May 2013
40 posts
3 tags
The Great Workplace Dilemmas of our time
WFH ( Yahoo)
NSFW ( Tumblr)
6 tags
Jolla - The Phone
Yes those ex Nokia folks, who left Nokia in disillusionment (over marrying Windows as an OS), to create a new phone are on the verge of launching one.
Based on MeeGo, Jolla will have its own proprietary Sailfish OS, a linux based mobile operating system, which will be open sourced and will be an integrated platform across mobile phones, tablets and smart TV’s.
Sailfish for starters will...
5 tags
SO you were talking about mobile video?
Here is an infographic on the entire ecosystem, to make you blink and then …..
Think.
Then spend some time in actually learning about each of their capabilities.
Then try and decide what solves your business requirement.
Till then shut up.
And read.
From the article ,” Inside the massive mobile video ecosystem” on Business Insider
You can download the more detailed...
8 tags
HMTL5 vs Native: Who is winning?
This one is a raging hot debate:
Article by Josh Luger for Business Insider
Read the detailed analysis on Business Insider here.
4 tags
Why I Like Tumblr?
Because it is the easiest, simplest and most relevant blogging platform with the most intuitive mobile interface to create and publish content
6 tags
With Tumblr
Yahoo is buying a media platform which has amazing social and mobile capabilities.
A long curve ball to stay relevant.
6 tags
Yahoo and tumblr both end in ! marks
“David Karp on the tumblr acquisition:
Everyone, I’m elated to tell you that Tumblr will be joining Yahoo.
Before touching on how awesome this is, let me try to allay any concerns: We’re not turning purple. Our headquarters isn’t moving. Our team isn’t changing. Our roadmap isn’t changing. And our mission – to empower creators to make their best work and get it in front of the audience...
8 tags
“We promise not to screw it up. Tumblr is incredibly special and has a great...”
– Marissa Meyer on the Tumblr Acquisition.
Now you can all relax. Then watch some cat gifs.
Amen!
6 tags
Would i like it if Yahoo buys Tumblr ?
No.
Though the rumors are rife.
Mostly because I never get to see the acquisitions Yahoo makes after they have been bought.
And I still find Yahoo as a web destination, quite boring.
6 tags
4 tags
The Ruins of Villa Epecuen
Amazing photo feature in The Atlantic
Back in the 1920s, a tourist village was established along the shore of Lago Epecuen, a salt lake some 600 kilometers southwest of Buenos Aires, Argentina. The resort town, named Villa Epucuen, soon had a railroad station, and it thrived for several decades, peaking in the 1970s with a population of more than 5,000. Around the same time, a long-term weather...
8 tags
Chartkick- load your JS chart graphics faster
We all love nice looking colourful charts ( 3d) on our web and mobile platforms. But most of these make the page load slower.
3d Visualizations of Pie Charts, Graph Charts, Bar Charts. Column Diagrams from web databases are generally rendered over standard JS using jQuery which sometimes can cause timeouts or may not be rendered properly if the page doesn’t load fast.
Chartkick aims to...
4 tags
Raspberry Pi ships camera module
Raspberry PI’s camera module is now shipping.
The five megapixel fixed-focus shooter — which only measures 25 x 20 x 9mm — can snap 2,592 x 1,944-pixel images and capture video at 1,080p (30fps), 720p (60fps) and VGA (60 or 90fps).
And yes just for $25 from RS Components or from Premier Farnell/Element14
Example command prompts to activate the camera:
Capture an image in jpeg...
8 tags
BBM comes to iOS and Android as a standalone...
True that.
Question is - is it too late in the day ? For Blackberry?
Messaging services have been slowly funneling traffic away from social media platforms for a while now and the mobile phone is truly starting to reflect what it always was - the most effective social network of them all.
Blackberry is late.
But it does give credence to another rising trend out there.
Doesn’t...
6 tags
ESPNs relation with Twitter- Twitter's march into...
Twitter’s march into the television kingdom continues unabated. WSJ’s new article announces the details of an expanding partnership between ESPN and Twitter.
You can read the details here.
But from a digital trend perspective here are the interesting parts one needs to think about.
The symbiotic connection:
The closer ties spotlight the symbiotic business needs of Twitter and the...
7 tags
About Dropplets
Hat tip to Arvindh Sundar for this.
Recently he moved his entire blog from Wordpress on to Dropplets, a simple markdown blogging platform. It’s database less and so can install on any server in just about 30 seconds.
