Posts tagged user interfaces

notes: tech this, tech that

Apr 16th

For a change, I decided to jot down the thoughts that were coming to me while I waded through month-old Reader items. Warning: It gets pretty long.

[Yes, I actually have a set of Reader items that I ensure I catch up with daily, and another set that I'm sure I will always be behind the curve on reading. What's the point? Its the only way that I can ensure that I'm somewhat current with what goes on in the world.]

Some background: the launch of Buzz meant I went about adding a bunch of people on Reader/Buzz that I wouldn’t have known of otherwise. Louis Gray, Tyler Romeo, Jesse Stay and a whole host of other active “technologists” came to my attention as a result of Buzz. Given my aforementioned division of current and ancient news, clearly, I’m always going to be behind the curve on the most happening stuff in the internet-verse — even given how I’ve tried to balance out the “breaking news” feeds and the “info” feeds.

Over the last couple of days I realized that as long as I stay somewhat current with my “friends” shared items… I’m just fine for the latest and greatest in the tech-verse. Twitter’s Chirp conference notes – check. iPad notes – check. Latest Gmail features – check. Expectations for iPhone4, FB F8, Google i/o – check. Of course, when I say “friends” I mean the aforementioned list of people… all of whom are probably wonderful but barely know I exist. In fact most of them probably don’t know I exist at all. But their connection on this Google network is probably the best thing ever. I don’t miss out, and I get to stick to my own reading trends. This use of social networking really appeals to me — really defines what I would like from it.

Read On… »

I’ve personally starting finding the charm of general social networking fading steadily. Facebook was interesting once, and fun to check in on a couple of times a day.. but my frequency has reduced to maybe once a day. One of the major reasons was FB pushing that “awesome” new feed more and not letting me customize my UI (earlier I could put my lists of interest on top and the general feed below, but now its all fixed in place). And this sucks. Maybe FB Purity will make me go back to using FB as I won’t have half the tripe that FB somehow assumes I’ll be interested in (Really? Someone I barely know commented on some FB activity by someone I don’t care about?) FB seems to have assumed that all my FB friends are bosom buddies that I want to know every little tiny detail about. Can that ever be true, especially on FB? Do they not realize that people just use FB as a proxy for a real relationship with a LOT of people? But, to return to topic, the activities on FB seem trivial at best. At worst, banal.

Which brings me to Twitter. For the longest time, I’ve avoided the service (yes, I thought 140 character thoughts could be nothing but “banal”). Based on some recent experiences though — work related and otherwise — it seems a lot more interesting. The obvious allure of a new service is there (I remember updating FB status twice or thrice a day when I joined. Now its barely once a month, if that). But the interactivity on Twitter appears hugely increased. On FB, I am still a consumer of other people’s activities, just as they are of mine. The interaction is limited to when they “comment”/react on something I post about. Sort of like this blog, but on a much larger and much more “social” scale. But Twitter appears to encourage conversation to a huge extent. How much will actually be meaningful will obviously depend on who you’re talking to. For e.g. talking to this guy seems to epitomize banality to me. What worries me? The information overload. On Reader, my feed organization keeps evolving. I move feeds around. I keep checking which feeds are not really interesting to me any more (too few — once they’re added, they generally stay forever. I even have a category of “dead” feeds). I know all about Twitter Lists and their organizational ability, but it still seems like Twitter will just be one more service that I will have to manage, check in on, and follow up with. And that kills it.

I was honestly hoping that Buzz would form the “one-interface-fits-all” for me. Anything but. It has actually become its own little network, mostly populated by the early adopters. There are imports from different services, true. But without some effective filtering, it just gets too noisy to use. Consider that I currently have to mute all the high-frequency Reader imports from people. I barely bother to look at the headline.. I actually mute based on who the activity is by. Why? I’m going to spend time reading it in Reader later anyway. So then what does Buzz become? Restricted to my friends i.e. a more social interface for my friends shared items and thoughts. Its even been found that the most Buzz activity is for articles that are Buzz specific i.e. not imports into Buzz. Articles written for Buzz. Buzz has thus ended up as another service that I have to check in on and manage. My Buzz usage has gone down to once every few days because about 90% of the activity on it has pretty much become imports from other services. You’ll say: “Wait. what? You want Buzz to be the all-in-one service and you’re complaining about imports? Something is not adding up.” My issue is not imports per se. My issue is the lack of filtering ability for the imports. For e.g. I get over 20 emails a day on one of my email accounts. 80% of them are filtered by Gmail to go to particular folders — because they can be checked later. It should the same with Buzz. For e.g. I should be able to filter out Reader shared items to a separate view, as I already check them in Reader. Can I move to only checking them in Buzz? No, because some of the people I follow are not on Buzz but are on Reader. And so my experience with Buzz has further soured my experience with social networks.

