The Official iVentster Team blog

2005-09-18T19:01:00.000-04:00

http://noahk17.blogspot.com

XuQa.com's first review....

finally ....

2005-09-16T13:48:00.000-04:00

www.XuQa.com

lots more to come

2005-09-12T06:02:00.000-04:00

Some thing cool is coming your way. Some thing we've busted our asses for 4 straight months on. Some thing 20 of us here have built and love so dearly. iVentster.com will be no more. Some thing much much cooler (yeah we admit iventster didnt quite cut it).

Stay tunned :)

2005-08-20T11:41:00.000-04:00

Fried Circuitry anyone?

2005-08-20T11:39:00.000-04:00

ummm wires. lots.

on VCs

2005-08-12T18:42:00.000-04:00

Now THAT is a cool way to be a VC, and not be lame.

CBM

2005-07-31T04:58:00.000-04:00

I won the CBM title, after being the only one to go on a date before Wednesday. The rest of the team is lame. No 8am. They went back on their words after entering into the holy sanctity of a bet.

We were also hit by a DDOS attack yesterday. Damnit, I wonder how other little websites deal with DDOS. We really don't have the money to do something uber-cool, but the voice in my head says that uber-cool things never need money anyway. Where is my geekiness when I need it now?

Oh, and my camera is back. Pictures gallore ~ on the way. I think my first picture will be of the monitor screen displaying ICMP and SYN-ACK packet flooding on our linux gateway. Tribute to whoever is pulling this attack off. Be honored. This is your time to shine, your ass in the sun.

The Challenge

2005-07-23T07:59:00.000-04:00

After the early success of Prosper (hint hint), we all have been challenged to prove our game or come in to work at 8 am everyday for a week.

Lets see who wins the CBM* title.

* cheif babe magnet

ouchh

2005-07-11T10:59:00.000-04:00

Ouch my leg hurts. I've managed to destroy most of the muscles on my left leg. It doesnt move much. Thankfully its not a fracture. And who said cricket was a safe game.

Its humbling when you have to use one leg to move another. Running a company is not too different.

I'm considering going back to Williams for the fall semester. Any thoughts folks?

laddertheory.com

2005-07-09T06:34:00.000-04:00

www.laddertheory.com

Sad reality of life. You can court your chick all you want - will get you freaking no where. Make iventster work, and you will never have to worry about her again. Its sad, but thats how we were made.

hmmmm

2005-07-09T06:31:00.001-04:00

hmmmm. Tired. Exhausted.

crash crash crash

2005-06-27T01:20:00.000-04:00

bad bad day at the racing tracks. So picture this:

very cool, floodlit night-racing go-kart track that looks like something on T.V. There's a particularly long, straight stretch of track where all the go-karts accelerate mad and reach speeds of upto 70 km/h. That's a lot when you're in a little go-kart with no body protection, a few inches from the tarmac, and no seatbelt.

At the end of this particularly long stretch of track is a particularly sharp turn. On one of the laps, I push the car too hard through the corner and lose control - the kart spins wildly and stops smack on the corner. Before I've had any time to catch my breath & step out of the car, two other karts come screaming down the particularly long stretch at 70. Wei is racing with Prosper. Neither of them see me or my cart stalled on the corner. As they pass through the bend of tires, Wei finally sees me and swerves to avoid. Prosper isn't so successful - he brakes, turns hard, and loses control. He comes straight at me, shouting fuck fuck fuck.

Boom Boom Bam. The hardest crash I have ever been in. Cut on my leg, swollen knee, left wrist and right hip bruised. For Prosper it was worse. He flew out of the car. Like actually flew out of the car, and landed on the tarmac. Knocked out for a second, he woke up on the road and figured if another car comes down this corner right now I'm fucked. Thankfully, no other car came for the next minute or so. He got up, and limped off the track.

Murti got hit by a stray rock on the track that came under his wheel, and rushed up into his ribs. Wei hurt himself by pushing the car too hard through the corners so it's left a bruise on his waist.
After a long, sore night, we'll all back in action today. Nothing's broken. We live another day.

Quote of the Day

2005-06-25T03:29:00.000-04:00

At the daily briefing:

Wei: Guys, listen up, who said we don't have resources?Huah?! It's just we under developed existing resources. True, we don’t have money, but I have nice boobs!.... I mean we got nice boobs! Boobs are nice, boobs are adorable, boobs are awesome, and ignoring those nice boobs is simply a crime! And the most importantly, we have more things than just boobs!...you know what I mean?!

All other guys: …

2005-06-23T08:10:00.000-04:00

computer room got flooded...arghhhh!!!

2005-06-23T08:09:00.000-04:00

so we get some new carpeting :)

flood!

2005-06-20T01:54:00.000-04:00

some idiot-a$$-friggin-'ole left the tap open in the bathroom last night. The entire computer room is flooded. Arghhhh!!!!!!!

