Geekaholic

Growler — Let Safari Talk

Aditya — Mon, 06 Jul 2009 05:10:43 +0000

To paraphrase a friend, It’s mid-2009 and Safari, regardless of how awesome it is, doesn’t support notifications from web apps. Let’s change that.

I’ve wanted to get into development on the Mac for quite a while now, and this seemed to be an easy and light way to do it. The idea for a notification system first popped into my head when working on Filttr and its web interface. I realised that there was no mechanism in any browser (not SSBs) for a web app to send notifications to a user. Not a Firefox extension, no nothing. Back then it was just a fleeting - “Wouldn’t it be good if we had this?” - thought, and I didn’t bother too much about it, except maybe mention it to a couple of people. Last month, Abimanyu finally came up with Yip¹ which he had been working on for quite a while, and it does exactly that. But, it was for Firefox.

Having switched to Safari at the beginning of this year, I was left out of the party. So again, I wondered - “Wouldn’t it be good if we had this for Safari?”. This time, Abimanyu suggested I give it a shot, and this is what came out of it. I would have finished with it sooner, but I lost motivation in the middle. The second leg lasted a day, and the plug-in was complete. Well, complete enough for a version 0.1 alpha release.

Quite simply, it’s a Safari plug-in that allows a web application to send Growl notifications using Javascript. The same way Fluid does. The syntax is the same as well:

window.fluid.showGrowlNotification({
    'title': "TITLE HERE (Required)",
    'description': "DESCRIPTION HERE (Required)",
    'icon': "URL_TO_ICON (Optional)"
});

And the result is this:

Can’t get simpler than that. I took the same path as Yip, and didn’t introduce a new standard. Fluid’s notification syntax is supported out of the box. But ‘out of the box’ is a bit of an issue in this release.

Out of the Box

I looked around quite a bit, but it doesn’t seem like Javascript can access Safari plug-ins unless they’re embedded into the page. That means that Growler isn’t going to work as seamlessly as I would have wanted. I’m still looking and asking around though, so if you know something that I don’t, please let me know so that I can fix this little niggle which will go a long way in improving the experience.

Till then, you need a small bit of Javascript that will allow your application to post notifications. This bit goes in your :

It’s basically an tag (which if you know what you’re doing, you can directly put in your instead of the Javascript) that will initialise the plug-in so that it can be used by the Javascript environment, and expose the embedded plug-in’s functions to window.fluid and window.platform. Yes, I’m sorry.

Like I said before, Fluid’s notification syntax is built right in, so you can use window.fluid.showGrowlNotification in your Javascript directly (after embedding the plug-in, of course). ~~Currently, only~~ title and description keys work. Update: Added support for icon as well. A blank string/missing icon attribute will show the site’s icon.

The plug-in includes Growl’s framework, which will prompt the user to install Growl in case it’s not present. Frankly, everyone should have Growl installed whether they’ll need it or not, and I am a little confused as to why Apple doesn’t include it with OS X. But in case you run in to the odd ball, the plug-in should take care of it on its own.

Development

I plan to release early, and release often, since this is something that I’m sure a lot of people will find useful. Which is also why I’m giving out the source, so that others can contribute in case I’m taking too long to release the next version. I’ve tried to keep the code as clean and self-explanatory as possible, but quite a bit has been lifted from Growl’s and Apple’s Objective-C documentation. So I won’t recommend using this as a reference for writing Safari plug-ins.

But anyway, here’s to something interesting to play around with for a few weeks to come.

I want to give a shout out to a couple of people who helped me through this. Abimanyu, for putting the idea in my head that I should try and make something, rather than harp on about how nice it would be to have it, and tomasf from #macdev on Freenode for getting my bundle to build without errors. It sucks to be a newbie, but hey, there’s always a first time.

Download

Here are the files you need. Growler.dmg contains the bundle and instructions to install it. The other link is to the project files for you to tinker around with.

Update: Forgot to add the link to a demo page. Try going to Sample Growler after installing the plug-in and wait for 4 seconds. If everything is good, you’ll see the notification pop-up.

