Mar-5-2010

The value of physical touch – Get your users to touch your product – They will buy it – Link.

9 Tactics for rapid learning that most people have never heard of – Pegging, Metaphor, Diagramming, Speed Reading etc. – Link.

My comment on the above page:

I forgot to add, you can use visceralization and visualization for learning the meanings of new words (for improving your vocab for competitive exams like SAT, GMAT, IELTS, etc.) Simply construct a story around the phonetic representation of the word and associate the story with the meaning of the word. See the site MnemonicDictionary.com they have ready-made memorizable stories that can help you remember meanings of new and difficult words. You can also add another learning technique to this techniques of rapid learning list: that is, Mnemonics/Acronyms where you take the first letter of the things in the list you wanna remember and form a coherent sentence or acronym with it. For example for remembering the order of planets in the solar system, you could use ‘Mother Very Eagerly Made Jam Sandwiches Under No Protest’. The first letter of each word would represent, the planets Mercury Venus Earth Mars Jupiter etc. in that order… More mnemonics for learning are here: http://www.fun-with-words.com/mnem_example.html and here: http://www.mnemonic-device.eu/mnemonics/. I am not affiliated with both these sites (standard disclaimer).

The mind ‘actively erases memories to create space for new information’ – Link.

4 simple principles of getting to completion – Zen Habits – Link.

How I was able to ace exams without studying – Link.

The Internet will make you smarter, say experts. – Link.

Top 5 new rules of productivity – procrastination can be good and happiness can be the ultimate productivity enhancer and more – Link.

The effects of luxury on human behavior – Link.

Everyday acts of innovation – talks about five key ‘discovery skills’ – associating, questioning, observing, experimenting, networking – Link.

Mar-1-2010

Is it only me that would first see the capacity of the hard disk rather than how many songs it can hold, etc.

For example I came across this page Western Digital Studio 2 TB edition and saw that they have put this in the description

Up to 571,000 digital photos
Up to 500,000 songs (MP3)
Up to 50,000 songs (uncompressed CD quality)
Up to 150 hours of Digital Video (DV)
Up to 880 hours of DVD quality video
Up to 240 hours of HD video

I thought it would have made more sense to me (by way of being able to imagine the storage capacity) if they had put “2 TB storage capacity” along with this number count of which type of file and how many such files will fit on this disk. It may be because I am used to computing vocabulary more than speaking ‘ordinary-ese’.

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I recently explored what Mozilla Ubiquity is all about, and decided not to install it. Seems it is something like Activewords, where you can type in verbal commands for the browser to act upon. For example, if you type “map placename” then it goes and fetches the google maps for that place. I am also reminded of Yubnub that also does the same thing.

Now my thinking is that, there is already a search box at the top right of every browser made these days. Instead of typing ubiquity commands to the browser, the same command can be issued to the search enigne, and search engines do produce appropriate results. I think there will be more and more merging of command-line and the search box in search engines, where search engines operate in some sort of navigational dimension also.

For example, I often visit the SAT Question of the day and Museum of Modern Betas. I have memorized neither of the urls for the two sites I often visit. Their URLs are not conducive to easy rememberance and recall (i.e., they arent easy one word or two word dotcoms). I havent bookmarked them either. Instead, I just start a search whenever I feel like visiting these sites – with the keyword phrases ‘SAT question of the day’ and “MoMB” and the first result is usually correct to click on to be taken to the site. The Domain Naming System (DNS) was invented because people would have trouble remembering strings of IP addresses, now it has become difficult to remember the DNS text name itself, so search engines to the rescue! You can simply type whatever you remember from the main title of the web page and typically within the first few results should be the website you want to navigate to. This gives a new perspective to search engines – search engines are there not only for searching, but also for navigating. I have been using this technique for quite some time now until I recently read about the “facebook login” issue where some other site ranked at the top for the keyword phrase “facebook login” in Google. Then I thought of writing a blog post about what I thought of the subject.

* * *

Links

5 mistakes smart people make – Link.

100 ways to develop your mind – Link.

At what age do children recognise the difference between sarcasm and irony? – Link.

51 ways to become a better entrepreneur – Link.

* * *

On the topic of search engines trying to improve themselves constantly, I was recently thinking about how search engines would match ‘list posts’.

For example, lets say you are looking for list posts about wireframing resources. How would you frame a search query that returns only list posts covering wireframing resources? Interesting thought. This is because, you need to match various articles like the following:

25 Wireframing Resources

20 Resources for wireframing and prototyping

List of Wireframe resources

50 Wireframing kits and resources

The best search query you can form is “wireframing resources list”. I think search engines need to provide a value like ‘n’ or ‘x’ to match ‘any number’ so you could match posts like these with the search query ‘n wireframing resources’ or ‘list of n resources for wireframing and prototyping’.

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Feb-19-2010

My Comment on Dan Kennedy: Michael Moore is a Big, Fat Anti-American as follows

First of all I am not anti-capitalist or pro-socialist. I am not pro-American or anti-American either. I am all for any type of economy that brings prosperity and wealth to the greatest possible number of people. While Dan gives some examples of people succeeding and striking it rich in America, Moore is also right in showing that there is no ‘universal tautology’ that if you try to strike it big in America, then you absolutely will win and become rich. There may be few cases of people who worked hard to succeed, luck by their side, and became rich in America, but that doesnt mean everybody in America is going to be rich if they only start putting in some effort. Some will still be poor/mediocre while some will make it big. I agree with Moore about the prevailing idealogy in America though not to the extent he has made it out to be. Take Bill Gates for example. Had Bill Gates been born in anywhere other than in America, today being a college drop out like he is, he wouldnt be anywhere near being rich legally. That is one plus point for America. But consider the fact that, even inside America itself, will Microsoft, the empire that Gates founded, hire a college drop-out just because ‘he or she can potentially become the next Bill Gates’? Striking It rich all depends upon luck and perseverance. Luck is an esential element that cannot come to everyone who tries to strike it rich, be it anywhere, irrespective of inside America or outside America.

Links

Should the word ‘retard’ be stopped from usage because it offends ‘intellectually challenged people’? – Link.

Equation: The difference between girls and guys – how girls rate guys and how guys rate girls infographic – Link.

Why One Way Of Learning Is Better Than Another – Link.

How ‘cognitive fluency’ shapes what we believe, how we invest, and who will become a supermodel – Link.

Dating preferences and age – the case for an older woman – from OKCupid blog – Link.

Dan Kennedy: Michael Moore is a Big, Fat Anti-American

Feb-15-2010

Commented on “What Google Buzz needs to Survive | IT World” as follows.