When can we get this going already?

Stories from Steve Jobs

2005-06-16T04:42:00.000-04:00

http://news-service.stanford.edu/news/2005/june15/jobs-061505.html

Whew!!!

2005-06-10T16:55:00.000-04:00

Whew!
We just added another 10 schools! This is gonna be so awesome. We're aiming to hit another 50 schools by the end of this month.
We're gonna kick some serious butt by the end of the summer. We're gonna make sure that all these schools party hard and party safe!

Oh and by the way, here's why we're in Karachi, incase y'all didn't already know. We're gonna hire some kick ass programmers for like 50 bucks a month. Prolly about 3 or 4 of them should be enough to help us get through the summer. Gotta save some money, ya know. We're not that rich....yet.

A couple of days after landing in Karachi, we're already hitting the ground running. But first myself, Ali, Wei and Murti are gonna take a little tour around Pakistan's largest and most happening cities. Sindh I think is one of them. We're gonna take some pics, and we're gonna put some up on the blog. We're probably gonna spend the next 2-3 days on tour. Should be a lot of fun.

Up next, we gotta make the iVentster calendar synch with rss, ical and outlook. I wonder how the hell im gonna do that one. (Haha, Jk. I'll figure it out. I'm not a bad ass programmer for nothing guys, common).

But seriously though, we plan to make sure that everyone can access their iVentster calendar no matter what calendar software they're already using. Using iVentster won't mean forsaking your favorite calendar.

Hola from Karachi!

2005-06-10T03:59:00.000-04:00

hmmmmmmm. Im sick. Bad cold. Right arm doesnt work. Cough. Fever... the internet is finally on. Phew...
But things are chugging along.

little league fanmail

2005-06-04T10:09:00.000-04:00

Dear Ali, Prosper, and Murtaza,
Now that the closing is behind us and you are about to start your summer in Karachi, I just want to let you know again what a privilegeit has been to work with you and get to know you. You guys are "awesome".In a very short time, you have managed to develop a sophisticated product,an incredible following, and have earned the confidence of extremely knowledgeable venture capital. That last piece, by itself, especially for a company at your stage, is truly remarkable. I hope you have a sense of what an amazing achievement that is and how remarkable you guys are. And, best of all, at the same time you have retained yoursense of humor and sense of self.
As for me, I have enjoyed every moment of our interaction. You have
been honest and honorable at every turn. From the outset, you earned my
respect and admiration. I hope you know that this goes beyond being
your lawyer. I truly care about each of you and will do everything I
can to help assure your success. Although I have no doubt that you will
be successful regardless. Thank you for allowing me to be a part of
this exciting adventure. I love you guys.
I hope you have a great, productive summer and return all fired up and
in good shape to take this to the next level. But remember, take some time off (atleast June) and recharge those batteries.
And try to find time to use the $300 X-box that's in the budget :)
With my sincere best wishes,
Mark

Prosper...man....

2005-06-02T22:04:00.000-04:00

I can't believe that Prosper had $0 on his credit card balance..man...and besides that, you have a huge pile of bills in your house. Did u spend all yr money buying chicken or sth?

And I bet with Ali $5 that you can not clean up your room by Sat.

BTW, Ali and I finished all the drinks in your house when you were gone, don't mind if we do, don't mind if we do : )

these guys rock!

2005-06-01T17:43:00.001-04:00

Tom, Christian, Mathias & everyone else out there many miles away. Thank You. We're going to make this work. We're so so so going to make this work.

note to self: Must hear more of Tom's awesome boy entrepreneur stories.

by popular demand

2005-05-29T13:36:00.000-04:00

A friend of mine was like WHY DONT YOU POST. I COME HERE EVERYDAY AND ITS EMPTY.

So by popular demand, yours truly is back. I'm in Karachi right now. Its freaking hot. The food is amazing; im taking kind of a break until Ali gets here. Then we can go sailing together! yay!

anyways we will soon start working on the site again. Fix some bugs. Make some improvements you all have suggested - hopefully in a couple of months, the site will look better, will not have bugs, and will do nicer things. BUT all said, rite now is take it easy time.

Prosper knows how to do chicken :)

2005-05-26T23:01:00.000-04:00

Man, check this out,

Propser made some chicken last night, with just some onion, curry, salt and pepper...it was AMAZING!!! I ended up asking for a big trunk to take back home~~

You guys defnitely should try that out some day, if Prosper does not mind doing that again.

I now definitely see a chance "Mr.Prosper's" taking over "KFC" in the future :)

Dude, u need to teach me how to make this kinda chicken so I can impress my Mom when I go back home

2005-05-22T03:28:00.000-04:00

Join us. We are the Penguin. Resistance is futile. [courtesy: thefacebook team]

Eureka!!!

2005-05-21T00:44:00.000-04:00

I have an idea!!!!!
In other news, Prosper lost his cell phone on some beach - Boston again tomorrow - and back home, i.e. Karachi for me on Monday.