Growler Plug-In — Tested in Safari 4.x/Mac OS 10.5
Growler Xcode Project

You might also know him as a core developer of Ubiquity. He just loves those Firefox extensions. ↩

The iPhone for Me

Aditya — Wed, 01 Jul 2009 07:10:11 +0000

When it debuted, the iPhone was a beautiful device, although it lacked a lot of functionality, and the hardware wasn’t powerful enough. Yet, we defended, bought and loved it, making it one of the biggest hits of ‘07, and the fastest selling device in some countries. I, however, was one of those people who didn’t/couldn’t take the plunge¹. As with most new Apple products, I knew that rapid iteration was the name of the game, and no matter when I would buy one, it would be obsolete by the next big conference. I chose to hold out. And boy am I glad.

When it did arrive in India, the iPhone 3G was ridiculously priced, and it didn’t back that up with features that we were used to. The U.S. has been fairly backward when it comes to mobile phones, but India is not. For years, we have been Symbian toting users of Nokia phones (which holds a huge majority share here) who have come to expect a lot of features from our phones, even if we never really used them. Most of the people I know willingly pay for what it can do, and not what they really do with it. That, coupled with lack of 3G in the country (even though the same people would buy other 3G enabled devices), and superfluous requirements like SMS-forwarding turned people away. So it was really no surprise when the launch failed miserably.

But now comes the iPhone 3G S. The first iPhone I can really get on board with, and it’s not just because it’s faster and better than previous iPhones. That’s a big part, yes, but the decision is made so much easier because of the fact that the competition looks (to quote Steve Jobs) really last century.

The Grass is not Greener

No matter what one might think, most non-iPhone smartphones today sucks. I’ve had a Nokia 5800 XpressMusic for quite a while now, and am thoroughly frustrated (I’ve already argued about how it’s a smartphone even though Nokia never meant for it to be one). I’m frustrated with the UI, with the lack of apps, the terrible hog that is the OS, and the plastic-y feel to the build. It’s a good phone, but not for ‘09. I’ve seen the specifications and read reviews of the N97 as well, and am still not impressed. If you thought Nokia, the largest smartphone manufacturer, would maybe get it right after two iterations, you’re very wrong.

Competing phones from Samsung and Sony Ericsson are just glorified good looking devices that offer nothing beyond a touch interface to whatever has been there in the market for the last decade. I’ve not seen the Android phones because they haven’t launched in India, so I can’t say anything about them. Windows Mobile devices are in the same boat, and a downward spiral.

Basically, any non-iPhone device that is trying to compete with it at the moment, is a poor man’s version of the iPhone. They’ve clearly missed the point.

Apple has almost completely bridged the gap (features wise) with iPhone OS 3.0. The apps war wages on, but it has already won the battle with a massive head start the App Store and its 50,000+ apps has given it. The Ovi store is a joke (and I dare say too little too late), and the Prē is too new and too immature to be in reckoning for at least a year to come. Windows Mobile isn’t even relevant anymore in this department. The competition today, is where Apple and the Macintosh were in the 1980s — not differentiating enough, and hence, constantly playing catch-up, among other things. If all this sounds fanboy-ish, then let the numbers talk. Remember, this is just one model, on one carrier in 8 countries.

I guess what I’m saying, in a few words, is that iPhone shines through like a diamond in a coal mine that is the phone market today. But a diamond that shines by its own light, not reflected. It’s not an awesome device because everything around it sucks. It’s an awesome device, period.

It is finally something that meets my requirements from a portable device that is a worthy substitute for my computer when I’m on the move. And it’s constantly pushing that boundary to show me things I didn’t realise I wanted. For example, my favourite thing from this year’s WWDC was the peripherals’ support². The iPhone being able to 2-way communicate with other devices is such an awesome thing, that ideas like this don’t seem so unworldly crazy anymore. It’s not only innovating, it’s letting us innovate along with it as well.

Coup De Grâce

Apple started by making the smartphone usable. Now, it’s giving us things to use. Slow and steady will win this race, because that allows Apple to work on the features that people will use, and make them in a way that people will want to use. The iPhone is already its priority device, with maximum development and marketing efforts going into making it as much of a hit as the iPod was. And I’m glad that they are turning it into a device that people want because they like it, and not because it’s flashy. People are buying the iPhone to use it and be productive with it, do things that they did not or could not do with other phones, in a way that makes it a very pleasant experience. They’re actually having fun with their phones.

