Zoho CRM User Experience & Interaction Design Blog

FM Radio is part of chennai people’s lifestyle. Even buying a cellphone is influenced by the FM radio feature in it.

It started with the legendary FM Rainbow from AIR, and picked up the pace few years back when Radio Mirchi and Suriyan FM started their broadcasts. Followed by an educational FM channel from a local college (i guess it is vaishnava college). And, last month, Radio City joined the bandwagon.

Radio Mirchi

Radio Mirchi set the benchmark for Radio Jockeying and still Suchi is undoubtedly the best RJ in town. Mirchi starts rocking with “Filter Coffee with deva” and moves in top gear with “Hello Chennai with Suchi”. Hello Chennai is best part of Radio Mirchi’s morning session by letting the people discuss about various topics. The pace steadies with “Ladies Colony” and the day goes on. Ajay wakes up those who sleep in the afternoon with his Kolly-vudaance. Definitely Radio Mirchi keeps you fully busy with variety of entertaining programs RJed in different style, from morning till evening. In the night “Kaadhal Doctor Siva” slowly rocks you back to a good sleep.

Though Radio Mirchi excels in RJing and variety programs, their morning broadcast is usually dominated with rap and “kuthu” songs. Sometimes it really irritates when you hear the same song multiple times. “Vaala Meenu” is one such classic example that was played often daily and weekly! At one point of time, I even turned off the radio when i heard “vaala meenu”’s starting music.

Radio Mirchi is the favorite of most people who are aged upto 35. Radio Mirchi is still a benchmark for RJ and Program varieties. The strong plus point being Suchi’s Hello Chennai.

Suriyan FM

From the stable of Sun TV, Suriyan FM offers bunch of “Janaranjaka” programs.. where most of the callers always say “unga voice romba nalla irukku, sweet’a irukku” to the comperers. Other than that they dont speak anything. Most of the Suriyan’s RJs imitate Suchi’s style, and end up delivering a pathetic “kothu parotta” of tamil language. The only better RJ with Suriyan FM is “Blade Dheena”. I really like his timing and crisp compereing.

Compereing irritations include the hysteric “Chinna Thambi Periya Thambi”, “Kittu Maama Susee Maami” (god! how they murder tamil?) and lot more, including the midnight scarer “Yazh Sudhakar”. Sometimes his own poetic phrases are good. But most of the time, it creates pilomotor reflex and spoils the mood (atleast to me).

But what makes Suriyan FM still running in top charts? Its nothing but their songs. Their broadcast includes many of the best tamil songs from 1980s to 1990s and has a proper mix of old and new.

Suriyan FM’s listeners are usually the middle aged and old aged (as far as i seen) and some young aged people too. Suriyan FM, is best for the songs. If you ignore the poor compereing, it is one of good radio in town.

FM Rainbow

Once upon a time I was listening to FM Rainbow, and was praying for a good comperer. They talk a lot, and broadcast few songs. But the star program was every weekday’s 7pm-8pm english broadcast. I dont know whether the program still continues or not. But it was one of my favorite at that time. I have heard many lovers dedicating songs, some proposing, some apologising… that was cool u know?

As I dont listen to FM Rainbow now a days, I am unable present a review. Probably some one from the readers could give a precise review.

Radio City

Just started listening to this channel. So nothing to review as of now.

-Dharma

I was interviewing number of candidates for web designer post. One of the interesting thing I noted is, about 95% of them use Dreamweaver. That was good. It helps in quick development, quick delivery and consistent code style.

But the side effects? 99% of the candidates were aware of just 20-30% of the HTML tags. Many of them admitted that, to debug, or even, to edit basic table structures they definitely need dreamweaver. Nearly half of them are scared to edit the HTML code directly. And, interestingly, a candidate who used the merge cells option to merge two rows, doesn’t know about the ROWSPAN tag.

I feel a little worried about this trend. HTML & CSS tags are the fundamental, basic things a web designer/developer should know. Instead of mastering the art of “using dreamweaver”, they should spend some quality time in making themselves familiar with all the widely used tags. They should practice hand coding to some extent, which will reduce the fear to touch the code directly (during debugging)

-Dharma

Hi all,

We are looking for a couple of web designers, with the following skillset:

Skillset:

- Upto 3 years of relevant experience

- Good aesthetic and design sense

- Good knowledge of HTML , DHTML, CSS

- Good knowledge of Javascript

- Good working knowledge in tools like Macromedia Dreamweaver, Photoshop, and Flash (optional).