Now I have been vocal about my quest for a simpler blogging platform for a while, because most blogging platforms have metamorphosed into complicated CMS full of feature creep...
4 tags
Jony Ive on Design
Ben Thomson recollects a personal experience from a talk show and gives an amazing write up on Jony Ive’s philosophy of Design down at Stratechery
One of the things that’s interesting about design [is that] there’s a danger, particularly in this industry, to focus on product attributes that are easy to talk about. You go back 10 years, and people wanted to talk about product attributes...
4 tags
IBM predicted wearable computing 14 years ago
Yes. I know. It’s all about Google Glass these days anywhere on the web.
But it does create a sense of being overawed, to know that IBM predicted the hardware design of what looks very similar to Google Glass as early as in 1999.
Yes. You got that.
14. Years. Ago
4 tags
LivIcons
For web designers out there, this would be an interesting place to spend some time.
LivIcons is a project dedicated to animated icons with the power of scalable vector graphics.
You can download the entire set from Code Canyon here.
Some features worth mentioning are
LivIcons are based on SVG (scalable vector graphic) in all modern browsers and on VML (Vector Markup Language) in IE6 - IE8. So...
4 tags
The postal data conversion operators - curtain...
Wonderful feature story by Ron Nixon in the NY Times on the US Postal Service’s data conversion operators, a techie title for someone who deciphers unreadable addresses.
You should read it here.
It envelopes you with a sense of nostalgia and a sense of loss, as in September, the post office plans to close one of its two remaining centers where workers try to read the scribble on envelopes and...
9 tags
Ray Kurzweil on IBM's Watson
Ray Kurzweil has held many hats. Accomplished scientist, entrepreneur, among the foremost thinkers in the realm of artificial intelligence and most recently as Director of Engineering at Google.
The naturally held belief is that Kurzweil will use his 50 years of expertise in AI and bring it together with the learnings from Knowledge Graph to revolutionize semantic search for Google.
Fascinating...
8 tags
The future of native PC applications on the web
This came in yesterday.
Mozilla is partnering with cloud-based 3D graphics rendering firm OTOY to develop a new codec called ORBX.js, which is capable of streaming high-definition video and Windows, Linux or Mac OS X apps to any browser that supports HTML5.
What is does tell us:
ORBX.js is a downloadable HD codec written in JS and WebGL which means were talking about improving a web...
6 tags
It took me too long to realize
And understand, that software coding and hardware design was the closest be being an artiste in the realm of technology.
Its pure art. Period.
It’s the true form of creation that can create technological change.
And though I got a good enough opportunity to walk that line early in my career I chose not to, because of some silly preconceived notions.
The stupid naivety of youth.
2 tags
3 tags
An idea
Is not an innovation.
An innovative idea is a great idea, but still- not innovation.
Let’s not confuse ideas with innovation.
Innovations do start with an idea, but are not tactical, have a long term value and generally aim at solving critical problems.
2 tags
Twitter is
Probably the most effective social TV tool.
So now let’s everyone add a hashtag to our TV ads, soap opera’s, serials, movies,cooking shows, news, run it on primetime, and ask TV viewers to use that tag and join an online conversation.
Let’s define it in business parlance as this is how we are drawing your television audience to social media and increasing...
1 tag
One of the easier jobs
In the world is to try your hand at social media marketing.
You can be an expert in less than a year.
In no other skill set / job can you gain expertise level in that short a time-frame.
Give it a shot.
3 tags
When
A social media campaign adds thousands of new followers, millions of impressions and fans overnight, apart from mutual congratulations from other social media junkies, glitzy presentations which go to great pains to define something as engagement, and award submission frenzy , what insight does it really tell you ( the brand) ?
You have many “engaged” fans?
Those...
4 tags
The Google Page Rank Algorithm Visualisation
4 tags
The shift is coming
” From Social to Digital Engagement - The Shift is Coming”.
Quite an interesting post with pictures, and images and concepts like Influence loops
But it raised in my mind some questions?:
So till now Social Engagement was different from Digital Engagement?
Customer’s didn’t take a journey before?
Social media was not one part of overall digital media ?
A search...
4 tags
It is mind boggling
That the best ( and only) innovations that have happened in technology in the last five years have been in the fundamental realm of communication. Of enabling cat pictures to reach people across the world, faster and in multiple ways.