I’ll be buying one when I move to the UK this October, and I’m really looking forward to it. I’m half expecting an OS update by then, to iron out any bugs they might have found after the release (UPDATE: early signs of which are showing).

I am an Apple faithful, but sometimes it just takes a while. The wait, however, is so worth it.

No Comments

Aditya — Wed, 24 Jun 2009 05:41:14 +0000

The first weblog I came across that didn’t have comments was Daring Fireball about 4-5 years ago. The concept was so foreign and radical to me, I just couldn’t understand it. Why would someone discourage discussion? Everyone reads through those lists of “how to attract more readers to your blog” when they’re starting out. A common point in all of them is to be an active participant in the blogosphere. To comment on and link to others’ posts. It did make sense — give some to get some. So then why was such a popular weblog not following such a basic rule?

Turns out that when I got the answer, I realised that I was asking the wrong question.

Everything has a purpose

Writing, is an art. Sharing one’s knowledge and opinion in a way that others want to read, and keep reading, is an art — and like any other, difficult to master. Just because publishing has become easier over the years thanks to the Internet, doesn’t mean the paradigm has changed. The written word still has its charm. Unfortunately, most new bloggers are in it for a quick buck, and as more and more of these people proliferate the blogosphere, the general perception suffers. Call me old fashioned, but I prefer the written word that is a reflection of a person’s thoughts about a certain topic or issue, with the motive of sharing it other people who have thought the same but are looking for a different perspective.

I initially began blogging not because everyone was doing it. I had things to say, and having a blog seemed to be the fastest way to get them out. But even from the early days, I was never a “tips and tricks” kinda writer. My intention has always been to bring a certain analytical, intellectual bent to the issue I’m writing about, because I’ve always thought of it as not worth writing something if there is nothing original in it. That is why I take days to refine what I’ve written. I owe it to you, to put out the best possible rendition of my thoughts into words. After all, not a lot of worth a writer is without his readers.

Comments on a weblog are like critique on the sleeves of a book. You buy a book to read the book, not the critique. When I write something, I write it for the person who wants to read what I have to say. I don’t really care for their opinion of my opinion. At least, not enough to have it on the same page as my writing. That why they have a blog, or my mailing address. Or even Twitter now. The idea is to take all the extra conversation off-line, so that only the important things stay up. Plus, in my experience, comments haven’t really added anything to what I’ve had to say. Part of the reason is the reader base I became popular with, owing to my beginnings as a Blogger customisations coder¹.

Even if you consider popular blogs like (eyeroll) TechCrunch, which get hundreds of comments on almost every post, just skimming over them shows how worthless they are. It’s either someone pushing something they wrote themselves by adding a link in their comment, or chiding the author of the post for being fanboy-ish/biased, or worst, just a one line — “Nice post, enjoyed reading it” — compliment.

Getting my mute on

Seeing how useless comments on weblogs usually are, and more or less agreeing with John Gruber’s reasons for disabling them on his, I decided to get rid of them from Geekaholic once and for all. It’s not like I get a lot of comments either, so it’s more of an unnecessary annoyance. I tried turning them off partly, allowing comments on my proper, big posts and not on my linked list. But people asked me to enable comments on those too, and I caved. This time I don’t plan to.

I respond to people faster on Twitter than I do on my blog, and the conversation reaches more people that way. There was an experiment some time back on exclusively using Twitter to handle comments. I’m not really sure how that worked out. Seems pretty chaotic, so I won’t be doing that either. This place will be read-only from now on. If you disagree, or need to vent, well too bad. Only one person can talk at a time. Here, it’s me.

We were lovingly called ‘hackers’, but I never considered ourselves to be so. Hackers are way more ingenious than what we used to do. Not to trivialise some of the things we achieved though. ↩

Pre Perception

Aditya — Thu, 04 Jun 2009 09:27:55 +0000

Hype, is never used in a positive connotation. Hype is used by people who know that their product lacks real substance and cannot hold the fort on its own. We’ve seen companies use the “hype” to keep people interested, usually the ones who have a lot to lose. Palm is one such company, literally putting the company on the line with this one device — the Pre.

