Hariharan

iLearnt.....

2012-02-12T10:55:00.000-08:00

Finally was able to finish "Steve Jobs by Walter Isaacson"..... Reading these days is a challenge with too many distractions around, from iPad, smart phones, xbox to macs... But this book is just awesome, I enjoyed reading every page... or I should say "iLearnt" in all the 42 chapters (is it the answer to ultimate question of life and universe?) in this book..

What iLearnt from Steve Jobs....

Steve helps you learn KISS (keep it simple stupids)....

This is the best part of Steve I liked the most... He kept his products really minimalistic... Take out iPhone,IPad or IPod.. Can it be simpler than that with the click wheel or just one button..

Thinking on these lines I wonder why the projects that we work on end up having countless number of features..Do customers really use them or is it confusing them more... Well even I think market surveys wont provide any answers...The simplest mantra KISS ....

After reading this book I think it changed the way iThink.. Simplistic and Minimalistic .. Stand and review what you do as a customer not as an architect or an idiot with degrees.... I seriously want to learn art now to get out any creativity left with me... iLearn

Steves judgement in binary.. You are either the BEST or SHIT...

Well I don't know how I would react if someone walks up to me and calls my work "SHIT"... But after reading this book I feel its better to call "SHIT as SHIT" than sugarcoating it.. This might give me bigger vision to correct myself and work better.... Other way around, would I be able to call someones work as crap straight on face.... I need to iLearn in both ways...

iPerfection

The book is all about the perfection Steve got into his products... A perfect cube.. patented simplistic packaging... glass walled iStores.. With perfection comes experience to the customers... How can a CEO think about the color of the computer to how components are placed inside to how it is packaged to the color of the packaging material... Look at his pic on the book cover.. You can sense the intensity of his iStare...

This is yet another article though not in the book worth reading where Jobs helps Google design its logo correctly....

http://www.macrumors.com/2011/08/25/steve-jobs-called-googles-vic-gundotra-on-a-sunday-about-this-icon/

I felt whatever I do is no where near perfection in Steves perspective (I might be a B to C class worker)... How many times have I made things just to work and never bothered to perfect it...

I started identifying people who like perfection from whom I can learn.. A simple example the security in my office always makes me park my car within the marking in exactly one go... I don't even know his name but we friends call him "Pura Katia"... I find his quest for perfection in the job he does.... iLearn...

iDecisions....

I want to know if there are anyone I came across who can take critical decisions without discussions.. Steve scrapped most products in Apple on his return in a single meeting....One of the best decisions I liked about him is, to remove the display from iPod shuffle (after all, the songs are what you have chosen)....Office with single restroom so people in different floors can meet each other... How many of us can take such decisions in our day to day work.... We always weigh right options with risks involved...Our decisions go scattered...

Can I take decisions if not now atleast in future... i need to iLearn

iIndia... A perception of INDIA... Intuition or intellect

Steve describes India's as a place where people use more of intuition over intellect.. This is the best ever description of India though he never launched his products here on time....Does this remain same even today? Well may be the weights might have differed but I still feel, in India its still intuition.. Just take your vehicle out in Bangalore streets, how much we use our intuition...

Well he became a hero in my mind... When I see my iPad or iPhone, I can proudly say iOwn a masterpiece, the most well designed and the coolest gadget on the planet...(Though I more a fan of android than apple because of 100$ fee)... Its an innovation that even a layman or child can appreciate and use...

And One more thing... Didn't he have a evil part which is also very evident in the book...Well I would prefer not to comment on that.. Lets not be like "...Beep Beep Beep...." newspapers...

Should I change my UI...

2011-11-23T09:07:00.001-08:00

Should I change the UI of my phone...

A good discussion with my friend who is an Apple fan and myself a Android... It started when I told him that I expected a drastic change in UI/Ux when I downloaded 600Mb update on my iPhone3GS(i cannot enjoy Siri yet)...I was disappointed to see same dashboard except for the notification bar which was not very unusual for people from droids...

Why would people still go behind iPhone..????

When iPhone was launched the user experience that it gave was simply "WOW"... People would have had such experience only in Labs and movies.. When you could flip through photos, album art on your music player it was simply beyond this world...

But now we are used to this... Is their anything new...

I am user who would expect UI/UX to give a refreshingly different feel everyday... This made me go for Cyanogen nightly builds on my Nexus One.. But even then it was too less frequent changes for me... I installed Go Launcher which gave even more effects and tweeks to native experience...

