Folio3 Chronicles Q2-10

April 2010 - June 2010The Folio3 Chronicles

Can we bring a change?

silent Revolution

Back to Basics (With Pen & Paper)05 06 08

April 2010 - june 2010

Quarter 2 > April 1, 2010 - June 31, 2010 - Valume 3 www.folio3.com

The Folio3 Chronicles

From The EditorThey say troubled times boost artistic expres-

sion… and this truism has never been more ev-

ident in the case of Pakistan than right now.

We might be a nation with many deep-rooted

concerns at hand, but we are also a nation that

is cultivating some great talent. Our bright,

young writers are being celebrated in the liter-

ary world; our actors are crossing borders to

play main leads in Hindi movies; while Paki-

stani designers and fashion weeks have been in

the headlines around the world!

This edition is done in a very short span, but

next time we plan to be bigger and better. Still

a lot of hard work, determination and efforts

were made by several people to finish this.

I would like to thank Aamir M. Ibrahim, Muham-

mad Kamran and Najmus Saqib for sending in

their submissions. I will appreciate contribu-

tion from all of you. Send anything you would

like to share with other Folio3ers, from images

to comics to articles.

I hope all of you will take out some time from

your busy schedules and enjoy this issue.

Best Regards

Moiz Kazmi

The ChroniclersMoiz Kazmi

Sanam Riaz

Aamir M. Ibrahim

Najmus Saqib

Riaz ur Rehman

SubmissionsSubmit your articles, news, photos to:

[email protected]

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April 2010 - June 2010

Table of ContentsMessage from the CEO and VP ........................... 4

Internet Activism: Can we bring a change? ................ 5

Silent Revolution .............. 6

Back to Basics (With Pen & Paper) ............ 8

Trust yourself but never trust your code ..................... 9

The Feat Sheet .................. 10

Hot Shot ........... ...............15

Open job Positions ............. 15

Rosters.............................16

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Message from the CEO and VP

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Hello everyone,

Those of you who have been with Folio3 for many years, as well as those who are our new employees, are seeing some significant achievements in Folio3’s journey as a Hi-Tech startup. The journey that began a few years ago has reached an important milestone. We have passed the one hundred employee mark and rapidly growing.

With growth come changes. And as a company, we will continue to make changes for the better. At this time, it is important to remember and renew our core values. Values that are vital to our success. These values guide us and give us a sense of direction through the many changes that take place. These come before policies, practices and goals. They help shape the basic philosophy of the way we do business. They help us, the people at Folio3, find common cause with each other.

Our core values are:1. We focus on our customers’ success.2. We value our people.3. We pursue high value in our service – sometimes in difficult terrain.4. Our corporate culture is hard working, open, friendly and fun.

We focus on our customers’ success, with a passionate commitment to customer service and excel-lence in quality. We believe that if we strive to make our customers successful, it will result in our success. We value our people and recognize that it is our people who make us successful. We give full com-mitment to the individual employee and try to promote a culture that brings out the talents and en-ergies of our people. In our people, we value autonomy, expertise and good judgment. We encourage personal involvement and individual responsibility. We respect individuality and diversity.

We pursue high value in the service we provide to our customers. It is critically important that our customers get the highest return on investment and we compete with the best in the industry in the relevant geographic region and market space. We stay focused on this goal and compensate for the many challenges that the local environment may throw at us. We compete vigorously.

We promote a corporate culture that is challenging and tough, yet open, friendly and fun. Along with this we value aggressive goals, clear direction and measured performance, and at the same time, a fun and friendly workplace.

We have a firm belief that keeping true to our core values will guide us through all times, rough and fair. Thanks for being part of this journey. Together, we aspire to greater heights. Adnan Lawai, CEO Naveed Qazi, VP of Engineering


Internet Activism:Can we bring a change?by Kamran Usman

We are surrounded with many opportunities in the Pakistani society, simply due to the fact that there are lots of tribulations. As Pakistanis, we are all responsible to work towards addressing the issues that Pakistan is facing, both locally and globally.

