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ujjwalg

1,102 karma · joined May 14, 2009

Cofounder of BenchPrep. link: www.benchprep.com Twitter: @ujjwalg
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ujjwalg··on Ask HN: Who is hiring? (September 2016)
BenchPrep | Chicago, IL, ONSITE | Multiple roles http://www.builtinchicago.org/job/senior-engineer-6 http://www.builtinchicago.org/job/software-design-engineer-t...

BenchPrep is a small group of driven, ambitious individuals committed to changing the landscape of education. We work hard, eat well, and have lots of fun. Our clients include ACT®, HRCI, Hobsons and many other educational companies. Our current situation is very thrilling. You will join a small team in a profitable start-up, that is building both green-field projects as well as improving existing top-of-the-line products.

Roles we're hiring for: Senior Engineer & Automation Engineer email: u@benchprep.com

ujjwalg··on Who's downloading pirated papers? Everyone
I wrote about horrors of scientific publishing not just from the viewership side, but also from publishing side a few years ago. tl;dr - Publishers have just too much control on publishing process and distribution process when they bring almost nothing to the table in the digital world we are living today. The very fact that as a scientist you can only submit a paper to one journal at a time and wait for months and sometimes a year to get a response is insane and completely unacceptable. Imagine if you have to do it when you are applying for a job.

If someone wants to read it, here is a link: http://ujjwalg.com/blog/2013/5/3/the-problem-with-the-scient...

ujjwalg··on Dear Google Mail Team
I wrote an article about spam filtering sometime ago. Context was "Spam Filtering should not have any False Positives, ever!".

If anyone is interested they can read it here: https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/20141202174235-36852258--spam...

ujjwalg··on Gates Foundation to require immediate free access for journal articles
I love what they are trying to do. The entire scientific publishing industry is messed up and can use any help it can get. I wrote a blog about how terrible the scientific publishing system is sometime back.

https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/article/20140922193017-368522...

ujjwalg··on Amazon makes Kindle app Apple compliant by removing one URL link
Apple rejected our iPhone/iPad app for the exact same reason. We had a link to our website in the help section.
ujjwalg··on Rumor: Microsoft To Buy Nokia For $30 Billion
Buying RIM made more sense in my mind given RIM's penetration in enterprise market.
ujjwalg··on Apple Moves to Tighten Control of App Store
I would say it becomes difficult to know not impossible. And as soon as they realize it they can remove the app from the appstore.
ujjwalg··on Google Will Become an AI Company
http://code.google.com/apis/predict/

this seems a perfect stepping stone... an awesome move on Google's part.

ujjwalg··on What would you do if you were CEO of Google?
I would put a focus group around improving add-ons for gmail, one at a time. Though I use multiple project management tools, I still use email the most. Having a direct project/todo management tool in gmail would make the life so much easier and no one will have to go and get different accounts for different clients. They can just add a project within gmail. But it has to be at least at par with the current best. This will completely disrupt the project management tool provider industry.
ujjwalg··on Paywalls crumble with Google Buzz
The interesting thing here is that the abstract which is the text he has is free for all. It is just the abstract of a nature journal article, nothing more, nothing less, which is available to everyone, anyways.
ujjwalg··on Ask HN: Review My (Twitter) App: Follow Ham
I really like the idea. I think if you provide some interesting statistics as example can make it viral. For example: how many spammy followers aplusk, techcrunch, mashable etc. have. How many of them are common to all etc., etc. This might get you a follow up article on techcrunch or the likes too. :)
ujjwalg··on "Superatoms" Mimic Elements: Research Reveals New Perspective of Periodic Table
The problem is not making them but making them in enough quantities to be actually used for applications. A lot of the current research efforts are in pursuit of depositing them on a surface in our group.
ujjwalg··on "Superatoms" Mimic Elements: Research Reveals New Perspective of Periodic Table
What the article says is TiO (a molecule aka superatom) mimics Ni (an atom). The group is trying to add another layer of molecules (superatoms) over the 2D periodic table.

