White Space

Lazy Innovations

2009-12-30T20:23:00.003+05:30

On a lazy evening my friend caught me on chat

Friend: Just wondering, have your read 'Ambient Findability'?

Me: Well no. I seldom read books

Friend: :-) Okey actually a friend was asking me about some usability books.

Me: Well, I haven’t read any books on usability. it’s a secret btw. Its not that I don't read at all. I'm an avid reader online. But otherwise I work on a common sense theory.

Friend: Haha :-) guess you don't need any

Me: The only book (if u can call it a book) I have read is ‘Getting Real’

Friend: oh yeah - that’s the only book I bought online

Me: I have bought books online. Just that I didn’t read them. ‘Getting Real’ a friend of mine sent it to me

Friend: Hmmm. I suggested my friend to read 'Dont make me think' - I don’t know any other

Me: I haven’t read it but the title sounds interesting. Something which I say all the time. Recently I read a quote on Twitter saying “Innovation comes from lazy people who try to do things in easier ways”

Friend: Haha true. Actually there is another: “Give the impossible to the laziest. They will find a way out”

Me: Good one. I'm lazy but I dont know if I have done any innovation though :P

Friend: Only problem is sometimes innovation doesn’t come from a problem. It comes from nowhere

Me: Is it? I don’t know. I'm bad at Maths. I can’t remember numbers. Any number. So I find some indigenous way to solve this problem of mine. Simple solutions.

Like I always give the same number of clothes to the laundry. So that I don’t have to remember different numbers every time. The laundry guy is also happy. The number and the money is always the same. No calculations needed :P

Friend: Haha thats cool

I'm an innovator yay :P

The Social Brand Ambassador

2009-12-18T01:00:00.007+05:30

The other day I posted a message on Yammer

I think social media ads will work in an entirely new way where we users will become the brand ambassadors. The future wont be CPMs, CPCs and CPLs based on irritating banners.

The reason for me saying this was coz I think the best way of promotion is through word of mouth. No ad on any medium can ever bring in the trust factor which your word of mouth brings in to your network of friends. I have a set of friends who share the same taste of mine in movies. I normally ask them before going for a new movie and I only go if any of them say its a good watch.

Now a days, even before someone asks, I share on Twitter and Facebook that I'm watching this movie and right after the show I say whether I liked it or not. This broadcast of mine is actually helping some friend of mine in my list to decide on whether to watch this movie or not and then pass it on to his friends. The same happens before buying a soap, a car or an apartment.

The day brands wake up to social media they will get to do dirt cheap but effective promotion to a targeted group of people who has more chances of buying their products. Its good for us too as they will not only be forced to sell good quality products but also good after sales service fearing negative comments just like how the good word spread like wild fire. Ref: The Kiruba incident

To make this work, the brands just need to make sure that I tweet about the product; good or bad; just to broadcast which may also start a conversation.

How?

For Online purchases

Obviously by providing a "Tweet this" button

For real world store purchases

1. May be using Blippy. Blippy is a service which reads my credit card transactions in real time and broadcasts it; it can Tweet and post to Facebook too. Brilliant but very controversial idea coz of security and privacy issues. Like my Who's that girl app!!

2. May be when I check in my location using the Google local store QR code, Foursquare, Gowalla, and Loopt. The moment I check in my store presence it tweets. The QR code can also be on the bill so pointing at it can tweet that I have bought something.

3. May be I can have a SocialMedia card, when swiped at the point of sales would tweet my purchase details. The same way I do with my store/brand membership cards. I will have a lot of control over my broadcast this way and its simpler.

Why should I tweet about my purchase?

Coz someone will reward me for doing this. But who? The brand of course or the network depending upon the model. All brands reward their ambassadors but in this case it will be peanuts compared to the money they pay celebrity endorsers.

In the above SocialMedia card model, the brand can give me loyalty points when I swipe my card which I can redeem at my future purchases. This way the brand also makes sure that I come back and use whatever they have given me to again buy things from them.

In the Google QR code check in model Google can pay me per check-in (CPCI). Every check in means that I have visited the store and I have tweeted about it.

What happens after that?

My friends who trust my views, see my tweet/facebook post and strike an opinion about the product which will then influence their purchases.

The brand can now advertise their products on Twitter/Facebook to a highly targeted group of people, in this case my friends, who now are more likely to buy their products. It can also work more like a personalized recommendation engine instead of mindless irritating banners.

Three of your close friends watched 3 Idiots and loved the movie. Book your tickets now!!

We all make money!!

Social media advertising model is good coz everyone gains

Me: Get paid or gain reward points for broadcasting my usage/purchase.
My friends: Get trust worthy opinions from me before buying something.
Twitter/Facebook: Will make money as highly targeted and effective advertising platform.
Brands: Spend less money in effective promotion. Make more money by selling more products.

Gyan Droid

2009-11-30T00:00:00.003+05:30

Caught hold of my ever busy Android expert friend to clear some doubts

Me: Are you there?

Friend: Hellons

Me: I have a doubt

Friend: Shoot

Me: Say I bought an HTC Magic which runs on Android 1.5. How easy is it for me to upgrade the firmware to Android 2.0 and further?

Friend: You can’t do it on your own. The operator has to push…

Me: Huh can’t I do it like how iPhone does?

Friend: No :(

Me: Grr. So I can’t buy any Android phone and install the latest version on it?

Friend: No.... it’s very tightly coupled to specific hardware for each model.
iPhone is a standard hardware. Oh btw HTC Magic is super buggy.

Me: oh

Friend: However you can upgrade a G1 using a computer as its meant for dev purposes.... other than that the operators push the upgrades… many logistics involved with operators pushing firmware… many apps cant work in further versions.... many games included… so they give time to rebuild for further versions… right now only Motorola Droid has 2.0.

Me: oh

Friend: … and HTC Droid has 1.5, rest of them either 1.1 or 1.0

Me: HTC Droid? What phone is that?

Friend: Droid is Verizon’s Android phones. There are 2 droids. One is the Motorola “Milestone” Droid and the other is HTC “Eris” Droid

Me: Oh

Friend: Verizon is the main competitor of AT&T, so they were looking to somehow pitch against AT&T and iPhone and hence the droid lineup

Me: Makes sense

Me: And they are CDMA phones right

Friend: Yeah!! :) But not many got that point. CDMA came with 1.5

Me: Confusing man. Supposedly there is a GSM Hero and a Sprint Hero

Friend: Yeahh!! The Sense UI

Me: Sense UI is a skin on top of some version of Android. Right?

Friend: Yes

Me: So when the Android version changes, will there be changes to the sense skin?

Friend: Not exactly. May be some bug fixes and some sort of enhancements...

Me: So how does that get updated? ie say I'm using Sprint Hero which has sense UI and Android version 1.5. One day I get a push from Sprint to upgrade to 2.0. When I do that will Sense also gets updated?

Friend: Yups correct

Me: HTC and Sprint work together to make this happen…

Friend: Correct

Me: Basically I cant plug in my phone to a comp to upgrade it. Its always over the air.

Friend: Yeahhh. Except for G1 which is the dev phone

Me: OK got it. So I'm always at mercy of my carrier to get OS updates

Friend: Yeahhh

Me: Is this coz there are many manufacturers, skins, GSM / CDMA complications?

