Entries from April 2008 ↓

If you're new here, you may want to subscribe to my RSS feed. Thanks for visiting!

Ani S writes this interesting story of how he still remembers the handwritten letters from the parents and ponders what is he leaving behind for his kids.

Remembering the times- when not so long ago - we were kids, and the postman used to drop that blue inland letter from Baba to Papa. Or that postcard that Maama write to Ma on Rakhi with the Money order. I still remember reading thru them - again and again. Though i rarely met Baba - we lived so far off - but i knew him through his letters. Even after so many years, i still remember how he used to start his letters lovingly addressing his son. And when the new years used to come - our homes used to be full of those cards - handmade, or otherwise. As years have passed, when I have my kids - these things seem something like history. In an age of mobiles and mails - and low tariffs of airtimes for both local and international calls - i guess we all have stopped writing letters - or even writing for that matter.

I didn’t get that many chances to write to my parents, as I was always with them. But sometimes when they used to go for a long vacation at our native place, we used to write to them. Our used to be a community letter where my elder brother used to start the letter, my sister in law used to write in between and I used to close with a short paragraph in the end. It used to be a blue inland letter available at 75ps, if I remember correctly. Otherwise, I have written lots of such letters to my other relatives and I remember writing on occassions like Diwali was used to be quite an affair.

Till some time ago we still used to send Diwali greeting cards to our relatives with some special personal message which was contextual to their lives and really enjoy it. Though my parents used to hunt for cards with more religious touch , I managed to convert them to cards created by NGO’s like HelpAge and Cry.

But I just realized after reading Ani’s post that I no longer do this and send a twitterish 140 charcter SMS, which is again just the foward of the best Diwali SMS that I receive from others.

But sometimes the warm is in the message and not the medium. I have moved to Bangalore but still call my old friends, neighbors and relatives from Bombay and I really love it when I can sing ‘Happy Birthday To You !!!" exactly at 12.01 am in the midnight and be the first one to wish my special and dear ones. The best moments of the life can be captured any where and memory can take any shape. I have some good ones captured and pixalized on my hard disk :). The handwritten warmth is taking a new form and shape over the emails, sms, instant messengers, photos, social networks and many many more things. You just need to pour your heart out on the keyboard.

Popularity: 35% [?]

Gerrit Visser on SmartMob talks about Robert Scobles keynote presentation at The NextWeb Conference where he talked about the user experience of social networks: Here is one user experience issue, friends divide and there is more on Robert Scobles blog:

“But when ICQ was launched, the experiences of people started to diverge. ICQ users with a hundred friends had a different experience than those with only two. With the new web, version 2.0, this diversion becomes more significant. Scoble proved this by showing versions of Google Reader, Twitter, Pownce, Friendfeed and Upcoming, one version with only one friend and the other one with Scoble’s famous collection of friends. 1000+ on Google Reader, 500 people on Upcoming, 3000 Powncers and over 17,000 Twitter contacts. So we got to witness two extremes here, one with no activity and the other version that was flooded by updates. Those are totally different user experiences, the consequence is the friend divide.

This same problem was experienced by me when I was working on a social network platform few years back.

Day 0 (W.r.t Users)

On the day 0 of the registration what should be the user experience like?. The recommendation engine can of course recommend certain people & features, but what if user chose to skip those. If the user provided some information at the time of registration it becomes easier for the SNS provider to recommend people, content or the features. But most of the times, users do not provide any information besides the user name and email ID and it would be a disaster if the SNS provider makes all the information mandatory for the registration.

Exposing random people, content and features doesn’t help. The success of the most successful SNSs can simply be attributed to ‘Invite Friends’ module.

On a detailed profile, the known people based on profile information such as home town, work city, interests, etc all form the discovery connectors and some times they are more important than the discovery itself.