Agree with number 1 – In my case, a thread that I commented on keeps appearing in my Buzz as new people comment on it, even though I didnt ‘follow’ anybody. I like the part you mention about the ‘Mute button’ that it should be one click way to do ‘line-item-veto’ rather than being buried in a menu (as it is now). Further, there should be a way to “Archive” a line item of interest. Currently the only way to do this is to use “Link to this post” and bookmark the separate url.

Update: I should have been more clear on this. I commented on a Buzz post somewhere on the web, and when other people comment on the same thing, I get an Email! Wouldnt a “new” indication in the Buzz menu item be enough at the left? I know there are ways to ‘filter’ the Buzz email using filters system, but thats not the point. Why generate such an email in the first place? People view buzz messages as somewhat unimportant and lesser in priority and attention-neededness than email. I usually check Buzz only after I have completed checking fully the day’s email. Why generate email from Buzz?

My comment here – Should Buzz be part of Gmail? as follows

“Yes, but Buzz updates should not come into normal Inbox. Buzz is something seen as ‘less important’ than email and which can be checked ‘as time permits’. I mean, if somebody is real serious about communicating with you, they should send you an email, rather than a Buzz.” – Me

Link

How to Flirt in the Real World Using Facebook and Twitter [Bad Valentine] – Link.

I had written in some blog comment somewhere about how Collective Buying or Group Buying is yet to come to America. An interesting tweet from @chrismessina tipped me off about the existence of Groupon. Amazing concept, that has been somewhat late in coming.! But I am sure time spent on it will be worthwhile (for those living in Chicago, and SF only, I think).

Genetic engineering for brains

A few days ago, I mentioned in one of my blog posts about how to treat your brain like a computer – how to Defrag your brain – Lifehacker. Today I was thinking about it further and determined that the first thing we are going to need to treat a brain on the lines of a computer is storage. I was thinking how will you store all those sights, sounds and smells you come across in your storage area or database. You could take pictures and videos and fill up hard disks worth of data, you could use something like Microsoft SenseCam, etc. The one big hitch will be how to store smells and other sensory data (like tastes). I was thinking may be in a few years we may come across genetic engineering for brains where upon few brain cells can be ‘replaced’ with artificial brain cells, synapses, axes, dendrites and neurons. These cells could come pre-filled with information, data and knowledge (DIKW). Then we could depend on our in-built database to remember certain things we are not supposed to forget. The hardest part is how to query this info bank. In standard systems theory, you would use a commonly understood language like SQL for this, using SELECT statements. But our brain doesnt work that way for querying and recalling. We need more research into how our brains query previous and existing memory data. We need to arrive at a ‘concept search’ protocol that is not exactly search by word, or semantic-based, but search by meaning. Current search implementations are all based on word matches. For example, I just came across a page that I bookmarked. I ‘forgot’ what the url was like, as I dont need to remember it, the system does it for me. I only need to be able to give it proper query words which I am likely to remember, recall and refer to later. Sometimes these words are not found in the title of the page (which is often how the pages are made query-able by bookmarking systems). So came the concept of tagging with keywords. So you could tag a page with keywords that you are likely to remember. But even there, it is not ‘concept search’. It is still ‘word match’ search. For example, you and me know ‘biz’ means ‘business’ but a word match search engine will not know this. So if you query something based on what you recall about the page, it is difficult for existing search engines and mechanisms to bring up the results. Our brain works in a different way.

Update: After I posted this, I came across this page : Helping Computers understand language which talks in more detail about this ‘conceptual search’. And I wasnt even searching for it! Just came across this casually link-to-link. Sometimes I think the internet has some super-human intelligence that it is somehow able to sense what you are up to, and on its own, produces results that are most relevant to you as at this point in time. This is not my first time I have come across such a phenomenon like this. This leads me to think may be electrons and electricity and bits and bytes have a mind of their own that taps into our own consciousness levels.

For example, what I remember about the page that I just bookmarked is that

It had a Twitter song/lyric in it that was about 15 lines long.

It was written by someone in Bend, Oregon.

It had a music video in it.

Now with only these as the queryable parameters, my Firefox bookmark is unable to bring the same page up easily. (Unless I save each and every bookmark page with a “Save as…” snapshot so I could go through recent snapshotted pages to retrieve the page in question).

If you are interested this is the page – Twitter Love.

* * * * *

If you have been into computers for some time, you would have no doubt come across the term ‘index’ used in connection with databases. The term ‘index’ has now obtained a revision in meaning from what you originally learnt it stands for, into something computer database oriented, for me at least. For example, on seeing the proverb ‘Face is the index of the mind’ if your brain draws a parallel, so understanding that mind is a database and face is the index, then welcome to database geekery. You have been working with databases for so long. There must be a word in English to denote this ‘re-definition’ in perception. But I am currently unable to recall any such word from my vocabulary as to what word could denote this phenomenon of ‘redefined perception in meanings’.

* * * * *

Answered the question “why can’t we label food as red (mostly bad), amber (ok), green (mostly good) andf simplify it all ?” as follows.

This is because people’s judgements regarding what’s bad and what’s good are different from person to person. What one considers ‘good’ may be ‘bad’ for another. For example, how would you ‘classify’ chocolate, sugar and coffee? They could be labeled ‘good’ because they are mood enhancers but they could be ‘bad’ for people striving for a healthy diet. Thats why there are objective measurements like Calories, Carbohydrates, Ingredients, etc. so we could make an informed decision by ourself on seeing the food packaging label.

But this is a good idea when you extend the concept. What if you could ‘label’ your feedback on food items on supermarket shelves? It will be something like a SideWiki, but this time it will not be on web pages, it will be on actual physical items. Think of an age where you could point your camera at a piece of produce or shoppable item and see public comments left on it by people. The ‘people’ could be filtered by those whom you choose to follow or trust through some means – by virtue of them being your relatives, friends, contacts, acquantainces etc. What kind of technology will this need? First, the camera built in the phone should be able to recognize the object by vision and retrieve comments from a public database. It will need image recognition, location recognition (GPS) and the ability to connect to a public comments ecosystem (like a website on the Internet perhaps). Then you could leave ‘group buying’ tags on some items you see on shelves in supermarkets (or in window shopping). For example, you could leave a public comment on an item like ‘let me know when this item is on sale’ and hope some kind soul would take the trouble of informing you when the item actually goes on sale. (May be the shopkeeper himself). You could leave comments like ‘I am interested in purchasing this dishwasher, but the price is a bit high. If you are interested also, please contact so we could form a group, and if we buy in a group of three, the price is likely to come down.’. Interesting concept, leading to interesting ideas.

