Somebody had recently emailed me if there are openings at Digité and quite accidentally (don't ask me how) I've lost the email and am unable to reply to it. Well, the answer actually is, yes. We are looking for good interaction designers, entry level or otherwise. If you're interested, just drop a line at nnair [ a t ] digite [ d o t ] com...
[PS: Current opening are only at our India Development Center, sorry for missing out on the details...]
A neat NY Times article by David Pogueon how you can save time by configuring various cool tech tools like speech recognizers, etc. The only problem is that people do not have enough time to do the configuring
Too bad I don't have enough time to read the whole article, so I'll just file it here for later... ;)
[NY Times Registration Required]
Nolan K. Bushnell, the creator of the Pong video game and founder of the Chuck E. Cheese restaurant chain, is innovating again. He is about to open a restaurant where the servers will have novel attributes: triple redundancy and backup batteries... [NY TImes Registration Required]
Interestingly I had the same idea of going on in my mind about a year or so ago. Guess an idea is worth nothing unless you execute it ;)
Been quite busy lately and spammers have pretty much destroyed this blog (so no more comments and trackbacks- not for some time at least, sorry), just checking to see if things are still working...
Just got back from a vacation, and caught this post on Joel Spolsky's site. The advice is really useful even if you're already a CS grad...
Interestingly, I just bought a book on Amazon and got π/2% off for using A9. Now that is a cool reason to search using A9...
Sorry guys, I've been out of action for the last couple of weeks. Had a minor back problem (early symptoms of a prolapsed disc) for which the doctor suggested complete rest. Now I'm tired of resting ;)
Hope to get back with regular postings soon...
At Digité We're conducting a small survey to determine the feasibility of porting our Project Management software to the Mac platform. The Mac Observer seems to have picked the link to our survey... It would be great if any Mac user reading this post can help us by taking the survey...
On a lighter note, just found this list of 1000 best movies ever made and I seem to have seen only around 300 of them so that is around 30%, not sure how I rate amongst all other movie buffs. It was also nice to spot a few Indian movies amongst them. There was Pather Panchali, Apur Sansar and Salaam Bombay. And a good thing that I've seen them all, at least that means I've seen the top three Indian movies... ;)
At Digité, we have an opening for a junior designer within the User Experience group. This would be a great opportunity to work on a truly world-class software product. If you're interested, get in touch with me (leave a message/visit our careers page/or use my presonal site)
Note: The current opening is in our Mumbai (India) office
The Job Posting is part of the extended entry:
About Digité
Digité, Inc. is a rapidly growing organization that offers global careers in
developing leading edge Information Technology solutions and platforms.
Digité provides its employees with an environment that is conducive to growth
and where they can prove themselves by working on some of the best technology
platforms available today and by providing solutions that facilitate the
operation of some of the top businesses in the world.
About the position
We are currently looking for User Interface/User Experience professionals to
contribute to an exciting new business concept and growth by strengthening our
Product Development team. Apart from an unique opportunity to build a
world-class software product, we also offer an attractive package that matches
leading software companies. In store for you are challenging opportunities,
competitive pay, Pre-IPO stock options, and most-of-all, a fun-filled work
environment.
Job description
Professionals with up to 3 yrs experience in reputed organizations or fresh graduates from reputed institutions with excellent track record and
qualifications in the following areas:
1. Visual Communication/ Graphic Design
2. Product Design
3. New Media/ Interaction Design/ UI Design
Graduates/Post Graduates from NID, IDC or equivalent with excellent academic
records would be preferred. Experience working on Enterprise level web
applications/RIAs would be an added advantage.
Areas of work
Application UI (Web and Client Server)/User Experience Design/Information
Design/Instructional Design/MarCom
Key result Areas
Ability to define product requirements
User study
Usability testing
Heuristic Evaluation
Information Architecture
Graphic Design, Information Design
Coordinating implementation of interface design
Software skills
Should be conversant with Graphic Design/Web Design tools like Adobe Photoshop,
Corel Draw, Macromedia Dreamweaver, Macromedia Flash, Macromedia Fireworks, etc.
Knowledge of DHTML/XHTML, JavaScript, XML & XUL would be advantageous
Experience with the print media will be looked upon as an plus point.