I

personally believe that taking care of the internal problems first is a good stratagem. We, as a na-tion, should focus on strengthening internal secu-rity to avoid terrorist activities such as bombing of mosques and other public places. We should take measures to eradicate growing corruption, eliminate differences based upon language & re-ligion, and build an eco-system that promotes lo-cal industries for economic development.

I know that it is easier said than done. Perhaps, I am being a bit unrealistic here. We have our families to look after or maybe we are just lost in the tech-world to think about anything else

than the latest iPhone or the Microsoft Kinect de-vice. However, as Will Smith’s beautifully crafted quote goes:

“Being realistic is the most commonly traveled road to mediocrity”

Had the human been realistic, we would not have electricity, or airplanes, or even computers, so technically we would not have the jobs we do today.

So, the point is, if any of us can invent the solu-tion to the current problems of our society, we can get rid of all the mess we have and which currently rule our lives. Running out of your home when it catches fire is a seemingly sensible solu-tion, but a better solution would be to think of ways you can control the fire and save the house.

As a starter, we, as techies can play a positive role by working in our capacities. For a start, we can at least start talking ‘publicly’(read: Internet) about the issues, and offer possible solutions. We are an organization of over 150 people, so if we can have, say, a hundred blogs, a hundred twitter accounts and say another hundred facebook ac-counts, which focus on highlighting the issues and solutions, and have a perspective, we surely can make a difference.

We surely do talk about the problems and the so-lutions within our small gatherings, but to bring awareness and change on a large scale, we need to be more vocal, more out-spoken and be on big-ger platforms. We have to be updated with media and news, so that we can keep a counter-check on what the foreign media portrays of Pakistan. What I have presented here are perhaps abstract theories, but providing a generic model is gen-

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The Folio3 Chronicles 6

Work started a few days ago, I was still trying to figure out how things worked. My job was still a chore, an unnecessary predecessor to my monthly paycheck. During the first few months, many men visited from the States, sharing their views of the little they felt needed to be seen in my city. Trying but fail-ing to paint the bigger picture summarizing the overarching story of things. Sure, it both-ered me. But I never knew how to respond. Then, one day, one speech changed every-thing; or at least my perspective on things.

There were many aspects to his monologue:, business, sales, corporate mission, and prod-uct roadmap. But the most important part of it was about how misunderstood we are as a nation. Eons ago our people were known as pioneers of education, science and innova-tion. Today to the world we’re nothing more

erally good, as different readers of this article may extend the ideas presented here in different ways. Some may setup dedicated websites, some may even be able to make a revenue-generating implementation for a social change, infinite pos-sibilities are there and things can be perceived on all levels.

I

did not have any specific goals while writing this, other than igniting our souls to do what we can within our own capacities to bring a good change in our society – In this way we carry on with our normal lives, and contribute without risking too much. I just sincerely feel that we can bring a change by putting in tiny bits. Being tech mani-acs, we at least know the technical challenges of building internet enabled systems – we just need to know the non-technical challenges of playing our part in development of a better Pakistan.

Silent Revolution by Muhammad Aamir

It was the spring of 2003 and corporations were falling faster than leaves in autumn. I never thought two planes crashing thousands of miles away would have such an impact on this day, in my part of the developing world.

April 2010 - June 20107

than terrorists. We complain about being op-pressed, denied, and violated. because of the incorrect perception people have about us, but have done nothing and thought of nothing beyond the obvious sales goals to correct this perception. We need to stand for the bigger picture. We need to prove that this country can execute and succeed in delivering high quality technology solutions and that we are capable of a lot more than is expected of us. We are no less than any-one else. We need to change the perception of people, one mind at a time, by delivering excellence. This company and the people in it will be pioneers of this change, and a few years from now there will be more compa-nies like us, bringing quality business and providing cutting edge technology prospects for its employees. Demand drives supply. Once there’s demand for skilled workers, the quality of university graduates is bound to improve as well. If you have demand for high quality engineers, supply will follow. And as time passes, people who once thought of us as nothing more than under privileged, un-civilized farmers will realize the difference between their perception and our reality. The speech ended and I found the audience – and myself – with jaws dropped, mesmer-ized by the possibility of becoming known

as a global technology hub – Of being part of a historical revolution. Needless to say, it didn’t take much time for us to snap out of it. We re-alized this speech was meant merely to get us motivated and geared up to work harder and longer days with the idea of a patriotic revo-lution acting only as fuel to employee motiva-tion which would not materialize into anything close to real.