San Francisco

2005-05-17T19:48:00.000-04:00

Hola from CA. Ali and Prosper have collapsed from utter exhaustion next to me. I'm sitting checking email here like a dork. None of us got any sleep last night (the freaking plane was at 6am)

The hotel we're in, called the York Hotel has a room called the Plush. Aparently its really famous for speakeasy in the 1920s and the filming of Vertigo or some thing. Some actors are getting dressed in the room next door. Seems to be for a shoot or performance. These folks call this plush thingy the most famous night club of Sanfran. Guess what i'll be doing tonite - Oceanography. I'm about to collapse too.

We're driving upto Palo Alto in the valley in a bit. We saw Mike in the morning. Mike: iVentster hearts you!

Holyoke = bad luck

2005-05-17T00:23:00.000-04:00

For personal reasons that I might disclose at a later date, and for the numerous times when we've tried to hit up parties at Holyoke (and everytime the site has managed to go down and ensured that we stay stuck in Jesup) - Holyoke has always equated to BAD BAD luck for us. But todays misfortune tops it all...

He was coming from Boston and we were driving from Williamstown. So we decided to meet half way at Holyoke. So there we were driving the sun was out, it was nice and warm and all was well. Until the oil pipe in Prospers car decided to explode. The car started knocking like it was gonna explode. All the oil went splashing out and the engine seized. The engine started fumming smoke all over and wouldnt shut down even though the ignition was off. After 10 minutes of resting, the engine shut down and stopped giving off smoke. There goes the 92 Honda (iVentster) Accord.

Getting back to campus was another story, but thanks to Nate, we're back here in one peice.

Holyoke = BAD BAD BAD (even though its an awesome all girls school)

b/c I don't have anyone else to talk to, and I can't possibly be hitting it up with this site

2005-05-15T03:57:00.000-04:00

I didn't go to my econometrics class for 6 weeks. Like hell, this class is full of equations and other modelling stuff, and I'm no math wiz. 8 hours of cramming-on-banana before the midterm, and I pulled a B- yesterday :) this entrepreneurship stuff actually makes you better and more adept at schoolwork. You figure out what the prof wants, and more importantly what requires the least amount of effort lol. This site is my first luv, sorry prof :) I was the only guy without a powerpoint for the history presentations. I was also the only one with an A+ :p

and about the site
By popular demand, we'll be bringing your pictures to the front page. As we're very interested and involved in how users respond to the site, talk back if you have strong opinions.

In other changes we're planning to the current site, we're looking into refining our collaborative calendaring system - you'll be able to take RSS feeds, sync with Outlook, iCal and other calendaring applications, and play around with more event-related multimedia. This takes a bit of work however, and we'll prolly not get around to it before the summer.

lets meet up

2005-05-11T11:26:00.000-04:00

While we're in Sanfransico, Pavo Alto and around - if you wanna meet up we're totally up for it. Its going to be Tue/Wed next week. Call me 413 884 5774 and we can fix up a time and place.

san fran

2005-05-11T00:43:00.000-04:00

someone just offered to pay for our tickets to fly out west! how sweet is that? i love this stuff we do.

got something wack?

2005-05-08T19:35:00.000-04:00

Summer's almost here. In between kicking Prosper's a$$ on Halo and Half Life Counter-Strike, we'll be playing with the site a bit, improving features, opening up at more colleges, and so on. If you've got something cool and interesting and wack, and you think it will rock with iVentster, contact us. We're open to anything if you can take us out on Counter-Strike :p

Schools out

2005-05-06T16:43:00.000-04:00

For those who want to use this site over the summer, it will be up and running. But for most people, the return will be back next semester. We promise a bang - bigger, better and a more powerful brand of iVentster, come September.
Thanks for sticking with us so far; the best is yet to come!

2005-05-06T02:27:00.000-04:00

pool party at UH

server issues

2005-05-02T23:24:00.000-04:00

In a nutshell..

"We're sorry, our idiotic hosting company just took one of our servers off-line, severely limiting the functionality of our preferences section. Their name is iPowerweb. They're sooo getting sued tomorrow morning. It's not even funny. So please bear with us, the preferences section will be offline for a little while. " - The Preferences page on iVentster.com, as of 11PM on May 2, 2005.

Just out of the blue, freakin ipowerweb took 2 of our servers offline! We don't owe them, we've paid all our bills, and we've done nothing wrong! Why?!

We all were away today on a very important mission, so we have no idea what time this happened. But it did happen. I swear, ipowerweb is the worst hosting company on the planet. They're ridiculously slow at everything too.

Anyway, enough about those fools. We're very sorry if your iVentster profile link stopped worked at any point today. The image might not show for a little while. It should be fully functional by tomorrow morning though.

