Visual Google & Ideologies of Web Design

just come across this nifty small add-on webservice from ggler. It does a commanding job. All it does is using google's search algorithm, it takes the search results from google supliment with the thumnail view of the website in the search.

Good tool for usage from the designer's perspective.

Ideologies of Webdesign:

The master is back. I am talking about Jacob Nielson of UseIt. This time on alert box he counters the user-centric design over a designer-centric design aptly titled "Mastery, Mystery, and Misery: The Ideologies of Web Design". read the full article here and a small excerpt below

The original ideology of hypertext and the World Wide Web, as expressed by Vannevar Bush (1945), Ted Nelson (1960), and Tim Berners-Lee (1991) makes individual users the masters of the content and lets them access and manipulate it in any way they please. User empowerment requires perfect usability and simplicity: only if users know what every design element means will they feel in control of the medium.

Search engines are the archetypical embodiment of the mastery ideology. They place users firmly in the driver's seat and take them where they want to go. You can get anywhere on the Web using a subservient interface that accepts any words you throw at it and serves up a simple, linear list of rank-ordered choices.

Anti IE Campaign

The Web Standards Project (WaSP) launched an ad campaign to get people to switch from Microsoft's Internet Explorer browser due to its lack of respect for web standards. Wasp was created in 1998 by frustrated web developers. Modeled on Apple Computer's testimonial campaign, the Browse Happy site shows users several case studies where different types of people benefited from ditching the industry's most popular browser.

Remember, months before, i was talking about switching to Firefox as my default browser not just because i respect standards, but also because of the security & comforts Firefox provides us. Now it is happier to learn that corporates & enterprises are also looking into switching to standards & standard-compliant browsers for better browsing experience. I am not against Bill gates, I am just against their policy of not adhering to standards set by World Wide Web Consortium though they are one of the corporate members in that.

Support Standards!! Save an error free, accessible, usable web for the future!!

Apple Unveiled. Microsoft thinking & macromedia is working

Last week, Apple unveiled the production bundle. The much awaited motion is being shipped. Looks like the small & medium producers are finally getting what the big budget studios can afford to work on. Technology works. Apple is introduced the "Production bundle" a deadly combo of 3 products including Final Cut Pro with HD, Motion & DVD Studio Pro . Just curious to watch, how Motion will change the compositing & effects landscape against the mightly After Effects, Combustion kinda competition.

But unfortunately, for Microsoft, things are bit awry. "Longhorn" is still a long way to go.. Increasing pressure on server market by linux pushes microsoft to seriously consider advertising & promotion of their servers.

Macromedia is ready for their next release. On a side note, after much interval, MM has released the new player 7 for linux. Having learnt the lesson from the release of their MX 2004 suite releases, MM is pursuing a sure & steady step for their Coldfusion servers...learn more on CF server & flash integration in the new enhancement code named "BlackStone".

More to learn before i take my next project so......

Japanese Companies & great Indian landscape

Japanese companies in India, are the hallmark of superior pricing & quality. Though japanese companies are in india for decades, in terms of business, they haven't made any great impact in the enviroment.

Here comes the Korean chaeopals LG & Samsung, both are brutally aggressive & understands the great indian middle class mindset. Within a decade of their existence, they have become indispensable in the market place & leads the market in certain industry product lines.

On the other hand, Japanese companies had problems in understanding India. They believe, that quality comes with a hefty price tag. Look at the fortunes of Sanyo, Akai, Panasonic and joining the race is Sony.

"CLOSE on the heels of shutting down its audio manufacturing unit, consumer electronics firm Sony India has suspended production at its colour television facility and said that it was evaluating whether to close down the CTV unit.

"We are evaluating the viability of CTV manufacturing unit in India. At this moment, we cannot say whether the company will continue with the unit," - Sony closes its plants

One of my friend works in National Panasonic's chennai factory and complained that there are huge piles of stocks worth few crores lying idle in their factory and the Japanese majors seriously considering the shutting down of the factory. Poor state of affairs for Japanese in india, like their haiku, their business dominance will be short & sweet only in certain areas.

Nice Post on Google

How google will be the supreme power online....it's fictious, yet off for a good read. August 2009: How Google beat Amazon and Ebay to the Semantic Web (Ftrain.com)

Shatter your dreams about India's best batting lineup....

Welcome to the reality. We lost bitterly to SL in the finals. If you like me, watched this tournament thoroughly, we were never in the picture to make it to the finals. We got into the finals thru' the backdoor by winning the match against SL with 4 runs. Pakistan played brilliant cricket thruout this tournament except for their shameful match against SL.

Winning & Losing the match is part of the game. We lost the World Cup and we lost couple of finals, but what is frustrating this time is the way we lost it.

Unanswerable questions which came to my mind are:

1. With 229 to chase, which is less than 5 per our, what was our gameplan?
2. With 2 early wickets, why we got into the shell and allowed Zoysa & Vaas dictate terms on our batsman?
3. What is Mr. Rahul "Wall" Dravid doing in this series except for few good performance against minnows ?
4. Except for the fielding & long time gone "NatWest" win, What is Mr. Kaif doing in the indian team?
5. When part time bowlers on our side itself dictated terms, is the Indian team haven't thought about the formidable spin bowling attack from SL in the later half of the day ?
6. What the fuck SACHIN thinks he is doing ?
7. Is he playing for his records or for his team?
8. Why we let the run rates climb steeply even the situation can be controlled with Yuvraj & Sachin on the crease?
9. Why is Sachin never spoke to their partners when they are struggling against the spin bowlers?
10. Why dont we for a change, change our opening pair to Zaheer Khan & Harbajan Singh.?
11. Are we good in paper, that we have the best batting line-up ?
12. What is Laxman, Dravid & Kaif wanted to do, by throwing their wkts in hands?
13. Are we slowing turning into a bowler friendly country from a batsman friendly team?

and last but not least, is that really true, that when Sachin plays, India fails.