Soft skills
1. Passion to excel (absolutely must)
2. Curiosity.
3. Team player with excellent oral and written communication skills in English
language
I've been a long time fan of the Palo Alto based design firm IDEO. IDEO redefined good design by creating experiences, not just products. This article elucidates how it's now changing the way companies innovate...
It was a lot of traveling over the last couple of weeks. After the wedding we traveled all the way from Bombay to Trivandrum, which is like the extreme south of India and hopped over to the Maldivian archipelago. Here are a few pics...
Over all it was a beautiful trip and thanks for all those who wished me for the wedding. The only problem with the prolonged stay away from a computer was finding out that my inbox had over 20,000 emails in them (no kidding.) I had put a catch all on the emails to my domain and spammers were sending spam mails to all possible email combinations. The result was that I had over fifty emails with the same spam message in my inbox. It was crazy!!! Good thing I got that sorted out, now to get back to work...
On second thoughts... ;)
Somebody in office just pointed me to this paper by Watts S. Humphrey. Processes are very important to companies, but it really does not cover how an individual developer attempts the problem, the personal software process (PSP) provides software engineers a way to improve the quality, predictability, and productivity of their work. Should be worth trying it out. Also it can have a lot of parallels in the design process too...
Note: There may not be any more updates for at least three more weeks. I'm getting married, and will be off to a Robinson Crusoe island for a week or so after that, so catch up with you guys later...
Greg Gretsch of Sigma Partners ponders over it in this AlwaysOn article:
“Silicon Valley is suffering a brain drain that is just going to keep getting worse. Historically the valley has been the beneficiary of brain drains from around the world. The diasporas of China, India, Russia, and others all came to sunny California to start their companies and make their fortunes. Companies like Juniper, QLogic, Exodus, and Silicon Labs are among the hundreds of companies that have generated billions in sales and wealth started by the best and brightest from around the world. Now, some of those great minds are packing up and heading home.”
Ok after the barrage of blog spam, it's now the task of spammers to blast us with spam. Over the last couple of days I've been getting multiple (in 100s) spam emails with subjects like 'Someone is interested in you,' 'Arrangement' and 'Surprise Invitation' which is forcing me to delete a lot of emails by just a simple scan. I may have missed a few legit emails in the process and in case you've written to me an not heard back in a while (I usually reply in a couple of days) then I'd urge you to use the contact section on my website, there is more chance of me reading mails sent using that interface...
Is this an ‘All Fool's Day’ joke???
According to this report Google is launching a free email service with 1 Gig of storage. Also Google's service, called "Gmail," will include a built-in search function that will let people search every e-mail they've ever sent or received.
Sounds too good to be true, especially considering that the news has broken out on April 1st ;)
Sometime back I'd blogged about the design rational behind the 'well designed' urinals at the Amsterdam airport, today, I received an email with an example of a horrendously designed airport urinal...
Come to think of it, the design is so typically Branson...
At Digité, we have an opening in the User Experience group. The following is the job posting, if you're interested, get in touch with me (leave a message/visit our careers page/or use my presonal site)
The Job Posting is part of the extended entry:
About Digité
Digité, Inc. is a rapidly growing organization that offers global careers in
developing leading edge Information Technology solutions and platforms.
Digité provides its employees with an environment that is conducive to growth
and where they can prove themselves by working on some of the best technology
platforms available today and by providing solutions that facilitate the
operation of some of the top businesses in the world.
About the position
We are currently looking for User Interface/User Experience professionals to
contribute to an exciting new business concept and growth by strengthening our
Product Development team. Apart from an unique opportunity to build a
world-class software product, we also offer an attractive package that matches
leading software companies. In store for you are challenging opportunities,
competitive pay, Pre-IPO stock options, and most-of-all, a fun-filled work
environment.
Job description
Professionals with 3-6 yrs experience in reputed organizations with
qualifications in the following areas:
1. Visual Communication/ Graphic Design
2. Product Design
3. New Media/ Interaction Design/ UI Design
Graduates/Post Graduates from NID, IDC or equivalent with excellent academic
records would be preferred. Experience working on Enterprise level web
applications/RIAs would be an added advantage.