Palm didn’t actually need “hype” to sell the Pre. It is a solid product. Rubinstien brought much required aesthetic taste to the Pre, in a market that clearly failed to understand what it was that made the iPhone tick. Palm got it. Almost. Even then, I’m not hopeful that it’s going to do too well. Not in its current iteration, at least. Of course, there are people who have sworn against touching an iPhone even if their life depended on it, hiding behind the excuse of “better functionality” from other phones which are “more open”. They are the ones who’re going to lap up the Pre. There are thousands of reasons not to do something. There is only one reason to do it.

Genius of the iPhone

The point Palm has understood, is the UI. It is the UI of the software that matters. Not how many apps you can run at one time, not trivial features. It’s the intuitiveness of the controls, the look and feel of the software, the feedback from actions and events. It isn’t what happens at the back. It’s what the person can see on the screen. UI is not something that can be bolted on. It’s something that drives the features. Even so, it is only probably 60% of the whole experience.

I came to realise this about a month back, after using my Nokia 5800 for 2 months. The reason the iPhone has held the fort, is because of the App Store. The sheer beauty and utility of the applications written for iPhone OS X is staggering, compared to what is currently out there. I haven’t used a Blackberry, so I can’t say anything about it, but Symbian is terrible with applications, which is surprising because it has the majority share and is so open¹. Everyday, there is news of a new iPhone app that allows us to do X. With the promises of iPhone 3.0, these apps will only become more useful. It’s up for discussion as to why the App Store is thriving even though it’s the most closed and opaque marketplace ever, regardless of which, developers are making money — and in the process, so is Apple.

Palm on the other hand, is having a developer meltdown of sorts. From Walt Mossberg’s review of the Pre:

The Pre’s biggest disadvantage is its app store, the App Catalog. At launch, it has only about a dozen apps, compared with over 40,000 for the iPhone, and thousands each for the G1 and the modern BlackBerry models. Even worse, the Pre App Catalog isn’t finished. It’s immature, it’s labeled a beta, and Palm has yet to release the tools for making Pre apps available to more than a small group of developers.

That seems healthy. So while the Pre is making headway in some regards, it’s falling way short in the others. My argument pro-iPhone is a simple one — iPhone apps have much more utility and staying power than apps for any other phone out there, even if they run one at a time². They work well, look even better, and don’t cost a fortune. What more do you need?

While WebOS (the Pre’s OS) holds promise, taking away the learning curve might invite absolutely useless applications (a la iFart) that have a negative effect on perceived efficiency of an OS if left unchecked in favour of “openness”. If Palm decides to have Apple-esque strictness in approving apps to maintain quality, they’re going to risk irking the developer community even more. If they don’t, they’ll lose face to consumers who’ll see their iPhone toting counterparts getting more out of their device. Palm has a tough task ahead. Getting the Pre out is only quarter of the fight.

It’s the little things

When Apple decided to make a smartphone, they did something very clever. They decided to make a device that regular phone consumers thought was too complicated for them, in a way that even a kid could use it. They changed the demographics of the smartphone user. This one thing rippled through the phone industry with companies suddenly realising that their target audience had changed. It’s like asking a company that has always written enterprise software, to write a Web 2.0 service. It’s going to suck.

Which brings me back to my initial point. iPhone’s success has been majorly because of its UI. While the Pre does this well, it doesn’t do it well enough. Pre does for UI what, say, Symbian did for software. Functional, powerful, but not usable. I remember watching Pre’s demo at CES, and trying my best to remember what each gesture was supposed to do. Over time, one might probably get used to it. But that’s not what “intuitive” means, does it? People like simplicity — which is what Apple achieved. Palm, in its attempt at outdoing the iPhone at functionality, went one step too far.

It’s probably idle nitpicking on my part, but small things like these add up to the full experience. Something that Pre has to get as close to perfect as possible if it has any chance at surviving till the next iteration. Already making its first mistake, I believe Palm shouldn’t be launching the Pre just two days before a new iPhone is revealed. Apple is the undisputed king of launches, and it’ll suck all the glory away from Pre the moment Schiller takes the stage. William Hurley is of the same opinion:

Timing is another strike against the Palm comeback. The Pre is scheduled for release just before Apple’s Worldwide Developers Conference 2009. Someone at Palm must have thought this was a good idea, but it isn’t. One week after the Pre’s release, the press will be dominated by Apple CEO Steve Jobs. If, as expected, Jobs returns, that will steal Palm’s thunder. If he doesn’t, that will only steal Palm’s thunder more.