Also very sorry that for a little while tonight the preferences section is going to have to be unavailable. We won't be able to receive any mail for a little while either, as our mail servers were also taken out. Like I said, we're gonna sue their pants off.

Boston: best day we've had in a while

2005-05-01T22:59:00.000-04:00

I sleep at 4 am and at 6 am my cell phone rings. Time to get ready and hit Boston. Prosper is driving while Ali and I catch up on sleep. It starts raining - we know this is gonna be good. Usually when it rains on such important days, awesome things happen to us.

We meet our first potential investor (cant give names right now). Really awesome guy. Hes founded several companies and he grills us with questions (i take flack for being the freshmen PR guy). During the meeting i come to admire his instinct. There is certainly a difference between succesful and failed entreprenuers and I believe it has a lot to do with instinct. In the middle of the meeting, his 8 year old son comes in and hes like son tell me some thing. If you had a dollar would you give it to these people? And im sitting there, going oh no, 2 pakistanis and one black guy. But the kid is like sure why not. The guy turns around and smiles at us. In principle hes interested. (this has to be one of the coolest stories ever).

We headed over to this diner and they were selling sandwitches for 10 bucks. Next stop Mc Donalds were we got burgers for $1. Finally for the first time, we used company money to feed ourselves. Felt good using the company credit card.

Our second meeting was even better. The gentleman offered to write us a cheque right there and then. Hes founded a lot of succesful companies and once again, i realized how good his instinct was. There is definately a trend here amongst these succesful people.

Anyways we're headed to NYC tomorrow for more meetings. Then Mark's place on Tues. In actually enjoying this fund raising.

2005-05-01T04:59:00.000-04:00

the shuffle giveaway has closed for this week, and we have a clear winner :) We'll be announcing stuff as soon as we get up in the afternoon tomorrow. Was a long, long night.

iVentster: fund raising

2005-04-29T01:05:00.000-04:00

I got approached by a friend today. He wanted to invest a 1000 bucks in this. Hes like this shit is gonna explode and i want in. I'm like dude this is a start up, dont put your lunch money here. And this dude is like no man, im working over the summer anyways so i can make it up. I want in.

Wow. Like friends putting in hard earned money through campus jobs is just mind blowing. I love ya all!! thanks for sticking with us so far. Although this semester is almost over, we promise some serious shit next semester. Stay tuned.

On a side note, the team is taking a trip to Boston this weekend. Investor meetings. We're gonna hit up Boston on Saturday and probably hit a party or two at Holyoke for the nite.
Ah fund raising aint as bad as they make it sound like.

2005-04-27T21:57:00.000-04:00

the new iPod shuffle. Login to see what the fuss is about.

250,000

2005-04-26T14:05:00.000-04:00

The 250,000th user has just signed up! That's number 17,083 for today :) Thank you everyone for all the luvin'. But keep your pants on.

Or off. They're not that much fun anyway.

everyone say bubyeee

2005-04-25T03:01:00.000-04:00

Jazz will be leaving the team soon for the steps of Capitol Hill. They go a long way up to some Senator's office. I'm telling you, someday this kid will be in Congress. And he'll be making a lot of people very proud, including me.

Best of luck Jazz. It was awesome having you onboard. Start-ups. *sigh* There's no other place quite like 'em in all the world.

2005-04-23T01:01:00.000-04:00

lil' fire throwing at porter apartments...
Posted by: Kyle Wiebalk @ UC Santa Cruz
Views: 282.

iVent Me

2005-04-22T03:23:00.000-04:00

Something cool; something wet; something wild has come your way.

As of now, you can show your Calendar to your friends in your AIM away message. You can also put your Calendar on your blog.

iVent Me . That's where it's at.

wisdom...

2005-04-20T20:29:00.000-04:00

"Shit or get off the pot"

I heard this from Jaz today. Wow. It has to be one of the best lines i've heard ever. I guess thats our appraoch to running this whole thing. Either take your chance or let someone else do it. We're going to cross 200,000 registered users today with an event database of hundreds of thousands of events. We're working to give our events feed to sites so that even more people hear of the awesome events you guys post.
Do look out for the iPod Shuffle. We're giving free iPods on the site soon :p

Murtaza
(sorrie for the random post, but im writing a physics paper and i needed a distraction)

Tech Support

2005-04-20T20:24:00.000-04:00

Someone came up with the idea of starting a tech support forum, and told us. We sort of think this blog, contact emails, and feedback forms do the job quicker, and serve as a virtual tech support medium. Go for it.

So if you're having any problems, drop us a comment. If it's not fixed within 24 hours, we'll change our name. Promise.

funniest response in days

2005-04-18T19:56:00.000-04:00

Quite frankly, the reason I wanted to leave was because I couldn't find how to leave. I didn't like signing up forever. So I don't want to be on it. Hope that helps.
-Liam

*** customer support*** now i know what those outsourcing blokes in India feel like

2005-04-18T16:48:00.000-04:00

funky event pics on iVentster, to match with your happening social life. You have one, right?