* * * * *

Neuromarketing

I came across this term for the first time last week. From my preliminary, hurried understanding, it has something to do with aggressive, targeted advertising that understands and responds to human ‘reptilian brain’. I even see vehement opposition to it. What I dont understand is why all the opposition to this concept. I consider myself well evolved, I dont buy something just on impulse factor, but only after thorough research and whether I really need it or not. I dont buy something just because the sales letter copywriter has been fantastic – what I see is the intrinsic worth or value of the product, what it means to me and how much it would set me back cost-wise. I could be wrong, but I would like to see neuromarketed ads targeted at me, behavioral advertising, context-oriented, personalized, viral advertising, and what not, it is all knowledge gained for beefing up marketing textbooks. But when it comes to reality, at the end of the day, I dont know about how other people buy, but for me, I buy something only if I can afford it and whether it makes sense for me buying it. I recently bought a music track on Amazon, it was something like $0.99, and I just bought it because the sample music they had was good, and it was not because some sales copy writer wrote a big sales letter extolling the virtues of this particular music track. May be I am wrong. May be Americans buy stuff that doesnt make sense to them and which they cant afford to have. That is probably the reason why there are so many bankruptcies and concepts like credit scores, credit history, etc.

* * * * *

Digital assets

I have came across some file folders named ‘assets’ which contain images, javascripts, PDFs, etc. for including in web pages. Something in me tells me this is not the right term for it. So I thought about it for a while. On the ‘yes they are right to call them as assets’ side, I could think of the points “Assets cost time and money to make, assets can be measured, assets can be audited, assets have monetary value” so these are ‘assets’ as all these points apply to stuff like images of web pages. On the negative side, ‘no, the term ‘assets’ is incorrect’ I couldnt think of anything. But somehow usage of this term ‘assets’ makes me cringe (Update: may be the right word is “flinch” and not “cringe”) and pivot in my chair a micro-little amount.

* * * * *

Social search

After I wrote the blog post a few days ago about Aardvark and how NY Times called them ’social search’ I read the news that Google has now acquired Aardvark. I sometimes think they are playing a corporate game in there, with millions changing hands, and the perpetrators of the transaction taking cuts into their pockets. I dont see how Aardvark fits into Google. Primarily because I dont ascribe to the view that, what Aardvark does is ’social search’. I believe what it does is more aptly described as ’social Q & A’ with some clever routing going on as to who is the most knowledgeable person to answer your query.

My concept of ’social search’ means that, you wouldnt have to ‘frame a question suitable for asking’. You simply would issue a search just like any other regular search. But if the search is ’social’, meaning you checked a box or something like that during the searching process, it should, in real time, notify your friends circle, contacts circle, your followers, etc. The difference between ’social search’ and ’social Q&A’ lies in the fact that you dont have to frame a question, you simply issue a search query which you think is appropriate. The searches you make should also be made available in a public feed that anybody could subscribe to, with only your UserID as identifier (with your optional connivance of course). People could see public search queries, and if they think they are able to help or guide, should be able to ‘guide’ the searcher to the right resource, not exactly with an answer per se, but even with a pointer to another resource. Why would people do this? Because they want followers for their profile. The person receiving the favor may then choose to ‘follow’ the person who guided. Now that could be a powerful motivator to increase the usage factor. Now that is what I would call ’social search;’ it being truly social in every sense of the word. Social means not only connected to your own circle, it should also represent an interface by which you connect with the external world, allowing you to be discovered, and being able to discover others, through a common API (another sign my vocabulary has merged with software and computing vocabulary)

* * * * *

Links

We know the country of Italy is shaped like a boot. What other countries have shapes that are common with other objects? – Link.

How to solve a Rubik’s cube in under a minute – Link.

50+ funny and weird signboard pics – Link.

How people negotiate condom use – Link.

How I got every job I ever wanted – Link.

Is Plain water healthier than sparkling water? – Link.

How to finally overcome shyness – Link.

Random thoughts

The only three three-digit numbers of significance are 555, 666 and 777. 555 is a brand of cigarette, 666 represents Anti-Christ and 777 is a brand of a pickle.

Vocabulary

Just came across this word schadenfreude in one of the comments in the TechCrunch MG Siegler rant about Expedia and had to look it up. It means “Malicious enjoyment derived from observing someone else’s misfortune“. I wonder how is this word different from ’sadism’.

Quality of search Yahoo vs Google

I just used yahoo to search for “Readefine” (sic) to get to the page which formats web pages into easier-to-read on the eyes – newspaper style columns. Yahoo incorrectly tried to tell me that I am looking for “redefine” whereas Google in the first result itself, was able to correctly point to what I wanted – the ‘Readefine’ page which formats web pages into newspaper-style columnar texts. I know Google is constantly working on improving search quality and search experience, so there goes something Yahoo might take a note of. Yahoo is good at things like opening up search APIs’, YUI, YQL, etc. developer stuff but in search, Google is still leading.

Feb-13-2010

Thinking about what is a good ’search experience’ and how search engines can ‘understand’ the meaning and content about what is being said. For example I came across this post today

5 Reasons why link building through guest posts is a bad strategy

Now our brain knows this should match queries like “guest posts – for and against” “Are guest posts a bad idea?” “The downside of guest posts” etc. But do the search engines understand? I think not.

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How to Sound Smarter – The Reader’s Digest Version of those rules for talking and writing–the ones you missed in high school – Link.

Scholars turn their attention to attention – In an age of classroom multitasking, scholars probe the nature of learning and memory -  Link.

Interesting (cute) photos from b3ta – >> How To Store and Organise Cats << Herding cats is notoriously difficult, but
tidying them away is no problem at all if you’re organised enough. http://snurl.com/catstorage

Feb-11-2010

I have Google Buzz in my Gmail account now. I am disillusioned because the first thing that I look for, a way to delete something, isnt available in Google Buzz. I am also not sure if the contents are going to be indexed like a blog. Frankly, I am disappointed due to the lack of the Delete link.

Update Feb 12 : There seems to be a ‘Mute this post’ link in Google Buzz entries but it requires dropping down the arrow. They should have called it “Delete” and included a link labeled “Delete”.

Update Feb 12: Contents of individual Buzz posts can be linked to using the “Link to this entry” option and can be shared, like twitter status update urls.

* * *

Would we start to see a “Follow me on Google” button everywhere now that Google Buzz has started? Google will be able to make the leverage to make webmasters add this type of buttons to their blogs and websites. I think this will merge with the usage of “Google friend connect” which I have seen in many websites, never really used it, so I dont know what it is for, I think it is there for ‘following’ the page itself, or the page author at the most. You cant expect to find this in the commenter’s profiles, as you can with Twitter. For example, when leaving a thoughtful, insightful, constructive, value-adding, discussion-generating comment on another blog that you particularly feel proud of generating from your tiny brain, wouldnt you want people who read it to be able to find your Google profile and choose to follow you so they can more easily recognize your name occurring in other places on the web? More about this below. (See the part about Google IDs functioning like Twitter handles – @UserID vs. ~UserID).