Friend: It is becoz there is no standard hardware for Android

Me: Even Symbian has many hardware right? I can update my phone using Nokia PC suite. Another story that I might lose data :P

Friend: Symbian updates might not be a major phone feature update, its mostly bug fixes. Whereas with each Android release there is something major added feature wise. And the apps on a Symbian device aren’t tightly coupled to the database but on Android even the contact app is tightly coupled. It’s each applications responsibility to back up data and restore it again in the backend every time there is an update, which is handled pretty much by all apps in the phone

Me: Database on the phone or on the cloud?

Friend: Phone

Me: But just for argument sake, what if a CD came with my Sprint Hero pack which has something called Android Manager Software, which has a button to check updates, which will update my phone if available. What can go wrong?

Friend: There are multiple dependencies.... Android is trying to keep everything in the phone itself as there are multiple hardware manufacturers, multiple carriers the only stop n shop solution would the device itself

Me: Oh

Friend: Which makes it convenient for every one, most importantly the user. It removes the need for any other mediator system which is a simple and elegant solution :) What do you think?

Me: Fair enough. Sounds complex but great if it works well. I personally don’t like dependencies; be it operator or PC software. It’s sad that I can’t update my E51 over the air. It’s even sadder if I have to wait for the operator to push the upgrades to me. What if he doesn’t? Or is it the manufacturer who is pushing it using the operator infrastructure? I may not be this worried if I'm in the US but what will be the scene in India?

Friend: Sir can we continue this talk later? I have to catch a bus to Coimbatore.

Me: OK man thanks a lot. Please carry on.

May be I will get the answers next time I get hold of him.

What if my door can tweet?

2009-11-21T21:45:00.001+05:30

In my last post I talked about how paranoid I'm with door locks. I have many times gone back home half way through going somewhere, to recheck if the door had been locked. The same happens with my car too. Some time back my cousin Nicky and I had even planned to make a smart car lock remote which shows me the lock status; my current remote doesn't show the lock status.

That makes me think, can there be something using which I can talk to my doors or for that matter to my car as a whole, lights, AC and gas supply at home to know their status? Can they tweet? Can they all be connected to small systems which can keep track of their status, receive tweets, understand the instructions, act on them and reply? Its quite possible. There are already automated systems or robots which can tweet; used for many reasons like 'to do reminders', 'dictionaries' etc. But mostly they are all just computer programs. What if the computer programs are connected to real things? Thats the idea.

Why Twitter? Well Twitter is not the only way this can be implemented. It can also be done using email, chat or SMS. Twitter coz there are multiple ways of tweeting and for all of them you need to know only one address. You can use SMS, your Twitter app on you phone, twitter.com, email, other twitter clients the options are many.

So next time when I'm half way through to work, and if I get doubts about if have locked the doors, I just tweet or DM

ooomz: @ooomzdoor status

ooomzdoor: @ooomz open

ooomz: @ooomzdoor Lock Sesame

ooomzdoor: @ooomz door locked

I can then sigh in relief and continue walking to work; may be praying that Twitter should be up all day :)

The dead lock

2009-11-06T18:52:00.003+05:30

Do you think usability and user experience are the same?

Its true that usability or 'ease of use' leads to good user experience but just that doesn't cut it. To achieve good user experience there is still more work left.

The door knob shown here is super usable and also follows the first rule of heuristics - visibility of system status. You press a button and the door is locked. To open the door you don't even have to "unlock" it. Just turn the knob and it automatically unlocks and opens the door.

Whats the problem now?

It doesn't "really" make me feel secure. It actually makes me feel stupid and thats bad.

After locking a door by whatever mechanism I usually recheck it by trying to open it again, just to be sure. I'll only be satisfied if the door refuses to open. This lock doesn't allow me to do that. If I try to recheck, the door opens. Once my dad was trying to lock his hotel room door with a similar door knob from inside and he kept on opening it again and again and started complaining that it was not working. In the end I had to give him an assurance that once the button is pushed, no one can open it from outside. He was half convinced even then.

User experience is a combination of many design aspects like info architecture, user interaction, usability and visual design. The right balance of all the them is what creates a good user experience.

My bet is on Android

2009-10-21T01:30:00.004+05:30

First things first; I think the iPhone is an amazing piece of gadgetery. There is no doubt that the iPhone clubbed with the app store phenomenon has just changed the smartphone landscape overnight and forced every other device manufacturer go back to the drawing board. I do agree that the iPhone has the best touch friendly OS and superior hardware to any other phone in the market today, but I somehow would like to place my bet on Android. Here are 5 reasons why...

1. I'm a Google fan

I'm a blind Google fan and I would like to be a part of their products. I know there are Apple fans who swear by Apple products. Some how I was never attracted to using Apple products just for the fact that the whole world goes gaga over it. I like the underdog.

2. I don't like restrictions

Just let me do my own stuff and make it easy boss. Dont make me "jailbreak" my phone or make me look for a paper clip if I want to take out the SIM card. Let me have Google voice on my phone. Let me choose my own device brand which allows me to change the battery myself, if it conks off. Let me watch flash movies...

3. I want physical keypad

I don't mind a virtual keypad but for better control and speed, I think I will need a physical keypad. I know the physical keypad makes the phone bulky and clunky, but I also know that better product designs can overcome that and it will definitely happen.

4. I want more choices

At the time of writing this there are 10 device manufacturer brands as a part of the Open Handset Alliance, the group committed to commercially deploy handsets and services using the Android Platform. There are 23 phones already announced and more will follow. I have more choices of brands, capabilities and price to choose from. Android phones will be cheaper as the OS is free for use for the device manufacturers (Please correct me if I'm wrong). The manufacturers can also customize the UI to bring in their own unique experiences on the phones like the MotoBlur™ and HTC Sense™. I think Motorola Cliq is the best of the lot I have seen till now but I'm also waiting for the stunning Sony Ericsson 'Rachael'. I did like the Nokia's Maemo phone N900 but I seriously think that even Nokia should join the Open handset alliance so that we will have superior Android phones. Who can beat Nokia in making mobile phones?

5. More and better Apps

I'm sure in the coming days there will be more and better Android apps available as there are no restrictions from both the Android Market and the OS level. Android does not differentiate between the phone's core applications and third-party applications. They can all be built to have equal access to a phone's capabilities providing users with a broad spectrum of applications and services. Forget about all that. The fact that all Google apps will definitely be on Android makes it good enough right away. Also as Android net books start coming in, I can even have the same set of apps on my phone and my computer, synced.

All this might not happen overnight. But I'm sure that there is a lot of interesting stuff waiting to happen in the Android space. Just be patient.

The appy fizz

2009-10-11T23:01:00.005+05:30

Got my friend's email out of the blue which had a question which was relevant in these times

Friend: Is a company better off building a mobile app for a smartphone or should they optimize their mobile web experience or do both?

Me: The mobile web optimized version is a must. Thats a standard now.

Now the decision to make an app or not.

We get requests for doing both mobile web and app even if there is no much difference between both the experiences. They just want to be a part of the app store euphoria. They just want their presence there among other companies. And there is a lot more advertising money in the app space coz of the hype.

Personally I think if you don't have anything special to offer than the mobile web its good to remain on the web. On the long run its the web which is going to win.