LockScreen

Moving across screens

But my friend argued you cannot change the UI/UX drastically... I may be altogether a different category of user... There are huge category of people who use the phone as a phone.. For them even changing the size of the button would make them feel uncomfortable.. These are no layman user but users who use the phone day in and out... Changing the UI is like changing their usual routine, which most of us don't like..

Well my friend also pointed out that the ribbon menus in Office 2007 made people really uncomfortable... Well, yes even I have trouble in finding where the menus were misplaced.. When most popular browsers removed their status bar, again it made me feel uncomfortable.. somehow the progress bar in the status bar told me how fast my internet was... When they removed it I felt my net was slow... But as time went I got used to...

New Youtube look...

When popular websites like Facebook and Gmail changed their UI, again a mixed response... Facebook for me was a welcoming change.. It added more UX.. But Gmail made it sick.. I wrote a feedback immediately telling them that my theme is really bad with the new look and just moving a delete button a few centimeters away made me think 2 seconds before I clicked on it.. But now I have got used to it...Youtube is due to get a UI update anytime soon with a small hack to turn on if you are impatient like me...I really love the new change to youtube... Well the usual experiment that most websites carry out now, allow you to fall back to old theme and making new theme the default.. Switching to old theme simply makes you look older... :)

A different genre of UI that Microsoft is trying to push though various XBox, Win 8 and WP7's... The metro style looks promising and seems to be more suited for both touch and gesture.. But its the next few years which determines its success...

To me what works out is... Give the user his freedom to choose... Let common users use default.. Let the advanced user get his way out...Anyway people will get used to CHANGE...

Namma Metro is AWESOME...

2011-10-27T08:27:00.000-07:00

Finally the wait is over... Almost 5 years... I would say its worth the wait...

My first impression ....
"Wow... feels like levitation"

In Facebook terms Super LIKE... In Google + its 100+'s....

What a ride.. very smooth.. from MG road to Byappanahalli in just under 12 minutes and back again in another 12 minutes..

MG Road station

The moment you get in you can feel the smoothness of the ride.. Almost zero noise.. I think Londons TFL should come to Bangalore to check out how smooth and noiseless your metros can be.. We have copied a bit from them... "MIND THE GAP"... Hoping to see a t-shirt soon with "MIND the GAP - Namma metro" soon.... Kudos to the technical team behind it for building a world class product...

Namma METRO Version of MIND THE GAP

Its really nice to see smart coins and cards used to enter and exit the stations. A very well trained staff to control the crowd...
I thought the best place to introduce any SMART technology for the common man(call it aam admi or cattle class) in INDIA was TIRUPATHI... The first place which made people stand in queue and get a Laddu.... But Metro seems to have a better crowd management... Leave apart the smart cards and coins...from buying tickets to standing behind the yellow lines... v need a lot of coaching and cane...

Its probably the first time... You see a board that tells the when you can expect the next train.. And for a change its on time...
IST is usually 10 mins late... But in case of Namma METRO its ON-TIME...

On Time

And your mobile networks including GPRS work inside the train and stations... We believe in people... A lot of them.....

And a cycle hiring place just a few 100 meters from MG ROAD station... Feels like the last scene of Sankars Mudalvan movie... Everything changes but no graphics this time....

I still remember my days at NSN which was on MG Road, when they began Metro construction.. Me and my friends had to take a really round about way to get on to the other side for sandwiches n chats.. Then there were days when construction almost shrinked the road to one lane and a crane on it blocking my way back home from Diamond district when I joined Thoughtworks.. A worthy wait...

The true SUCCESS of Namma Metro comes when the finish when Majestic Station becomes operational... You can travel from one end of Bangalore to another counting the number of ticks on your watch...

The PLUS sign which connects both the purple and green line is a true PLUS MARK for Namma Metro when operational..

Waiting for Better GIFT from Namma METRO next DIWALI

<<>>


MG ROAD Station

My attempt to play ilayanila interludes...

2011-08-13T03:16:00.000-07:00

Ilayanila attempt...

Technically copying

2011-06-26T09:11:00.000-07:00

In recent times its quite fashionable for companies to sue the other for copying there designs and patents.
Oracle sues google for android.. Apple sues samsung for copying iphone... etc etc..

Is copying such a crime....

Lets flip back a few pages of history of few days to years....