Also making its debut right before WWDC, is the N97, which arrives with pretty high expectations of its own. Palm definitely couldn’t have chosen a worse time.

But, I still have faith in merit, and I hope people see the Pre for what it is, and buy it for the phone, not the hype. Some things like Synergy and being able to run multiple apps at once (even if it lacks a lot of apps) is very nice. I don’t care much for the slide out keyboard, since my Nokia has made me fairly competent at touch typing with an on-screen one. Competition is good, and competition is definitely the reason iPhone 3.0 has progressed so rapidly (not that Apple is one to sit on its posterior the second time around as well). This month is going to be very interesting as far as mobile devices are concerned. Let’s see if Palm achieves whatever they planned to.

Open-ness is something all developers have a gripe about with Apple. However, if openness is the reason Symbian’s apps suck so bad, then I am glad Apple chose the route it did. With the exception of Gravity and Google Maps, I haven’t seen a single third-party application come close to being useful and usable — together — for S60. ↩
Which is going to change on the 8th. ↩

Bing

Aditya — Sat, 30 May 2009 06:46:11 +0000

I usually don’t like to comment on a Microsoft product — mostly because everyone knows that I have a serious bias against Microsoft. But Bing is something that I can’t help but write about. Microsoft’s re-vitalised search engine set to take on Google (again). It’s not out yet, and I am not one of the people who has got into early testing. I want to look at this strictly from a is-it-worth-it-in-a-market-already-saturated-by-Google point of view.

The customary rant

Anyone who says out the name enough times cannot help but chastise it. Let’s be honest — it sucks. Sure, Microsoft might be trying to be all young and cool trying to come up with a verb-able word. But they’re failing miserably at it — just like Cuil did last year¹. The logo isn’t that great either. It’s a barely a logo to begin with. Logo design teaches us that iconography is the way to go if you want the logo to have an impact. No sign of it here. A fancy font that isn’t even that fancy (annoyingly boring, maybe), and we have an immediate re-branding nightmare.

The UI (from whatever screen-shots have been revealed) is nothing too different from what is already out there. The same blue-black-green colours (although in Microsoft’s defence, the shades of blue and green are different), the same three column layout — we’ve seen everything before. Bing could have distinguished itself with a beautiful UI, but except for the front page, nothing strikes me as different. I’m a stickler for looks, and it’s been established that eye-candy helps. So why can’t Microsoft put in some extra money into actually re-vamping it, I’ll never understand. Anyway, nothing new. Moving on.

Update → I like the hover-expand to show more content from the page the result points to. In a couple of quick runs, it seemed to feel better than Google’s at showing the occurrence of the searched terms. Plus, Bing feels faster than Google. I guess that’s a UI plus to them. I can’t say the same about relevance though.

Bing = Bing is not Google

Silicon Alley Insider does a good job of putting into words the point that we’ve all been making these past years:

In search, needless to say, Microsoft doesn’t have a monopoly. It has 8% market share. It has a product that has a few cool features but is no better than the market leader’s product and is easy to copy. And it has a vast, powerful, and talented competitor that has every incentive to make sure its foot stays firmly on Microsoft’s throat.

Bing cannot avoid the motions of being compared to Google no matter what notion of itself the ads and promotions try to portray. And unlike the 90s, Microsoft can no longer mark IE’s default search engine as Bing and expect to see usage increase. Hence, it has to actually win back these users. We all know that is a very tough task right now, simply because Google is synonymous with search. Firefox, Safari, Chrome and Opera — basically all browsers that are not Internet Explorer, ship with the default search engine set to Google. You see the handicap forming here?

Microsoft is fighting on multiple fronts here — perception, reach and financial, and on a turf that it doesn’t know how to fight on. Basically, Microsoft is starting from “Fucked” on the Fucked → King scale, and trying to make its way up. They are not good at it. You would think they should just give up and move on to things that they are actually good at. But I can’t help but think Bing is good for the web after all.