But if you can give more than what the mobile web offers, then yes. Apps can make use of the native capabilities of a phone to give interesting features and experiences using the touch, accelerometer, camera, video/audio recording, geo location, compass, augmented reality, the pinch and zoom on iPhone and other supported gestures, offline access, better animation capabilities etc.

One more thing we have to keep in mind is that the app should be good enough to be used repeatedly.

Friend: Ok Thanks.

Dont just do things just for the sake of it. Do it only if it makes sense.

Somethings should change

2009-10-02T14:48:00.001+05:30

My wife who has now become a Facebook addict; constantly using it on her phone, is not very happy about her slightly expensive Airtel data plan.

She: I'm thinking of changing my connection coz I'm not able to afford the internet on Airtel.

Me: So have you looked at the options?

She: Yes. I think Tata Docomo should have cheaper internet.

Me: Oh really? Did you check out the rates?

She: No not yet. I guessed coz their voice plans are anyways cheaper. So its obvious to have a cheaper internet plan

Me: Well you better find out. What about Reliance? Did you check it out?

She: Huh? I'm talking about GSM services

Me: I know. Reliance has also come up with a GSM service

She: Huh?? When??? I didnt know this. Aren't they advertising?

Me: Of course they are. The new Hritik Roshan ads are for their GSM service

She: Oh I just didnt figure out...

Me: Well its not your mistake that you missed it.

She: Then?

Me: Isn't it interesting that you are well aware of Tata Docomo services and you even have a perception about their pricing. At the same time you dont even have a clue that Reliance also came up with a GSM service around the same time and they even have a Bollywood super star endorsing it?

She: Ya right. How did that happen?

Me: Its coz Reliance did nothing to create a strong audio visual distinction for their new service brand. They just added the words GSM and CDMA to their existing brand identity.

Whereas Tata made their GSM brand Docomo look absolutely different from their CDMA brand Indicom. Docomo also has a super cool signature tune which made the brand distinctly recognizable. Their ads are funny, almost in the same lines of the Virgin Mobile (A Tata Indicom joint venture) ads. The teaser ads too helped in creating curiosity and buzz among people prior to the launch. Tata didn't stop there, they also did some fresh innovation in their pricing strategy which made the whole thing a big hit. I'm told that the SIM cards have run out of stock at many places.

She: But Docomo is a Japanese brand right? So may be its their look which Tata used...

Me: No. Ironically Docomo's real logo looks very similar to Indicom. So that says it was a well planned strategy of theirs to come up with a fresh new branding.

She: Wow

In design, being consistent is very important if you don't expect your target audience to behave or react differently. But if you want them to take notice and act accordingly, you need to bring in new elements to break the consistency and familiarity.

My life is an open facebook!

2009-09-13T14:35:00.003+05:30

A couple of days ago I was having this conversation with an aunt of mine about creating a family tree. She knew that I was interested in it as I've already started making one. She wanted to bring in her side of the family into the tree and was asking me to contact her niece who is also interested in genealogy.

Aunt: I'll give my niece's number to you and you can talk to her about how to go for it

Me: You can give me her email id and I'll invite her to the tree I've created on Geni. Then she can connect with us and also start building the branches

Aunt: Oh so she can see your tree?

Me: Yes. Geni is a social networking site where you will have your relatives as your "friends" who got added while creating your family tree. Its like facebook with a family tree.

Aunt: Whats Facebook exactly? I've heard of it though...

Me: Facebook is a place where you keep in touch with your friends by exchanging messages, pictures, videos etc

Aunt: Like email?

Me: No not like email

Aunt: But then whats the difference? I do keep in touch with my friends by email by exchanging message, pictures and videos

This was an interesting question. Whats the different between Email and Facebook. I was sure that by just giving out some features of Facebook wont help in this case as she will also find some equivalent stuff she can do with email. I had to actually explain the basic funda of sharing and sending.

Me: Its like telephone vs radio or may be video chat vs reality television

Aunt: I still didnt get it

Me: Will explain. There are lot of things happening in your life. And you would want your friends to know about them. You send letters or email to your friends about these happenings. Sending emails/letters to each and every one is of course emotionally satisfying but has become non feasible in our busy lives. We hardly get time to do the regular chores. So we started sending out emails only when something very important happened, which meant that our friends missed out on the trivial happenings in our life. This phenomenon is called the "send" model. You send emails, letters, or you make phone calls or did video chat to tell your friends whats happening.

Aunt: Ok so how does the other one work?

Me: Thats the "share" model. Say one day you got pissed off by your friend's complaints that you are no longer calling or emailing her and decided to install a camera in your living room and share the video feed to your friend. ie you share or live broadcast things happening in your life and let your friends watch it on a continuous basis. Facebook is an online tool using which you share things happening in your life at one place and allow your friends to come there and look at them. Be it messages, videos, pictures, your birthdays whatever you think your friends must know. Now its your friends' turn to look at them. Your friends can also do the same and you can look at their stuff too. This way everyone is up to date about each other. You don't send anything to anyone but just share them at a common place and let others follow you to look at them.

Aunt: Interesting

Me: This is not something which can only be used to keep in touch with your friends. This funda is also used for collaborative work. Like in your office instead of sending out files which you have created to each and every one for whatever reason, you keep it at a common repository and allow interested people to access it. Like this you can avoid the odd hour calls from your boss asking for that file which you worked on two months ago!!!

Aunt: I understood. So you are saying in Geni.com you can not only create family trees but also allow the people on the tree to share their lives so that others can look at them and be up to date.

Me: Exactly.

Cool. Now I have one more question to ask when I take interviews, other than my standard question "Difference between Yahoo mail and Gmail"

Who's that girl?

2009-08-14T00:00:00.002+05:30

Continuing with the crazy product ideas...

What if there was something, like a mobile app, when pointed at someone can give me information about that person? This would be scary but lets keep aside the privacy issues aside for a moment. It would be like an intelligent visual address book which recognize people in real time and gives me information using "Augmented reality".

Say if Google comes up with this mobile app, when pointed at someone, will capture the image of the person and do an image search and find out who the person is. Google would also know if that person has a Google account and hence can show me some non sensitive profile information about him/her to me.

Something close to my idea has already been prototyped by Pranav Mistry of MIT which is demoed in this video.

Drive me lazy

2009-07-13T00:00:00.002+05:30

I always used to wonder what my life would have been if God had not created a calculator; I'm bad with numbers, my math is bad... really bad. I don't know if thats some kind of a disability but i have never taken it as one. I know that there are so many things which I'm good at (haven't figured them out yet tho), but when it comes to maths, I just use a calculator. I also believe that my disability to remember dates is also related to my problem with numbers. I don't remember birthdays; well even mine. Google calendar is one of the apps I religiously visit daily. I've also synced Gcal to my phone calendar, so I'm pretty confident that i wont miss any important dates. Then there are to do lists, reminders, alarms etc to help me further to remember things so that i don't have to give a lot of work for my brains. I also believe that all these gadgets which made my life easier have also made me lazy.

I guess its my laziness which has made me a 'heavy weight'. And I've been using the "no time" excuse to not do any kind of exercice too. I have also got a diet chart which I think if followed will make me malnourished. But I'm open to not eat things which are fattening and not healthy. But I'm again lazy to read the calories and find out whether its too much for me etc.