Areas of work
Application UI (Web and Client Server)/User Experience Design/Information
Design/Instructional Design/MarCom
Key result Areas
Ability to define product requirements
User study
Usability testing
Heuristic Evaluation
Information Architecture
Graphic Design, Information Design
Coordinating implementation of interface design
Software skills
Should be conversant with Graphic Design/Web Design tools like Adobe Photoshop,
Corel Draw, Macromedia Dreamweaver, Macromedia Flash, Macromedia Fireworks, etc.
Knowledge of DHTML/XHTML, JavaScript, XML & XUL would be advantageous
Experience with the print media will be looked upon as an plus point.
Soft skills
1. Passion to excel (absolutely must)
2. Curiosity.
3. Team player with excellent oral and written communication skills in English
language
CNN reports that as U.S. jobs move abroad, more Americans are willing to work overseas:
“Robert Dunn first spotted the warning signals three years ago, after the dot-com bust.
That's when his Las Vegas-based company, Creative Healthcare Solutions, which provides Internet technology services to healthcare clients, started seeing jobs being awarded to companies in India and China.
Instead of protesting against the offshoring of work that might have gone to U.S. firms like his, Dunn, 55, has decided to get in on the game.”
Two years ago, I decided to come back to India after having worked in the Silicon Valley. I was one of the few back then, but these days I'm seeing a lot more people coming back to India. And now this. Maybe soon people in India will soon start complaining about this phenomenon of 'reverse brain drain' ;)
“Yahoo said yesterday that it would start charging companies that want to ensure that their Web sites are included in its Web index from which research results are selected.
The practice, called "paid inclusion," has long been a part of many search engines including Microsoft's MSN search function and Ask Jeeves. But Google, which last year surged ahead of Yahoo to become the No. 1 site for searching on the Internet, disdains the practice as misleading.”
Hmnn, not sure if paid inclusion really makes a lot of sense to people. Sponsored links are much better in my opinion...
Cool, Digité just made news on Yahoo! Financial News that's amazing, we've got loads of press coverage recently and the response at the NASSCOM event was tremendous, looks like the product is starting to get noticed...
Jesse, thanks for your wishes...
Digité the company I work with has just started sales operations of our software that helps manage IT outsourcing initiatives, here in India, and looks like the news has been covered pretty well in the media...
Mathematik and dynamical-systems are two great places to get some javascript based visual effects for games. Should be useful for flashers too...
[via Metafilter]
E M E R G I C . o r g: Drucker on India and China
Joshua Marshall has excerpts from a Peter Drucker interview in Fortune:
India is becoming a powerhouse very fast. The medical school in New Delhi is now perhaps the best in the world. And the technical graduates of the Institute of Technology in Bangalore are as good as any in the world. Also, India has 150 million people for whom English is their main language. So India is indeed becoming a knowledge center.In contrast, the greatest weakness of China is its incredibly small proportion of educated people. China has only 1.5 million college students, out of a total population of over 1.3 billion. If they had the American proportion, they'd have 12 million or more in college. Those who are educated are well trained, but there are so few of them. And then there is the enormous undeveloped hinterland with excess rural population. Yes, that means there is enormous manufacturing potential. In China, however, the likelihood of the absorption of rural workers into the cities without upheaval seems very dubious. You don't have that problem in India because they have already done an amazing job of absorbing excess rural population into the cities--its rural population has gone from 90% to 54% without any upheaval.
Everybody says China has 8% growth and India only 3%, but that is a total misconception. We don't really know. I think India's progress is far more impressive than China's.
Joshua leaves us (and the policymakers in the US) with an interesting point to ponder: "Think how much of our broad, long-range foreign policy thinking rests on the premise that China is the rising economic and military power? What if the premise is wrong? Or what if India, nearly as large a country in population terms, is another rising behemoth?"