Seven years later, I was invited to attend the CIO Mentor “Nashta” in our very own Concor-dia. Ten 3rd year students of science with anx-ious minds and curious questions made hours fly by as if only seconds. An extraordinary revelation hit me that day. I realized a lot has changed. Without us noticing, time had given genesis to many changes. New companies; big, medium, small and tiny; had emerged from no-where creating more job opportunities. Words like offshore, outsourcing, product develop-ment, entrepreneurship weren’t alien any-more. Companies had made great products, around mobile testing and content sharing, finance and stocks. Heck, one company even made a successful Cricket game! For someone who said he wanted to be a game programmer first day in college, this was a huge deal.

In the past few years, universities have become


more organized in their placement programs and are doing an amazing job bridging the gap between the industry and the students. Organizations like CIO-Pakistan and PASHA have taken some very long awaited steps to help the technology community grow. Now a fresh university graduate is better equipped to make his own decisions about what to do with his professional life.

Best of all, I was fortunate enough to hear from many customers that the team here was as good as any team in San Francisco. Believe me, every time I hear it, it feels good. Makes me feel, maybe in some way, we made a dif-ference. We had pioneered the change. Just like he said we would.

But the job’s not done yet. Much more still needs to be done. And it’s up to us to stim-ulate the next change. I know you’re busy with all those deadlines in the office and a list of chores at home. But if this is going to happen, if we’re going to do this, take this revolution to the next level, we need to try and escape the necessary necessaries of ne-cessity and take one step, one minute, one pixel to help change this image further. In-vest in a final year project idea, guide a few fresh minds on the technologies you’ve mas-tered, or simply answer a few questions for those anxious minds. Platforms and people are there to support the few who dare to try.

I, like you, am an average man who wants to change the world. But every time I think of moving a pebble off the road, my responsibil-ities come calling. The revolution has to wait for another day. Hope is what I carry with me and the burden of belief, that one day I will

change one life for the better. All I aim for is to make one more person realize the dream, envision the belief and stop for a moment to think, just a moment. This would be my pixel in the new image of things to come.

Because I know as well as you do, under the blue T-shirts, we’re all green and white.

Back to Basics (With Pen & Paper)by Najam us Saqib

Computers are getting-in in every aspect of our life. Perhaps this process is more signifi-cant and faster than global warming or infla-tion. Even for tasks that require a human to be creative are also being done using computer aided tools.

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I think for such tasks simply using pen and paper is more helpful. It helps us work fluently with the flow of ideas. Whether it’s in our nature or instincts or genes but it’s somewhere built-in, especially people of current young

generation didn’t have these electronic tools in their childhood so now their brain is engineered this way.

Following are my reasons to support this

• Our mind and memory is more used to with pa-per rather than its electronic alternatives.

http://lifehacker.com/5477231/it-didnt-hap-pen-if-you-didnt-write-it-down

• Its far more helpful than just note taking

http://lifehacker.com/5440788/best-goal-track-ing-tool-pen-and-paper

• A multi-window, multi-tasking and multi-tabbed system is not helpful for concentration.

• It is fast and more readily available.

• Change is always good. As we are using com puters for communication, fun and many more things so most of our time is spent in front of computer screen.

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Trust yourself but never trust your codeby Najam us Saqib

“An intelligent fool can make simple thing complex”

Most good developers have believed in their selves. This helps them committing and fulfilling harder goals. This self belief also gets extended to the code they write. This feeling make them believe that simpler parts of our code can never


be wrong neither syntactically nor logically. In reality it frequently happens that few lines of code written to perform a very mundane task become the source of Bug.