What if there was a plate which told me if the food I've taken is good or bad for me. I just dont understand the calorie and fat chart. Just tell me if its good or bad so that I can avoid eating that or may be reduce the quantity. May be it can turn green to red to show how good or bad. Of course it would be a special plate to change colors according to the food; it should also be intelligent enough to find out my weight and body state by reading data signals from my body by me just holding it. I'm sure that my body or at least the brain knows if I'm over weight, if my organs have any specific problem, if i have an allergy etc. This information is what the plate would be reading to find out whether the food I have in my plate is actually good for me. May be it can also show me if the taste of the food is according to my likings? May be I'm pushing it this time...

To be continued (Of course when I have more ideas on how to drive me lazy)

Internet on the move

2009-07-09T23:56:00.004+05:30

Its quite amazing to know that inspite of internet being a part of almost all of us, mobile internet has not been able to reach upto that levels yet. Its partly coz of ignorance among the users that their mobile phone can also be used to browse internet other than making calls and SMSing. The other reason would be the not so great user experience of browsing internet on a mobile phone which has made users stay away. But after the iPhone happened, every phone manufacturer has jumped into the "touch phone which is also a powerful internet device" bandwagon, which aspires to give users a compelling mobile internet browsing experience. After iPhone the users are also becoming aware of the fact that they can browse on their phone. Mobile service providers have also started marketing their services around mobile internet; almost all recent Aircel ads have been revolving around internet connectivity on phones. I personally have donned the role of a mobile internet evangelist for quite some time now, spreading the word and have also been able to successfully coax people into using internet on mobile.

Some time back I had run a small survey on Twitter and Facebook asking people what all do they use mobile internet for and also the reason if they don't. As expected the Twitter community was already aware of internet on mobile but there were still some people who hadn't tried it out.

Most people who stayed away from mobile internet said they didn't have to as they are online on their computer. Well I think its like saying "I don't need a mobile phone coz I have a land line". Mobile internet is supposed to be used when you are on the move and not in front of your computer. There is no point in using it when you are in front of the computer.

Some people also thought the small mobile phone screen wouldn't be enough for them to browse the internet. Most of our popular daily use sites (email/news/) have a mobile version which makes it easy to use on almost all new age mobile phones. I had talked about it some time ago.

The following were some of the responses I got...

My Friend: my phone cannot do internet

@mekkanikal: I do. Check my mail and update stuff on twitter all the time. I use it for reader and google, map, local search as well!

@morphiine: I dnt use net on mobile..coz my mobile doesnt have dis facility..ya i wud browse if i had the facility...

@Karthik: I use mobile internet always when I leave comp for long time and it can be anything from twitter to mails.

@KritiA: For Twitter ofcourse!

@vimalg2: EDGE++ Opera mini for news, Nokia Push Email, Gmail Java app, Slick IM (Jabber), and Putty SSH to keep an eye on all *nix servers

@ajuonline: To check mail and stay on IM while on the move. And as a backup, when not on the move :-)

@tsuvik: I use it for tweeting majorly and googling sometimes.

@scorpfromhell: I use mobile internet mostly for jibjib (twitter j2me client), google reader & offfice emails. some times 4 picblogging & googling.

@vsr: Primarily for gmail & twitter on the move. another reason would be tht I don't have a *internet* conn. & EDGE's my way of access.

@cruisemaniac: contacts+sms backup, chat, twitter, mail(push-or-not), music(wifi only), browsing, google-reader, app-download, flickr, twitpic, voip

@FagunB: Mobile bill payment, tweeting, mail check (push) n app download - rarely to connect thru putty (for app testing)

@unitechy: twitter/email/photo upload.. basically for social networking. i think on twitter everyone uses mobile internet

@jinadcruz: Twitter..Local restaurent search..movie search..gmail..actually all kindsa mail..fb..et al

@vivekk: i say no. Nokia 1100 supports torch and SMS. That's it

@fossiloflife: yes I do, to check mails, Tweet, FB, News, general gyan

@Zishaan: email, gmail, gchat, web browsing, calendar, address book, facebook, twitter, maps, google search

@the100rabh: I dont use MI because I am connected to my laptop most of time and plus over the roof wireless internet charges. I wish WiMAX comes to India soon and we have broadband with mobility. Thats when MI makes sense.

@poojakashyap: I don't use mobile internet coz the connectivity is too slow.

@dkris: The only 2 reasons why I use MI for tweeting, checking on emails.But yeah not always.Since its expensive

@jijoy: i use it for twitter,MFE n Youtube

@pratiksinghal: Nope i dont use mobile internet. reasons-i use net almost full day on lappy & mobile sceen is too small to properly browse!

@varunkhanduja: No. The small screen of mobile doesn't gives me same feel as using on comp. Personally don't like using Internet 24x7

@netcraze: Yes for email, fring, almost all google products, twitter, zedge, facebook, feed reading..

@itdeepak: I use mobile internet for everything. What is iphone without a mobile browser.

@nikhilnarayanan: Googling,tweeting/email when no internet is available

Souparna: Don't have a connection on the phone, and somehow don't see the immediate need to since i am connected via my system most of the day anyway!

Joy: I do .. checking location route maps .. and bars in bangalore to go .. some times for scores. works out cheaper than smses :)

Susheel: I do, I use it for twitter, to check the names of actors in movies (IMDB.com, i can never remember names) and to check my business and personal mail.

Anjali: I don't ! There's a life away from the internet !

Shikha: Gmail. GReader. Twitter. AskLaila. Facebook. Music. Finding restaurants. Finding places. A lot of searching. Okay, I know. I'm addicted ;-).

Siddhartha Sen Choudhary: I will use Internet on mobile only when a mobile like Nokia N97 replaces my laptop :) Doesn't makes sense to go for GPRS connection only for mobile browsing.

Phoney Girls!

2009-06-16T20:59:00.002+05:30

As I work on the mobile internet space, I'm always on the lookout for new ideas which will help me in designing better mobile experiences. I talk to people about how they use their phone, what all they use it for other than making calls and sms, what all do they expect from a phone etc etc.

When my wife was planning to buy a new phone I had suggested to buy a Nokia E51 (I have one) as I think it comes with all the latest useful features at a less price. But she rejected it outright as she thought it was a very common phone as she saw it with many people. She wanted her phone to be something special although she was not clear about what feature would make it so... a qwerty keyboard perhaps. She looked at many options but the moment she saw the Nokia 5800 XpressMusic, she made up her mind that the special element she was looking for was a cool touch screen. Every other feature came next to that. Once she started using the phone a lot of things surprised me

She thinks using stylus is cool and refuses to use finger touch. I think she is gonna hate iphone.

She hates the accelerometer. Has switched it off.

She wanted to re install Nokia PC Suite on my computer coz she thought the PC Suite CD which came with the phone was cute.

She wanted to join Facebook coz she wanted to use the Facebook icon that came preloaded with the phone.

All these things completely bowled me over coz these were valuable data which would help me immensly. I decided to ask more girls about their mobile phone preferences and the answers I got were even more interesting.

I like windows mobile more than Nokia coz win mobile allows me to put Calvin and Hobbes animation on the home screen

I bought my Sony Erricson coz I thought the package was super cute

I think some day I will become a mobile anthropologist.