Moving on. The Windows Phone 7. I’m dallying between 2 POVs. There is the one that M$ is essentially replaying what Apple has been doing with the iPhone. Closed system – check. Closed source – check. v1 released without copy-paste, multi-tasking and other features that are ubiquitous with other phones (including the iPhone today) – check. But on the flip side, it will integrate Windows and Office beautifully. It makes use of the Zune interface, and maybe will use the Zune software for syncing. Both of which are absolute joys to behold. A sheer lesson on beautiful type and having a beautiful intuitive interface. Considering that Apple = iTunes, which is also the biggest piece of bloated crap on the Windows ecosystem.. having a beautiful intuitive software interface suddenly makes the hardware all the more interesting to me. Which brings me back to the phone. The interface. The idea of data over function (i.e. info hubs which collate information vs. functions which collect specific information) is very alluring. There is a faint parallel with my want for a “one social media interface fits all” and my thoughts about this phon. Which M$ seems to be about to deliver on. Unfortunately aforementioned weirdness/caveats detract from my enthusiasm for the phone.

Next up. Playing with the PC. I was working the other day when I suddenly realized that my computer was concurrently running (1) Zune for music, (2) MATLAB processing images, (2) GIMP editing a high-res image (3) Fx & Chrome with different mail accounts open, (4) Miscellaneous Explorer and IrfanView windows. And in all of this it wasn’t hiccuping in the least. A far cry from being unable to run full-screen Flash for over 1.5 years as my graphics cards was frying

This is the 701st post on this blog. They’ve not all been the most informative, the most insightful posts in the world. But they exist. And I’m actually starting to think that #1000 could be a lot closer than I think if I remembered to actually hit publish once in a while.

p.s. There were more Reader items, but I figured this was enough for now

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google, microsoft, social networks, techie, thoughts, user interfaces

notes: buzzing around

Feb 17th

Posted by SEV in staying.interested

No comments

Google’s latest experiment – Buzz – has been launched to the world recently, with varying degrees of appreciation, hate, irritation and all the reactions that every new social idea is greeted with. Personally, it is a social media outlet/inlet that I can get on board with – seeing as how it integrates nicely into my existing Gmail/Google experience. It has its caveats though.. features/glitches/annoyances that I wish they had ironed out before getting it out the door:

Read On… »

Google Reader posts can be easily imported to Buzz – and comments on Buzz are back-ported to Reader. However, liking and reading of Reader imports in Buzz are not back-ported into Reader. Irritating in some cases, when there’s nothing much to see. Good in other cases, as I may miss something/want to re-buzz something.
Privacy settings from Reader are correctly applied for such posts (unsurprising, as the dashboard for Reader privacy is still through Reader) – so if I can’t comment on your shared item in Reader, I can’t in Buzz either. However, the status of those settings is not correctly shown in Buzz. Everything imported from Reader appears as ‘Public’, when in reality, only the item is public – the discussion ability is anything but for the ‘Public’.
Google seems confused as to what they want to make Buzz. A single life-stream source that you check for all your social updates? Or just another interface to their social services – to popularize them more? I would have thought the former.
Setting privacy settings in a particular way is not easy. Needs a lot of thought, as each Google service still makes use of its own privacy settings. For example, I didn’t want to see a particular person’s Reader shared items in Buzz. Unfollowing them has a global effect – I unfollow them on Reader too in the process. I ended up unfollowing them and adding the RSS feed of their shared items in Reader separately. Crude, but effective. Similar ideas have been suggested for re-buzzing.
A cool idea is posting via email to Buzz, but the functionality is more of a status update than a post — more like short updates posted to Twitter. The power of length offered by Buzz is not exploited as the body text is ignored for such a Buzz update. Sad really, as would have been such a simple yet refreshing re-buzz idea.
‘@’ replies are nigh-impossible when you do not know the person’s Gmail ID that is associated with the Google profile.
Muting is golden.

Feature requests I have galore: lists/groups support, ordering/collapsing messages, re-buzzing, additional import options into Buzz, selective streaming for my Buzz feed etc etc.

I’ve discovered whole hosts of new people (who have also discovered me) and have already had some interesting conversations using it. Most privacy complaints and issues I’ve read with are minor or non-existent: I firmly see BIG things in Buzz’s future.

If only it would get here faster.

(to be added to if I think of more)

Update (26 Feb 2010): Via Reader found a series of comments I had missed on a Reader-Buzz export. Searching through my Buzzes in Gmail showed me I muted this post. However, opening it up there does not show me any comments on it at ALL. According to this post muting a Buzz apparently mutes me from ALL future comments on that post in Buzz, to the extent that the related Buzz in my Gmail does not show the new comments after I muted it i.e. muting completely silences the Buzz conversation for me from that point on. Even if I’m ‘@’ mentioned in it. Need to use it more sparingly.