Monopoly at any level is not good. And at this point, Microsoft is the only entity powerful enough to challenge Google. While I pulled a number out of my ass yesterday, what I really meant to say was that Google losing some market share will be good for the entire search engine scene. And the only one capable of pulling those users away is Microsoft. Wolfram|Alpha is suffering a major identity crisis with people trying to figure out exactly what it is good for². Twitter’s Search is one that is giving Google a complex, and I hope they’ll get around to improving themselves in that regard. Yahoo! is the same old. Cuil, is well, dead in many senses of the word. If I’ve missed any names here, that should tell you how significant they are in this race.

So there is no viable competitor to challenge Google. Incentive to improve would be rock bottom if it wasn’t for Bing. A much improved Live Search combined with Powerset should prove enough of an experience that Google sees some drop in its usage. And ultimately, either party improving is a good thing in the big picture. I don’t care if it is Bing, or Holo, or some other ridiculously named engine. The web has evolved, but search has not. It’s only decently relevant, and it’s about time we saw significant improvements to tackle the needs of the post Web 2.0 era.

I don’t know if Bing will stick around, or if Microsoft will decide it needs to try another re-branding exercise. I just hope it stays around long enough to change something, otherwise it’ll truly be as useless as its name implies. For now, I’m not holding my breath waiting for June 3rd.

Twitter Killed My Blog

Aditya — Sun, 24 May 2009 07:23:37 +0000

PSYCHOBABBLE: Immediate satisfaction is an instinctive trait of all animals. The “now” is always better than the “later”, because anything with half a brain wants to “know”. In psychology, it’s called the id, which is the part of the mind that looks to satisfy the basic instincts. Humans, having the most developed brain of all the animals, have learnt to suppress that instinct better. But underneath it all, we are all impatient. It was the reason telephones, and then SMS messages became popular. Our need to “tell others” as soon as we can, is something that any innovative device or service can take full advantage of.

When Twitter came along, it was understandable that the lure of a spontaneous conversation was far more tempting than one in a remote part of the web. It’s all about engagement. People are far more engaged on Twitter than they are here. I say something, and the replies come in less than 2-3 minutes later (given time for everybody else’s client to refresh). But that’s not all. The ability to share a thought as soon as I can think it, and speak it out without frills, is very attractive to someone like me. And that is one of the bigger reasons why this place had become such a ghost town.

When you say and share everything that comes to mind immediately, not much original material is left to write about. You’ve already tweeted the gist. The unadulterated version of the thought. Turning one word to ten just so that it’s an interesting read is not fun. Sure, not everything can be said in ≤ 140 characters — and those are the things that I write about here — but most things can. It’s faster, easier, and hence immediately satisfying to tweet it. Things like sharing links, or what I thought about the newest Google killer on the block are just better on Twitter. That was the main reason for the death of my link-list. I realised I shared links faster and better on Twitter than I did here, and that they reached more people because interaction is so much higher with tweets. I wrote a little script to bookmark links from my Twitter timeline to Delicious to overcome the little problem with Twitter Search that prevents me from finding links from others (or even me, for that matter) beyond 7 days. And this is kinda the point.

Twitter’s dynamic nature lets us use it in whatever way we want. More so for us programmers since we can build stuff around it to do our bidding. So, while Twitter won’t kill anything, it will replace a lot of things in our lives because many of us do things on the web in a light way. Whether it be reading feeds, general browsing, or checking our mail. Twitter can be re-routed to do all those things for us, because majority of the users are low-volume users of the web. Direct messages can replace e-mail, reading feeds can be brought down to links shared by people in your timeline and so on so forth. There are very few mainstream Internet paradigms that cannot be replaced by creative use of Twitter.

I still don’t know how good or bad our dependency on one service is — especially one that is prone to be so unreliable. But I do know that change is a good thing. It allows to think and not get used to one paradigm. Lesser room for a bad model to stick around for a long time. To re-iterate, I don’t think Twitter is going to kill existing paradigms. But it is very well going to make sure we re-think them and try to fix the things that are broken.

Restructuring

Aditya — Tue, 19 May 2009 10:15:01 +0000

The beauty of life is that it is never too late to fix or change things. There is always time to restructure if something isn’t working. All one has to do is recognise the opportunities, and just run with them. Maybe “opportunities” is too optimistic a word. Things aren’t positive all the time — and it’s understandable too. Why would one change something if it is going just fine? Reasons to change are usually because the current system is wrong.