Let’s take an example. You write a small script to fetch some data from the DB and show it in HTML table. Somehow the data does not show up correctly. You scratch your head as you are unable to find any bug in your db schema or in your PHP code. After a painful debugging ses-sion you find out that real problem was in your HTML tags. It took so long to find the bug be-cause developer thought that the html part is simple and it can’t be wrong so the bug must be in some other part of the code.

Trusting your code blindly results in time-wast-ing. In fact the more you write and test code the more you understand that “less is more”. http://elegantcode.com/2010/06/06/the-best-code-you-will-ever-write.

The Feat SheetOcclinkOcclink Management System is end-to-end soft-ware designed to lessen the burden of Work-ers’ Compensation by assisting the employer in tracking and management of claims. It pro-vides a repository in which documents, billing

history and other types of correspondence can be stored electronically, retrieved and shared with all concerned parties pertaining to a claim so the employer has more insight and timely in-formation. It also provides an easy way for all the stakeholders to interact and use the system, ranging from tech-savvy administrators to the medical providers and attorneys.

AchievementsOcclink is the first one amongst the stream of projects we have been doing with Growers Ex-press. Due to this reason, it was very critical for the team to deliver a good quality product meeting the required features list. The team started off with a small pilot to facelift the UI of this application and then eventually worked on to add many high quality features. The system went into production on June 1st 2009 and the team has been enhancing the system since then.

Technologies.NET (VB & C#), jQuery, MS SQL Server 2005, Email2Db

SurveyTool

Another system that is being developed for Growers Express is Survey Tool. It is a stand-alone set of applications that provides an effec-tive and efficient mechanism to conduct onsite surveys in an automated environment. Handheld technology is used to capture survey data from the field that is sent back to the servers through

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Wi-Fi network.

The tool also let you print sur-veys, correc-tive actions and rewards tickets while conducting a survey. Blue-tooth technology is used to print these artifacts in the field through wireless print-ers. Currently the handheld side is being de-veloped for Window Mobile 6 platform. Future plans include expanding it to iPhone and other popular platforms.

Achievements Survey Tool’s pilot project was launched in July 2009 with a set of devices floated around the user’s com-munity. The product has been enhanced since then and now it is being used by the Growers Ex-press folks to in-vestigate hygiene and perform various internal audits.

Technologies.NET (C#), .Net Compact Framework, jQuery, MS SQL Server 2005, MS SQL Server CE 3.5

TrueTrac

TrueTrac is a suite of related products created for produce industry. It is designed with the aim to enhance the product traceability for produce industry at first stage and then other industries going forward. Products include mobile based applications for tracking harvest data (CropTrac™), manag-ing employees & harvesting crew (CrewTrac™) and printing PTI complaint case labels (Label-Trac™). MyTrac™ is a web-based content man-agement system that allows TrueTrac custom-ers to maintain content pertaining to their business and customize the instance of web-site. Customers may manage their own learn-ing center through this CMS.

AchievementsTrueTrac has been developed in Fo-lio3 from scratch. Development team started working on CMS and its admin console in July 2009 and first demo version was ready by October. TrueTrac’s hand-held application LabelTrac™ was ready for its first demo to the stra-tegic partners ear

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ly January and the event happened successfully. The system is now in production for its customer and many other features and products are in line for upcoming releases.

Technologies .NET (C#), .Net Compact Framework, jQuery, SQL Server 2008, MS SQL Server CE 3.5

Gamezebo

This quarter, Gamezebo saw a major Facebook in-tegration overhaul. Based on the latest features released by Facebook in their F8 conference, we integrated Facebook Connect Single Sign-On, Graph API to access profile information and social plugin’s for Like button, Like Box, Friends Activ-ity and Recommendations. Continuing on the Facebook front, we added syn-dicated content support through RSS feeds from various game blogs for Facebook game updates. Now anytime a new feature gets launched in Farmville, Gamezebo users get to know about it instantly. Also to keep up with the increasing page views, now hovering around 140,000 views per day and downloading 70GB’s of data daily, we moved our walkthroughs, our most viewed content, to the Rackspace Cloud. Now the walkthrough for Farmville, consisting of over 100 images, loads up blazingly fast through the Rackspace Cloud Con-tent Delivery Network.