Problems fixed...

2005-04-17T15:22:00.000-04:00

Hello everyone. I know everyone's been starved for my voice cuz I haven't spoken in a while.

So being the master programmer on this team, I felt obligated to obliterate the suspicion in anyone's mind that I might be REALLY REALLY REALLY WACK. The fact is that I'm really not all that bad. I am a very well certifed shizbot-creator. The problems we've been having are not my fault at all...well some of them are:

-The one about people not being able to log in even after they reset their passwords? yea, that's very much me. It's very much fixed now though. If it ever happens to you, just come at me personally : prosper at iventster.com.

-the one about your profile not updating and not being able to upload your picture, um... that's me too. That's also been fixed. Please forgive, dont kill me.

-the one about being listed in the wrong school...um (damn, me again). Sorrieee! My bad. Also fixed. IF you ever get it again, just log out and back in. You should be all set.

As for all the others... Our domain not taking you to the site, the site hanging up sometimes... We officially place the blame on our damn hosting service. Their DNS servers SUCK!!! They say they're working on it though. We now have two servers set up, for all you guys for whom the domain isn't resolving to the right server, you will be directed to a secondary server, which is running a version of our software, although you won't be able to access the Party Pics section from there. In another couple of days though, everyone will have access to the main server. Again, our hosting company's fault... I do apologizing on their behalf.

Thanks for letting me exculpate myself of those wackness charges there. I really appreciate that.

Oh and by the way... I still need a girl. So any ladies wanna holla at a chocolate-skin brotha and certified shizbot-creator, holla at me. you know my email.

2005-04-14T14:31:00.000-04:00

I gotta say I agree with the comment on First Mover Advantage. My company came up with the idea of thefacebook and iventster put together. Got 2 months into development and thefacebook appeared...needless to say we went down in flames.We reformed and came up with another idea like iventster....2 months into development. Looks like a repeat. Gotta love business.All I have to say is I don't know what took Zuckerberg and crew so damn long to figure out what that they had something, and needed to actually apply it to something besides social stalking.I agree Iventster has a long way to go , but I hope things work out for them. If Bo Peabody has contacted them like they say, then they have some luck on their side.
---------- extract from a comment posted on zackklien.com

Yup Bo made us an offer. We've said no for the time being. Sorrie for that. Maybe we can work together. We're totally up for working with people rather than against people.

Pakistani blood - no good

2005-04-13T16:39:00.000-04:00

I went to donate blood at the American Red Cross camp. It was my first time. I was shitting myself. They asked me a bunch of questions, from have you paid for sex in the past 12 months to have you had unprotected anal sex.

Anyways she asked me which counties I have been to in the past 3 years. So i told her the Wales, Germany, France, Netherlands, Singapore and ofcourse Pakistan (thats where home is). When she heard Pakistan, her head turned up and she said, oh oh.

I was turned away. Apparently being in Pakistan even for a week in the past 12 months equates to Malaria. Heck i've lived there all my life! never had malaria nor has any one in my family. I felt like shit walking away while every one stared at the brown boy not being able to donate.

good times and bad times

2005-04-12T00:47:00.000-04:00

Sorrrriee for all the bugs and down time. 99% of them have been fixed. We're on really awesome servers. Our DNS has resolved. Its all finally falling into place. Thank you for being so patient and understanding.

We spoke to a couple of guys today. Zack from collegehumor, Mark from thefacebook, Brain from EVDB, Matt from villageventures etc. A lot of people who run very successful sites have offered us help and support. Its nice knowing there are people always out there who will look out for you in bad times. For example, during the first couple of days of launch, our database server died down on us. Michael (from bebo.com) out of the blue helped Prosper optimize it and make sure we could scale to a much larger user base. We've sent him some nice choclates :p

I was smoking Hooka with my house mates today and one of them remarked, ' Murti, if we were in the 1700s, i can so see you running a plantation with a fuck load of slaves'.

DNS propogation

2005-04-10T18:32:00.000-04:00

The site will be down for a couple of hours. This is due to the migration of our DNS server (boo yahoo once again). For some people in some parts of the world, the site still works. For most people it will be 2-3 hours before it will start working again. Sorrie for that.

iVentster.com becomes worlds largest network of college events

2005-04-08T15:22:00.000-04:00

As of now, we have over 150,000 public and private events posted on the site, with 100,000 members. This number is increasing exponentially every day. In just over a week, iVentster.com has become the worlds largest network of college events and parties. We're expecting to hit a million events by the end of the week.
Thanks a lot to every one who believed in us and helped us. And a big boo to those who didn't (mainly over-smart investers). Lets keep the faith and lets keep trecking.

*muwah and hugz* to all those that rode with us this far. We will never forget the lovely support emails you sent and patience you showed with the bugs on the site.

yahoo sucks!