Disclosure: I was a graduate student of Dr. Castleman.

ujjwalg··on Uncommon - Custom design your own iPhone case
Do you have an affiliates program?
ujjwalg··on Ask PG: Can we get an RSS feed for articles we upvote?
I know, but I cannot make them public or categorize them. And it will take me a while to come to articles which I upvoted 6 months back.
ujjwalg··on Dropbox (YC S07) Raises $7.25M, Crosses 3M Users
I agree and congratulations to the whole team. I have been a huge fan and loved their free service. However, as soon as I moved to the paid service and increased my backed up data to 10GB my computer became extremely slow. Dropbox is using 98% of CPU both on windows XP and Mac. It has been a week and not everything is backed up yet. Moreover, if I move a directory within my dropbox folder, it takes it as a new folder completely and tries to delete and back it up again which is completely opposite to their philosophy. Also, if you want to back up 2-3 computers at the same time everything screws up. So, a word of advice while using dropbox, be patient, dont get too excited after using their free service and jump the gun from 2GB to 20GB, do it slowly and carefully and hopefully things will work out great.
ujjwalg··on IPhone Web Apps as an Alternative to the App Store
http://www.apple.com/webapps/

They have a separate store for iPhone webapps

ujjwalg··on Augmented Reality Virtual Keyboard using HTML 5
If you watch the end of this video http://www.ted.com/talks/pranav_mistry_the_thrilling_potenti... which was posted on HN a couple of days back, you will see a lot of things that he proposes which can completely change how we interact.

He not only gives an example of virtual keyboard, he also gives example of a paper can be converted into a touch screen with a motion sensor.

Highly recommended video.

ujjwalg··on Ask HN: What are the best places to publish/sell downloadable software?
This is really helpful. Thanks a lot.
ujjwalg··on Mendeley, the-Last.fm-of-research
I have also tried using Mendeley but never used it after a day of trying it. Papers for Mac is so much better and they have an iPhone app too. Hopefully, Mendeley will follow suit.
ujjwalg··on Ask HN: What are the best places to publish/sell downloadable software?
Thanks for the info. Trial versions for desktop app are currently being developed and we will upload them on the websites you mentioned once they are done.

I was trying to figure out Amazon store for software, but it seems to be not working for everyone at this moment. The list you provided is good. It seems like there is no complete list for these stores. We will make one, once we are done with finding all and post a link on HN for everyone to use.

ujjwalg··on Amazing startup pitches (Loopt, Mint, Dropbox, etc) [videos]
this is now my homepage. thanks for sharing.
ujjwalg··on Experiment HN: Idea Day Results
1) Home-delivery, inner city parcel service and taxi service having a centralized system. It will be a B2B and B2C combined together to make things more efficient

2) Higher cab fares during night time so that drivers have incentives to operate during night, especially, on friday and saturday nights.

3) Lower medical/insurance costs

ujjwalg··on Tell HN: Apple paid my iPhone money, with exceptional service
You mention that "you can upgrade from personal account to business accoun", how can someone do that?
ujjwalg··on If you had 5 dollars and 2 hours, how would you make as much money as possible?
In short: Entrepreneurs should "think outside the box". Don't be scared of competition/constraints.
ujjwalg··on ReMail (YC W09) launches multiple accounts
The app description mentions "reMail needs less space than you think: 100,000 emails take 500 MB on your phone - 6% of the capacity of an 8 GB iPhone, the smallest iPhone available"

What does that mean? If I have 1GB size 100,000 emails will that take 500MB of space on my phone?

ujjwalg··on Reasons why Apple should add "Gift This App" to iTunes
I completely agree. Not only this, they should also let developers provide individual discount coupon codes for their apps the way you can do on your own website. We have users who are helping us with testing and we want to give them our apps at 50% or 75% off but there is no way to do it.
ujjwalg··on The stats iPhone developers are missing: Sales Conversion and Referral Source
They are providing you a service and 5% of app sales is nothing given that there are 10 more websites doing very similar stuff.
ujjwalg··on App Store Heresies: Higher Price, Better Ratings. Don’t Discount Your App.
I completely agree with you. We have a lot of apps with >$14.99 price tag and as soon as there is a negative review the sales go down a lot.

I also agree with you with the momentum aspect. If you are gaining momentum a bad review can ruin it all for you. It happened to us on a $1.99 app in education which made it to top 25 in that category but 1 bad review and it was downhill ever since. It will be really helpful if Apple allows threaded review system in which the developer can comment on the reviewers comments and the reviewer receives an email notification to respond and change.

ujjwalg··on Dropbox Acquires The Domain Everyone Thought It Had: Dropbox.com
It is unrelated to this post but, dropbox rocks. I have tried 4 different file sharing services but dropbox simplicity and efficiency beats them all.
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