- Good knowledge about browser issues and Cross-browser compatibility techniques are must.

Following skills are considered as a plus:

- Knowledge of Javascript (DOM)

- Awareness about W3C standards

- Ability to handcode HTML and CSS

- Knowledge of AJAX

Job Description:

- Will be working in rapid development environment along with Usability engineers and the developers.

- Translating image prototypes of GUI to HTML pages (using standards compliant CSS)

Other requisites

- Strong verbal and written communication skills

Candidates can send their resume, along with their portfolio to the below mentioned email id. If you find this requirements fit for any of your friends, please refer them.

Send your resumes to : sohail at adventnet dot com

For more info about the company visit : www.adventnet.com

thanks,

Rajesh Sundaram

For those who like to know “what is Information Architecture?” and how it is used in designing products, refer Webmonkey’s tutorial about Information Architecture. It is short, and precise tutorial which doesnt take more than 30 minutes to read. When you finish reading it, you will get a good understanding about “Information Architecture”.

In a short form, Information Architecture or IA, is a simple process of defining & building a blueprint of a software / webstie / web application. Webmonkey’s tutorial suggests 5 stages to design the IA of a software/website/web app.

They are

1. Define your goals,

2. Know your audience and Competitors

3. Define the Site Content

4. Define the Site Structure

5. Visual Design

Though webmonkey’s tutorial is focused on IA for websites, it doesnt deviate to a greate angle from the default IA concepts.

Here is the article link:

http://www.webmonkey.com/webmonkey/design/site_building/tutorials/tutorial1.html

-Rajesh

Spybot Search & Destroy

I use Spybot Search & Destroy in my home PC, to get rid of registry hacks, malware other nuisance stuffs. Spybot S&D, is worth considering for those who are looking for a good piece of free spyware removal utility.

Installation was a breeze. The same goes with update too. Once installed, the Spybot updates itself automatically. If you do not have a net connection, you can download the updates seperately and install them.

Interface

The interface is pretty basic with a expanded tab to the left and contents to the right. Upon startup, it opens the first tab (Spybot S&D) and offers 3 options

1. Check for Problems

2. Recovery

3. Immunize

4. Search for Updates

The check for problems is nothing but the “Scan” command and it makes a thorough check in the registry for all known adwares, malwares and other phishing agents. Suspected entries are then listed below. Some of the genuine entries may be included in the list too. So you need to verify the list check/un-check the entries that are alien, and click the “Fix selected problems” button on the top. Registry entries are fixed.

In case if you have deleted a genuine entry by accident, you can use the restore command to restore the genuine entries.

Immunize tweaks the registry and shields un-authorized registry updates in the future.

Settings & Tools

Settings offers the usual options for changing skins, update settings, type of files to be scanned, scheduling, ignore options and more.

Tools includes viewing reports, resident options, checking for registry inconsistency, and a few more tools.

Conclusion

A clean, no-nonsense and excellent free anti-spyware, a gift for every home PCs. If you find it useful, consider donating a few bucks.

Website : http://www.spybot.info/en/index.html

Looking at the current trend of mobile phone convergence.. I foresee in the near years that a

1. Entry Level Mobile phone having

– Color Display (upto 64K)

– Polyphony Ringtones

– FM Radio

– SMS/MMS/GPRS Connectivity

– VGA Camera

– 5 MB internal memory

– Proprietory OS

– Bluetooth (optional)

2. Mid Range Mobile Phones having

– Color Display (64K and above)

– Polyphony, MP3 Ringtines

– Stereo FM Radio

– SMS/MMS/GRPS/EDGE

– Megapixel Camera (2 MP atleast)

– Internal Memory

– Expandable Memory (Mini SD, Micro Memory Stick)

– Mp3, 3GP Video players

– Proprietory OS

– Bluetooth+PC connectivity

3. High End Mobile Phones having

– Color Display (True Color)

– Polyphony and MP3 ringtones

– Stereo FM Radio

– SMS / MMS/GRPS / EDGE / WiFi / GPS

– Megapixel Camera with autofocus and Optical zoom (3MP atleast, with Video )

– Large Internal memory

– Expandable Memory

– Host of Software suite running on Smart OS like Symbian or Linux or Windows Mobile

– Bluetooth+USB+TV connectivity

– Keypad integrated, along with option Handwriting recognition

Sooner or later, there will be only a thin gap between the Smart business phone and a Laptop. Smartphone missing a fullscale OS+Hardware, and Laptop missing a fullscale phone.