Living amongst computers and other technical folk, one as young as me tends to forget that there is a life outside all that. A life with people who’re a part of it not because of your skills, but because of the kind of person you are. Sometimes, those same people choose to not be a part of your life because of the kind of person you are. That’s when you’re jolted back to reality that people, as they are, are not black and white. They’re not a boolean output. People are full of greys, and when one such as me spends a good amount of time away from them, they become as predictable as a game of Russian Roulette. Our lives are deeply affected by the people we interact with, and how those interactions go. At the end of the day, man is a social animal — and regardless of how much one tries to isolate oneself, it doesn’t work for too long.

So, when the system fails, it’s time for a change. And that’s been my plan of action that past month or so. There has been restructuring in my personal and professional life. The definition of “personal” means I will not get into that here, but I’m happy to share the rest.

Parting ways with Racked Hosting

It was almost exactly a year ago that I joined Racked Hosting LLC as a designer, and was quickly promoted to team leader/software architect. It’s a fantastic place to work. Of course, I have no other reference for comparison, but I’m quite sure that the work environment there is not easily found in other companies. So, it’s with some regret that I handed in my resignation a week back. It was mostly to step out of a commitment that I felt I could no longer continue without personal harm. I’ve never done too well with authority either, and I realised that the way things were going, something would have clashed soon in the future. I try to avoid conflict as much as possible. Troubles in one aspect of our life usually permeate down to others and cause rifts that would normally not be there. There is no reason to mix our personal and professional lives up.

Therefore, at the moment I’m unemployed. It’s a liberating feeling to not have that kind of responsibility. I’m taking a professional break, to concentrate on the things a regular 20-year old would find important. Going to college, completing my degree with high marks — things like that. I’ve realised that trying to achieve too much too fast means not enjoying each achievement. Trying to do many things at one time might sound glamorous, but it’s a lot more hard work than the rewards can justify. Sure, no hard work goes to waste. But there’s a time and place for everything.

I’m not sure if I want to take up freelancing again. I don’t know if I want to start something of my own. The point is to not over-think things, but to make the correct choices whenever they present themselves. There is no point in worrying when you’ve already left A and headed towards B. The trick is to not screw up at B as well.

More art, less tech

I’ve always considered myself an artist with a technical bent. I gave up my drawing and writing to surround myself with code and (systems) designs. I gave up design for development. I gave up a lot of music to concentrate on becoming technically sound with programming languages and software theory. But it’s at crossroads like these that I question if it was really worth it. Sure, some people know my name because of a new Web 2.0 service I helped make. But now that I’ve started paying attention to myself, I realise that personal satisfaction is way more important when compared to social acceptance than I initially thought.

So I’ve decided to revisit my roots. Twitter is one of the reasons why I’ve stopped writing here, but another was the lack of time. Work and other commitments always got in the way. Now I’ve decided to put aside some time to actually write here. Goodness knows I have enough to say (I chatter my ass off over at Twitter). I’ve also decided to finally get around to finishing the fabled redesign that’s lying in a very incomplete state. I hope to get it done and out before I leave for college in a few months. I did design my home-page after much deliberation. And of course, pay extra attention to my music. It’s a little surreal to learn that people don’t know that I play 4-5 instruments and sing, have been in two bands and have put up more than ten shows. I’m no celebrity by any standard, but you would expect the people who know you a little better than an average stranger to know about the things most important to you.

It takes something big to put in motion a change equally big, and I guess that’s actually what’s ended up happening. Here’s wishing myself best of luck for the next few months. I haven’t extensively planned it, so it’ll be interesting to see how things work out. No goals. Only journeys. Sometimes, to reach somewhere, it’s better to not know that you’re headed that way.

Facebook’s “Me Too” Complex

Aditya — Mon, 04 May 2009 11:16:09 +0000

The Facebook vs. Twitter battle was one of those things that I didn’t think would really happen. The signs were there, but I thought Facebook would be smarter and more focused. As it turns out, I was wrong. Facebook has gone from the technological media darling to the popular girl with a terrible inferiority complex because of the new lass in class. While I still have tremendous respect for the service and company, I can’t say I’m as loyal anymore.

