Wednesday, July 28, 2010

Senior developer for software.com (PHP)

We are looking for a senior developer for software.com. Here are the details:

  • At least 4 years experience in developing with PHP
  • At least 1 year in a large E-commerce website
  • Must have dealt with large website projects (1 Million PV/month at least)
  • Must have experience in any MVC framework
  • In depth knowledge of HTML/CSS/JavaScript or other UI technologies and browser issues

Skills needed (must):
  • PHP version 4/5
  • HTML/CSS/JavaScript
  • Linux (Fedora/Red Hat/Debian/CentoOS)
  • E-commerce system (any large E-commerce platform in PHP)

Extra skills (bonus):
  • Amazon AWS (EC2, S3)
  • MySQL optimization and tuning for high volume websites
  • Python, C, C++, Java experience
The person must be able to manage her/his daily task, and communicate the same to the Australian team.
We do not have managers in the team so proper work management for oneself is a must.

Location: AD-38, Sector 1, Salt Lake City, Kolkata, India

Company Portfolio: The position is for software.com, running under Startive Networks Australia (investor into software.com, freelancer.com, forums.com etc.)
The person will be on payroll of Pixlie Web Solutions Pvt. Ltd. which already manages forums.com.
software.com will have a fresh team to build an e-commerce application on the software.com domain.
It will be similar to buy.com but for software business.

Compensation: For the right candidate we are willing to provide up to Rs. 80,000/- (about USD 2K) a month.

Other details: We are a very young and cool team working on some of the greatest domains available out there.
Breakfast, lunch, evening snacks are available at office free every day.
Also dedicated gaming machine, movies every once a while, and other indoor games available.
If you are willing to shift from outside Kolkata, we will arrange for your accommodation for first 3 months.

Sunday, July 11, 2010

Requirements for Software.com

Software.com needs developers again (work from Salt Lake, Kolkata office):
1 x experienced backend PHP developer with Magento e-commerce experience, there will be a lot of customization of the product so they need to already know it and how it works.

1 x front-end UI developer with strong HTML and CSS experience, i.e. be able to take a layered PSD and make clean, lightweight, well structured HTML/CSS.

1 x graphic designer, someone with experience with e-commerce and retail stores, i.e. they need to design banners for products, sales, promotions etc. I'd want to see lot's of examples of previous work on this role.

1 x system engineer to setup and maintain Magento on Amazon Web Services, using EC2, RDS, Cloudfront & load balancer - therefore they need some very solid Amazon experience.

We will need to be "on call" (HQ in Australia) so if the site goes down at any time they can be reached via SMS and can login and see what's happened & fix (hopefully not a regular occurrence).
Please share this...

Tuesday, July 06, 2010

First look at Airtel DTH HD (High Definition)

After a long battle I finally got my first look at ESPN HD on our newly installed Airtel DTH HD. We have a Samsung Series 5 40" LCD (LA40C550) which is a full HD capable one. I have already played HD content like Avatar trailer, "Waka Waka" and so on. Of course I was not expecting Avatar picture quality on ESPN HD. But it seemed more compressed than I expected. The obvious things you will notice once you switch to ESPN HD is the aspect ratio. If you have an HD TV and are stretching the Standard 4:3 feed into 16:9, you get used to the stretching. But once you watch full HD resolution (1920x1080) you realize all of a sudden that humans are not that fat.

To compare the two side by side I would need two setups, which I do not have. So I tried to concentrate on the match and not the channel logo on top, to see if I could see a lot of difference between the two feeds. To be honest the difference was there, but not on the face. Even though HD was still HD in resolution, the bitrate I am sure is much lower than any HD content on disc. So that brought in similar blotchy-ness in the content as SD format, but much, much less. Yes you could see the players with much more clarity, and the overflowing color patches that are common when you view the field from distance was not present as much. Overall its a good view. I could not test surround audio since we do not yet have a 5.1 setup on our main A/V receiver.

So final verdict? Well I will say, unless you are crazy about pixels, you can wait for the prices to go down, or maybe HD becoming the "standard" equipment in DTH.

Thursday, July 01, 2010

Poor customer support from Airtel Digital TV

We recently bought a new Airtel Digital TV DTH service for our Salt Lake office. All was fine until I noticed an upgrade to Airtel DTH HD (High Definition) at a price of Rs. 2250 /- one time. It included ESPN HD till July 12, 2010, as I remember from my phone conversation with the customer support. I ordered for the upgrade (paid on IVR) and two days back (30 June 2010) we received our brand new HD box. But ESPN HD was not pre-activated. Strange as it may seem, I was to pay an extra Rs. 100/- for ESPN HD which was supposed to be included in the package. The reason given was a change in plans suddenly. Well of course to the customer, a price of Rs. 100 seems OK to be able to watch World Cup in full HD. So we paid the 100 bucks, sent the request and waited.

Waiting... waiting... still waiting. Its 2 July, and no ESPN HD on our TV. I called up customer support yesterday (1 July 2010), they gave me a waiting time of half an hour. Well of course that did not work. Then I called again, and I got a waiting time of 24 hours. That time is also almost up, and nothing yet. Oh! and all this while I have not received a single status SMS from Airtel on my registered mobile number. I called up today (2 July 2010) and got a waiting time till evening. They said there are technical issues in the new HD release, and many customers are feeling the pain.

My question: Airtel is not a small startup right? Why such rubbish service from such a big company? Its a grand fail. Just trying to launch an unfinished product to cash in on the World Cup fever is nothing but robbery.

Update: When nothing worked for 6 days (yes 6 bloody days, 3 complaints and what not) I finally asked Airtel Digital TV to give me a full refund (Rs. 2350 /-, HD Set Top Box + ESPN HD) and take their new shinny toy back. That worked! I got ESPN HD in 2 damn hours. Hah!