Anjali Arora on Web applications, personal information management, FoundIt

Defining who/what you are, & more importantly, what you are not

FoundIt has evolved, a little at a time, but based on my own fascination with helping to get to information when we need it. The problems now are problems of plenty: there is too much information even on our own computers, & a lot of what we do everyday may be easily avoided, if only we remembered that we had done this before, & have the stuff somewhere.

So the current FoundIt you see now is one that has grown organically out of our understanding & experiences with managing information,as well as what some early user surveys revealed. But this version is still an underpainting. Those of you not familiar with this term, an underpainting comprises the initial broad strokes that a painter puts on the canvas, to essentially map out masses & tones on the canvas, oftentimes using a single color such as sepia or a yellow ochre. This is a great means to break down all the decisions that go into a painting into manageable, distinguishable ones. Once the artist is happy with what he sees in the underpainting, she can start to put in more detail & volume & color.

So with FoundIt, the underpainting is in place. The way we hope to develop FoundIt is organically, based on your experiences & what you'd like to see the application do. I see the latest issue of Time magazine has 'You' as Person of the Year, because well, you control the information age. This isn't really as ridiculous as it sounds at first. There has been a huge shakedown of a lot of institutions in the last year or two: big media, publishing, social software that makes ordinary people capable of contributing to & being heard in a way never seen before. And as a designer, I do believe that the best applications need to be made from the inside out, growing & developing based on actual needs & experiences. So FoundIt will continue its goal of an application that brings your key information to the forefront, just in time, every time.

And equally we have to be clear about what we will not be. In the recent weeks that we have been promoting FoundIt with various groups/ people, blogs, we have heard back from a Venture Capitalist or two that they are interested only in funding social software. That's interesting but oddly, we had gotten in touch with them because they are avid bloggers & not because we were looking for VC money. But it certainly got me thinking that if one did need a lot of money to get up & running, one would spend not only a lot of time & energy in other activities such as writing business plans & making ridiculous 5 year forecasts, but that one would also be under immense pressure to alter the complexion & nature of the product. We are more than willing to shape this & other products based on user feedback; but to have a financier twist you out of shape simply because everyone in their tribe is looking to birth the next YouTube or MySpace is absurd. At least to me. And thankfully for us, we do not need millions of dollars to bring our ideas to fruition.

And so we will continue down the path of organic, evolutionary growth.

Download FoundIt now!

We are now offering FoundIt beta free to download. Some links of interest:

What is FoundIt [Download available from the right column of this same page]

Product Tour

This is just the beginning. We aim to explore exciting ideas in interface design for information retrieval, as also bringing meaningful information to you the user. So try FoundIt, & send us your feedback.

FoundIt beta is ready for release!!!

We are very excited to be releasing FoundIt(beta) for you to try out. FoundIt is a web-based application that gives you a bird's eye-view of all the files & documents on your computer. In addition it allows you to tag & chunk content for easier retrieval & re-use.

So check out the FoundIt page & sign up to try FoundIt.

Breath of fresh air

In the humdrum of everyday work, there come those moments when one breathes deep & full, those moments when one sees exciting, adventurous work. Such a moment came for me today watching a documentary on Frank Gehry's work on PBS ( BTW, this wonderful channel amidst the crap that goes in the name of entertainment TV channels has given me & my family so many wonderful moments, I owe it big!). His process, his inspiration, and his amazing work: this documentary covered it beautifully. Gehry says his desire to build what he builds now-- in my view, some of his structures look like a child has randomly arranged blocks, sometimes a little awkwardly, so that the viewer gasps at the possibility of one of the blocks tipping over---emanated from a childhood spent building fantastic creations out of left-over wood-blocks that his grandmother would bring in. His Bilbao museum is stunning in the way the burnished metallic shapes melt & flow one moment, stand uptight & rigid the next. The way the earthy browns combined with the blue reflections in the glass walls took my breath away.

I also loved the kind of loose process he has - he sits back, while his assistants add another twisted piece of paper to the model at Gehry's bidding, only to have him make them rearrange it; or when asked why he says he likes a shape, or what materials he will finally use, his answer is very often "I don't know yet".

For me personally, the challenge is to see how I can combine my passions for painting with my work in interface & interaction design. I don't know how I am going to tackle this one, not yet anyway, but I do know that the idea has been brewing in my head for a while.

And some more....

Returning to Ahmedabad, my home city, after almost three years of being away takes some getting used to. The traffic in the streets is overwhelming, there is the constant screech of honking from the interminable stream of two-wheelers & cars & buses flowing merrily down the narrow street. It's a brave soul that walks down these roads, I am thinking, as I try to take the furthest edge of the road, so as not to become just another statistic on my first evening home. My husband though is very unwilling to be pushed to the unpaved edges, & insists on staking claim to the meager strip of paved road; and so we continue down....