2005-04-08T12:43:00.000-04:00

Sorrie for the 3 hours of downtime today. We got a butt load of traffic and yahoo bolted out on us. They stopped letting us use their DNS servers coz we had too much load. This is the stuff the attractive voice (when you sign up) wont tell you.

warms our day

2005-04-06T19:12:00.000-04:00

From: mollie.t.fehlig@vanderbilt.edu

I'm way impressed...I filled out a survey and received a response within 3 minutes! I've never actually written to a site creator before, but after reading y'all's messages about how hard you've been working, I just wanted to say it's worth it! Amazing job. Thanks for your creativity and dedication. Keep it up!

peace
mollie

let's talk ya?

2005-04-06T13:44:00.000-04:00

to make all your accounts more secure, we encypted our passwords database so that no one, not even us, has access to them. For some users however (about 1 in every 1000), the passwords are not accepted when they try to log back in. Thank you to everyone who reported this bug to us - as the Pimp's post shows, we've been working around the clock. Should be fixed in a few hours. If you still feel like giving expression to your years of built-up feelings, and have no friends to talk to, you can email us here support@iventster.com

The Art of War

2005-04-06T05:59:00.000-04:00

Its 6 am. Prosper is on his way back home trying to get the FTP server running. Ali and Jaz have called it a night. I'm here in Jesup manning station. I can see it getting bright outside - soon it will be sun rise. I'm lucky I have only one class tomorrow. Ah! classes. They so are a thing of the past right now. Tonight was a great night - we got so much done. A special cheers to Mark!

So thats what it feels like being in a story book. I've heard stories of people pushing themselves, doing great things, sometimes making shit load of money while they are doing it. But its so different being in their position now. Its real. My arms are bruised - i got some strange cuts on them - they hurt. My back and head ache from lack of sleep. Im practically dropping dead right now. And yet there is some thing that keeps me ticking. 'Pehla Nasha' one of my favourite songs is playing in the background. I know this is going to work. Im waiting for Prosper to call and tell me to send out the invites. I wait.

And of my love life - my non existant love life. Gave it all up long time ago. Some one once told me, between school, a girl friend, and a company you've got to choose two. Jaz and Zaki are living testaments of this - I choose school and company. However as days pass it seems like one more choice will have to be dropped. I hope I don't have to make that decision this semester.

Prosper call man. Prosper has had it hard too. Hes taken more shit and crap than ive ever seen any programmer take and still pull through. I'd trust this dude with my life. Single handly hes done what teams of tens of programmers do in months. This dude is plain freaking awesome!

The clock is still clicking - Prosper still hasnt called. I'm getting worried. Its getting brighter and brighter. I've been in this lab (on and off) since 1 pm (17 hrs!). I went into physics, gave my quiz and left and came straight here. I probably got an A+ on the quiz. But my other classes im just failing

If there is one thing i've learnt, its never to give up no matter how royally fucked up the ass you are. Its all about striving - if you can give 200% knowing that the project might not live another day, you're on the way to some thing. The thing i HATE about most entreprenerus is that they are too smart for themselves. They calculate - maximize profit and plain think too freaking much. When you see a beautiful girl, you don't run calculations in your head. You freaking get out there and take your chance. Thats what ideas are about - taking chances. You can do as much intellectual mastubation you want but it wont get you anywhere. Some times one needs to take a leap of faith. Trust your guts. Get out there and be the person you dreamt of growing up into when you were a kid. Thats what we're about to do in the next 30 minutes. We don't know whether it will succeed or not.

Prosper just called. The script isnt running. Rackspace is messing up our servers. Hes calling them back. Its getting brighter. The maintaince staff have come in already (they woke me up while i was napping on the floor)

I spoke to the hosting guys. Some crazy stuff with our firewall and port 80 authorization. Its fully bright outside. I'm still waiting. Prosper i think has collapsed.

I have the courage to see this thing fail, but i dont have the courage to know that i did'nt give it every last breath I had...

I don't know what will happen tomorrow. All I know is today, we take our leap of faith.

whatever happened to neurons?

2005-04-06T01:14:00.000-04:00

too much beer. that's what happened.

For the hundreds that have asked: we are not thefacebook. We are an event-networking site, not a social-networking site. What does that mean? Well, we made an entire site out of it didn't we? Go feel her out :p

back to skool...

2005-04-03T21:17:00.000-04:00

School starts tomorrow. I am dropping courses. Jaz broke up with his gf. Ali cancelled his JP Morgan NY internship. Prosper said no to job offers. Boats are burnt.
and above all we didnt go to Mt. Holyoke as planned. We stayed and worked. The pieces are starting to come together. Bugs are almost fixed. Graphics are HOT! our vision keeps on getting bigger...
hang in there guys - by the end of next week this will become the biggest source of events out there. We already have 86,000 events posted on the site. We're aiming for 500,000 by the end of this week.

take it easy

2005-04-03T06:26:00.000-04:00

Sunday Morning
-Maroon 5.

