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Notes on building software.
Plain-spoken articles on development, platforms, and getting digital projects done right.
From Space Jam to ChatGPT: the history of web design
A year-by-year history of web design from 1991 to 2026: the stacks people really built websites with, from hand-typed HTML and Flash intros to React and AI builders, with Space Jam, Orkut, Jio and KGF along the way.
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How much does a website cost in Udupi & Mangalore? (2026)
What a small-business website really costs in Udupi and Mangaluru in 2026: the one-time build, the yearly domain and hosting charges people forget, and what to ask before you pay.
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We asked our chatbot 124 questions. 29 answers were wrong.
We tested the chatbot on our own website with 277 questions, and it said yes to hacking, claimed an office we don’t have and left out our prices. Here is what we fixed, and the rules to ask for before a bot speaks for your business.
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Most of your website visitors are bots: how to check
Our dashboard showed more than 2,000 visitors from the USA, so we filtered out the machines: two in three visitor-days were robots, and fewer than 1 in 100 looked like a real visitor from India. Here is how to check your own site, and what to count instead.
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GST on old gold exchange: how the jewellery bill should work
GST is charged on the full price of the new jewellery, and the old gold comes off afterwards, like cash. Here are the rules with sources, a worked bill, how to value old gold, and six checks for your billing software.
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How to start a news portal in India: 2026 rules and tech
A news website does not need RNI (now PRGI) registration the way a printed paper does, and Google News has had no application form since April 2024. Here is what the rules really ask, and the website traps we hit building and moving Kannada news portals.
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How to prepare an RA bill: GST, TDS, retention and cess
Charge GST on the full value of the work in the bill. Then take retention, advance recovery, TDS and labour cess off what you are paid, not off what is taxed. One RA bill, worked line by line from both sides.
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Hiring an App Developer in Mangalore: Freelancer, Local Agency or a Bengaluru Firm?
Freelancer, local agency or Bengaluru firm? An honest comparison for Mangalore businesses: what each does well, where it goes wrong, eight questions to ask and the warning signs.
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Websites That Sell for Karkala's Cashew, Granite and Stone-Craft Businesses
Karkala's cashew, granite and stone-craft businesses sell to very different buyers. Here is what a website needs for each — grade pages, stone catalogues, sculpture portfolios — and the mistakes that keep good firms invisible.
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What custom software actually costs in India — and how to know if you need it
Real price ranges for custom business software, what makes a quote go up, and the honest test for whether you should build at all or just buy something off the shelf.
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AI-built or WordPress? We measured 19 of our own sites
One hosting account, 19 live sites, 13 of them WordPress and 6 hand-built. We counted the files, then checked what the published research says about plugin vulnerabilities and AI-generated code. Neither option is safe by default, and the thing that actually failed on our own server was neither of them.
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Our mailing list had 306 subscribers. Not one was a person.
The list had grown on its own for weeks without a single campaign. Grouping the signups by network block took ten minutes and answered it: four datacenters, zero home internet connections. The worse discovery was what our own form had been doing.
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Why 200 location pages will not get you found
Thirty services times forty towns is twelve hundred pages, and it costs almost nothing to build. We tried it on our own website. Here is what the audit found, with the numbers.
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Why a small jeweller needs an ERP, not just accounting software
Five things happen on a single jewellery bill that no ordinary retail software models — and they interact. What we learned building and running an ERP for a gold house.
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How to choose a web development company in Udupi or Mangaluru
Ten questions that separate a studio that will still be answering the phone in two years from one that will not. Written by people who answer these questions for a living.
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How to get your business quoted by ChatGPT, Claude and Google AI Overviews
Search is quietly changing from a list of links into a written answer. Here is what actually decides whether that answer mentions your business — and what to change on your site this month.
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Shopify or WooCommerce for an Indian D2C brand?
The honest comparison, with Indian realities included: UPI, COD, GST invoices, shipping partners and what each platform actually costs once you are running.
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GST e-invoicing, and what it does to your billing software
IRN, QR codes, the IRP and the thirty-day window — what e-invoicing actually requires, who it applies to, and why it is a software problem rather than an accounts problem.
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Your Google Business Profile matters more than your website
For a shop, clinic, hotel or workshop in coastal Karnataka, the map listing usually decides who gets the call. Most listings are half-finished. Here is how to finish yours.
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Do you need an app, or is a website enough?
Almost every business that asks us for an app needs a website that works well on a phone. Here is the test that tells the two apart, and what a PWA does to the question.
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WhatsApp, a marketplace, or your own store?
Most small brands in coastal Karnataka sell through WhatsApp, then jump to Amazon, then wonder where the margin went. A clear-eyed comparison of the three channels and when each one is right.
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Should your website be in Kannada?
A question almost nobody writes about honestly. What Kannada content actually does for local search, when it helps, when it is wasted effort, and the cheap middle path.
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When a spreadsheet stops being enough
Excel runs an enormous number of good businesses, right up until the day it quietly stops. The signals that you have outgrown it, and what to do that is not a six-month ERP project.
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Why slow websites lose rankings in India
Your site loads instantly on the office wi-fi. Your customer is on a mid-range Android phone on patchy mobile data outside a shop. Only one of those two experiences is being measured.
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