Sheehan Toufiq here!

What have I been up to? Toufiq Media is nearing the end of it’s research and beginning it’s application development phase. We’ve weighed the pros and cons of every programming language that would best suit our current project, Xeelium.

Xeelium? What is that? The fact is that we’ve thrown out very limited information out there on this current project, therefore right now I want to start sharing the dynamics, the features, and what exactly Xeelium is, besides the fact that it’s obviously some sort of web application with an extremely cool sounding name.

Xeelium is a new breed of music networking. Imagine a “widget” based application that allows musicians to create a social community with other bands, music producers, and industry executives. But there are tons of other social networking sites for musicians out there, what exactly makes Xeelium a “new breed”?

Widgets. Our plan to distribute API keys to third party developers to create lots and lots of widgets. There will be the standard ones branded by Toufiq Media itself as well as the ones by other developers doing what they do best. Music and video playing widgets, recording widgets, autotune widgets, video editing widgets, studio and beatmaking widgets, widgets for analytics, widgets to dress up your profile, the possibilities are endless. When it comes to branding yourself as a musician, Xeelium will be able to do everything. Of course Xeelium’s widgets will have to be accepted, so don’t expect any of them being advertisements promising a free ebook containing the top ten weight loss secrets if you complete a survey on your sex life.

The point of our story. Why Ruby? Three words:

It is sexy.

Ruby is a scripting object oriented programming language that highlights syntax. It was created to make the life of a programmer much, much easier. You don’t have to tell Ruby that the thing beside the lake that quacks like a duck, flies like a duck, and uses it’s bowel movement to prevent anyone to play effective tackle football anywhere in the park is indeed a duck. Ruby automatically assumes that. Now that’s sex appeal. What’s even more exciting is Ruby on Rails, an open source framework built on Ruby released around 2005 by David Heinemeier Hansson. Look him up, pretty cool guy. Also, since the framework is so new, it’s young, dynamic community is literally one of the friendliest, most supportive neighborhoods on the internet. Our plan is to build Xeelium on Rails while integrating a javascript library for the UI.

Scalability? There are loads of horror stories of Twitter’s scalability issues with Ruby on Rails. I for one could not keep track of how many times I saw those birds carrying that big ecstatic whale to give it ride of it’s life. Although Twitter did end up choosing a different programming solution (Scala), a lot of it’s code still remains on Rails. Also many people don’t know that Twitter’s scalability issues were mostly due to poor infrastructure and a lot of the biggest parts of our research is to ensure the prevention of something similar. We will cross the t’s and dot the i’s. All of them.

Now all we have to do is to roll up our sleeves and get to work on building the next big thing.

Sheehan Toufiq here!

I sat down earlier with my older cousin, Musaddeq Khan, Chief Marketing Officer of Verdeeco, Inc. Verdeeco is a startup company based right here in Atlanta that integrates a smart grid platform with energy associated services. The platform is designed to aggregate various applications for utilities to help them achieve a much more efficient electric grid.

I’ve had the pleasure of working with Musaddeq previously for a company he founded back in 2002 called Prominus, Inc. Like Verdeeco, Prominus was also a technology software company. However, specializing in debt collection software, their flagship product was called Debt2Collect. After briefly describing his meeting with an investor earlier in the week, we proceeded to discuss Toufiq Media. Fahad Islam, our co-founder was present via skype. After mainly discussing our business and revenue models, as well as our guerrilla marketing strategies in the forms of social media and online hype, I couldn’t be more thankful being a young web entrepreneur that already had a family member in the biz.

Fahad left the meeting a little early, and Musaddeq and I continued to discuss the focused demographic that Toufiq Media plans to target, a contributing factor to why the company has major potential to become successful. With a lot of helpful advice from my cousin, and after Fahad and I later made minor changes to our plans, I am extremely glad to say that we have a very rich resource that will steer us in the right direction. Get Excited!

Sheehan Toufiq here!

I would first like to start off by saying I’ve never actually written a blog post before, unless you count those Xanga profiles everyone had as kids. Bring back memories?

So bear with me.

Expanding on that, there’s a certain sentiment that one gets, when a launching a new web asset. It’s somewhat of a mixture of “Whoa, the whole world has access to my voice at the moment?” and “Why yes, I own that piece of property right there.” Now if your voice sucks, then there is really no reason to gloat about either.

In December of 2009, my Co-Founder Fahad Islam and I started Toufiq Media, LLC. Our goal was to create new and unique applications, become successful at it, and make loads of cash. Not by selling off the company once it’s actually worth something, but by sticking with it. By building the company from complete scratch, standing beside it until the very end, and proclaiming “Why yes, I own that piece of property right there.” This blog is going to document that journey, the glorified world of startups and entrepreneurship, and the ideas that are behind the driving force of Toufiq Media. We’ve come a long way since December. From building a tangible startup infrastructure, to creating a motivated team that is both business agile, as well as an idea think tank that is backed by action.

I just got done reading Campus CEO, a book by Randal Pinkett, Winner of NBC’s The Apprentice 4. After reading it, the feeling of not being taken seriously as a young entrepreneur of 20 has completely left me. Pinkett taught me that launching a company as a student is in most cases much more beneficial than waiting until graduation. You have a great idea, why wait? Why not now? Being a student, I am surrounded by free resources that would cost major bucks in the real world. Being a student, I literally have much more energy and enthusiasm than an average professional that works all day and slaves away at night trying to build the next big thing. Being a student, I have little to no significant expenses, such as a mortgage or a family to support. Being a student, I have beautiful time management and organization skills, and enough discipline to cultivate a potential multi-million dollar business. Being a student, I have an enormous amount of networking opportunities with investors and other entrepreneurs floating around college campuses looking for people exactly like me.

I could go on and on.

To conclude the launch of Toufiq Media’s Official Blog, I will say that I am proud to be a Campus CEO, excited for all the things that are to come, and ready to learn through real world experience what it takes to be a entrepreneur and the leader of the next big thing.