Remember the milk carton

2009-06-05T00:00:00.004+05:30

I use Nestle milk's Tetrapak carton which I think is not very user friendly. Its coz I have to cut open the corner of the brick shaped carton to make a hole which not only makes the milk leak and overflow but also forced to be stored in an opened condition. The same is the case with Amul Taaza milk. Nandini Good Life milk pack comes in a very basic Tetra Fino package and hence cant be kept upright. I wonder why cant Indian milk cartons be made like the typical gable top milk cartons like we get abroad.

A gable top milk carton is a peak shaped smart packaging design marvel which can be pulled from one side of the tip to make a pout kind of opening. This not only helps pouring the milk properly without overflowing or leaking but also can be retracted back to close and store. Tetra Pak has an advanced version of this with a cap called the Tetra Rex.

Is it a cost cutting technique thats making the companies get milk packed in a simple Tetra Brik package and not a gable top milk carton? A more expensive Amul Lite comes in brick shape but has a flip open top which is again not as usable as the gable top carton. I think the people who go for carton milk wouldn't mind paying a little extra for it to be a little more usable. Or atleast make it like the Tropicana juice pack (Indian) which is brick shaped but with a capped opening. Are Nestle/Amul/Nandini listening?

The ultimate Twitter revenue model

2009-05-25T21:37:00.007+05:30

Best ideas are born when chatting with friends.

Friend: A friend is planning on starting a website that is similar to smashing magazine... but for movies and music... you interested?

Me: I don’t have time to read or write now a days. Haven’t even opened Google Reader in a long time :-(

Friend: I have had 1000+ in my reader for a couple of months now..

Me: Yeah me too

Friend: been sleeping at 4am, 5am...

Me: Once I argued with some one who said blogging was a fad. Now I think its coming true.

Friend: lol... According to some, blogging is dead... it's become a commercial enterprise now... and blogging as you used to know it, no longer exists.

Me: Amateur blogging has come down like anything

Friend: Yeah... over 100 million abandoned blogs… according to Technorati

Me: It’s more like online magazines now. Blogs are a boon for sure. You search for any shit you get it on someone’s blog

Friend: According to some, micro blogging is the new blogging…

Me: Micro blogging is keeping me updated now a days

Friend: Now how to make money off it is the next phase

Me: hmm may be they will have sponsors

Friend: Likely

Me: Sponsors based on the number of followers. Sponsors need not work based on page views. They just need to be heard.

Friend: yeah, so that's authority and popularity... you need to be popular...

Me: So if you sponsor me, I will talk good things about you

Friend: Is that an offer?

Me: hehe may be I will do a matrimonial Twitter channel and…

Friend: huh? Why?

Me: …only girls are allowed to follow me. I broadcast trustworthy info about prospective boys

Friend: Hmm...

Me: The boys sponsor me.

Friend: Then I’ll definitely sponsor you...

Me: See...

Friend: hey, if they're sponsoring you, how can they be trustworthy?

Me: They need not be trustworthy. I'm trustworthy. Like say Techcrunch

Friend: How so?

Me: They ask me to review them by paying me. (I don’t know if Techcrunch takes money to review btw)

Friend: Oy, I'm not stripping, ok...

Me: hahaha

Friend: How will you review me?

Me: Like you pay for my friendship

Friend: :P

Me: I become your paid friend. I study you for a week or so and then I write about you. Millions of girls who follow me will read it and would want to meet you

Friend: You've got to get into action on that... but micro blogging is not enough to write about me... you need a large book.

Me: Well even Alukkas jewellery and Kalyan sarees can pay me coz of the target audience. So that I talk good about them too.

Friend: Hmm... Are you gonna act on that?

Me: How’s my idea?

Friend: I think its good... needs marketing... solid marketing...

Me: First I need to be a ladies man, make a solid girl friends circle and then make them fall for ahem sorry follow me… and then let the boys know that the girls listen to me... lot of work

Friend: You need to have a very sound reputation both on the net and off...

Me: yes

Friend: and you have hang out with the girls study them too

Me: Well that will be a free service. I will do special recommendation of those girls who allow me to hang out with them

Friend: I think you will need a team for that...

Me: No No its like Splitsvilla. Everyone makes me happy

Friend: what the heck is that...

Me: Oh that’s another reality show on MTV

Friend: hmm...

Me: Girls make the King happy and boys make the Queen happy

Friend: What the heck?

Me: In the end the king and queen pick their partners to win the show

Friend: This is some porn reality show?

Me: Hehe not porn but of course little more than Indian sensibilities. However I hope the girls’ parents have sold their TV before the season started.

Happy Singh is King

2009-05-10T12:45:00.006+05:30

Long back when I went to my friend's newly opened graphic design shop, I was suprised to see the unusual aquamarine colors he had painted on the walls. I asked him about it and he said that he wanted it to be a conversation starter. Like how I asked him about it, he expected others also to do the same and he can talk about the idea. Something to break the ice with his prospective clients. I found the idea interesting. Since then I have always tried to have something with me as a conversation starter whenever I go to meet people. For some time it was my thick framed glasses (which was not very popular then), mypsychedelic shirts, 'fuel inside' sticker (which looked like the 'intel inside' logo) on my bike's petrol tank, bright red canvas shoes, the apple sticker on my hp laptop etc. I also have a gaping void cartoon on the back of my business card which acts as a great conversation starter when I go to geek camps. Now a days people find iPhones as a great conversation starter. And the list goes on.

Last month on my brief visit to Bombay, I was taken to this restaurant called 'Happy Singh'. I was expecting a typical punjabi dhaba atmosphere when I went there but as soon I entered the place I thought the place looked like an American/Mexican eatery. You know the ones like TGIF, Ruby Tuesday, Indy Joe etc. The interiors were all bright red and green with colorful light shades and graffiti on the wall. The atmosphere was so lively with something or the other happening all the time, happening bollywood bhangra numbers in the air, the servers all ready to help you out.

We were welcomed by a drink and then asked for the order. There were lots of fun stuff for us to look at on our table. The menu card was funny with every creatively named section having the restaurant mascot Mr happy singh in different avatars. There were cards on the table with jumbled up phrases for us to crack. The table also had a number displayed and a note saying if we were unhappy about anything about the place we could complain it to the authorities along with the table number.

When the food came, my aunt commented that it was quick. But the reality was that we were so engrossed in cracking Happy's jumbled phrases, talking about the unique ambiance, commenting on the different funny avatars of Happy Singh which adorned the walls, that we didn't even realize how much time we waited for the food to come. It seemed so very quick. The food too didn't disappoint, it was all beyond expectations. We had a fun time over there beyond the point that we went there to have lunch, till the ceremonial kitchen close bell rang. We were more than happy to give creative feedback (to match up to the ambiance) to them on their suggestion cards, which are usually avoided or typically filled for a formality in other places.

Happy Singh is King

We gushed in sheer excitement as we came out of the place.

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Search using a pic. Can I?

2009-05-03T20:45:00.001+05:30

The other day @sampad posted a fun challenge on Twitter to guess the person on the pic he posted on twitpic. I looked at the pic but didnt know who he was. The first thing I wanted to do was to ask Google by giving the picture as the search query which unfortunately was not possible. However I kinda guessed that he was some online personality and searched Google images with terms facebook, twitter etc. Ultimately the guy turned out to be Chris Hughes, the co founder of Facebook, but it was found only after a lot of googling based on the hints given out by @sampad.