* * *
I think Google Buzz updates would be more like ‘personal press releases’.
* * *

Another question that occurred in my mind is that, eventually the Google “Buzz” tab on the Google Profiles page would evolve into a blog setup. Would the contents of the Buzz page be indexed by Google? Also, how about a facility to search somebody’s Buzz updates or a time line filter so you can view the status updates of someone say on a particular day or as of a particular week? I think they are also going to need a ’symbol’ of some sort to denote that this is a shortform of a Google Profile ID which can be ‘followed’ if you have a Google ID/account yourself. The symbol “@” has been widely used in the Twitter-sphere to denote a particular user’s handle, so we need something similar to that to denote a particular word identifier is in fact a user’s handle. I think all the symbols in the keyboard have been taken for denoting meaning. The only useful symbol left is the tilde, so I wont be surprised if people start referring to ~UserID to denote a google profile. This overlaps with the concept of Google Webfinger. But Webfinger is based on using a user’s email address to identify other personal data like location, interests, etc. about the user which the user has willingly shared to the public world. But with the use of the ~UserID format to denote a particular ID as a Google ID, the user can deduce that UserID@gmail.com is the email address. They need to allow an user to choose a Google ID separate and distinct and not traceable to their corresponding Google (Gmail) email address. That is, Google ID would be like a public key where anybody can view your Google profile page and ‘follow’ you and view your status updates. But they wont be able to get your email address unless you chose to share the email ID on the profile page. This would be just like Twitter. Add in two lines in the form of “Current Location:” and “Current Status:” in the profile page and it would easily challenge location sharing services like Foursquare, Brightkite, etc. and Twitter and Facebook too.

Update Feb 12: After I wrote about Webfinger yesterday today I was surprised to see two news items telling Google has started turning on Webfinger for Google Buzz public profiles. Here are the links

Webfinger now available for Google public profiles

Email as Identity: Google turns on Webfinger (RWW article)
* * *
But I dont think American corporate idealogy would allow a single service to engulf upon or breach other big companies’ web playing grounds. What I mean is that, people want things like Foursquare and Facebook to be around, so these companies can concentrate on their own web playing areas. I think this is good for competition. But how will they make money out of this when users expect everything that Google has engulfed, to become available for free?

Twitter vs Facebook

Twitter introduced the concept of “following” people to get their status updates. You could theoretically follow anyone without needing to get ‘approval’ from them first, (I am ignoring the tiny minuteae of people who have ‘locked’ and ‘protected’ their tweets and who need to ‘approve’ you before you could follow them to get their status updates). Facebook works on the premise that if you wanted to get someone’s status updates, you will have to ‘friend’ them first and they have to ‘approve’ you as part of their friends circle.

Idea Bulb now I have the interesting idea of taking the ‘following/follower’ concept into the area of web page browsing. In normal life, if you know and trust a person (deemed equivalent of a ‘follow’) you would be more than likely to read and try to comprehend what they have said or commented about on a particular page or a blog post. It would be nice to view web pages with overlaid comments like a Google Sidewiki format – filtered to show only those people whom you choose to ‘follow’. Then we can see public comments made by those people whom you trust or choose to follow. Eventually we may see things like this:

X visited this page timestamp 20:33:14 spent 20 minutes on this page and had this to say…”. If you are following X, you will see this in your sidewiki, otherwise you will not.

Another example:
Y visited this page 23:12:12 spent 4 minutes on this page. “Y” can be in your ’social circle’. If not, you can opt to still see Y’s comments in your SideWiki normally, and choose to ‘follow’ Y.

This will be in addition to the standard ‘comments’ system that the majority of the blog posts allow that is hosted with the blog itself. You could read comments, pick up interesting comments and choose to “Google-follow” the ~UserIDs behind them, so you will quickly be able to pick out other web pages, where the same user has commented on, and what they had to say there. This is just as how it operates in a real world – you meet people, you ‘filter’ them, you size them up, and decide to trust their words or atleast, pay heed/pay attention to what they have to say about stuff in web pages. This I would call social browsing.

Currently, there are some projects that allow users to get some of this functionality. These are the Eyebrowse project of MIT, Fytch.com and Google Sidewiki. The Eyebrowse project is a Firefox plugin that allows the user the option to share the url of the current webpage he/she is browsing on. But it doesnt provide a way to share comments within the Eyebrowse system itself.

* * *
I remember reading a popular Latin dictum that meant ‘by a factor of popular usage’. I remembered the meaning but I am unable to recall the exact Latin phrase exactly it is. After some severe thinking and brain storming, I concluded it must be one of ‘de facto’ or ‘de jour’.

* * *

On the topic of ’social search’, I want to say that, Google has only scratched the surface so far, when it comes to ’social search’. Yesterday I saw a New York Times article that projected Aardvark (a social Q&A site) as the ‘pioneer’ in ’social search’. I think the author of that piece did not understand the concept of ’social search’ clearly. What Aardvark is doing is “social realtime Q&A by connecting the right people at the right time’. For example, I could have posted the question I had about my latin quote to a group of registered journalists who would more easily be able to answer my query.

On this tangent of direction of my thought synapse, everybody who can write a blog entry for themselves is a journalist these days, on the web.

What I meant to say is that, the concept of social search needs to evolve to a large extent. What Google has done is adding all your Gmail contacts as your ’social circle’ so content produced by them ranks higher in your search results. I dont exactly like the second part but I think Google is on the right tracks with its concept of first defining the concept of ’social circle’ – this will merge with the concept of ‘people whom you choose to follow’ and will remain separate and distinct from the people in your ‘email contacts’ and ‘address book’. My idea of social search is that you should be able to see somebody else’s search queries in real time (if they have chosen to share it with their social circle in order to allow the possibility of someone recommending them good search results, a knowledgeable person perhaps). You could choose to ’share’ your searches with the public world with the hope that some knowledgeable person out there, somewhere, would be able to point you in the right direction in real time, with the answer you are seeking to your query, or be able to help you out in other ways. If you think about it, this concept is not new, this is how people have been posting their doubts and queries and things they need to help with, in forums all over the Internet.

