Google as per Google

Google indexer has a bunch of rules which ranks search results. What if the same rules were to be used to redesign the Google homepage ...?

:)

Thanks Gene.

Web 2.0 support in times of adversity

The fires continue to burn in Southern California. Over 500,000 people have been evacuated, 1000+ homes destroyed. I know of people who had packed and were ready to leave. This pic, taken 2 days ago, is at Foothill Ranch, about 20 miles south of where I live.


Why am I posting this here? Because, Web 2.0 did its bit to keep people informed.

A live Google Maps mashup of the fires. Probably a hundred refreshes from my computer alone.


Twitter updates: (likely that more feeds were following it)


YouTube Videos:


Flickr

The San Diego fire wiki came to the assistance of the worst affected area. About 400,000 people were evacuated from their homes.


A media major like the Union Tribune preferred using a blog for updates rather than their own website which would have carried other news.


These are just a few examples. I haven't even looked at Facebook. I am certain that more bloggers, vloggers and podcasters would have posted content all over the Internet. (US, at least.)

When technology becomes a part of life, it ceases to be technology. (somebody else said that, not me.)

p.s.: the numbers quoted here are likely to change. Please rely on official sources for exact figures.

..and then there was a flash of Lightbox!

Lightbox is a script that allows you to overlay images with the current webpage as the background.


This script's gained a lot of popularity among sites (especially some web 2.0 ones), and has several adaptations like overlaying text and even a wordpress plugin. Blogger doesn't allow me to upload javascript into my post, so you'll have to see the demo here. Not everyone is ga-ga about it, though. I like the idea, but I think (like everything else) it has its place. If I were writing a tutorial and I have some charts or figures, I'd use lightbox so that my readers could view a clearer picture without having to navigate to another tab (or window). I would have changed the background, though -- rather than go black and make the screen look like a photography darkroom, I'd just gray out (make transparent) the current web page.

Take a look at it, and see what you think of it - and where would you use it, if at all?

Nov 8 is World Usability Day

World Usability Day was founded to promote the importance of simple and usable products/services. Several events are being held all over the world to mark the day.

Bangalore.
Hyderabad.
Seattle.
Redmond.

I can't believe there are none in CA!

It will be a great place to meet and share ideas with more usability enthusiasts. I'd urge you to attend, and let us know what you thought about it.

Google acquires Jaiku

Happened today, its likely that you have already read about it.

img courtesy: jaiku

Here's some FAQ&A on the deal and its implications.

Q: Why not Twitter?
A: Google probably thinks Twitter is overvalued (at USD 20 million). It is likely that they spent lesser on the Jaiku deal. Twitter recently closed a USD 5 million second round. And it is in Europe (read: ahead of the US on mobile technology adoption).

Q: But Twitter has more users, is more popular?
A: Sure, but Jaiku is more than just a micro-blogging or lifestreaming platform. It is an intelligent presence detection application, with their smart address book feature. Google is acquiring technology again, they can generate the user numbers, I suppose.

Q: Where does this all fit in the biG picture?
A: The New York Times reported yesterday that Google phone project is a mobile software project. So whether the Google offering competes with Microsoft (Windows Mobile) or Apple (iPhone) remains to be seen, but in the light of this, the Jaiku acquisition seems to make sense. A mobile software (platform, most likely) + mobile technology from Jaiku + mobile social network Zingku to promote it. All the right conditions for Google to continue to govern your life.

Q: Google, Social Networking? Remember Orkut, Dodgeball? Why will they take on Facebook and MySpace?
A: Because they are Google. Their social networking attempts have not taken off well - at least in the US - but there are rumors that there may be a third life (or should it be second, second life?) in the wings. Although Jaiku fits in nicely with their mobile strategy, its lifestreaming features is a ammunition for any Social Networking War (what an Oxymoron!) that it may be gearing up for.

Afterthought: MS should really buy that stake in Facebook.

What do you think?

XAML: The language for the Program Manager

or, The Three Little Pigs: Then and Now.

Chapter 1: Then

Once upon a time, in a land far, far away lived 3 little pigs in a wood. One pig was a graphics designer, the other was a program manager (business analyst, if you like) and the third was a developer. They all lived in harmony until new features came along. When that happened, it was usually the program manager (PGM) pig who started all the fuss.

The PGM pig took his primitive toy, or worse still - paper - and squiggled some lines and boxes and wrote up some lines, aligned them all and gave it to the graphics designer (UI) pig.

The UI pig dressed it up nice and fine - added the right colors, hue, gradient, font. He created a lovely looking picture out of it and sent it to the developer. And he would throw the squiggly paper thingy away.