The incident made me think; once again... :P

What if Google had a feature in 'Image Search' where I could upload a pic for Google to find content on the pic and give me results based on that? It would be fantastic. I'm sure that Google can do it, coz it already has Similar Images Search in the labs, which shows other images that look like the one which showed up as a result of an image search using keywords. Similarly Google has to just accept my pic via upload and then do a search in their database to find similar images which are appropriately tagged to know who/what the person/object is on the picture. Then it can show me results on the person/object it found out; not only image results but also other web results like a normal Google search. In Chris's case it would give me this page as a result of my "fundoo image search".

I know this is not far away. Oh btw it would not only work for famous personalities or landmarks, but also for your lesser known friends and relatives; remember all those image tagging you did in Picasa web albums? Google knows them all.

What happened on 23rd February?

2009-04-08T00:00:00.001+05:30

Last month my business analyst friend at work was analyzing the traffic report for IBN Live mobile site for the month of February and was not able to figure out some patterns. At last he asked me

Friend: Umesh, do you remember what happened on Feb 23rd ?

Me: Mmmmmmm not exactly. Whats the problem?

Friend: Well I see a sudden spike in traffic on that day and some how I missed out to note it down then. Now I have no clue what happened on that day.

I tried to recollect the happenings but as I’m very bad at remembering things I decided to ask others. Even they were clueless. Then we started spitting out random things which came to our mind…. Tendulkar’s century, Karachi Attacks, Elections, Stock market crash… but none of them could be traced back to the 23rd of February.

I tried Google, but didn’t give any helpful results. I also tried Twitter search expecting to see some tweets which happened on that day. But it didnt have a way to search for tweets on a particular day. The date as the search query didnt help too.

Then some one shouted.. It was Maha Sivratri. Then someone remembered Resool Pookutty saying it was all god’s grace as the Oscars happened on an auspicious day. Bingo. It was Oscars which made the traffic spike on IBN live site. Supposedly it was not only the television channels but also the news channels which had benefited from India’s triumph at Oscars.

I was sad that as a self confessed web lover who swears by Google couldn’t find out a popular event which happened on a previous date using the search engines. That day the whole world was talking about Twitter as a real time information search engine and I didn’t have to think of use cases to understand its potential.

Twitter is a huge archive of information about all the things happened and happening in this world on a day to day basis as there will people tweeting about them. And hence it’s also the place to search for things happened in the past and things that are happening right now in real time. Sadly Twitter couldn’t help me with the Oscars day but may be that’s what they are working towards. If Twitter had accepted the date as a search query and shown me the trending topics on 23rd February and also the tweets on those topics, I would have easily found out the answer.

Twitter as a search engine for live happenings is very powerful and there is no doubt about that. Its something even Google cannot do. The other day we the mallus in our office were so eager to find out about the Malayalam movie Sagar Alias Jacky which got released at around 12pm that day. As usual we had to wait for the first day first show to get over for the reviews to come out. I decided to try my luck again. At 1 pm I searched for Sagar Alias Jacky on Twitter and bingo there were people tweeting from the cinema hall as they were watching the flick and we got the very first reviews come to us live from ground zero. FTW.

Kindle the Amazon fire

2009-03-27T14:43:00.007+05:30

Go to know that my friend is getting the Kindle 2 so thought of catching up with her the same way we did some time ago for the iPhone

Friend: I’m so excited about the kindle 2

Me: Hows it? Just today morning as a part of our Friday Ideas session, our team was discussing about bringing digital experiences close to real world experiences and book reading was one of them. Someone wondered how was it to read a book using the Kindle.

Friend: Kindle 2 is a pretty neat device - I actually bought it for my husband. It's got a great design and lets you lose yourself in your reading. It's got free Sprint wireless connectivity built in, so it is fairly easy to order a book on Amazon and have it delivered to your Kindle in seconds. Kindle versions of books are a lot cheaper than the hardbacks I buy, often less than 1/4 of the price of a regular book. I do a lot of reading on my iPhone but the glare of the screen really hurts my eyes. Not so with the Kindle, the screen is very easy on your eyes, almost like reading a real book. The best part is you can adjust the size of the text, which is a great usability feature for older readers.

Me: What are your favorite features?

Friend: Text to speech version - You can get your Kindle 2 to read the text to you. I think this is pretty neat. I know that my husband loves this feature the most.

Play MP3s - You can upload your MP3s to the Kindle and listen to them - I expect you will be able to buy amazon mp3s directly from the Kindle in the near future but this is just me speculating

Built in dictionary - You can highlight any word and the have the inbuilt Oxford American dictionary tell you the meaning.

Bookmarks - you can bookmark several different books at once and the kindle will remember where you left off your reading.

Size - it is incredibly light and is as thin as a pencil - for someone who reads as much as I do and lugs a ton of books around, this is the best feature.

But I personally think that there are some missed opportunities in terms of other features that can create an ecosystem around the product.

Me: May be a full blown internet browser, an SDK to build third party Kindle apps :-) Btw I heard people saying that no one will buy Kindle as it’s now available as an iPhone app. What’s your take on this?

Friend: Well iPhones/iPod touch do have a bigger market share than the Kindle. Both devices enable you to stay connected (through cell network and wifi) and both have a great existing ecosystem that is built around them.

The Kindle device is pricey and works well but from a business perspective, the device is not as important as the digital selection of books that is available. The Kindle is a means to an end. If you want to reach a wider audience for your ebooks, then you first start with your device, then target other device enabled customers, and once ebooks themselves gain traction, target the masses (PC users et al).

This strategy is consistent with Amazon's strategy of providing Earth's biggest selection. I think it's brilliant.

So the question really should not be "how many kindles will be sold after the iPhone kindle app is released?” Rather, how many more incremental ebooks can you sell by being device independent?

Apple and Google are also trying to tap into the digital book market but Amazon has existing relationships with publishers and will win in the long run.

Me: Oh. So you are saying Amazon's strategy is to sell more ebooks (makes sense) than focusing on selling and making kindle to be "the ultimate" device. Kindle would be just another device offered by Amazon along with iPods and iPhones on their catalogue. It’s just that Kindle is an in house brand and has special features to be a better reader than iPod. Am I right?

Friend: Absolutely. Amazon is first and foremost a retailer with a huge selection of digital content and a proprietary device. With the latter, they can make sure competitors do not lock them out of their devices.

Me: Great. Also got to know that Amazon gave in to the ridiculous Authors Guild claim to allow authors to block text-to-speech. This was one of your favorite features right?

Friend: That is hilarious. Too bad about the text to speech but that was husband’s favorite feature. My next favorite feature is downloading books in seconds on to my device, which the stupid iPhone Kindle app cannot replicate. I’m not too gung ho about the iPhone Kindle App. Kinda sucks if you ask me.

OK so that was some serious talk. Btw I have neither an iPhone nor a Kindle. I might go for an iPhone some time in the future when the prices come down but would never go for a Kindle. I actually like the device and its features but I’m not a voracious book reader. All my reading is confined to Google Reader which works well on an iPhone. I might get one for my wife provided Kindle allows non amazon ebooks to be loaded onto it. :-) After all we are Indians.