* * *

I think the reason the Internet and web browsing is so addictive is because, it generates some chemical signals when you browse various sites that is akin to hunting and gathering, in pre-historic times. Just imagine, you have your email application or gmail or yahoo mail tab open the whole time you are connected digitally to other people. That can be considered as your ‘home cave’. As you start wandering about on the internet in places like Facebook, forums, etc. you visit public places to gather with fellow hunter-gatherers. Then when you browse and take your time visiting several web pages you do hunting-gathering of knowledge and information. If a particular piece of info, text or picture sounds interesting, you immediately copy it and email it to yourself by switching your focus to the email tab or application. When I think about it, we have now evolved from a primitive hunter-gatherer stage towards a corporate culture and from then onwards, to ‘work at home’ / telecommuting stage. So now, theoretically, you should have your cave evolved into an archive of information that matters to you but everything else (read: social) should be kept in a separate room (like your drawing room). For this, we need the concept of an information dashboard, a centralized place, or a ‘nerve centre’ that can be kept open at all times when we are connected to the Internet. This has to be based on email – the first correctly-executed and well-known, widely understood application on the Web. My idea is like a ‘nerve centre’ or ‘information consumption HQ’ or simply ‘cave home’ where somebody drops things you would like to see (home delivery of pizza – akin to – email coming in to your cave). Then there is inevitably the ‘horde’ or ‘archive’ of useful information which you build up over a period of time. What current email implementations lack is a way to integrate email with this common nerve centre. I had an idea day before yesterday which I would call the “Cranium” which I will describe below if you are interested.

* * *

Different Idea bulb There could be a way to highlight, comment and annotate text in web pages in a social way. For example, instead of commenting on an article at the very end, you could place your inline comments within the piece itself, sorta like Word’s revision tracking feature. People will willingly highlight and strive to place constructive quality comments in web pages they come across in order to spread their name recognition far and wide (personal branding), and also to gain ‘more followers’ if there is the ability to embed your ~UserID easily in the places where you leave comments on. Currently all blog commenting systems need your email address, and some like Lifehacker send verification emails for comments to that email address. There should be a way to just disclose only your public Google ID (~UserID) without revealing your hidden email id behind it.

* * *

My idea of “Cranium” or “information nerve centre” is as follows. Google has added “Buzz” below the “Inbox” link in gmail. What I would do, if I had control of gmail UI, will be adding the following links and their corresponding functions described below below the “Inbox” link.

These will be

NoteWiki
Feeds
Society

I feel this will be the best solution for information overload- that is consuming the right amount of necessary info at the appropriate time can be achieved with this setup.

NoteWiki - this will serve as an online notebook of everything you want noted and saved – including links, pictures, videos, etc. It seems to me an enormous waste of waste of 8 GB of gmail space when you are only using 400 MB of it. By opening up the same space to notes, people will use more of that storage space. Notes can have labels or tags attached to them, but there will not be a tree system of organization of those labels or tags. Just like in Gmail labels system, there will be only one top-level of labels or tags for your notes. You can add as many notes as you like, and everything will be searchable. You could ‘note down’ username/password/login info for other sites that you use, duly noted and searchable and archived in the NoteWiki. If you forget your password, all you have to do is to do a search with the name of the website and you will see the note where you have entered your login info.

Feeds - This is where you will keep track of blogs and websites you follow via RSS/Atom feeds. The current method of RSS reading in Google Reader typically gives the impression of overwhelmingness and information overload. There seem to be no ‘delete’ buttons so you can remove a particular feed item from view once and for all. There seem to be no ‘archive’ buttons to save particularly interesting feed items so they become part of your personal archive which you can search for later using keywords.

My user interface for feeds will be like a chat window, a way of representing status updates from the information sources you are subscribed to , one line or row per source, and no more. There will not be a vertically long list of feeds you are subscribed to in a Treeview towards the left. Instead, what you will see is an ‘RSS inbox’ with only the last 3-4 updates per source (headline only) and the number of sources will be the number of rows in your RSS inbox. There will be delete links (’X') for each and every feed item in every feed. You will be able to save or archive individual feed items because they will have an ‘archive’ link or you would be able to copy the text off them and put it in your NoteWiki. You should be able to group your feeds into tabs based on subject areas or categories.

Society - This is where you will get status updates from people whom you choose to follow, culled from other sources like Friendfeed, Facebook and Twitter. But it wont be a long vertically scrolling stream of updates like what you have seen in twitter web interface (or in Google Buzz). It will be one row per contact or person whom you are following. The first column in each row will be the contact’s public handle (either their ~GoogleUserID or @TwitterUserID or !OtherHandle). Their latest status update will appear in the second column with a timestamp. (Or this could be configurable to display about the latest 3-4 status updates from that person). Then there will be “< Previous” and “> Next” buttons to horizontally scroll through previous or latter status updates for the same person. (Like the “<” “>” buttons in the Web clips that appear above gmail inbox). Status updates will not be limited to 140 characters. You wont need somebody’s email address to ‘follow’ them, just their Google Profile Id would be sufficient. Journalists and columnists can put their most recent published work with a link, as their status update. You should be able to group the people whom you are friends with and whom you’re following, into ‘tabs’. For example, you could see something similar to this appearing as tab headers. The numbers in brackets denote the number of new status updates in that group.

Brands and Businesses (1)
Celebrities (3)
Other Personalities (5)
Family (7)
Friends (9)
FoAF (11)
Other Contacts I know personally (13)

There may also be a public timeline of Google status updates, just like the twitter public timeline, or the Google Wave “public” area (”with:public” search string) which you may view to view public conversations and Q&A and you may choose to ‘follow’ any other user in those conversations and then move them into the appropriate group.

I am all against ’sharing’ items from Google Reader, it only leads to confusion as to where and whom you are following, due to the introduction of Google Buzz. If you want to share something, you can copy+paste the item and link to your Buzz page status update textbox and share from there. The “Share” link, if it is allowed to appear in the “Feeds” section what I have described above, would only lead to more ‘occupied’ real estate. You are not going to share everything that you come across in Feeds. You will typically share only 2-4% of the items you come across in feeds. So it makes sense to remove the “Share” link altogether from Google Reader individual feed items.

Eventually, I would like to add “Personal Finance” as one of the links below the “Inbox” where you will have access to a web app for managing personal finances, and money management, on the lines of Mint. You could also have a “Health” link to maintain your health records. There could be a “Pets” link to keep track of vet visits, vaccination dates, etc. for your pets. There could be a Baby/Parenting link where you keep track of vaccinations and school records for your children. All these in combination will take a fixed allotted storage space that is currently alloted only for Gmail purpose in Google’s web mail interface.

As this evolves, we will begin to see Firefox/Chrome plugins from Google where you can simply select text from a web page and have it “jotted down to your NoteWiki” with the tags you specify. You can simply right click on a picture you want to keep and select “jot to NoteWiki” option and it will be saved with tags to your NoteWiki. Note I didnt put a “Photo Album” link below the “Inbox”, photos will be treated just like Notes with tags and everything.

