One of the primary needs of an online education platform is the need for a discussion forum. A discussion forum is similar to Quora but different in that there is only one thread of answers/comments for each question. So in terms of an educational portal a discussion forum is a…

Talking with NGOs and understanding the processes they are using to communicate with their beneficiaries and the challenges they were facing, we were set on a path to create an application that would empower non-profits communication with their beneficiaries. After spending months and working on design and implementations we were…

Product-market-fit. These three words will change your approach to design. They’ll leave you puzzled, and at the same time so empowered. It’s not just for product leaders and managers. Read on to know why every designer needs to know this.  You may have heard about many products that connected with the…

GitHub badges, a consolidated way to present concise pieces of information about a project. These badges help in increasing the readability of the readme file because they provide metrics about the repositories that help the readers to get a clear idea of the repository very quickly just by scanning the…

We are working on a communication system, now the requirements was to set up some automation with upcoming messages. So let’s say we have a message with some greeting keyword like hi/hello we need to respond to the user as a welcome message. This is a very simple example but…

It’s been almost a month I’m working on the open-source project with Tech4Dev. Prior to this, I had been a part of many enterprise applications in several domains including the social sector. With a deep desire to explore more areas, I found one of the interesting aspects of this project…

Q: You’re new to this project, where can you begin? A: First of all, we’re happy to know you’re interested in this project. By now, you might know that we’re building an open-source chatting platform between NGOs and their beneficiaries. It is a great opportunity for us to make an…

We’ve struggled with communication. First, in about 80% of all interviews, we observe prospects failing at communication. Whether they are from reputed Tier 1, Tier 2 colleges or not so known Tier 3 colleges. Second, those who got picked showed large scope for further improvement. Third, when we internally evaluated our team,…

ColoredCow has been working on Laravel for the past 3 years. In this time period, we have learned a great deal about coding from the way the framework is architected. We have also vastly grown in terms of processes around development following some of the practices that are built into…

How to prepare, manage and succeed in your Google Hangout/Skype Interview. Your interview creates your first impression for people you want to work with. You start a new journey and open new possibilities with an interview. When it is so important then why not give your best in it. With…

“NGOs are in the business of trust” streamed the bold voice of Annabel Mehta, President, Apnalaya. This statement struck a chord with the diginatories from the social development sector, who all had gathered in the Wodehouse Gymkhana hall in Mumbai for ToolBox’s annual event ‘Out of the Box’. The event…

We started our journey with Laravel 3 years back and yesterday we took an important step towards being an active part of the community and meeting fellow Laravel Enthusiasts. We believe conferences are a great medium to know about what is happening and also to make connections.   In our…

Have you ever gone over an application codebase and felt that it should be refactored because it’s poorly written and just doesn’t make any sense? However doing so feels like an enormous task? Read on to make sure your application doesn’t end up like that, Legacy. Lately, I’ve been consulting…

In the past, we consulted startups on hiring remote development teams for their digital products. Hiring a team over building one from scratch in-house product can reduce costs and save time in early years of business. From years of experience, we generalised these 5 pointers that books often don’t talk about….

Last week I had a very great experience. We got a task to fix some vulnerability in the project. The project was in a PHP Framework and the codebase was not compatible with the latest framework. Our client used an online tool and got some vulnerability pointers which should be…

Many times, while working on various tasks, you must’ve got stuck between options and cannot decide which one you should do. The easiest and most obvious route is you do the research and probably take consultation if needed. Many people manage a list of pros and cons and based on which…

In life we all have our days of success and failures. Somedays are good when do our tasks perfectly while on some days we are barely able to make it halfway through. The world always expects the best from us, but that doesn’t mean that if we fail to give…

Throughout our lives, we aspire for remarkability in everything we do. It is the unanimous cause of passion behind our work. But sometimes we get so fixated to create that perfect masterpiece that we forget that remarkability comes out of habit, it’s a feeling that should be exhibited in our…

Everyone knows that Reading is a good way to help you grow further. From last few months, I am also finding it very useful and interesting. It’s helping me to improve my personal and professional skills. I am sharing my thoughts on how reading is helping me to increase my…

From the time of our birth our life has been a journey of experiences. With more experiences our mind expand and so does our abilities and capabilities to connect with the world. It’s strange how even after so many years of learning new things, we haven’t mastered its art. The…