Video is cut from a live concert, so wait a few seconds after This Love and Sunday Morning will load automatically. Kick back, and take in the morning. It's Maroon 5 all week. From the folks at iVentster.

Streaming Music videos provided courtesy of MVC

2005-04-02T22:41:00.000-05:00

*applause*

all hail Young, creator of the ^hip^ iVentster style. Trumpet blare. Drum roll.

It's official. iVentster is now cool.

Boo Hoo

2005-04-02T04:28:00.000-05:00

Unfortunately, last night, our invite feature was shut down. We are trying hard, with one programmer and limited resources, to do what we can. Our vision was to create an original and innovative product and it is becoming more clear that this idea cannot succeed without your support. Please tell your friends and spread the word.

Thanks

SP2

2005-04-01T19:19:00.000-05:00

I feel like Microsoft. I feel like Microsoft because we're having to put up a patch on the site; a few users on our site are going to have to re-register their accounts because of a database glitch. Here's what happened:

Last night we set up a separate testing site at http://...testing which was supposed to be a testing place for implementing new features. However, the database tables between the testing site and our main site got mixed up, and the site got confused. We just discovered the bug, and had to go through each of our 35,000 registered accounts to fix it. Though the bug is gone, a few accounts will have to be deleted, and we sincerely apologize for the inconvenience. An email will be personally sent out to each of the 50-odd users whose accounts need to be reset with instructions, and a phone number to call if they need further help.

Keep the peace. And please, don't kill us in our sleep. We're trying to do the best anyone can on spring break.

2005-03-31T23:42:00.000-05:00

We crashed in the computer labs after a long night, and were mistaken for homeless people by campus security :p

on brownies and servers...

2005-03-31T19:56:00.000-05:00

We've stopped sending out invites for the previous 12 hours. 400,000 are in que - our servers finally gave in to the immense load. A big thank you to Michael from Bebo.com for helping us out. We've ordered brand new dual Xenon machines (absolutely top of the line) with one of the best hosting companies out there (Microsoft hosts with them). So by tomorrow, the Shizbot will send out invitations - we're expecting half a million hits tomorrow!

On the personal side, we're all exhausted. Yesterday we ran a 20 hour day - today looks like its gonna be the same. But our statistics are sky rocketing and it all makes it worth it. Yesterday 150,000 hits were recorded - its humbling and yet invigorating to see that people are actually using what we created! You guys make the juice worth the sqeeze!

We havent eaten much (no time duh!) but these uber kool brownies have kept us going. They were given to us by our lawyer. His wife invited us over for dinner and listened to us crap on about the site for hours. Previously lawyers always were these evil men lurking who either stole your money or your competitiors depending who paid them more - but now - oh my God! these dude and his family are awesome! hats off. If any of you ever want to start a company, take this law firm on board!

We're going to pull another all nighter to prepare ourselves for our new servers and infra structure! The site will go down for an hour or so at 5 am for maintaince. Thats when we will make the shift.
Murti
ps: jaz's gf just got back - ask him abt it. They seem ichy with each other - i hope nothing bad happens

Overthrow

2005-03-31T12:15:00.000-05:00

I barely got through him. He is on the phone. I am free. For the past couple days, the iVentster.com team has been under blog-arrest by our tyrannical alibaba! Quick thing. I wanted to apologize for the technical issues that we are working around the clock to fix. Thanks for the great support so far. We have gotten great response.
Ali is coming back. Students of the world unite! OVERTHROW! BYE!

The Shizbot-creator....me

2005-03-30T22:30:00.000-05:00

Yesterday(wed)
I'm very tired. I hadn't slept for 72 hours, and my brain has just started to wig out on me...dag. I try to sleep, but I have to stay at my computer. I have to. I have to make sure that our baby is ok.. I go to sleep, except I can't sleep. My head is pounding, but there's a buncha shite I gotta get thru. I think to myself, I need to sleep! Dag.

I close my eyes, and then i hear my phone ring. It's Ali. Shite. Something must be wrong. Please tell me something is not wrong! But no, nothing is wrong, he just wanted to invite the team to a dinner with our lawyer. Thank God!

Today: For like 1 full minute, our site went down, and no school could be accepted. And what do we get? about 300 emails from users, beggin us to add their school! So I feel good, because I know that everything's going to be ok. We are going to be ok.

So I'm looking forward to our trip to Holyoke. I need...

Thank you!!!

2005-03-30T18:54:00.000-05:00

A sincere THANK YOU! to all our members, supporters and activists. So far thousands of people have signed up (we're expecting to break a million over the weekend). The surveys we've gotten are AWEEESOME!!! (muwah** love u folks!). Although we're still running sleepless starved nights, the signs ups are coming rolling in by the tens of thousands!!!. By next week, our vision, 'Events at every single college under one roof', (not just any roof our uber cool social interactive calendar) will come true. Now a female starved Williams kid will be able to hit parties at schools (i.e. Holyoke) around the area and not forget the the beauties of this world (okay now im pushing it).