* * *

Feb-10-2010

I am yet to see Google Buzz in my gmail, but from what I can say, one of the things the Google engineers got wrong was “auto-following” all people in your contact list. I have emailed some people only once or twice, and I dont want to ‘follow’ all these people. This is one case of ‘bad defaults’. Unless you consciously and willingly make an informed choice about whether you want to hear status updates from someone you shouldnt be automatically forced into doing so.

* * *

Instead of writing lengthy blog posts, I think more writers should keep to a macro level opinions/blogs/thoughts etc. (as opposed to micro level – 140 characters) People’s attention spans have grown shorter on web reading – 5 sentences or 5 minutes, whichever comes earlier, seems to be the attention span right now for me for any and all web reading.

* * *

Just came across a headline on Fark – “Couple caught with over 50 alleged fake credit cards. Multiple charges expected” and my eyes registered the first word as “Google”. The words look remarkably similar in shape, dont they.

* * *

I think these tiny Twitter status updates should each have a quality meter in them. That way when you see a good tweet from someone, you can give a public rating on it. (now you can ‘favorite’ a tweet but it is only for your own private consumption) And other people coming after you reading the same post from the same person whom they are following, should be able to filter tweets so they can quickly say something like ’show me only those tweets that 5 people have voted on and read’, as a way of quickly sorting through a mess of status updates.

* * *

I just had time to view the Google Buzz video that Google had made and posted in its Blog, and another thing I can see wrong is if anybody comments on your Buzz feed, it comes through to your main inbox. Inbox is considered separate and distinct in concept, usage and function rather than getting social updates. Social updates can quickly overwhelm the information consumer due to their sheer volume/number. They (the Google Buzz team) should just have left the new updates stay in the “Buzz” inbox as new items.

* * *

I just viewed that Google Buzz video again in this page and it strikes me that it is indeed a good idea, but if I am sharing a status update with the ‘world’ how do I find other people’s status updates who have also shared something ‘public’ with ‘the world’ and choose to ‘follow’ someone based on what their sharing history is.

Google Buzz seems like made for people looking to post/share short interesting or informative posts with the world, more like a blog.

I also think I can see similarities in Google Buzz with the way Friendfeed works. The logo for Google Buzz seems to be strikingly similar to Google Chrome’s logo.

* * *

Just viewed Mashable’s Google Buzz page. So thats where ‘public’ status updates will end up in. I see they have a “Load More Buzz” link at the bottom. This is something I dont like – infinite scroll. But it is something used by Twitter web interface, Qrobe.it combination search engine which I have been using for some time to mix results from Bing and Google, and now Google Buzz has also started “infinite scroll”. Give me pagination instead of infinite scroll anytime.

* * *

Feb-9-2010

Links

How to flirt – lessons for women – Link.

Ten things you shouldn’t say to your boyfriend – Link.

Improve Productivity by avoiding going online before breakfast – Link.

How Google sets goals and measures success – Link.

Speedwriting for the rest of us – Link.

08-Feb-2010

Seth Godin of Squidoo fame posted this yesterday in his blog – the iPad app of my dreams-the digital talking pad -

He calls it a ‘digital talking pad’ but the write up seems to suggest that(or at least thats how I understood it) what he has in mind is a presentation app. I think what he wants is available in “Slide Sorter” view in Powerpoint but that view can be used only when editing the slideshow or presentation. He says, “Instead of it being linear (like Powerpoint or Keynote), the pages are arranged in a grid or checkerboard.” I think his idea is that, you should be able to randomly jump to any slide from any other slide from the speaker’s point of view. So the slides are to be arranged like window tiles. This will be the presenter’s view. The actual output view would show one slide at a time (as seen by the participants).

The reason for the success of English as a widely used business/communication language

In English, whenever someone comes across something new, they immediately give a name to the concept or phenomenon. With the advances in civilization, almost everything you could possibly come across, has a name referring to or denoting/documenting the concept or phenomenon and it can be found if you spend some time searching for it. Whatever you can think of, if you google it, you will see someone has already given a name to the concept you just thought of, even though further research may not have happened on it. English is very accepting of foreign transliterations (like the word ‘catamaran’), this is one of the reasons English is rich in expressive meaning when the appropriate words are used (getting exposed to ‘vocabulary’ and diction as a measure of learning is one the facets of learning English for competitive tests). For example, just the other day, I came across a post in Friendfeed about ’samutrika lakshanam’ even though it originally is an Indian/Sanskrit concept, English has a parallel word for it that means the same thing – and the word is ‘physiognomy’ (I didnt know of this before).

Commented on “5 super useful notebooks”

Eventually we should be able to ‘beam’ or ‘transmit’ what we want to remember (”things to remember”) using commands directed to a computing device we are carrying on our personae (like Microsoft Sensecam), that we would otherwise need a notebook to write. But we are going to need ‘thought’ commands and computing devices that operate from a wireless frequency range if we are to take notes during such activities as sleeping, jogging and bathing lest the computing device which we are supposed to carry in our personae will become wet and the lack of probability of carrying a computing device with us all the time. (especially during activities like trying to sleep and when suddenly an idea strikes your fancy and you want to note it down somewhere)

Remembered that I had come across the word ’syllogism’ somewhere and realized that I didnt know or couldnt recall the meaning of it, so went to Ninjawords and looked it up. Here is the definition of syllogism:

(logic) An inference in which one proposition (the conclusion) follows necessarily from two other propositions, known as the premises.

I did some more searching of good examples of syllogism, and these I came across in a Yahoo answers page that have more ‘mental stickiness’ factor as I try to commit to memory what this word means.

Example A

If all syllogisms are stupid,
and this is a syllogism,
then this is all stupid.

Example B
If Jesus loves Stephen Fry
and Stephen Fry would love to have a Big Screen TV
then Jesus would love for Stephen Fry to have a Big Screen TV.

How would you like your name to be linked to on the web?

This is a self-interview question that occurred to me today. I am thinking about the concept of “name/email/website” fields to be filled, found on most blog commenting systems. My thoughts: Most people without websites of their own would probably want their name to be linked to their twitter account page, if they have one. If they have websites of their own, they would put their website URL to link to, from their name.

Added “Nixo-facto” to my vocabulary

As I was browsing the link for syllogism found on the Yahoo answers page, referred to above, I eventually ended up learning another phrase. This word is “Nixo-facto”. The word has been defined by Wikia quite nicely. Basically it means, “if the President does it, then it is not illegal”. From the word it also seems that, it must have had its origins around President Nixon’s time. I then checked UrbanDictionary to see if they have more funny usages for this word, but seems at the moment they dont have any.