The third (DEV) pig looked at the picture and set to work. His job was to bring the picture to life, and get it to do something. Working on a blank canvas, he painstakingly tried to recreate the picture - each color and image and box and words. Days turned into nights, and then, finally the pig was done.

When the PGM pig saw it, he was huffing and puffing (and blowing the house down!) The buttons should be a little lower! There's too much whitespace on the right! I want all this in the same window! And other things that left the DEV pig scratching his chinny-chin chin.

Some more printouts.
Some more squiggles.
Some more hue, alignment.
Lots of throwing away. Paper, Beautiful old pictures. LoC*.
Some more vigorous hacking.
More scratching the hair on their chinny chin chins.

Vicious Cycle.

The next day, they were confronted by the Big Bad Wolf (the Project Manager) asking them to present their work on time or I'll huff and I'll puff and I'll blow your house away!

More huffing and puffing.
More days turning into nights.
More throwing away.
More wishing this was all over.

Little did they know that their lives were about to change.

Chapter 2: Now

One day, the King of Far, Far Away decided "enough is enough. Lets put an end to the pigs' misery!" And so he did.

He created a new way for the designer and developer pigs to talk to each other. Now, these two pigs each use their own toys (for the developer, for the designer) and each toy could talk to the other. No more pretty pictures thrown away. No more starting off from a blank canvas. You could change things completely before you said "Oink!".

And the two little pigs lived happily ever after.

"No, no! Wait for me!" cried the little PGM pig.

Huh?! And the two little pigs lived happily ever after.

"But you don't know this language. All you know is English. Very good English, but its - just English!" Said the DEV pig. Take a look:

<Button>Control.Background PE
<Control.Background>
 <LinearGradientBrush StartPoint="0,0" EndPoint="1,1">
   <GradientStop Color="Yellow" Offset="0.0" />
   <GradientStop Color="LimeGreen" Offset="1.0" />
 LinearGradientBrush>
 Control.Background>
Button>   

"C'mon, its almost English**!" said the PGM pig. "We could all finish up before the Big Bad Wolf came, and go home."

"I hate it when you are right - it usually means more work for me!" conceded the UI pig. "You really needn't know all of it, you know. Just the essentials."

"Sure, anything that means less work" said the PGM pig.

So the PGM learnt to use the new language -XAML - just the essentials. Soon he could make his own tweaks,** and use the designer's tool for all his squiggles.

And so, the three little pigs lived happily ever after.

The End.


*Lines of Code.
** Must read link.

p.s.:
XAML is a MS specific technology, used when the UI is written using WPF or Silverlight.
Wanted from MS now: A tool that functional analysts can use to capture business requirements and draw up screens.

Round up of “Expression around the clock”

The Expression around the clock event happened yesterday in Bangalore at Fuga, a cool venue for an even cooler event. This was a global designer conference(taking place simultaneously in 10 venues around the globe) aptly themed “Design is back!”

The event started with out with registration, Microsoft had a very strict registration and confirmation process for this event and inspite of that the place was packed with people. There were about 200 people and seating was available only for about 70 people.

The event kicked off with a keynote from Shelly Armstrong of the Microsoft Design team. Shelly has been involved in various projects in Microsoft, including the interaction design for the XBox and the Zune. Her talk was totally targeted towards designers and tips on improving UX, design, importance of keeping up with latest trends, networking etc.

After this there was a break, with the bar being opened up [:)]. There was more action ahead though. The next session was by Supreet Singh, an UX designer and Pandurang, a dev. They started out with a desinger dev duel and demostrated how Expression Studio supported the designer-dev collaboration with ease. This was pretty interesting, with Surpreet putting in a video on to his canvas and then Pandurang writing a bit of code for the play and pause functionality.

The dev, (as they put it, didn’t have much idea about UX) and hence he puts up text messages for play and pause. Surpreet then takes this XAML and immediately ports this message into a cool button.

The next part was demos - impressive stuff overall, though I had seen most of them before. The demo which impressed me the most, was the one of a Silverlight video player being able to play 10 high definition videos simultaneously with ease, and the ability for the user to seamless switch between them with no system overload.

Post this was the usual networking session (with more beers though!). Met a couple of interesting people and managed to market our UX blog. People seemed to be very interested by this, especially because we are not a design only firm.(Thanks Ram ! for mentioning our blog in your post.)

At the end, Microsoft gave away a goodie bag to each participant. It had a 60-day trial of the Expression Studio, a design magazine and a Reebok t-shirt!.

Excel tech writer, where art thou?