SAP Spotlight Positioning

Designed as a professional collaboration applica-tion for SAP’s marketing and sales division to help

in the prod-uct position-ing of various

SAP products. SAP wanted a product that could enable easy access to positioning message pro-files (topics), create new topics and be able to share and collaborate on topics. In addition they wanted some means to score topic performance.

AchievementsFolio3 worked with SAP through a 3 month dis-

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covery phase to design a sophisticated collabo-ration application that fulfilled the needs of the SAP marketing and sales divisions for positioning. Then with only a 4 month development window, Folio3 completed and delivered the application providing the following features for various types of usersContent Owners - Solution Marketing - Enter content under development and publish - Share content with others- Consume content index with ability to see de-tail - score Content Consumers – Marketing Programs, Field MarketingSolution Engineer, Account Executive, and Global Communications- At-a-glance summary of topics - Discover relevant topics - Track areas of interest - Use consistent messages Executive Stakeholders – Marketing Executives- Find categories, sub-categories and topics of in terest- Simply and easily understand the content index for each- Be able to drill-down into a category or sub-category TechnologiesPHP, Drupal 6, MySQL, SPHINX, jQuery

MediaMorph

MediaMorph is a NYC-based start-up whose platform helps Film Studios and Television networks to man-age, account for and optimize revenue from Digital Distribution. MediaMorph’s product is in daily use at major Hollywood Studios such as Warner Bros and Sony Pictures, giving them the insight that they want and the control that they need in order to foster the growth of digital channels.

With digital content being sold at over 100 outlets like Amazon, iTunes, XBox, Hulu selling digital media all over the world, having a platform which performs revenue aggregation precisely to the penny is very important. MediaMorph makes that possible with its comprehensive, sophisticated and highly flexible product suite.

Achievements:1. The revenue aggregation cycle called “Royalty Workflow” was completed and deployed at Warner Bros. We are now integrated with SAP at Warner Brothers.

2. Comcast Entertainment Group, a big name in the US entertainment industry, becomes our customer. Their manual reporting system has been completely revamped with MediaMorph’s automated aggrega-tion and scheduled delivery systems.

3. With a mammoth database being maintained for Sony Pictures Entertainment, daily ETL scripts took as longer than 6 hours to complete. Performance improvements got the number down to 1 hour!

4. Numerous complex reports for WB and SPE were

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improved to run as fast as under a minute against a 20 minute generation time earlier.

The team has done wonderfully well to under-stand the needs at the customer level and have surpassed expectations on numerous occasions.

TechnologiesJ2EE, Postgres, Python, Jasper, Struts, Quartz, Tiles, AJAX, ActionScript, XML, WebServices, Tomcat, Apache Axis, different APIs

Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT)

The Massachusetts In-stitute of Technology (MIT) is a private re-search university lo-

cated in Cambridge, Massachusetts. MIT has five schools and one college, containing a total of 32 academic departments, with a strong emphasis on scientific and technological research. MSRP (MIT Summer Research Program) and Converge are two such research programs for which hun-dreds of students enroll every year. Folio3 was involved in the design and development of online student application forms for both MSRP as well as Converge this quarter.

Achievements: MIT’s pilot project MSRP was released in Feb 2010. Even after facing a few bumps in the beginning, the team worked diligently to get the project back on track and make it a suc-cess. The MSRP application is being used by MIT students and faculty to enroll new applicants for the summer research program this year. The Converge application is under development and

leading online casual game destination, attract-ing 700,000 unique users and 3.5 million page views per month. Gamezebo, re-launched its web site with the help of Folio3, as the first des-tination to discover new games, read reviews, and share tips for casual games on the iPhone, Facebook, and online.