Commented on “Steampunk: A Mobile Device Concept for Rural India” as follows

Summary of my comment: “People have to go through a learning curve in order to interact with advancements in technology. It is expected and normal.”
First, I like the style behind the piece and the topic it has covered. But, as much as I like the concept of making technology more user-friendly, and while I dont want to be seen as a snob or as someone looking down upon rural populace in India (Most of us city dwellers have rural origins and have migrated to the cities anyway), I would say that there are some concepts which need to be learnt and adjusted to. You mean to say ‘many of these people havent seen an envelope to be able to understand the iconography behind an envelope symbolizing Mail/SMS on the mobile.’ What I am saying is that people once they get used to the idea of western iconography go through a (often delightful) learning experience and they immediately begin to associate an envelope symbol appearing on the mobile interface/UI to that of SMS/email on mobile. I see a drawing in this piece showing a mobile with traditional dials for measuring battery power left etc. Why make the mobile more of an electro-mechanical device? It is more of an electronic instrument and its UI should reflect its intended design philosophy. I just coincidentally read this article here – http://orderedlist.com/our-writing/blog/articles/stop-being-an-idiot/ which addresses the topic of designing for the ‘lowest common denominator’ or ‘assuming users are stupid’. After this I read this piece and I found fundamentally they strike the same chord – I think you should read this link which I have given here.

I can see one of the flaws in my own argument – that, technology needs to adapt to the needs and usage of the existing people, not the other way around, but we are talking about designing for a lowest common denominator factor here – I am looking at history and evolution about ‘the age of arrival of machinery’ here – TVs, DVD players, music systems were designed their own characteristic iconography/functional symbolisms and people had to learn them in order to operate them. Going a little way back, car dashboards and controls were not made to look like instruments that a farmer would use and interface with, daily, when we evolved from an agrarian society towards a knowledge oriented one. In short, conclusively, I am saying that, learning new interface concepts, symbolisms, iconography, are but an inexorable way of evolution in this knowledge economy. Rural populace should not expect electronics, information and communication designers to change their user interfaces into steampunk concepts.

That said, I can further add that, I always dread the thought of buying a new mobile phone/iPhone for I have to go through its instruction manual to understand its concepts and how it operates. One of the problematic concept in mobile phone design (from the point of view of a rural, non-literate person) is how to look up and call someone in contacts/address book, given only the name. There are some things that HAVE to be learnt.

Commented on “Stop Being an Idiot” as follows

I agree with some points – users arent that stupid. There must be an ‘attempt’ on the user’s side to understand something. If you think of it, when graphical user interface was first introduced in the computing scenario, people had to learn something new of a way of interacting with a personal computer. They had to learn the concept of applications, files, file systems, drives, icons, how a double click opens applications from the ‘desktop’ etc. Similarly when learning internet browsing, users need to have learnt the concept of what is a web URL, where to type it in and what to expect. So we need to change the definition of “designing for the lowest common denominator” or “keep it simple stupid because users are stupid” design paradigm to something of a design mantra/guide like “make it powerful BUT easy to learn and intuitive, that is, the step of learning something new (like an interface of a web application) should be able to completed within a short period of time. The ‘learning’ should also be able to be completed in as intuitive and fun a manner as possible.

Commented on Download Squad article “Can we continue to trust electronics made in China?” as follows

Agree very much with this article! Sometime back I read an article in alternet “Is someone in China reading your emails“? From that time onwards I have felt sure all hardware manufactured in China have been ‘bugged’ to transmit information like keystrokes, screenshots, etc. to a hidden central location. It is perfectly possible with the state of current technology. If it is possible, then it must have been done already. Syllogism-> So it must have been done already, somewhere, by someone.

Links

100 ways to develop your mind – Link.

10 ways to improve memory – Link.

What makes women happy? Time article – Link.

05-Feb-2010

Commented on Mike Kujawski’s blog “My response to the Twitter debate on the NYT and New Yorker blogs” -

Twitter is good as a real-time conversation channel and you can follow people that you wouldnt have otherwise have had access to. For example, take celebrity personalities like Obama and BillGates. Without Twitter, would you have had access near them or would they even post their thoughts or what they are doing at the moment where anybody could read them? In one of the comments (or in the article I cant remember clearly) someone has said Twitter is like a river into which you can dip your cup have a sip and go about your work. If you have any more than 100 people you are following you can quickly see how overloaded/overflowing this river is and how good of an exercise it is in sorting out the chaff (people posting blatant spam, quotes, re-quotes, etc., nothing original). This sort of information overload when we are faced with, will help us evolve into better handlers and consumers/propagators of information, in the long run.

My Thought Blob 01:00 PM

Read the newspaper article about “biologically tampered” brinjals and opposition to it - thinking : so previously they were calling it “genetically engineered” “genetically modified (GM)” now they have started calling it BT – Biologically tampered. But arent genetic engineered foods taste better and isnt this all for a common good? If they are genetically engineering it, then there must be some advantage in it right? Thinking seedless grapes, seedless oranges, etc. arent they better to consume than traditional seeded ones? It is a choice to consume GM foodstuff, nobody is forcing anybody to buy only GM stuff? There are both organic foodstuffs available on the market, and GM ones, we could go with whichever we please?

My Thoughts 03:00 PM

Thinking about game mechanics, verbs used in games and how they can be applied in common information consumption situations (like RSS reading). You “shoot” an email to someone, “jump” from RSS feed to RSS feed, etc. etc. and so on.. What other verbs that can be seen as ‘common’ between game mechanics and information consumption?

My Thoughts 04:00 PM

Digesting of information is what is called as “takeaway”. People say “My takeaway from this discussion/meeting whatever is such and such”. That said, thinking why Readers’ Digest is not doing well in circulation (read it somewhere). Digests are supposed to be interesting topics, succinct, brief and with brevity, clarity, expressive in every word (meaningful) and covering every sense with no room for differing inferences. Thinking about my previous sentence, that sounds like a good thought for how a good email (or a piece of information) should sound like. Just recalling how some blogs write “Comments may be edited for brevity and clarity”.

My consumable links recommendations

10 tips to help you stay organized – Link.

Periodic Table of Smellements – funny infographic – Link.

9 unconventional steps to a thriving, “very small” business – Link.

Alternet article – the 6 weirdest things women do to their vaginas – Link.

14 key skills and attributes for Public Relations professionals – davefleet.com – Link.

‘Why People hate marketers’ from “The Art of Non-Conformity” – Link.

Guyism – the 7 worst ways to propose to a woman – Link.

14 ways to get breakthrough ideas – Link.

20 hilarious school exam answers – Link.

People judge someone’s facial attractiveness within 100 milliseconds – Link.

Commented on Friendfeed

about Internet censorship in Australia – in Friendfeed here.

