“the way of the Prophets is a difficult path to follow – they were all hurt and slandered by their people, and while they could have retaliated, they didn’t. but we have to do our best to follow it…”
this is roughly what someone i really respect told me today after he was cursed out for no reason. while he could easily have hit the guy or cursed him back out, he kept silent. the whole time i could see him on the verge of snapping, but he managed to keep his cool.
truly, as the Prophet said, the rough meaning of which is, “the strong one isn’t by the physical strength, but it is the one who can control himself at the time of anger.”
it is really hard for the nafs to remain silent, especially when it is wronged and has strength over the one who has wronged it. when a person is patient, however, they send a much stronger message.
may Allah reward him for his patience and grant him and his family utmost happiness in this life and in the hereafter. ameen.
a long time ago, when facebook opened its api, i wrote a Quran application for facebook [see my previous post, here]. however, it was a hack, wasn’t fully featured, it didn’t look great, and, most importantly, it wasn’t put on the facebook application directory. sometime later, someone launched a Quranic Verses application – it was much nicer, more feature rich, and, most importantly, it was in the application directory.
feeling a bit competitive, i spent most of my past weekend rewriting, adding viral features suggested by my friends, and polishing the app. after three days of hard work, i finally launched. its been one day now since i launched, and here’s what i learned:
- being first to market is a huge competitive edge – i started out with around 40 user, whereas the other app has about 24,000. regaining the lost share of users will be extremely difficult.
- on the same note as the above, it seems as though getting to the market first is more important in some ways than what you bring to the market. if your product is the only one out there, people will use it, even if it has problems. once they start using it, the chances that they leave yours and use another one are slim. even if a competitor comes out, you can just improve your app and keep the market share.
- features aren’t always what you think they are – some features that you think are critical and awesome won’t be used by anyone at all – other features that you think are useless will be used a lot. its actually pretty odd, the one feature that i thought would be the selling feature of my app has gotten no usage by anyone except me, and the one feature i left out is the only one anyone asked me about.
- connections are important – a person who knows how to spread a viral app can do it, and can work wonders for your app and users. a solid and passionate user base can help your app grow, but without it, nagging can only take you so far. also, your connections can give you really good ideas and valuable user feedback that’s hard to get otherwise.
- its amazing how much you can get done in such a short period of time when you have a burning desire and passion to get something done.
- from a technical stand point, certain things may seem daunting at first, but a solid will to succeed makes these technical hurdles surmountable.
- even if something didn’t turn out quite the way one expected, there’s always some benefit to be taken out of it – so take the benefit, learn from the negatives, and move on
so yeah… i guess that about covers it… i still have a hope that the unused feature will be used and i can start a wildfire of users adding the app, but at the same time, i am being realistic and sticking to point 7 above by writing this blog post and consciously thinking about these matters.
peace… its been a while since i’ve updated, but that’s really due to a great number of things, from some games (late july/early august), to a shift to a new phase in life (moving, etc), to a bit of illness, so its been hard to find time to update till now.
i just got out of the hospital yesterday. to make a long story short, i went out with my friends to try this turkish restaurant – most of us ate this one side dish, and all of us who did got sick. my friends who got sick had to drive 800 miles home while they were sick, which is really horrible… i got sick pretty bad to the extent that i was hospitalized for a few days… i am still recovering now, but am feeling a lot better, al7amdulillah (thanks to God).
i guess i might want to say that the lesson i learned is to not eat food from outside at all… and while i know that probably won’t be possible to adhere to, at least i should be careful and avoid any sort of shadyish restaurants and stuff…
but one thing i did realize is that no matter what happens that one views as bad, there’s always something to be thankful for, even in the rough situations. so al7amdulillah. i am thankful.
anyway, that’s all the updates for now, probably will update later, insha’Allah (with God’s willing). by the way, keep an eye on the comments, jawwad and others are posting their own blogs under the comments of mine (hehe).