Hand-Holding

In India, where more and more people are logging on to the Internet everyday, for the first time in life they will be straight away exposed to the Social Network. I am sure more than half of the SNS population in India doesn’t know what SNS means - they know it as Orkut and Facebook that’s it. For such users, launching yet another SNS with upload photos, upload videos, find friends doesn’t mean anything. You need to properly hand hold your users, what is the next step, what you can do here and why you should do it over here. I think LinkedIn does it best in terms of hand-holding the user. I also liked MySpace Tom who was my first friend there. It can be really scary if you don’t have any friends on Social Networks or places like Twitter, it feels like a terrified kid trying to cross the bussiest highway on the planet

Mimic / Imitation Effect

On any Social Networks, users copy each other and that’s how they influence each other and do some activity more compared to other activities available on the site. Users may not understand the real use of that activity initially but discover cool tools and features through this mimicing. For example, on Orkut they scrap or write testomonials on Facebook they poke each other, write on walls or send each other applications and widgets. But if there are no such tools or the unique twist on that social network, people tend to wander and get lost. It is very important for a newbie to know what others are doing or what’s popular on the system, jump into it and discover people or content through it.

Popularity: 40% [?]

Slashdot: How Social Networks May Kill Search as We Know It "Recently we discussed a startup that’s blending social networking with traditional Web search. But now high geek Glenn Derene takes it one step further, pronouncing that our increasingly traceable online footprints will transform Google’s dominant algorithm and open up the world of Web search for the 21st century. Speaking to a tuned-in VC guy and scoring a rare interview with Google’s VP of search, Derene may have some meat behind his newly-coined term: ‘faceboogle.’ From the article: ‘As we each carve out our individual niche on the Web, the logic of search may well flip inside out. Since we are essentially meta-tagging ourselves through our social networking memberships, shopping habits and surfing addictions, it’s conceivable that the information could attempt to find us — the old concept of push media, but in a far more refined way.

Popularity: 33% [?]

Can the Cellphone Help End Global Poverty? Great article, you don’t even need to own a cell phone to benefit from it

Popularity: 30% [?]

• Usability or user experience - what’s the difference?
• Usability Checklist Guidelines
• Simplicity According to Erik Burke
• Focus Groups vs. Usability Tests
• 14 Website Usability Guidelines That Keep them Coming Back for More
• Brand vs. Usability Weblog Usability: The Top Ten Design Mistakes
• The Blog Usability Checklist

Popularity: 36% [?]

TreeHugger carries a nice post on Conspicuous Consumption, Conscious Consumption, and the Fulfillment Curve. I think you will agree that Screen Consumption is also one such consumption and it would make perfect sense if you think ’screen consumption’ while reading this post. The consumption graph cited in the same post also draws out fulfillment levels Vs consumption and how to achieve balance by satisfying the comfort and without exceeding luxury and extravagance.

Popularity: 36% [?]

I think I am not the only one who is suffering from heavy screen consumption. Juraj on Slashdot posted a question today What Font Color Is Best For Eyes?

"What font color and what background is best for the eyes, when you work for a long time? I have found various contradictory recommendations and I wonder if you know about any medical studies on this topic."

Popularity: 48% [?]

Photo credit : aslakr/flickr

Few days back I posted a question on linked in "How much screen do you consume " and received couple of interesting answers. I thank all the people on Linked In who shared their feedback and I am carrying forward that discussion on my blog now.

Julia Shacklock had a very interesting observation that two people at the same place can be in two completely different ‘virtual places’ using multiple screens. She also commented aon the requirement of having a single screen a single window to the world instead of going through or switching through multiple screens that we do now on a daily basis.

Screensumer & Virtual Worlds
Virtual worlds are not just the worlds where you take a different avatar or identity. Virtual worlds is anything that is taking up your time & attention so that you are more immersed and engaged in the screen through which you are consuming it and less engaged with what’s happening around. It happens all the time and it changes your perception of reference, context, reality, distance, relationships and many other human sensations and attributes.

For example, in a same room your wife is watching something interesting on TV and you are doing some serious work on your laptop. In this case, you are not attached with your physical environment or the person who is near to you. You and your emotions are more tuned to the screen that you are consuming. Since your wife is watching an interesting program she may like to share it with you and you may block that response with a frown. Also, if you are getting disturbed by the interference of the other screen - TV and want her to lower down the volume or such, your wife thinks you are a jerk and can’t enjoy simple things iun life and all you know is to be the slave to your laptop. You both are at the same place, same time but in the different virtual world. These virtual worlds of screensumers are the virtual worlds inside the real world.