Upwardly Mobile 2

2009-03-10T00:24:00.001+05:30

Another powerful mobile app is the Qik web casting on mobile. It records videos using your phone’s camera and in real time uploads it to your qik.com account, enabling you to do a quick and easy way to do a live web casting. Last month I was attending my colleague’s wedding in Guruvayur and I did a live qik of the ceremony for the folks at office. It was a phenomenal experience. Although later I meddled with the video quality setting to make the upload faster only to make the video quality poor. But the first clip did make a sensation in the office.

Mapunity’s BTIS service helps you in getting real time traffic status updates in Bangalore so that you can decide on what route to take when you are driving. They have a very useful SMS based service but I'm not sure how will I be able to remember all those keywords. So they have a mobile app which is still in the alpha version. But I think the app can be only used by people who have an engineering degree in mobile technology. They are really in need of an UX expert to make the app simple to use and if they do the app could be a runaway hit. I don’t mind helping them out if they are Ok with it. Coming back to the matter, if you manage to figure out how to use it, it has a mint cool feature of showing live pictures of on the road traffic powered by cameras kept at different traffic junctions.

Talking about user experience, the ICICI imobile app is very simple to use. Yes it doesn’t even ask for your ICICI web User id and password to login. They have a real cool way of integrating your bank account with the app. I paid some of my bills using this app but again recharging my wife’s Airtel prepaid card is still a problem. Even though I can easily make a payment to Airtel using the app or ICICI online, the prepaid account just doesn’t get topped up. ICICI does re fund the money after two - three days though.

Thanks to my phone, I don’t forget a thing now a days. Previously I used to get SMS reminders from Google Calendar for the events I shouldn't miss out, but now I’ve synchronized my phone with Google Calendar and Outlook. I use Google Calendar Sync to bring in Google calendar events on to my Outlook which has my official appointments and tasks. I then sync my phone with Outlook using blue tooth. So once I setup the sync thing, as I add events on Google Calendar and Outlook it automatically gets updated on my phone which will then remind me by putting the day’s tasks on my phone’s home page.

Then there is mobile.ndtv.com my favorite for reading news; they actually have enough things on mobile for me not to even go to their website. I also use the network18 sites m.ibnlive.com for news, m.buzz18.com for time pass movie gossip stuff and last but not the least m.moneycontrol.com; just to see my portfolio value going down day by day :-( Ah for cricket fans there is m.cricketnext.com too. Network18 has a very good presence on mobile and they are open to trying out new stuff. Oh btw these sites are powered by the company I work for, July Systems. ;-) That’s also a reason behind me being addicted to mobile internet as I'm supposed to be an evangelist of all the mobile sweetness.

PS: Also check out Wikipedia (en.wap.wikipedia.org), dictionary.com (m.reference.com/d), Yahoo Mail (m.yahoo.com/mail), Delicious (m.delicious.com) and Flickr (m.flickr.com) on mobile. Some of them do redirect to the mobile version when accessed using their regular web urls on mobile phones. Some of them don't, which is bad.

Upwardly Mobile 1

2009-03-06T23:40:00.003+05:30

I’m becoming an exceptional mobile internet user, day by day. Gone are those days when I used to be content with the features of my Nokia 6510 even though it rang or beeped message only once or twice in a week. The new Nokia E51 has changed the way I see mobile phones. Ahem well the calls and messages are still as bad as my good old 6510 days, but the change now is that I’m checking emails, reading blogs/news, searching for local shops, movie timings, quickly clarifying things on dictionary.com and wikipedia, tweeting and of course the Google maps and latitude. When I’m at home I feel extremely lazy to open my laptop now a days. Everything is now on my phone, ah except typing this story. I’m not yet good at typing things on my phone.

Asklaila.com (asklaila.com/m/blr) is a frequently visited site on my phone to search for shops and restaurants when I’m on the go. Like the other day I was in Koramangala and wanted to know where was Lawrence & Mayo. Just did a search on Asklaila and it showed me the shop address and also gave me options to find other optical shops nearby. It also gives me phone numbers and clicking on them will make a call. I’m not saying Asklaila has a better database than Google Local Search or anything like that (I seriously don’t know) but the user experience on this one is really nice. Well they can still improve if they can also show results that are around the location which I specified. Eg the other day I searched for Chinese restaurants on MG road and I wouldn’t have minded if it also showed me Chinese restaurants on Church Street and Brigade road. Their full blown website does that and it would be wonderful to have the same feature on mobile. Also they could integrate a map view. Or may be integrate it with Google maps app. Or an Ask Laila app with Google maps/latitude integration… I don’t know ;-)

Oh btw, If you are in Bangalore and if you know exactly which restaurant you are going to and you want to call them to reserve a table, then you don’t need an internet connection. Call Ubona at 4070 0000 and tell the restaurant name to the IVR response and it will connect you instantly to the restaurant. It’s powerful enough to understand you regardless of your accent and it works well even if there are multiple outlets for the restaurant you are looking for. It will guide you well through all the locations. Once I tried a restaurant and they didn’t have that in their database. The IVR voice sounded confused. But 5 minutes after hanging up I got an SMS from them saying the restaurant I asked for has been added and gave me the contact details. Ubona’s restaurant search works only in Bangalore and it’s a beta service they are running to demonstrate their software’s capabilities.

Avid mobile internet users would know that Google apps (Reader, Calendar, Gmail) are available for mobile on the regular urls. Google India movies (google.co.in/m/movies) is one page you want to save to your bookmarks, coz it shows all the movies running in your city, timings, theatres etc. Very handy when you are in a sudden mood to go for movies and no access to news papers. But to book the tickets you might have to turn to the movie ticket booking mobile apps like BookMyShow.com’s B Mobile app (Send BMS to
51818). But again BookMyShow doesn’t take booking for PVR Cinemas. Oh listen to this, Last weekend I was trying to book tickets for Delhi6 on PVR’s online booking site and for some reason it was not working. I quickly downloaded their mobile app (Txt PVR to 53030) and continued booking the tickets. It was like a breeze to use the app; very nicely done and extremely simple to use.

To be continued

Subprime Crisis, Credit Crunch... What?

2009-02-27T19:00:00.003+05:30

The Crisis of Credit Visualized from Jonathan Jarvis on Vimeo

OK I know that its recession time. Oh yes I also know that its something called subprime crisis which started it. But never knew exactly what that meant. This video explains things in simple terms. I like simple stuff.

Longawaited Latitude

2009-02-14T22:04:00.006+05:30

One of those days when I was bored to death, I decided to chat with my friend

Me: Today I thought of sharing an idea with you, may be we can build on the idea if it makes sense

Friend: yeah tell me

Me: My problem is this… My cousin stays at RT Nagar and it take an hour's drive from my place to his place.

Friend: ok

Me: Whenever I start from place i call him and say I've started. After some time he calls me in between to check where I have reached. If I had a mobile app which uses GPS or cell tower id or whatever possible to locate me and broadcast my location at regular intervals on a map using GPRS and could be shared with him then he doesn't have to call me. Right?

Friend: There are apps available which does this

Me: But I haven't found anything which works well in India and especially with my phone which doesn't have GPS. That's why I thought of building it ourselves

Friend: Nice idea

Me: The app should have some privacy features too. E.g. I have you and my cousin in my friend list. But I don’t want you to see my location every time, you should see only if I decide.

Friend: yeah true....I don’t want everybody to know that I am in the bar :-)

Me: correct.