We as human, want to be the master of our work and look forward to appraisal and recognition. Due to this primitive nature, we often tend not to communicate when required. We want to be the one to solve the problems of other, and come out as heroes. If there…

Recently, we got a project that was already built on one of the popular frameworks. We realized that the project had become a legacy application. The code was written on the initial versions of the framework, wasn’t up to date and compatible with the latest framework version. Probable guess: the…

The perfection in multitasking is what everyone wants. Everybody juggles between multiple tasks and everybody wants to master the art. Not everyone works on large-scale applications. These applications have full-time dedicated resources constantly fixing bugs, building new features and maintaining the environments. These applications are rare. Not everyone owns a…

What sets a winning team apart from others?   I remember watching a movie where the coach said how his players should not be concerned if they move ahead. Rather the focus should be on moving the ball forward. If the ball moves, they move forward automatically.   A lot…

Two weeks ago, I got the news that one of our team members has to leave the company (He was the key man in one of our main project) and I need to immediately take the charge of his project. Before leaving he has given his estimate and releasing dates…

Remember when we were children how we used to do some of the most irrational things like making a sand castle and creating a story around it or creating our own games with our rules and storyline. If you would recall then you’ll realize that how these things don’t fit…

We all know that design patterns are very helpful and important in software development. Though It takes some time to understand and implement but, once you able to do that development becomes a very interesting job. I am working on a healthcare project. Though the project is doing well and…

We as humans are driven by perfection. To become the best in our fields is something that the society has taught us to desire. But In order to deliver with perfection, we get stuck in a loop, discarding our less than perfect efforts. This at times doesn’t lead to any…

All of us, all our lives are always waiting for the best time to do something.   The Best time to start loosing weight. Best time to go on the trip you have been waiting for. To buy the gadget that you wanted.   Overwhelming and long shot examples? Here…

Recently I was working on a healthcare project’s assignment. Our client wants to have some integration with a third-party service. So I did my research and give the estimates to the client. When I started developing everything was going according to the plan. When I about to complete the task…

While working in CodeTrek from its initial phase, it brought me an opportunity to create a new system altogether. I started working in CodeTrek along with Adiba and Abhishek. When CodeTrek began to develop, I was only taking care of the coding part of development. But only coding the assigned…

When students enter in college, it becomes important for some students to think about achieving a “great career”. Those are the students, who actually want to do something great in their lives. They put some great efforts to make themselves better. And I think the time of vacations brings out the best…

We have completed a solid chunk of development in one of our product ManageMyNGO. Now NGO organizations are putting their data into our system it’s very important for us to have a solid data recovery plan. Today  I have a discussion on DR plan activity with my team.  Sharing my…

After getting a Bachelors degree in any field, What would you opt to go for? Higher Studies or to get a job or start a business? Students who are in the middle of their courses must have started to think about there choices. I just want to share my understanding…

A strong organization is comprised of passionate people. And intense passion towards our work may convert us to a nerd. According to Google, a nerd is a foolish or contemptible person who lacks social skills or is boringly studious. Well, most of us don’t fall on the first part of…

Our latest weekend experience taught me that life is much simpler than we like to see it and it is much more fun when seen through one lens.   Last Saturday on a spur of movement we decided to travel Mawana, Prateek’s hometown. Why? Because we had heard so much…

Unexpected gifts, unannounced good news, a word of comfort, some support, some encouragement. Doesn’t, all of this add a fresh spark in life? Pushes you to do more, to walk an extra mile and be grateful for what you have.   I felt the same when Sarthak connected with me…

We often discuss how easy it is to build software development, if we get the basics right. Most of the time it is all about people and the relation we share among us. Working remote sometimes add to another level of abstraction and discontinuity between teams and often is a…

Learning has always been high on the list for us at ColoredCow. From start, we have believed that to grow as an organization it is important to both grow individually and as a group. Hence we keep finding new ways to broaden our perspective and outlook.   The aim is…

How can I learn new technologies? I know little about Software, how to enhance my skills? I feel like I am missing a lot in comparison to my friends who are studying from colleges in bigger cities and non-hilly areas? How to learn without impacting my studies?   These were…

Employability is the talk of the town, and sadly not for very positive reasons. Every other day new statistics keep coming up and we hear about abysmal facts like ‘Less than 8% Indian engineers fit for core engineering roles’ (Economic Times), ‘80% of India’s engineers remain unemployable in the software…

It is not every day you hear that someone decides to paint a ghost village with life lessons. Yes, you read it right, I am talking about painting an abundant village with life lessons of people who lived there. And yes, I agree you don’t hear that at all!  …

This morning when we all walked in our office, a pleasant surprise awaited us. To our delight, we were greeted by boxes of sweets! With sugar lovers in the house, it was a happy kick-start to the day. What added more to the sweetness was the reason for celebration. Vaibhav…

  Before we talk about ways to find an internship that can help your career. Let’s first pose a simple question, What is your reason for doing an internship?  Why would you go for one?   Is it about earning money, getting exposure or just getting a certificate of experience….