AchievementsFolio3 created the 2.0 version of the site from start to finish. In addition to reviews, previews, walkthroughs and news for casual games for all platforms, the new Gamezebo web site enables casual gamers to: - Post and share user tips and game guides- Search and discover casual games to play based on platform, genre, or rating- Follow favorite games with alerts- Add friends, post in forums, and send private messages

TechnologiesPHP, Drupal 6, MySQL, J2EE

Soccer World

We launched our first in house flash game Soccer World on Kongregate, in time for the FIFA World Cup 2010. The game was developed in Flash AS3 and integrated with Kong API. Because of easy pick-n-play game mechanics, we received a very positive response from users. The team is now working on the Facebook version of the game complete with social features and leader boards.

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Hot Shot Employee of the Month (April’ 10 – Jun’ 10) Hot Shot employees who impressed all of us throughout the year are the biggest asset of Folio3. They work hard, they are determined and are helping us grow substantially. We con-gratulate all of you and thank you for your ser-vices:

• April 2010 – Shahzad Anees

• May 2010 – Kamran Usman

• June 2010 – Syed Zeeshan Ali

• Personnel LivesSpecial Moments: Some of our Folio3 employees finally tied nuptial knots. The entire team at Folio3 is happy for them and wishes them good luck for the life ahead:

1. Salman Rawala

2. Sanam Riaz

Folio3ers who went for Umrah:

Imam Raza got a chance to perform Umrah this quarter. The Folio3 Team congratulates them and wishes that more Folio3ers get an opportunity to go for the Holy pilgrimage

In Other News

Kaab Ahmed completed his MS in Software En-gineering from Mohammad Ali Jinnah University

Khulood Ali, Usman Aleem were promoted to the position of Senior Software Engineer from Software engineer and Zeeshan Hussain, Saira Sarfaraz, Amna Khan were promoted to the position of Senior Quality Assurance Engineer from Quality Assurance Engineer.

Open Job Positions1- Iphone/Blackberry Developer

2- Senior .net Developer

3- Senior PHP/Java/.net Developer

4- Senior QA

5- Fresh graduates

6- Interns

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RostersNew Members at Folio3:

Folio3 hired some very talented employees this quarter with the headcount reaching 150 and still counting. These employees were hired under several designations. The lists of their names are listed below. Let us all welcome them wholeheart-edly and wish a prosperous future for them.

Senior Project Manager - Muhammad Ibrahim Khan, Waseem Ahmed

Project Manager - Muhammad Imran, Navaid Ahmed

Lead Software Engineer - Muhammad Asif Kam-boh, Muhammad Sheraz Siddiqi

Senior Systems Engineer - Muhammad Hasan Bin Jamal Siddiqui

Senior Software Engineer - Hassan Adeel, Ja-hanzeb Zaman, Moin Ahmed, M. Kamran, Kaab Ahmed and Shahzad Fateh Ali

Senior Software Engineer - Faraz Ahmed Ikram, Hassan Jamil, Muhammad Saqib Javed, Umair Vatao

Software Engineer - Moiz Uddin Hyder, Aneeq Hashmi

Senior QA Engineer - Yasmeen Mushtaq, Ahsan Mustafa, Ashar Hassan, Azfar Ayub, Salman Sadiq, Syed Zeeshan Ali

QA Engineer - Hafsa Saeed, Hunza Basharat, Mu-hammad Nasir, Naveed Ahmed, Syed Samad Ahmed

Bukhari, M. Ouns Qureshi

Support Engineer - Ijaz Hussain, Muhammad Faizan Noor

Senior Support Engineer - Ather Sultan

Graphic Designer - Yasir Siddiqui

Senior Graphic Designer - Syed Muhammad Kashif Hashmi

Engineering - Sabheen Ahmed

Technical Writer - Moiz Kazmi

Internees - Shahab Uddin (Technical Support), Mohsin Ali (Data Entry), Muhammad Jawaid Gadi-wala (Engineering)

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Folio3 Chronicles Q2-10