Ajay Juneja : Ramblings

Happy 2008 - 7 items of wisdom learned in 2007 to share with you!

ajayjuneja — Tue, 01 Jan 2008 03:13:00 GMT

Happy New Year Everyone!

Wow - 2007 has been a big year! Lots of great things happening for Speak With Me, Inc. - which will be revealed slowly in the upcoming year - and a whole lot of lessons learned - in both business and personal relationships. I'll use this post to reflect on things I've learned this year - and hopefully all of you can share your experiences too!

1. The Fraility of Life. The Joy of Life. The Thrill of Life. Enjoying the ride!

As many of you know, I am one of the car nuts who hangs out at Santana Row routinely, coming in everything from my beater Red 1980 Rx-7 to the pretty fast blue sedan. Earlier this year, a bunch of us went on a drive thru Santa Cruz and up to Half Moon Bay - and one member of our group, Luis Aldaz - had a pretty severe accident that day, and unfortunately didn't make it. Luis - always lived life on the edge - and to the fullest. He raced his 911 GT3 routinely, skydived, and always was pushing himself in every aspect of his life, having immigrated here from Spain - and really made a name for himself in Silicon Valley. Everyone loved him - he always greeted you with a warm smile - and truly defined living life with no regrets. Luis is an inspiration to us all!

Some wonderful memories - Pictures courtesy of the Santana Row crew...

2. Live life with no regrets.

For every decision you make in life - if you are going to regret it later - make a different decision! Life is too short to have regrets!

3. If you want something, ask for it.

You'll usually get it. Being nice helps your odds :)

4. Be patient with your friends and loved ones.

I had a situation this year where I admittedly revealed something to a longtime friend before she was ready to hear it - and I got egg in my face in response. Looking back, I wish I was more patient with her - and since then - I've learned to be more patient with everyone. We all are aware of what others are going through well in advance of what they are aware of what they are going through - so in the words of the Eagles, "Learn to be still." People for the most part, have to emotionally grow on their own. Sometimes nudging them can help a ton - but only if they trust you - and trust themselves - enough to hear you and listen.

5. Never make a fear-based decision.

We all have a choice in life - to make decisions based on fear, or faith. I've found that every situation in which I've taken the faith based decision - has yielded long term success - even though there may be a shorter-term struggle to get over along the way. However, fear-based decisions tend to be extremely short-sighted and one almost always regrets them in the long term. This goes with #2 - living life with no regrets.

6. Miracles can happen - but you gotta make them happen!

My good friend Andre Vanier - founder of Rondee.com - and I had a discussion in early July - where we were going through everything I had done to get Speak With Me, Inc. funded. We went through the list three times - and we had exhausted all possibilities - so the conclusion was that, yes indeed, I had done everything humanly possible to get Speak With Me, Inc. funded. So Andre suggested to take a break and wait - and try to focus on other things. Indeed, a week and a half later, we got our first funding check in! Some day I'll post the before and after account balances (or maybe it'll go into a future book!) - I've kept the bank statements and wire transfer receipts for a company memento! The faith based decision making process I put in place in 2005 - yielded success!

7. Have Faith, have fun, and don't forget - you are a human too!

And humans - make mistakes. Self-awareness, compassion, humility, and forgiveness are the most important things to learn to yield the best out of yourself - and to give the best you you can be - to the world and to yourself. Always apologize when you screw up - and before you send the apology - be sure to have forgiven yourself first! Many religions - Hinduism, Christianity, Judaism, and Buddhism, (sorry if I left some out - I've only read scripture from these four) among others - try to teach these concepts in some form or another. The path to success - is littered with mines, some of which might have exploded along the way. The path to failure - is not walking across that minefield.

In other words...

Ahh... twas a wonderful day for a drive...

ajayjuneja — Sun, 16 Sep 2007 06:33:00 GMT

Whee - we had fun today at the Santana Row exotic meet - great cars, great friends, and a great drive!

Below are some pics AlexD took :)

I'm in the Blue Audi in the first pic! :)

Looking back at the Summer

ajayjuneja — Mon, 03 Sep 2007 03:39:00 GMT

Summer of 2007 sure has been an interesting one. It's been one of self discovery and a lot of growth, both for me personally, as well as Speak With Me, Inc. Speak With Me, Inc. has received it's first bits of angel funding, we've hired a few new spectacular people, and we're puttering along pretty well. I have been slowly getting used to the many more requests for my time from all of the new people both interested in the company, and working with the company! We're still in a bit of a stealth mode, so our website still doesn't show much yet - all good things come to those who wait!

We're already planting seeds for our next round of funding, so if you or anyone else you know is interested in a new user interface technology that will be making lots of noise in the coming years, please do let me know at ajay AT speakwithme DOT com.

Shoot for the Cure!

ajayjuneja — Wed, 23 May 2007 17:30:00 GMT

http://www.shootforthecure.net/site/

If you're in Pittsburgh, help support the cure for breast cancer and have Yan and Johnny do your portraits for you!

Yan's definitely an awesome photographer!

Going back east for a few weeks! April 15th - May 7th

ajayjuneja — Thu, 12 Apr 2007 00:22:00 GMT

Say hi if you live back east -- I'll be back there from April 15th - May 7th.

Philly, NYC, Toronto, possibly Boston too.

Know any good T-shirt / Silkscreening vendors

ajayjuneja — Sun, 08 Apr 2007 06:40:00 GMT

...We're going to be making some Speak With Me T-shirts soon!

Please refer us some high quality and well-priced places!

HP spying even more out of control than I thought!

ajjuneja — Wed, 20 Sep 2006 16:19:00 GMT

Wow. So heretoforth I didn't publicly post my opinions of the HP pretexting scandal, I did chime in on Scoble's blog but I just read how far it went -- this is totally stalking.