E M E R G I C . o r g: Prahalad on Indian MNCs
The Economic Times has an interview with CK Prahalad. Excerpts:
Take Wipro, TCS and Infosys as potential models of what multinationality means. You will find their cost, given the size of their global operations, measured in terms of people working abroad, is incredibly low compared to traditional MNCs like GE, IBM, Siemens or Philips. The reason is fairly simple. They have no legacies to change, they re starting from zero. And they were under tremendous cost pressure from day one, so they had to develop new ways of communication, co-ordination and management. That s quite unique and different from building standalone, country-by-country organisations with their own infrastructure and then changing it to global business management.The new MNCs like Wipro or TCS are all multi-focal companies where the key manufacturing operations are in one part of the world but the customer-facing operations are in another part of the world. Their revenues may come from a part of the world where they don t necessarily dominate. It s a very different configuration from what the traditional MNCs had to start with. Not only will Indian MNCs emerge as a major force, but they will have the opportunity to rewrite the book on how to manage global operations. They will show us how to create low cost, highly effective, real-time systems. The good news is we are starting with real-time 24/7 as a starting point.
We are inventing so many things we don t take credit for. Take call centre operations. Few people know what it takes to train young Indian men and women who have strong accents, to speak English as if they were born in Ohio. We ve developed accent neutralisation capabilities. And we train not one or two people but a hundred thousand people to take on a persona
for eight hours a day which has nothing to do with reality. In other words, we efficiently play-act and that s the innovation.
MetaFilter: Tommy, you're permanently expelled!
"Want to get arrested? Walk home with me." It's LawForKids, the site devoted to giving the kids the education they need about drinking and other kewl stuff through the aid of really, really, really crappy cartoons. Plus, enjoy the intellectual and grammar-rich discussion on hard knocks in Juvie, plus Flash games about being a good citizen. Not sure about discouraging kids from crime, but I sure as hell want to stay away from a life of web design now.
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Scripting News
Rolling Stone interviews Steve Jobs.
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PubDate: Fri, 12 Dec 2003 23:37:39 GMT
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If you're wondering what's up with the blog, well, I'm really sorry for the lack of updates the last couple of days. I'd been traveling around the country making a few presentations to a few key customers and had a number of users lined up for user testing of our software, so in the process I was unable to devote time to posting updates. Hopefully things are under control now but hey, you never know...
If Sergey Brin and Larry Page of Google were to have a blog, this probably what it would look like...
Very funny :-)
MetaFilter: Procrastination Research Group
I've been meaning to post this for the longest time.
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theOTHERblog: Jason Salavon - Every Playboy Centerfold, The Decades
Via plasticbag.The photographs in this suite are the result of mean averaging every Playboy centerfold foldout for the four decades beginning Jan. 1960 through Dec. 1999. This tracks, en masse, the evolution of this form of portraiture. ...
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With Google going IPO soon the NY Times looks at a possibility of a Microsoft takeover of the web search company.
“According to company executives and others briefed on the discussions, Microsoft - desperate to capture a slice of the popular and ad-generating search business - approached Google within the last two months to discuss options, including the possibility of a takeover.”
So you reckon Google could go the Netscape way if big bad MS becomes its rival?
Diwali is the Indian New Year. The festival of lights and a time to deck yourself in the very best. So, I could not think of a more apt time to give this site a makeover (not to mention the fact that it is also a long weekend.)
Let me know what you think of it. I may have missed out on a few styles and templates since this is a semi-rush job. Also, to everybody, a very happy and prosperous Diwali.
The Directorate of Audio Visual Publicity (DAVP) in India is known for coming out with some of the most drab advertising in the country, so when recently it started releasing Full-Page Color ad with the 'India Shining' theme, it did look like some other creative minds were at work. According this report, the ads were developed by Grey Worldwide. Nothing brilliant about the ads, but it's certainly refreshing to see them, nonetheless (personally I like the Indian Oil ads more - reads like Agnello Dias' copy, not sure though.)
Rajesh also points to a NY Times article about the Indian Economy and how ten years after the de-centralization, the results are showing...
This NY Times article explores how people are buying gizmos they never use. I've done it myself. My list includes my iPaq, a 20G removable hard drive, an extra webcam and my MP3 player (to a small extent - since I'm mostly on my computer anyway) And by the way, I'm really conservative in what I buy and also use a lot of gizmos on a daily basis, but I know a few people who just have tons of such stuff just lying around. Are you one of those?
I'm not sure how many of you are old enough to appreciate and be interested in vintage computing. But if you are, here is an opportunity you cannot miss. Only 20 protype Commodore 64s were built. This is probably the only survivor. 5 more hours left, then it will be gone...
Joel Splosky gives you run down on Unicode and how to develop Intrnational Applications...
