Introducing Inspidom: Stay Inspired. Stay Wise.

I still remember from way back in 2007 when my father got me the first ever Iphone. Surprisingly the one feature that I have continued to use since then across all my devices is that of note taking. I always enjoyed writing down random ideas and thoughts.

And so it began. Since then, I have always carried with me an ever expanding list of quotations and pieces of wisdom. They could come from anywhere — a book or an article that I have read, a movie, random conversations with people, the internet or even status messages. I used some of my favorites during my Toastmaster speeches and during my time as a trainer at Infosys.

From time to time I would revisit these notes. Particularly when I wanted to feel positive, inspired or just wiser. Sometimes with all that happens around you, a few words is all it really takes to alter your state of mind. I look at quotations as a very powerful medium for this. I see them as a highly distilled and pure form of knowledge.

It occurred to me sometime back that I stopped looking at those notes. I was too busy and had no ‘time’. Lists are too boring right? Why not have a random quote come up to me when I need it? And still better, why not share it with the world? And thus Inspidom was born.

A screenshot of the home page of the website

Coming to the technical stuff: It uses tabletop.js, animate.css, touchswipe, odometer and jQuery to render the primary components and a bunch of custom themes and fonts for the UI. They are all open source! (The world is still so wonderful I tell you). And luckily I got the inspidom.com domain name, I own server space and tada I am live.

But, not before I had to learn a whole bunch of stuff. In particular, being able to render the site optimally on all the myriad of devices we use (different screen sizes, platforms, standards etc.), gosh its crazy! As an example, css had to be customized to render on screen sizes with less than 400 pixels of width(phones) and have a responsive design. Adding support for Chrome, Safari, Internet Explorer was important. I can only imagine the challenge this poses at scale. But off course, its a continuous learning curve.

What did I learn? We live in the best time ever. Ours is the first generation which can turn our ideas into reality almost instantaneously all thanks to technology. To be possessed by creative ideas, working on something you want for yourself and experiencing a state of ‘flow’ is priceless. The feeling of seeing your idea come to life, to have others use something you created is simply amazing. It’s magical. For me personally, launching inspidom.com is like planting a seed onto the fertile soil of the internet. I wish to nurture it with care and see it grow over the years.

To the users: you are the reason the site is up. Sharing those quotes with you is what brings me joy. I hope you like them. If you want to see one of your favorite quote on the site, feel free to tweet or drop me a message. I hope to keep the database continuously updated with thoughtful and profound words.

In the end, the truth is: our time on earth is limited. Do the things you love. Live, laugh and learn.

Stay Inspired. Stay wise.

PS: Why the name Inspidom? Well, I’ll let you the reader figure that out.

Here, go serve yourself some inspidoms: www.inspidom.com