Sometimes while aiming for the higher rungs on the ladder we overlook the fundamental steps. Clarity of purpose, tends to be one such neglected step. A clear blueprint of what you wish to do and what would it take to be there increases chances of achieving it. So all the…

A name, a word that creates an identity. An identity that we hold closest to our existence and which in turn forms the starting point of every introduction we make. The sound of one particular word that is so deeply engraved that we remember it even in a crowd. With…

In a slow but progressive manner, we see organizations around the world moving towards a people-centered functioning. Making new policies and including different activities in their schedules to pave way for a healthy and motivational environment for their employees. The intent can be debated but if done genuinely a people-centered…

Take a second, go back and think about your first day in school, work or any new thing you started with. Do you remember that giddy feeling you had before each of those new events. Whether veteran or rookie, we all are graced by those initial moments of nervousness, those…

As humans, we are gifted with an evolved way of communication. We not only express ourselves through words and gestures but also through intricate ways like music, art, and literature. Each of these forms of expressions gives us an advantage of expressing what we think and feel with clarity. This…

Access control is an important aspect of any system dealing with sensitive content. At ColoredCow, we recently worked on a healthcare system and one of its key requirement was having an ACL system to enable secure and efficient handling of data.   Key specifications that we identified from the requirements…

  ColoredCow started its official journey 3 years back in Gurgaon, the Millennium City of India. The city that caters more than 250 of Fortune 500 companies and houses many Gen-Next entrepreneurs. We started our journey from this place, the place that inspires many from it’s ‘rags to riches’ story,…

The process or the phase of incubation fundamentally helps each organism to develop and be prepared for the external world, incubation provides right conditions to grow and be ready to survive. Inspired by the concept of incubation we have seen a lot of countries over the years using a similar…

Building a great product for you shouldn’t be about managing teams and coordinating its design and development. While you figure out the market, and develop the business plan for your product we empower you to do so with the following benefits:   Stand Out Differentiate your business with custom softwares…

There are two parts to building a great website (or any product for that matter). One, to explore the story behind that product; a story that brings the purpose in perspective. Purpose is generally constant throughout the project (unless the problem you’re trying to solve changes). This constant will keep…

It is great chance if your clients think the same way you do. The journey of working together becomes rewarding and enjoyable. Such was our situation with our client the Predictive Strategy Group. It was exciting to just hear about their product but after using it, I was a believer…

A website solves a business problem. It is not just a page for people to find your phone number and address. It helps you gain more customers by engaging with them, by telling about yourself and your product. It ultimately helps you sell a proposition. When people talk about you…

There’s something not right about handshakes. I mean, it is a good symbol of warmth and showing interest but it must not be used as means to an end. A good handshake holds a lot of responsibility, it should not be substituted for communication by overdoing it. I’ve seen people…

Small pieces of paper that carry information about how one could reach you but not about why they should reach you. What leaves the lasting impression of why one should get to you is the kind of service you deliver and the way you made your customer feel. If your…

To ship it is to let your work float out into the ocean. If you think you’ll perfect your work first and then send it out, you might end up taking forever. Imagine facebook’s fate if they had waited to launch their site till they had perfected the ‘like’ button,…

Money isn’t necessary to make us feel rich. People are precious jewels and much more treasure worthy than money will ever be. But people do not come with a red mark ‘X’ on their heads like those treasure maps. You have to be on constant journey with a shovel ready…

Perfection isn’t achieved in one go. This is the toughest fact of life because to accept this means you will have to work much more and much harder to get there. If you witness something perfect, and you know it isn’t a result of beginner’s luck or a fluke then…

Despite doing the work you love, there will be times when you start observing a pattern, regularity. This will be easy to overlook because you love your work. You wake up each morning, excited to go to work only to do the same thing you have been doing for a…