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google, online, social networks, techie, thoughts, user interfaces

personas-ization

Nov 5th

Posted by SEV in staying.general

1 comment

Somehow Personas is making me regress. Back to a time when I first started using Firebird 0.7, and hacked my way into theming it (the Firefox of those days did not look pretty – it looked like what it was: a quick, nifty version of the Mozilla Suite Browser). And then with Firefox 0.9, official themes could be easier downloaded from the official Firefox site. My only irritation being that you could not easily preview them. Or use them (restarting was required, as far as I remember).

Worst of all, such themes would screw up in some tiny detail.. given that by this time Firefox was a permanently opened application in my Windows – the tiny detail would eventually grow to a huge gigantic flaw. One I just could not miss. It might be just the lack of theming the edge of a particular menu. But that was enough. Yeah, I know. Big huge non-existent problem.

And so, I quit theming. Indeed I scorned the idea. Who would do something like that? I even quit theming my Thunderbird. They seemed mere frivolous activities, for someone who did not appreciate the true utilitarian look of the browser. Eventually my entire computer would be regressed to its bare-bones look, grey and blue windows and all. As simple as you can get. Stark. Snappy.

Dull?

With UberT, theming developed into a challenge. How far down can you tweak XP to look like another OS? Longhorn (now Vista) previews were coming out, and just as quickly being made into themes. Flyakite OS X for the pure Mac experience. Indeed, I remember at the WWW2006 conference everyone was puzzled how my “Mac” was behaving like an XP. My Firefox? Got a Safari theme. But I remember my constant search to improve its look – none of the ones available were just quite good enough.

Yeah, I know. Continuing big huge non-existent problem.

Since I moved to Vista, though, such endeavors have ceased. Some amount of basic customization seemed enough. Wallpapers, task-bar/window color (always black!), transparency. It appeared as though Windows had evolved perfectly in this one aspect to fulfill our need for customization. Meanwhile Gmail added themes, as did iGoogle and so on and forth.

And Firefox remained in its default form. No more big huge non-existent problem! Even if UberT saw one and insisted that Glasser was the greatest thing for Firefox and Aero ever.

Now we’re at Windows 7. Themes are more neat than ever before. Nifty and pretty. One-click install into Windows from the site. Yes, yes, my Firefox remained its usual default self. Until now.

I had heard of Personas (during the Fx 3 release) but had never really paid any attention to it. Until I installed Fx 3.6 Beta. Personas built-in. Which I discovered by accident while reading the release notes.

The simplicity boggles the mind. Go to site. Hover to preview. Click to install. No restart. On-the-fly theme switching. And it styles nothing more than the window itself. I’m not irritated that the developer didn’t get the menu color quite right.

Unfuckingbelievable.

Now that I read this post in retrospect, it seems like the silliest thing to post about.

But remember Rule #32 from Zombieland: Enjoy the little things.

So here I am.

firefox, techie, user interfaces

why linux is not for human beings

Nov 4th

Posted by SEV in staying.general

2 comments

having spent 3 hours of my life in trying to get a dual-monitor setup + compiz on ubuntu 8.10, i have come to the conclusion that it is simply impossible.

[note: this is on a machine with 2 X300SE ATI cards which are connected to a dell (1280x1024) and a sony (1024x768).]
observations:

ATI+ubuntu = configuration hell. always has been and always will be. make it the seventh hell of hells when you add a dual-head setup into the mix. nvidia (from all the forums) is apparently much nicer.

ubuntu natively picks up my monitors + resolutions. impressive.
compiz appears to need the restricted ATI drivers to even work, on this latest iteration. once they are in there, it just works (on a single screen setup). beautifully. memories of spending 5 hours grappling with xorg.conf are sweet mythology.
if one ditches compiz, and sticks to the open-source drivers, there’s still no scope of managing to ensure that different monitors run at different resolutions, and all work together to form a single desktop. the sony seems like the screen is extending way beyond the actual monitor with icons somewhere in the air above it.
the ATI catalyst GUI sucks. cannot set up monitors at different resolutions, does not understand how to arrange monitors, ends up setting up the 2 monitors as a single LARGE widescreen, $^%#^&^$…
default for all graphics configs (initially) is to clone outputs on both screens all the time. why?
due to this lack of configurability, i have to either downgrade res to 1024×768 on both and have wonky compiz effects, or not have compiz at all.
i somehow managed to enable a 2560×1024 (don’t ask) screen expanding across both monitors, to find that my cards only support upto 2048×2048 (ok, this is slightly invalid, but i was highly frustrated by this point anyway). ergo, compiz still won’t work.
ubuntu without compiz effects seems dinky to use, and somehow extremely non-intuitive without all the flashiness.