See Washington Post Article here.

So let's see what's involved here:

1. Sending spyware to journalists.

2. Faking identities.

3. Keystroke logging.

4. Survallance cameras.

5. Attempted procuring of a lost good.

6. Phone record theft (pretexting).

7. Attempts to intercept text messages.

-----------------------------------

Now all this goes on for months, HP gets a detailed report on the whole thing, and Patricia Dunn says she had no idea the extent as to what they were doing?

Talk about not holding herself accountable for her actions.If the private investigation firm hands you a report, how can you possibly claim you had no idea what they did?

Anyhow, this to me, is so far overboard it's definately in the stalking realm.

What Patricia needs to realize, is that even though this was a means to an end, it was also a really bad means, and the means matters. A really bad means almost always backfires upon you.
When one holds themselves accountable for the really bad means, it doesn't stop the damage in trust that was already done, but it does help the road to recovery. Unfortunately, Patricia has shown an inability to do that, either.

Speak With Me is hiring!

ajjuneja — Sat, 16 Sep 2006 23:55:00 GMT

Well, this blog has been quiet for a long time. There have been lots of things in progress, most of which I unfortunately haven't been able to publicly talk about.

One thing I can talk about though, is that Speak With Me is hiring!

About Speak With Me:

Speak With Me is a company that is changing the way we interact with our electronic devices to access information. We plan to be commonplace in your home, in your car, and on the go. We flatten the user interface and make previously hard to access information easy to find. Mike Arrington of TechCrunch reviewed Speak With Me's technology a bit less than a year ago, and was quite enthusiastic about having our future products in his own car (rather, he seemed to want to steal mine). At this time, we've got most of the executive team in place, and we need the rest of the staff to be hired in the upcoming months.

We are looking for:

1. Product and Project managers

2. Software engineers and Senior Software engineers who like working with embedded systems You do not need direct experience with Speech and Dialogue systems for these roles, just be a great software engineer(C++, embedded systems)

3. People to make dev. tools and enhance our API -- if you've worked on Visual Studio, Eclipse, or other software - please contact me.

4. User Interface (UI) designers

5. Tech Writers.

6. Marketing and Sales people

7. Sales and Application engineers.

Speak With Me is located in the San Francisco Bay Area, and will be expanding over the next several months.
If you are interested, please contact speakwithmejobs AT gmail DOT com

Aston Martin flies in air at ALMS race

ajjuneja — Sun, 28 May 2006 06:00:00 GMT

coolest picture ever... and the driver is okay!

The castle in the sky -- what an amazing film by Miyazaki!

ajjuneja — Mon, 03 Apr 2006 07:52:00 GMT

On Saturday night, Cartoon Network aired what was one of the most fabulous, timeless pieces of animation I've ever seen -- Laputa, The Castle in the Sky.
Laputa captured many forms of the human condition -- greed, love, adventure, fundamental goodness of heart in some people, fundamental evil of heart in others -- all captured in a magical journey that feels like another world, yet with many similar problems to the world we live in. I absolutely loved the movie, as it touched me on all levels!

Car Photos! Stoptechs and new rims!

ajjuneja — Mon, 27 Mar 2006 07:15:00 GMT

So, my rims and brakes finally came in! Here are some pics:

Closeup:

Special thanks to Creative Autoworks in San Diego, CA for setting me up, they may also be helping Speak With Me out with creating a demo car for CES & SEMA in the future. Note: this is my personal car, not owned by the company.

Using the dialogue manager for 13 hours straight was as addicting as crack...

ajjuneja — Tue, 28 Feb 2006 15:14:00 GMT

Nothing like changing your tunes at 90 mph while going through the tunnel on I-90 in the rain... while keeping all my concentration still on driving. How addicting? Almost as addicting as track day at Laguna Seca is for a speed freak and car nut like myself...

Oh, also while in Seattle, I attended the Podcast Hotel, caught up with Chris Pirillo and made a few new friends, including Bre Pettis and Cielito Pascual. Bre and Cielito so graciously helped me film a video of the dialogue manager in Seattle, which will be broadcast on Bre's Blog in about 2 weeks as a Podcast.

What in the world was my car and me doing up in Seattle for a week? Well, a roadtrip to visit friends of course! Oh and speaking of friends, I do believe I owe a thank you to an old friend who tried to set me up two and a half years ago with a group of people in Seattle I happened to finally meet with this time around...

1835 miles of driving with the dialogue manager under constant use...

ajjuneja — Tue, 28 Feb 2006 14:52:00 GMT

So... I finally worked out my vibration issues with the hard drives -- first by switching to laptop hard drives, then by adding some creative engineering:

and special foam and at first things were better than before, but not quite good enough for all the various road conditions out there.

The problem?

The computer needs to be rigidly mounted. Bungee cords weren't enough, and because I was tinkering with things so much, I had removed the wooden panel framing the computer as seen in this pic:

I put that panel back in, and with the computer now firmly held in place, ALL my vibration problems were solved. I tested this on my drive back from Seattle to San Francisco and throughout the Seattle and SF Bay areas as well, and everything worked great! I wonder if this setup would hold up on Laguna Seca...

VW ads: "Unpimp your Ride"

ajjuneja — Wed, 22 Feb 2006 19:37:00 GMT

Gotta say these ads are hilarious! Take a looksee here.

Happy Valentines Day!

ajjuneja — Tue, 14 Feb 2006 08:45:00 GMT

Valentine's Day greeting designed by the wonderful design team at 21 productions!
Speak With Me uses them for graphics and web design.