I notice right away that at least we are not sharing the road with cows & buffaloes that too prefer to plant themselves bang in the middle of the dry paved roads, especially in these monsoon months. These animals are largely missing now from around my house, & I have to admit, I miss their sight! The next few days I am actually watching out for cows, donkeys, camels, & elephants, & I do manage to sight all of these. I remember a few years ago when we were visiting London, we paid about $10 apiece to visit the London zoo, only to see that the bulk of the animals there were what I used to see on the streets everyday back in Ahmedabad! In fact, add monkeys & peacocks to the list too; driving down the University road in Ahmedabad on this visit, we were forced to stop as a magnificent peacock strutted gracefully across the street.

The other major major change I notice is that the air is so much cleaner. Ahmedabad was infested with old, rickety auto-rickshaws, three-wheeled vehicles that raced across pot-holed streets, giving passengers a cheap but unforgettably bumpy ride. These rickshaws were noisy, & let off such angry black, malodorous fumes that one's eyes would sting from a short walk outdoors. Thankfully that has changed, we now have what are called 'green rickshaws', that run on CNG & are quiet enough so that one can actually have a conversation while riding in one of these!

The city buses too have switched to CNG; the streets are full of Toyotas, Hondas, Marutis, Fords, as also assorted scooters & motor cycles. The clean air has made it possible for chronic walkers like me & my husband to reclaim the outdoors. Our son, though, continues to wrinkle his nose at the mention of any physical activity!!

The monsoons have begun in earnest, & everyday brings heavy rains, slushy streets, cool breezes, & awful moisture-laden fruit & vegetables that spoil in very little time. Still Ahmedabad is lucky unlike Surat, that had Katrina-like flooding this past month; entire areas of the city were marooned & cut off for days on end.

I loved that most of the little shops around my house are still around. Everything looks familiar & comfortable in that respect. But there has been a burgeoning growth of shopping malls, restaurants, & some totally new fads for this once very conservative city: hookah joints. After an evening out with friends, one of our hosts offers to take us to an exciting coffee shop. Once there, we are told that the only available table they have is outdoors, & we take it. I couldn't for the life of me fathom what was exciting about this place to the college-going crowd, the primary consumers of these services. Our table was in a dark, damp corner, with some rain sneaking in through the covers overhead; there were mosquitoes for company. Through the glass doors, we could see young boys & girls sitting on relatively more-comfy chairs & sofas inside the cafe. Today they are having only coffee & snacks & conversation, but as we do a reconnaissance (a favorite term of my son's) of the innards of the 'cafe', we come to a floor that is given over to mattresses strewn across the floor. We are told this is where customers can lie around, puffing away on their hookahs. I later learn that hookahs are harmless contraptions, dispensing flavored water/ steam into willing mouths & noses. ( On our way back to the US via London, we see women as well as men puffing away on their hookahs along Little Beirut).

As I mentioned earlier, Ahmedabadis seem to be reveling in all the glitzy shopping malls all over the city, this once tight-fisted city simply can't seem to get enough of these. In fact, a cursory visitor to the city can be forgiven for thinking that all that the locals do is eat, drink ( not openly, though, for this is a dry state), & shop.

Everything is so expensive, or so it seems to me. I seem to be stuck in a time-warp as it were, and I am having to ask for the price to be repeated ever so often. The economic upswing has pushed up incomes, but has also resulted in sky-rocketing prices, as also insatiable demands for wage hikes by employees. This last fact is so missed by foreign clients getting work done in India, who believe it is their right to demand that work be done at rock-bottom prices.

We had an exciting, eye-opening visit to the RTO for a local driver's license. The process for getting this very basic piece of document is as obtuse & non-transparent as can be. The offices are dark, overcrowded, filthy, & it is impossible to figure out what is to be done next. Our guide/ tout leads us from one desk to another, confident that our job will be done. He informs us dismissively about the new computerised process that will be in place in the next few weeks: it won't work, he declares loftily; the computers have been bought, the company & a few politicians will have made their millions, & now the computers will gather dust, & things will continue as always at the RTO!

India is a foodie's delight, & we dig in every day into our favorite foods. After months, I am starting to enjoy drinking milk. Milk in the US is a horror, I am told it is because the cows are fed some concoction that is certainly not grass! ( This time around, now that I am back in the US & am determined not to buy regular milk here, I chance upon 'Organic milk'; this IS milk, trust me). The other thing that has added enormously to my temporal pleasures while in India is the multiplexes: they are ever so plush & enjoyable, have had a great time watching even indifferent movies here.