Now that im done with the mushy part, lets get down to business. Most people have posted their personal activities, like classes, actitivties. Post public events, parties, stuff you want the cool kids next door to come to. On average each event gets viewed over a 100 times rite now (number is gonna increase to 1000 soon) so post and people WILL see it :p

mailschmails

2005-03-30T11:43:00.000-05:00

We found a bug yesterday in our email system - seems like Prosper (who's coding this Shizbot) was out of it when writing this part of the code. Yeah, he's been single too long. The "from" field in some of the invite emails you guys have been sending was jibbled - the email seemed to come from Prosper, not the person who invited you. We are happy, indeed very happy (okay maybe not Prosper) that this bug has been permanently squished.

You know how you can customize invites when sending them out? Someone did something wack with their invite. Funniest one to date.

The damn iventser thing wants to send you all this message to make you sign up. Then, if you decide to sign up, it will try to send this message to all your friends too. It's a pyramid scheme, I say. I'm cleverly altering the message to foil its plans. But I want to see what it is. Have a good day.

We don't take ourselves seriously, and neither should you :)

Bad Education

2005-03-30T03:13:00.000-05:00

I don't care where you are, the one thing I have learned in doing this project is that we as students are not trusted. Except to the smallest of extents, to everyone around us, we are just students. Idiots. Empty barrles to be filled up, advertised, and sold. We don't know what we are doing. Look they are starting a buisness, isn't that cute? Look they are doing community service, thats so nice.

I want some respect, cause bottom line, I have learned more from my peers than any class, professor, or book. But do we ever get the chance to explore this imaginary real world? No. Cause that dosn't matter until they have finished with us. We aren't prepared. We aren't ready. We are still naive and idealistic. We can't be trusted because we are not like them yet.

Experiental education is the ultimate assertion of a student's freedom to learn for his or herself and it is dying on college campuses. Williams doesn't give a crap about anything not on the syllabus. I say screw the syllabus.

The first apearance of Pimpin Paki

2005-03-29T21:49:00.000-05:00

Hola!
I cant spell for shit. That said, lets move on to more serious things; the Holyoke girls. Aparently there were rumours amongst the Holyoke bunch (we are a team of 4 guys and thus the obsession with Holyoke) that iVentster.com is a scam and we're out there to collect emails!
helLoooOO!! we put in 16 hours days, broke up with gfs, screwed our GPA, got kicked around by campus security (who thought we were homeless people) etc. If you're 16 +, hot and female call me 413 884 5774 to verify that this is not fake...
I just flew back in from Florida. While these three guys busted their asses working 20 hour days, i was admist 80 F and hottest females on the planet! (being at Williams i had forgotten what beauty truly is- but Florida was like God sent heaven!). To all the Williams girls, look up from your books, put aside the glasses and learn how to party.
All of you are invited to come see my play - i'm playing the gay lead (with lots of intimate scenes). Its called 'On a Muggy nite in Mumbai'. Its running at Williams on the 15th and 16th of April.
Prosper has collapsed after 70 hours of non stop work and since hes down, tonite is for darts, poker and the apprentice.

Muri
p.s: unlike jaz and ali who try and be funny, this is a more honest account of whats happening here at base camp.

yummy

2005-03-29T07:20:00.000-05:00

Personality? That Jazz has more hair than he has personality.

I don't think of you guys as a market. I think of you as people I can ask out. Or sleep with.

Student Surpasses Master

2005-03-29T07:02:00.000-05:00

Hey Alibaba, you are as unoriginal as you are small. "Holyoke Ho's" was my quote. And that was off-the-record. What kind of person insults their first successful market? Here's to all the beautiful young ladies at Mt. Holyoke, I respect you. I KNOW Murti respects you, Prosper too. Ali is just gay. Get your hand off my crotch! Sorry.

I just feel someone needs to take the responsibility of appreciating their market. Ali doesn't see you as real people, I do. And Ali, don't whine so much. Playing poker with me while Prosper was programming doesn't count as work. Buggers? That's all I have to say about that. Talk to you? I am talking to you Ali. Our peeps deserve better than your pathetic meanderings. My name is Jaz "Urban Turban" Ster, and I pledge here today to defend the iVentster masses from Alibaba's whineful tyranny.

mwa mwa

2005-03-29T06:55:00.000-05:00

The holyoke girls are the first to be really, really using the site. Go Holyoke Ho's go go go. I wish I was at Holyoke for the rest of college. *sigh* So much love. Williams sucks.

2005-03-29T06:51:00.000-05:00

the site's just launched. Go use it you buggers. You know how hard we've worked on this? Jazz is boring me. Somebody talk to me.