Dev’s Blog

When i stepped on the treadmill this morning my hands automatically punched 75kgs and i started working out as usual. Been using this for few months. Its a bit old but looks cool. The LEDs, the statistics at the end of the workout, the variable workout programs, everything…except one vital issue - am not 75kgs.

I really don’t know why the designers of my treadmill couldnot add a weighing machine to it. May be the latest ones might have (let me know if you come across one) but isn’t it something simple to do in the first place? Am already standing on it so whats the big deal to guage the pressure exerted and convert it to kgs? And if those tiny LEDs were showing results of complex algorithms based on my weight as 75, then you know everything is invalid now. I started working out few months back, but right from day 1 i have been punching the weight as 75kgs (courtesy: health checkup that i did many months back) and i really don’t know whats my weight today. Am not looking for a very accurate weighing machine (am not selling gold and it doesnt matter if it shows a few grams more or less) but i want to see whether am decreasing in weight or gaining weight.

Now forget the treadmill and think about your product. This is a good casestudy for all designers especially software ones. Do you expect your user to provide the right input OR do you go one up and also facilitate her to get the right inputs? Many just stop with step1 the way my treadmill guy did.

Design Flaw: Expect your user to give the right input

Rectification: Go one up and facilitate the user to get the right input

First time when i ran ethereal in my network; it was really fascinating. Looked like there exists a different world, a very busy one, under our feet that many are not aware of. (sth equivalent of the 9 3/4 platform that harry potter crashes into, only a few souls can see) Now a bunch of college folks have made a good attempt to show those busy packets to common folks in a format that all can notice without using ethereal - music.

The Sheridan College Institute of Technology and Advanced Learning has created software that translates network and server activity into music. They call it Informational Music (iSIC). The institute’s IT department has started using iSIC. Operators listen to what sounds like classical music but is actually a precise audio model of system metrics. They are trained to recognize instruments, chords, tempo and other musical elements of music as a translation of e-mail activity from 15 servers over three subnets. Every aspect of the music correlates to information. More here>

Oh, thats our datacenter; iSIC enabled ofcourse!

(image courtesy nutsabouthifi.com.)

It should look exactly like an antartica iceberg. Top 10 percent for everybody to see and rest for specialist users.

Top 10% for everybody to sea: Great design helps users access the most wanted elements first, without cluttering the interface and without confusing the user’s mind (not giving too many choices or not giving anything at all). Just like how an iceberg shows up its face up above the sea. What you see is just what you need to see.

Rest 90% for specialists: Great design assumes that every user is unique with different set of needs and hence doesn’t overload too many options in the first place but provides different paths - each path leading to a desired goal. As the user proceeds further in his tasks, a good design starts unfolding itself and makes the user say awesome, awesome…someone has already travelled this way. The feeling is something equivalent of the shocking effect that you get when you see whats below the iceberg.

Conclusion: Great design doesnot confuse users at its gate, but leaves the user saying awesome..awesome..someone has already travelled this path.. when he travels through it and comes out.

Today morning i was collecting all images related to chicago autoshow. (wanted to put up an image gallery). Autoblog came very close to having covered most of the show happenings. I decided to download all the images but there were around 300 of them. Rightclick+save would work but that is the most inefficient way to do it. Vinodhvv saved me by introducing this cool firefox extension called DownThemAll. This gets installed into your firefox in a flick and helps you downloadthemall, literally. I got what i wanted in less than a minute.

Cool browser. Cool extensions.

Did anybody notice this? Its believed that IE7 might block google adsense ads from appearing. Reported here http://forums.digitalpoint.com/showthread.php?s=e44693ef94633768e416ffd404ae5aac&t=52925&highlight=adsense+ie7 . If this is true, then you are just going to witness another david and goliath fight. This time the results may vary.

UPDATE: After i posted this i got couple of mails saying that its a bug in IE and the team is fixing it. And they pointed me to this site insidegoogle which posts interesting updates about this problem. Read the last few paragraphs following the updates.

Traditionally home pages served as the doorway to any site. Companies used to print the website address in tradeshows, brochures, and all communiques. The idea being, i will somehow manage to bring people to my doorstep and they will figure out what i offer. This led to navigation links, solution maps, product categorization, about us, store, news and events and all those links decorating the home page. But google broke all these practices by directing traffic directly to any single page that is relevant to the user. Now we end up with a house that has 1000 doors not 1. Still thinking of that color for your home page?

Next time you open up the food package do it cautiously or you might end up eating one of those tiny RFID chips along with the food. In this year’s ISSCC (International Solid-State Circuits Conference) Hitachi is showcasing a 7.5 micron thick RFID chip. It will measure 0.15×0.15mm in dimension and will be 10 times thinner than a sheet of paper. (seen below is a 0.4×0.4mm chip)

Happy eating.

Joel thinks its a design marvel that people are willing to accept ignoring its flaws.

Seth thinks its a disposable fashion item.

Joe Nocera thought it is just another mp3 player and after two years now he feels cheated.

I think two of the guys above are surely wrong for the following reasons.

- if iPod is a disposable fashion item it has to be cheaper than what it is now, so that people can throw it away and buy newer ones without filing a complaint.

- if iPod is just another mp3 player, we might not be talking about it now.

Business Today, a leading business mag from india reports that Cognizant Technology Solutions (CTS) might be crossing the magical billion dollars figure this year and become the fourth company to do so following TCS, Infosys, and Wipro. But the point to be noted here is that CTS would be achieving this milestone in the shortest time compared to the rest. TATA took 35 years, Wipro took 25 years, Infosys took 23 years, and CTS will be doing it in just 12 years. Yes just 12 years. The report also claims that CTS has the number one spot on average revenue per customer. Good show guys.

ps- i haven’t subscribed to the mag’s online edition and hence couldn’t paste a link here.

Novel is conducting a survey on what apps people need to move their desktops from Windows to Linux. The results as on Feb 3, 2006 revealed that the number 1 application that most people wanted, to port their desktops to Linux is ADOBE PHOTOSHOP. Which indirectly means that GIMP, as i have always felt, is not worth the buzz. It always looked like a lightweight tool such as irfanview (i know the difference between these tools, am not degrading gimp to the level of a screencapture tool, but am saying it from the point-of-view that gimp opens multiple screens, doesnt occupy the full screen and doesnt give an app like feel, it stays on any corner of your screen and behaves like a tiny tool. Photoshop on the other hand looks big.). Anyway with this survey report the GIMP team is sure on the anvil to deliver goods and we may expect something more on the 2.4 update.

GimpPhotoshop