The fundamental nature of the web was to communicate. Hence all tech innovations built on it have overtly relied on making communication more sexy.
But...
2 tags
6 tags
They say that one shouldn't scroll too much
But I think it’s a “Meh” argument.
I hate tabs and the entire multil-tab, sub-tab architecture. It’s ugly.
For ages I have heard experts counsel on how all the links should be in the viewing area, so that we can maximise hits, but it’s kinda lame.
If a person is not interested in your content, he wont click even if he has a 100 links to click on.
I love the one...
2 tags
The Expertise Issue
When experts start spending time, pontificating on their own knowledge to prove their level of expertise, then there is no solution.
There is debate.
There are useless discussions on holistic queries which have no bearing to the problem in hand.
There is a game of self satisfaction and a pregnant punctuation of an unsaid dialogue from old hindi films -
Do you know who I am ?
Nope.
I...
4 tags
Retracting a Tweet
Nope that is not possible. Twitter does not allow people to rectify, correct , edit a tweet which has already been posted.
If it is some horrifying untruth of faux pax you have already tweeted, you can try and delete the tweet, but if its already been shared and retweeted the tweet stays- floating in the interwebs, reminding you of your shame and ignominy.
Stonly Baptiste, a software developer...
3 tags
Why I like Crashlytics
Is because it is simple but effective.
During the development of any app ( and for that matter even after its been launched), one critical component is the beta phase, where standardization of bugs happen and the app often crashes.
However, more often than not it is a difficult job to accurately pinpoint why an app actually crashed.
Crashlytics helps in just doing that.
It helps in deep...
5 tags
Tapstream
It is a nice little tool which helps you solve one of the most frustrating features of the app economy ( that is if you are an app developer). - Knowing where your app downloads came from?
Which ad networks delivered?
Which social network drove user adoption?
Where did your most high value users( those who actually use your app regularly) came from?
What’s more is that it allows you a...
3 tags
Social Media Strategy
Is just one part of your overall digital marketing strategy which is again just one part of your overall marketing strategy.
Like Really.
8 tags
Betaworks fixation with news
Marco Arment just sold Instapaper.
And with that acquisition, Betaworks neatly wrapped their fingers around arguably the best ” read it later” app available today.
So the company which own’s Digg - which uses algorithms to decide on trending stories, Bit.Ly - which shortens tweet URLs and can also analyse how many times a link has been clicked, Chartbeat- which gives real...
4 tags
The thing about email
Is that it still works. That is why every other day you will get a mail in your inbox from all the social networks that you are part of , reminding you of the picture your friend has shared, the new cat video which is making the rounds, the invite you have ignored for so long, the tweet’s that you may just be interested in and so on.
And all this just to remind you to log in.
One. More....
April 2013
14 posts
4 tags
Facebook is becoming
More and more like the Myspace of old. With the status updates shifting to the right and Facebook telling us to add Movies, Books and TV Shows right on our profile, along with the using of emoticons to set our mood and whatnot, it is almost starting to make me feel nostalgic.
Innovation much?
But then i guess a bit of inspired repackaging doesn’t hurt, though for the first time, this...
5 tags
5 tags
4 tags
Can you select your emotion?
If you ask Facebook, you can.
The verb economy which started with the Like button and has been endlessly debated on extending into “want”, “need”, “buy” territories gets one more fillip in the form of yellow smileys.
Now to wait for marketers to start having a smiley strategy.
What’s interesting is that this was a standard feature in MySpace in its...
4 tags
Just because you are giving it for free
Does not mean it is not helping you to earn. Often what you freely give away, sets a domino effect which creates a trigger at a completely different point, from where the payment comes.
Ask Justin Timberlake. He understands this better than most marketers and sales folks.
For his comeback album the 20/20 experience, Justin aired select album songs for free- everywhere. The radio, the Super Bowl,...
4 tags
Home
Is not really perfect. But it is where ease is. Where we can be ourselves obsessively. It is imperfect, but it works. it is where the basics are taken care off really well. It is where even our disconnected connections work in sync with the functional ones.
Facebook home is something like that. Not an application, not also quite an OS, it just gives you enough to double up your original social...
2 tags
Now
We are stuck in meanwhile between what we thought would happen and what in reality is really going to happen.
2 tags
3 tags
If you really know
Then show it in the work that you PERSONALLY ship.
Not in words.