Reproduced here below

“It is best to ignore this lest it will generate attention prompting companies to come up with more “bigbrother watching stuff”. Those people doing censorship should think that, their children and grand-children, down the line, will be watched and judged (even cornered and punished) for innocuous stuff on the internet by unrelated people if they build censorship stuff like this, i.e., the tools u build today can and will be used against you and your progeny by others!

Thinking how do people go about researching or finding out about a topic on search engine like Google? I am not a newbie to searching just wondering how others compare to me, how much time do they take before arriving at the results, how many search results pages they visit and the time they spend on each result, etc.

Learnt new word ‘asinine’ from the following usage “To claim that a product has failed before it’s even started the race is… asinine.” Then looked it up in MnemonicDictionary.com to help remember the meaning. Trying to remember “Ass in Nine (9)” Just like an ass or donkey. Vocabulary = Vocabulary + 1

Searched on Google “how to remember meaning of words with pictures” Amazing Google’s search quality is – clicked on two of the results (the justinelarbalestier.com one and the Amazon result). This caught my eye in the search results “Paramnesia — not being able to remember the meaning of words.” Nice to know! Now I have to try remembering the meaning of paramnesia..

Wondering why no search engine has an option to ’save this search so I can more deeply research it later when I get the time’. Sure, Google has “Web History” to store anything you search for, but it stores any and all search queries, with no option to save only the individual searches, and I have purposely turned it off (not because of privacy concerns but afraid of it being one more thing to manage in my radar, like periodically going through it).

Came across this in Google adwords and clicked on it “Need Better Search Skills?” seems the site is selling an ecourse for betterment of search skills. Interesting, now thinking about how can one better search does not matter, how can one digest/absorb/able to recall what just went flying by on the internet is what ultimately matters. We are going to need a course on information absorption, information management, information digestion, information consumption without succumbing to information overload.

Signed up for this free ecourse – How to Beat Information Overload by Jane Plass. The more you deal with information, consume, filter, try to remember and recall it at the appropriate moment, the more you crave for it. It is like an addiction. I would call this information addiction.

Thinking about the use of the symbol “/” to denote “balance” or “sameness” in meaning. Instead of choosing one word OR the other, using “/” to write multiple words that mean the same thing -could possibly evoke clearer mental pictures on the part of the reader/consumer of the written word/material.

Thinking whether this: outline of my next book (Guy Kawasaki)- could be a pre-cursor to what I would call “social book authoring” or “collaborative crowdsourced book authoring” (on the lines of several authors who cooperate on the topics, and comment, suggest, and guide the writer/author what to write about, exactly what topics to cover, etc. Authors/writers could use their blogs/public internet outlet to collect feedback/ ideas / suggestions from interested people on how best to cover the topics intended for the book.

Idea bulb What if there existed something like Google SideWiki, where people have succinctly summarized a very long article or blog post with just the main points if the author has failed to do so (like highlighting the main points with bolded text). Often times I feel like ADD (Attention Deficit Disorder) and SAS (Short Attention Span) I cant bring myself to read/consume/digest a particularly long article. Couldnt be there a collaborative literary effort of people who actually read long columnists fully, summarizing what they just read, and what the takeaway is… This could be entered in the comments field with a special indicator like /*TAKEAWAY*/ so readers/visitors would know this is a precise/succinct precis/summary of the ongoing post/article.

Searched Google for “adjective of brevity” . I expected with the new Google’s “answers within the search results” facility I would get an answer inline within the search results page but it took the first click on the first search result and reading through three paragraphs of text that “brief” could be considered adjective form of brevity.

Contemplating I need to spend some time adjusting the fonts of my Windows 7 installation with its default font set. I think the option should be somewhere in the Display applet in the Control Panel. More on this later.

Wondering just how many emails do people have to face/cope with everyday. Somewhere on the internet, there will be a published study.

Contemplating is there a word to describe people who think too much or too deeply about any given thing? If there exists no such word as yet, how about ‘thinkmaniac’. I was also thinking whether ‘thinkophobia’ would fit, but that would be a fear or aversion towards thinking. Also considered ‘ninja thinking’ and OCD (obsessive compulsive disorder). Speaking of OCD, OCT would fit probably – obsessive compulsive thinking!

Commented on TechCrunch article “Facebook’s Project Titan: A Full Featured Webmail Product” as follows.

Not. Emails are still very much alive and kicking, and will continue to exist in some form though they may have evolved and become known like a ‘message queue’ or a ‘buffered message’ system. There is simply no substitute for a form of communication that does not demand real-time attention, that you can attend to sequentially as time permits. Read PBS article ‘email is far from dead’ here – http://www.pbs.org/mediashift/2010/02/email-is-far-from-dead033.html. That said, facebook launching email to go along with your social presence is a cool idea. Facebook is seen pioneering the merging of email inbox and social media messaging dashboards conceptually.

Wondering if people would soon tattoo their personal digital ID like a QR code on their person, voluntarily, then you will not need any form of identification to use any government service.

Remembering I thought about this long time ago – “Google Store View” concept where you can virtually visit a physical store from far away, all via the Internet. Theoretically, from Google Maps Street View, you can double click on a particular business door to get inside and do shop-browsing. Eventually this may happen in real-time, using web cams. As regards Google coming to your shop and filming photos on-location, it just has to give local business owners a dashboard to upload their own pictures and panoramas of their shops. Google thumping a new world order and its omnipresence and brand awareness means business owners would only be too happy with the promise of more business and more customers, to voluntarily photo-shoot their own businesses and shop outlets and submit the photos/pictures of their shop/store innards to Google via a console kind of system. Update: I just found EveryScape.com has been doing likewise for a while now!

Commented on the page How should web browsers render alternative text? as follows

Commenter Chris, FF has the wrong implementation in my opinion. I posted about this in Bugzilla @ Mozilla last year (opened a bug report), that Firefox is not rendering the ALT text as a tooltip when you mouse over an image, and they said it is as per design, and that the web page author should use the TITLE attribute of the IMG tag for FF to display any intended tooltips for the image (if the image renders successfully). If the image is non-existent (404), then FF displays the ALT text only with no indication that the image was ‘missing’. They said this is as per the HTML working group recommendations. I didnt concur, since my stand is that, lets say the web page author hasnt specified TITLE attribute for the IMG, but has specified the ALT tag, then for the sake of describing the image, FF should still display the ALT contents as tooltip even when the browser is able to render the image correctly. This is because as a user/browser of the page in question, I would still like to see how the web page author has described the image,  and I dont know how to compile my own Firefox, so I ended up installing the FF plugin “Popup ALT attribute” which shows me the ALT text as tooltip in case of images successfully rendered.