Little Italy, is all-vegetarian, italian food restaurant. And it is located in the basement, of El-Dorado building on nungambakkam high road. The proper way is to drive from haddows road, and take left at nungambakkam high road junction (neat ABN AMRO) and take another immediate left to enter the el-dorado building.

Little Italy is not a new restaurant.. it is running for a couple of years in this place, and I believe many advees would have visited earlier.

The restaurant or the “ristorante:” as they call themselves is located in the basement. Upon entering you will be greeted by waitors. Tell them how many you are and they will guide you to the appropriate table. Their menu book starts with a short story of usual “italin food speciality.. and how we are special” and about the award of recognition from some italian official.

Turn the page next and you will see all greek and latin. Well i mean.. the typical continental confusion. All italian names. Gazed for a few more minutes and still we were hopeless. So we asked the captain to make some suggestions as we are visiting the italian cuisine for the first time. He suggested us, Passato Di Vedure Soup ( 1 / 2 servings) and Zuppa Di Asparagus Soup (1/2 servings). Then for starters he suggested “Funghi Alla Trapanese Starter”, a button mushroom starter. For main course he suggested “Alla Firritiana Pasta”, “Pasta Barbaresca”, “Pasta Del Fattore” and “Matriciana Pasta” for 4 of us. We said “OK! great !”.

While waiting for the soups, I evaluated the interiors. They are good, with a stream of english music flowing in. Perfect lighting (not dark.. not bright) and good seating. Air cooled and clean ambience. Ok thats for the interiors. Our 15 min chat stopped when they served the soup and starter. I got the asparagus soup, a creamy soup with onion and asparagaus bits. That was good in taste. My friend reported that the other soup was just average.

The mushroom starter was awesome! Believe me that was really great. some 12 mushroom heads cooked in olive oil and some european seasoning served with 3 dry breads. I liked it very much ! Funghi Alla Trapanese Starter was excellent. It was boiled properly (no typical mushroon smell) and seasoning was great.

Then came the main courses. Two main courses were tomato based and used Penne pasta. Third one is Fusilli and the fourth one is cochiglie i guess. The fusilli and cochiglie are dominated by cheese and other two are dominated by tomato. The tastes were good. But unfortunately, no one was able to consume a complete main course. Almost 20% of the main course was left and it was a waste. If there was only two main courses shared with 4 of us, then its a good meal.

So my suggestion is when you order pasta.. remember it is heavy. Heavy on diet. So, if you are 4 members order only one pasta.. then go for some others like spaghetti or ribbons. I should partly blame the waitor who suggested us 4 pasta’s. Either he has taken advantage of our first-time visit, or he is not good in helping the customers. He could have suggested that 2 pasta’s are enough for 4 of us and encouraged us to try some spaghetti or something else.

Except for that part, the whole experience is good. But, I must admit, that the restaurant owners.. who spend more money and more effort in interiors, exteriors, appointing good-looking nepali/assamese babes as waitresses, never think about giving a proper food-guidance to the first time visitors. They should educate their work force in that front too.

Food is priced on the higher side.. a soup costs more than Rs.100 and main course costs Rs.275 minimum. Little Italy offers a rich experience for premium customers. Consider Little Italy for rare occasions like a dinner with your special ones, or a corporate celebration etc.

Conclusion : Little Italy is a premium restaurant that offers good food. If you are new to italian food, inform the captain or the manager and ask him to guide you properly.

Rating : 3.5 / 5

After a long time.. SUPERMAN RETURNS in RDX at sathyam! I felt like a 10 year old kid when entered sathyam coz I was so excited to watch my favorite hero in action again. Settled in the seat with a paapkaan and pepsee and started watching.

As for the story goes.. well you can read it here.. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Superman_Returns#Plot

And for the review, everything fails.. i mean the movie fails. The superman life is portrayed as kinda dull.. not much entusiasm. Poor screenplay.. dragging script.. everything leads to a big disappointment.

It starts like an action movie.. and travels on a somewhat action-comedy part, and suddenly getts into too much romance and ends up dragging in the climax. There are only 3 action sequences. One.. where he saves the flight, two.. bullet time-slice sequence and three.. the climax. Apart from these 3 sequences, the movie struggles with dragging screenplay and confused romance!

Except for Brandon Routh and amazing graphics+sound effects, Superman Returns - disappoints!