Matt Stephens and Dough Rosenberg have a bold critique of extreme programming.
Quote:
“There's a lot to be gained from learning about XP, and agile practices in general. However, many feel that XP has taken things too far. By taking things to the opposite extreme, we're just introducing a fresh set of problems. The optimum solution, then, must lie somewhere between these two extremes. That is fundamentally what Extreme Programming Refactored (XPR) is about.”
theOTHERblog: Interview with John Scully
As I look back on things that I wished we would have done differently when I was at Apple, I think one of the biggest missed opportunities, and it was on my watch, so I feel responsible and disappointed that we didn't do more with it, was Hypercard. It was created back in 1987 by Bill Atkinson, Apple's first software programmer. We could never figure out exactly what it was. What it was, was the belief that everyone should be enabled to make the computer do what they wanted it to do... a hugely ambitious aim that seems to have waned lately... ...
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Dan Gillmor's eJournal: Remembering the People Who Give Back to the Net, and All of Us
The Internet has become a grossly commercialized Wild West in so many ways. But the community spirit on which it was founded is alive and well. The Net depends on the same spirit that motivates volunteers in the physical world: a commitment to solve problems and make life better for those who might otherwise not have the resources or expertise.
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O'Reilly Network Articles: From NEXTSTEP to Now: An Interview with LaunchBar's Norbert Heger
When LaunchBar was announced as a winner in the second Mac OS X Innovator's Contest, we received lots of positive comments from readers who were fans of this software. Like so many good ideas, the concept for this software has been around for a while. Its roots go back to 1995 and NEXTSTEP. Norbert Heger describes those early days and the evolution of this terrific Mac OS X application.
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Joel Spolsky shows off his swanky new office...
So when a geek designs an office, amongst other things, you get 20 power outlets per programmer, snake trays and cubicules designed for pair programming!!!
CRN Magazine's list of top 25 innovators...
Macromedia's Kevin Lynch figures at number 9...
Quote:
Quoting Lynch:
E M E R G I C . o r g: Entrepreneurs as System Thinkers
EntreWorld has an article by Michael Gerber:
All successful entrepreneurs possess one fundamental ability, one fundamental quality, one fundamental skill, one fundamental interest, without which they would never be successful entrepreneurs possess the ability to perceive the world as a system.What is a Systems Thinker?
A Systems Thinker is one who intuits and sees the whole of a thing, the entirety of it, the one-ness of it, the integrated unity of it, as opposed to merely the sum of its parts.
A Systems Thinker transcends the world in order to transform it.
A Systems Thinker is an inventor as opposed to an engineer.
A Systems Thinker sees purpose in everything, and sees the system as the realization of the purpose.
A Systems Thinker sees meaning in everything, and if not, pursues everything until the meaning becomes clear, until the System reveals itself in all its glory.
A Systems Thinker is possessed by the meaning of things.
I agree with Gerber - entrepreneurs definitely need to see the bigger picture, see things as a whole rather than a collection of parts.
When Steve Jobs decided to name his company Apple, after the Beatles Record Label, little did he imagine that they would be at loggerheads with each other a few decades later...
Excerpt:
The complaint addressed the use of the word Apple and Apple logos in the computer company's downloading of music from the Internet, Apple Corps said.
Just came across this utility on book blog that uses an algorithm to guess the gender of the author. Right now it seems to have less than 50% success rate, and it kept guessing that I was a female for every piece of writing I tried, except one. So that was just a 25% success rate...
[via The Gadget Guy]
I'm sure everyone has been rejected at interviews, but does a rejection warrant the creation of a blog exclusively for the purpose of describing the interview process? This guy seems to feel it does...
No matter how disgruntled this guy is, the blog happens to be an interesting look at the way Accenture is going about recruiting in India.
A friend of mine who works there was mentioning they want to expand to 10,000 consultants by the end of the year. If this is how they are hiring, I would like to wish them the best...
Do you have an insatiable need to buy/read books? Did your parents behave the same way? Not sure if the biblio gene skips a generation, reading the comments on Jeremy Zawodny's blog and going by my experience -my parents own none, grandparents are relatively avid readers- maybe it is so...
Seriously, why not? At least we will get a laugh out of it before dumping it into the trash.