Two step backwards

I think I’ve seen Facebook in all its glory and for everything it has to offer to me as a general user, a power user and a developer. I had spoken about how cool it is to develop for the platform. But somehow, between then and now — Facebook has lost its spunk. Maybe it’s just me and my people hating ways who can’t see the benefit of the “social connections” that Facebook offers. But I know there are others who agree with me. Facebook’s severe “me too!” complex makes it extremely unattractive.

It became very obvious (albeit, with statistical handicaps) that the new design and functionality didn’t sit well with the crowd. I’ve been pretty agnostic about it till now, but a few days ago I wanted to fine tune some of the things there, and two links later was completely lost. It’s not so much that their UI/UExp is bad, but just the fact that they’re trying to be everything to everyone makes it so hard to work with it. They’ve gone from a very simple way to keep in touch with friends, to a central Internet hub. Facebook feels more like Friendfeed + Twitter rather than a place to just catch up with what my friends are doing. Not to mention the applications. Being bombarded with “what kind of ______ are you?” quiz results the moment I open the home page, is pathetically overwhelming. Pathetic, because there is absolutely no context to such information, and no way to turn them off without jumping several hoops. Overwhelming, because there are just so many of them. Conversely, Twitter is such a simple concept and service, that without trying, it has become everything to everyone. The irony can’t be ignored.

I’m slowly weeding myself out of that crowd. The entire bi-directional connection concept doesn’t work for me anymore. I don’t mind people adding me as a friend, but that doesn’t mean I want to see what they’re up to all the time. Which is why Twitter’s “follow” model works so well. I do make an effort to respond to all replies¹, but I follow a very small lot of people for precisely that reason. I’m not an elitist (not when it comes to Twitter at least). I’m just trying to keep it useful. Facebook misses this point.

Not so charming

I don’t see my friends on Facebook switching over to Twitter, which is why I can never truly log off. Who knows, maybe they will, someday when they’ve grown out of all the Poker and quizzes. But I already have. I’ve noticed my usage going from being a participant to an observer. I don’t post notes, or put up photos. I don’t comment on status updates, and write on people’s walls. I only reply to things, and send the odd message when I know that’s the only way to catch the person. From obsessively checking my news feed every hour, it’s gone down to once a day. Things aren’t even close to “real-time”. I’ve never heard anything that I “have to know” on Facebook. I don’t see that changing anytime soon.

So long, and thanks for all the fish!

Being followed by 500+ twitterers means I get a fair amount of them. If I began following all my followers, it wouldn’t take too long for my to start pulling my hair trying to understand which conversation is going where. I shouldn’t have to resort to turning Twitter off to keep my sanity. ↩

Bonny Lass

Aditya — Mon, 30 Mar 2009 16:30:49 +0000

A friend. I’m actually pretty proud of this one.

Canvas Fun

Aditya — Thu, 19 Mar 2009 14:39:42 +0000

Update : Added a small animation, which makes the graphs grow down instead of just appearing. I’m all about the looks! [and] pulling in data from Twitter Search — less cache, more tweets.

This morning, Chrome Experiments was revealed, which had some amazing looking Javascript-coded demos. My favourite is the Social Collider, an amazing visual of conversations going on in Twitter. It’s definitely not for the faint-browser-hearted¹.

That got me interested in the element, upcoming in the HTML5 specification and already implemented (in some capacity) in Safari 3.1+/Firefox 1.5+/Chrome. So playing around with it today, I started by tackling graphs (being the easiest thing to make). I got some basic animations working too, but nothing Geekaholic-post worthy. The graphs came out nicely — satisfactory for a few hours work — so I thought of sharing it, in case anyone wants to get started with or just finds this sort of stuff interesting. It’s extremely basic, but gets the job done well.

As for the colour of the graphs, I wrote a random colour generator that has got absolutely nothing to do with anything else. Makes it look a little colourful.

Graph script

Twitter apps frequency graphs using Canvas/Javascript : Refresh the page to regenerate the graph with updated tweets from the public timeline (only tested in Safari 4/Firefox 3)

By the looks of it, anything except Safari 4 and Chrome will choke on it. CPU usage shoots up initially, but will slowly reduce, so make sure your processor can live through it before you open it. ↩