now, while i’ve always been a fan of the terminal and all the cool commands that you pull out of the hat in linux… why isn’t there even an alt-tab command in linux? or any apparently simple way to set it up? compiz has ultra-funky features, and ubuntu has…nothing? what sense does that make?

incidentally, i had to reboot after an update (first time ever, for a non-kernel update). nasty memory of windows rebooting in the middle of my experiments ensued.

i’m impressed with the ease of setup. ubuntu has come streets ahead since i used it last in 7.10. lack of user-interface customization tells. big time.

solution: back to winxp with ultramon installed. such simplicity. maybe i will now move to winvista-32 or 64 on this machine, just for the heck of it.

crossover works great though, installed office 2007 directly on ubuntu. very cool. too bad the one thing keeping me on windows is the customization, rather than office.

frustration, techie, user interfaces

chrome-d: disappointing

Sep 2nd

Posted by SEV in staying.thoughts

2 comments

the net is abuzz with the latest google move: google chrome. people are trying to figure out why ? what ? how ?

i type this post from chrome, and i see: a combo of ie8 and firefox3. to go. with bits of safari and opera all thrown in. even this review is just thrown together from initial impressions.

disclaimer: i firmly believe that firefox 3 is the best browser around.

back to the show.

we have speed dial. we have the ‘omnibar’. we have privacy. we have cool animations when you move tabs out of windows, for urls on pages, previews, search etc. we have download managers. we have auto-bookmarking. we have combined features from 3 different browsers which attempt to integrate together. and they do, somewhat decently.

however, i don’t like the philosophy.

Read On… »

tabs are actually seperate windows all grouped together. so chrome now has 5 entries in my windows task manager: ~~1 for each site i open~~ i don’t know what they are all for. does this mean that chrome has better memory management? for the 0.2 release, chrome is currently using 71 mb, when i have 2 tabs open.
there is a ‘chrome’ task manager with detailed stats. this looks neat and informative – still not relating to my windows task manager though. the download manager looks neat too, with details and a nice hour clock progress bar.
there’s no google integration. i was hoping to see a sign-in screen for google. chrome is google, therefore the interface should magically interface with google. 2 tiny mentions of google: statistics reporting, and gears. i don’t see options login to my bookmarks, reader, gmail. the point ? launching a ‘google’ browser – it should have been launched with complete google integration. wasn’t that the point of this browser ? i would have switched. or at least been more enthusiastic.
i now have a GoogleUpdate.exe sitting in the systray. why ?
i can’t set the web-page speed dial. it depends on my browsing history. thats a little silly. what if i watch a lot of pr0n ?
google search via omnibar, no seperate area. this takes a lot of getting used to.
i’m not checking for compatibility. i read that ajax (is supposedly better implemented) and flash are fine. i’m assuming most things will be broken while google or others run around setting up functionalities.

finally, the main reason i even opened this page to write: is it necessary ?

we have 3-4 browsers out there in common use, of which i would rate fx3 as being right on top. ie plays catch-up, and opera is not compatible enough to be judged. i have heard good things of safari, but i don’t like apple+i don’t like sneaky installs. google is a big player in fx, with many fx defaults remaining google-centric. then why the browser ? to herald the start of the operating system within a browser ? to herald web applications finally becoming desktop based ? what of google gears ? wouldn’t it have made more sense to release a bunch of google plugins to deliver this functionality to firefox ? or were there so many plugins that they just added a wrapper and made a new browser ? i foresee a lot of these features, neat as they are, coming to fx, and maybe even ie. i would not have expected google to stoop to microsoft-levels and attempt to take over the internet. they already own the web to a large extent, keeping themselves divorced from OS and that huge ditch would have been a nice way to ensure they remain ubiquitous. how long before chrome becomes a requirement to use google rather than an option ? chrome-centric features are bound to debut soon. ‘you can do a,b,c but if you want to find the nth root of pi, use google chrome!’.

i wonder, i wonder. is this the beginning or the end of google ?

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firefox, google, reviews, techie, user interfaces

interface renewed

Jul 8th

Posted by SEV in staying.general

4 comments

for the last 5 days, i’ve been on the ‘new’ microsoft interface. one simple comparison:

Explorer

Office

having followed the classic menus of ‘File’, ‘Edit’,'View’ over all their interfaces for the last 12 years, microsoft went ahead and completely revamped their interface. those buttons are hidden away, far from the human eye.

sleekness is one thing, i wonder which genius decided that those menus detracted from the UI…

microsoft, techie, user interfaces