Now, this is not a new phenomenon - we think over things and  we multitask and we overtask. Our engagement, feelings and expressions are not limited to our physical presence and the physical surroundings.

This is not new, but no other generation in the past was so immersed in the virtual worlds than we are now. The billions of virtual word can change not just the equations with your family and relationships but with the entire society.

Virtual worlds are not barriers to the real world relationships and transactions. They are enablers in fact. Social Networks, Mobile phones, Email, Video conferences and other types of screen based communication can bring people and societies more closer and together and people are already doing that. But as we have the couch potatoe syndrome for the over consumption of TV and we are seeing it’s effect on society. We are still unaware of the fact how our combined consumption of screen is impacting our senses, body and health.

The problem mostly happens with youngsters and blind followers of a particular trend. Early adopters, social influencers and professionals do it because of their attachment with that particular trend or technology. They have a cost to that consumption and also the gains. People don’t understand the priorities in their life and simply mimic the ‘media moguls’ and the ’super novas’ on the web. With millions on memes, trends and hypecycles on the screens these days, it’s very easy to lose focus in real life and spend the time, day, week, months, year and life in this massive matrixed hypermedia.

The other problem with hypermedia screens is that it is there are no real boundaries and everybody is in the state of denial that they are addicted to their screens and have an OCD towards their screens.

Popularity: 37% [?]

I couldn’t find the online version of the article but read two articles in TOI related to topics that I was thinking lately - Screensumer.

Time to master the digital distraction - To tackle the information overload, experts see a rising push to manage the new tech tools. And here is the quote from futurist Simeon Spearman.

When you see the demands we put on computers these days and how much they can process, you begin to understand just how much we’re being hit by all the time

Two weeks ago in North Lauderdale, Fla., funeral services were held for Russell Shaw, a prolific blogger on technology subjects who died at 60 of a heart attack. In December, another tech blogger, Marc Orchant, died at 50 of a massive coronary. A third, Om Malik, 41, survived a heart attack in December. Other bloggers complain of weight loss or gain, sleep disorders, exhaustion and other maladies born of the nonstop strain of producing for a news and information cycle that is as always-on as the Internet.

Popularity: 49% [?]

Findability, Orphan of the Web Design Industry - A detailed post by Aarron Walter on Findability, how to focus on it and how to involve all the stake holders in the design process. Joshua Porter had also posted similar views on social design blog - bokardo. Myspace, Facebook, Delicious, Youtube, Flickr are some search example of great findability tools. Social Networks if you see are nothing but collection of findability and discoverability tools.

" Once upon a time in a web design agency, there lived a sad little boy named Findability. He was a very good boy with a big heart for helping people…

• find the websites they seek,
• find content within websites, and
• rediscover valuable content they’d found. "

Popularity: 41% [?]

Interesting Question - What kind of resources are required for doing a crawl of the whole web? (I’m just looking for ballpark numbers — servers, bandwidth, cost, etc.)

Popularity: 33% [?]

Virtual voyeurism: Who’s watching you on the Web?

Popularity: 32% [?]

Web usability ‘guru’ Jakob Nielsen has revealed the results of a study showing, he says, that “Between the ages of 25 and 60, people’s ability to use websites declines by 0.8 percent per year - mostly because they spend more time per page, but also because of navigation difficulties.”

Popularity: 31% [?]

The Globe And Mail: What Women Want (US specific data)

• Current news 63%
• Entertainment/celebrities 51%
• Food/home 34%
• TV shows 33%
• Health/fitness 31%
• Travel 29%
• Music 28%
• Fashion/beauty 24%
• Politics 18%
• Sports 18%
• Cars/automotive 16%
• Technology/gadgets 15%
• Finance 12%
• Business 9%
• Corporate news 6%

Source: Forrester Research

Popularity: 31% [?]