Hugh Macleod’s book ‘Ignore Everybody and 39 Other Keys to Creativity’ comes from a great experiential learning. His ideas are profound and ripe and they made a connection with me. There was a lot of truth in his voice; I wonder why he preferred to call it ‘keys to creativity’…

I would recommend Rework to anyone starting their own business. What I think of the book: If you are running on a business model designed by your grand-father, or as an individual you strongly believe in one way of working and wouldn’t change it for the world, then Jason Fried…

If you are in a service sector and you deal with many clients, then work related turbulence with some of the clients is inevitable. There can be many reasons for this; you might fail to prioritize the tasks owing to the many clients, there could be some error on your…

There was a time in college when I would get mails from my professors and I had a problem in responding them. I did not know how to say to them what I wanted to say. What I mean is, I doubted myself if I was saying the right thing….

When you read, outside noise is suppressed giving way to your inside voice. It is like meditation. At ColoredCow, we give a lot of importance to reading. More than an advice, reading has become a part of our culture. We have a list of books that we want each of…

At school, the homework came with a due date and I had to adhere to it. There were times when I’d reach home with a huge load of work from all the subject teachers with very less time to finish it. I was forced to overcommit. I couldn’t argue with…

If someone asked me whether I wanted to learn something new every day, I would raise my hand every time. But there is more to it than just raising a hand which is the “HOW” of learning. Learning a new technology is a roller coaster ride, it is not that…

Companies these days are taking unconventional approach to impart values and culture into their people. We realized how one such approach was unknowingly building ours. Colored Cow is a small company and we prefer to cook our own food. We buy groceries on a Sunday and stock our fridge for…

It was 12 minutes past 8 in the night and I saw 3 women coming out of the meeting room, all of them from different age groups. I did not dare ask for their ages, they looked vibrant and enthusiastic. I should be crazy to have bound their energies by…

Have you always wanted to build eye-catching, making-dent-in-the universe user-interfaces? Flash Back – 2013 I had always wanted to get into web design and development. Fancy aesthetic user interfaces that make you feel cool. I applied my perfectionist approach to it and started collecting the stuff I need to know…

We have been sharing our thoughts on all things digital and a part of it covered digital communication. Prateek read a newsletter by 9 Clouds which talked about the same, so we decided to write our own post as a critique of the newsletter. Please read the newsletter before you read further;…

At Colored Cow, we’re trying to identify and build a community of people who are passionate about technology. We want to give back to this community all that we have learnt through our experience. We’re doing it by creating a platform for them. On www.meetup.com, we found a group of…

In one corner of the office I saw a bar stool standing tall with dignity amidst the business environment. Little did I realize that it was the chair that KD was talking about, the chair that ColoredCow got for him, for he is at his best when he is on…

I know a way to learn something new- jump in. Javascript and Ajax presented themselves to me as alien’s languages. Despite having an edge in object oriented languages I had an initial hitch when the time came for me to learn new ones. I leapt at the chance of learning…

Thank You Mohit!   And this is how Mohit helped us:     -Abhishek

A common problem that one faces today is how to move from ‘Hello World’ problems to building world class integrated systems with complex use cases that are closely coupled with each other. Here is my story on how i evolved from “Hello World” to building two online marketplaces, starting a…

It started with an informal meeting. Post this meeting, Mohit Pawar, Gautam, Naveen and Deepti joined us for another discussion. The agenda was to give Mohit a clear picture of where we stand as a company, which would help him identify our shortcomings as a team and as individuals. After…

Or your business don’t need a Facebook page, or a Twitter account, or anything of that sort if you don’t have answer for the following question – What are the 3(at least!) most important outcomes that you wish to get from your website(Facebook, Twitter, etc)? Outcomes could either be actions…

You started your business with a dream of turning your greatest passion into creation of a road to freedom and independence. Unlike so many people who just talk about it, you put your neck on the line with a dream to grow and prosper. You’ve been running your business for…

Every business owner knows that it’s very important to know his or her customers. Even then in my last five transactions, I’ve done with local businesses, nobody tried to know me. Why? They don’t have time to make any effort for this! They don’t see any value in it! May…

My shopping patterns have changed significantly over the last few years. Thanks to the advances in the technologies, my experiences of getting things done is getting better and better. Like, for quite some time now all the books I’ve purchased were purchased online. I don’t remember the last time I…