Most of these companies don't have a great story to tell, but the bad incidents have turned into History that people speak of and make movies of it. Social Network and Pirates of Silicon valley have exposed some characters of top brass of the computing industry.. Even if the stories were fictitious I assume atleast 50% of them were facts...

Google did get the basic idea how simple a mobile UI could look like from Apple.. There are striking similarities between android and iOS... What about tablets.. Google had to release Honeycomb to stay in the fight.. Well you install Office on cloud and you can call it Google Docs... They copy a flying bird and call it Buzz instead of tweet.. They "Like "something and call it "+1".. you can still have your objectives as "Do no evil"...

What about apple? A visit to Xerox PARC centre you could flick ideas that could change the world. The idea of mouse and windows technically belong to Xerox but a vision of Steve Jobs that changed the idea into a product. Even the name MacIntosh is named after a type of Apple McIntosh ( there is no infringement here because its spelt wrong :) ).. Now in recent iOS we can see some reverse osmosis with android...

Microsoft has its own tale to tell... Did they copy from apple or did they copy from Xerox.. Or did they ever write the Quick DOS... Well we should really appreciate marketing strategies even though Bill had his share of BSODS (the only screen that hasn't changed till now) on stage.. Bill Gates borrowed Steve Jobs vision and made the PC truly personal...

Was the idea of Facebook original. The answer is Yes and No... It was someones idea and someones fund.... Lets split Facebook as an idea and a product.. Well we could see clear owners..
Even open systems like UNIX and LINUX have there own stories to tell..

So at the end the fights have been good to end users... Technology moves at a faster pace..

Historically for innovations that change the world need a war... Most of innovations that we have today have taken birth out of two world wars.. Now that we don't have world wars innovation happens through copying the good part of competitors... A virtual 3rd World war.. not between countries but between companies...

At the end of the day we have to appreciate these companies for there product even if we can question the originality of there ideas... Apples intutive UI.. googles simplicity.. Microsoft way of touching the layman (really appreciate Kinect)... Facebook for truly connecting people...

My take

If you see something good.. COPY....
If somebody copies you be HAPPY that you are worth copying...
Continue suing ... thats gives you publicity... that's marketing...

Prove that you are an Indian

2010-03-28T07:48:00.000-07:00

I recently voted in the BBMP elections which made question a few things around me. Lets forget the fact that that Mr.Nilekani is working on the unique identification project... Can I prove that I am an citizen of Indian today????

Yes I can... I have my driving license, but only people who drive have it... I can show my passport, again only people who would go or have gone abroad hold it... a ration card... is this still being issued though you cant buy anything in fair price shops(atleast by people in cities like bangalore)... a PAN card.. is this only for income tax payees??.. any other card... it has some other purpose than to prove that you are a citizen of INDIA... So I am one among the billion who don't have anything to prove that I am an INDIAN....

Wait there is one card which I missed out.. VOTER's ID CARD... This says that as a citizen of INDIA I can participate in the democracy of the country...

Lets describe the card... A printed A4 sheet paper... cut nicely and laminated.. And to prove that this is authentic the critical part of the system.. the HOLOGRAM...

How do I get this card... You have to stand in a queue to get yourself photographed and autographed on A4 sheet (cost cutting... only black and white printers...) and there is boy who cuts the sheets and nicely laminates.. let put the complete cost at 2 rs per person...

Lets check our biggest asset... the population of 1 billion +.. the cost comes to around 2 billion Rs... So Indian govt would have to spend 2 billion Rs to just identify that a person who participates in its DEMOCRACY is an INDIAN (the most important part of being a citizen)... Is this more or less...Lets look at our defense budget... Its a little less than $30 billion :-() ... Note the amount is in dollars... Is identifying the citizenship a critical part of defending the country...

Yes why not... If you can prove that you are an Indian and your neighbors are INDIANS too we can remove those untrusted people like terrorists who come from other countries and become easily a part of us(since we too dont have an identity like them) and destroy us...

Every US citizen has a Social -security number.. Many countries even our neighbors pakistan and SriLanka have...

Straight from wikipedia...

"In India, there is no formal national identification scheme or number. Various schemes had been proposed but were never implemented"

Unfortunately INDIA even after being ruled by various parties, had several democratic elections, had several riots, emergencies, wars and peace treaties... does not have national identification number... shame on us..

Better late than never atleast after 60years of independence we realized the importance of national identity...

Hope the new unique id project gives an identity to every Indian...