Friend: Yeah. You can hide yourself. In that case app will show only your last known public location

Me: but then no one will see me right? I should have granular settings to say who should see me and who shouldn't. Show my location to Everyone or Selected ones.

Friend: Yes

Me: I went to bar and broadcasted my location to everyone. This happened y'day. Now I’m at work but I’m not broadcasting

Friend: ok

Me: should it still show the bar as my location?

Friend: It shouldn't.

Me: Yes. But the thing is so how do you decide when to show me or not

Friend: if you are not broadcasting, the map will not show you - even your last location.

Me: But when do i broadcast, ie i opened my app… Will it continuously be connected via GPRS or update periodically or updated when i press a button

Friend: You need to open the app to broadcast. But may be we can work on making the updater run in the background. it will periodically connect and send and recieve data

Me: ok so say it will connect every 5 minutes and update and standby

Friend: We can have a priority for outbound updates - means when your location changes, it has to be updated fast but only when you change location, second priority is for updating friends locations on the map, which can be time. So if you don't move from your place and the map is open it connects every 5 minutes to check your friends’ positions. If you move it will connect immediately and update your position. If your app is closed it updates only when your location changes.

Me: That’s good. But I think we should also consider having the time interval for outbound updating. i.e. I should be able to switch off the on location change update and say connect every one hour or 5 minutes.. For both outbound and inbound updates.

Friend: Yeah the on location change thing works well if I’m in the city. If I’m going for a long drive the connections will be faster and internet usage will be more - right?

Me: Yes

Friend: Sounds interesting. We will do this.

Enter latitude

Well we just saved some time by not attempting to do the app. Google just added the latitude feature to the new version of the mobile map application. I can set to update my location automatically or manually and it shows me on the map. The manual update allows me to choose from options like Google map’s “my location”, manually point a location on the map or just type a location. Which means the map only helps you but never forces you to use its powers. The auto update also asks me if it should update even if the app is closed. Very nice.

Once I set my location I can invite other people from my Gmail contacts. Oh ya it also shows me who else in my contacts is already using latitude. I can quickly share my location with others who requested my location. Have granular privacy setting for each and every user. Wow.

What I didn’t like

To switch between auto and manual update I have to do multiple clicks coz it’s hidden under the privacy settings page. Should have been little more visible. Also I don’t know what the time intervals between every GPRS update are. And I can’t do anything about it. Also when I change my display pic on mobile to make it less pixelated, it passes the same image to Google talk to make it look bad on comps. But I think thats minor. I’m not complaining.

After all 'where are you' has indeed become a thing of the past!!

Android vs iPhone?

2009-01-16T19:38:00.003+05:30

As I talked about Android some days ago, My friend who is currently working on Android projects pinged me to talk more on it

Friend: I watched the videos, seems pretty neat! though the phone seems quite bulkier than the iPhone..

Me: :) I would say, Android should not be compared to iphone, may be to start with we can compare, but ultimately they will be two different gadgets

Friend: But they are launching it as a competitor in the same space

Me: That’s the easiest to do when you start. Remember Gmail? When gmail came they just said it gives 1 GB storage space, which was easy to make people take it

Friend: True... but its not like the 1gb thing was just a carrot... they have still kept up with it and maintained it..

Me: Yes. But 1 GB is the last thing u use Gmail for now… right?

Friend: True.. absolutely.. I have not used the iphone… but at a very basic app to app thing.. it will boil down to the same wont it?

Me: Bringing out a brand new phone experience challenge has already done by apple. Now Google doesn’t have to repeat it, it will just say it’s like iphone to start with. The common thing in both the phones is they have really played down the “phone” aspect of it.

Friend: It will be a phone.. which lets you do things.. only difference being that since its open source.. experiments with it would be higher..

Me: The user has nothing to do with open source

Friend: True... you n me don’t have.. But as a whole its easier to build stuff on top of it right ?

Me: Yes. It’s like your computer. What I’m saying is its early to be directly compared to iphone. iPhone is all about experiences and Android will be of affordable and powerful things which u can do using a handheld device.

Friend: Longer run... I’m sure its gonna surpass the iphone in more that being just a phone.

Me: The objective of Android and iPhone is not to build a great phone. Phone is just a part of the feature. They will go on to become powerful handheld computers like the Mac and windows machines. I don’t know if I will ever compare Mac with a windows machine when I go to buy a computer. I will be clear on that. I will only compare machines in the same platform with a hardware perspective. For me Mac and Windows are two different products… even though on a high level they are two different computer brands. A couple of my friends have a Mac and windows for doing separate things. They might have some similar features and functionality overlap though…

Friend: Hmm

Me: Objective of Google is to make users use only their stuff for computing, tomorrow they might come with a Google TV :P which runs on top of Sony or Samsung

Friend: hehehehe! Wont be surprised... ! That would make it quite interesting I’d say.. !

Me: so your point of being the G phone bulky is least of Google’s problem, people will still look at HTC, Sony, Motorola and Samsung for options on hardware

Friend: do they have a system wherein i can have my tv on cable n online at the same time?

Me: I don’t know. I know there is Apple TV

Friend: Google might become like a service then!

Me: No... OS or OS like

Friend: yeah. i guess..

Me: It’s like this you can buy Samsung laptops, Dell or HP, but ultimately you r going to use Windows

Friend: hehe yes!

Me: So the laptop being bulky is not Microsoft’s headache, that’s something that the hardware company should figure out

Friend: :)

Me: Btw it’s all in the air OK, I really don’t know what their real strategy etc is

Friend: Yeah. Well. When it comes to Google you can hardly tell what the theory behind it is

Me: Yes

I retire. Google hire me... :P

Sky's the limit

2009-01-07T00:41:00.002+05:30

I was watching all those cool Android videos the other day, which I think is clearly going to have an edge among the iPhone droolers if positioned right, and that’s when it struck me that whatever I was seeing were only a start of what Google wants to attain as their ultimate goal of being the omnipresent in the digital world. Whatever Android does on phone is exactly what I’m going to expect from Google on my desktop in the coming years. May be they just chose to start early on mobile as there is a clear opportunity there at the moment and make it slowly on desktops.

Even though Google has already emerged as the undisputed king in the internet, its Chrome, not a fat ass OS as we think, that is going to turn the game around for Google on desktop. I’m no one to predict anything in the digital world but this is what I think which is going to happen or at least would like to happen.

Chrome won’t be a run of the mill web browser which will compete with IE or Firefox but their aim will be to remain light weight in terms of features but focus more on making Google’s products work well on it. I have already started using it as I’m a user of most of Google’s web services and I think they work the best on Chrome. Remember I have always been an IE user and no other browser was ever able to convince me to dump IE for whatever reasons till Chrome happened.

Now as Google has me using its products on its browser, here is my wish list for the future

Chrome should remember me as a Google user; i.e. I login and it knows what I want, my favorites, my history and geography.
All Google products on chrome as an integrated environment; i.e. Chrome as a one stop application which has search, email, calendar, contacts, things to read and write, pictures, videos, music, docs, maps, other websites, file storage and every other thing I use computer for.
All the Google apps available offline i.e. I can open Chrome to draft a gmail even when I’m not plugged into internet.
Plugins which work well with the integrated apps.

Simply whatever things I can do on my Android phone and Chrome on desktop should be almost the same.