Cricket: Dancing Sreesanth in SA!!!

Cricket: This is Sreesanth, of India, responding to Andre (the Giant) Nel of South Africa by scoring a six and..... (more) I think India should definately this sort of attitude ,,,,, a fire back. Common India!!!! Dikhaa do.

What is SPAM Emails?

Try to understand what is Spam?
Many people including some people working in an Internet security products company is unable to identify the SPAM emails. I got this spam email forwarded to me from one of my friends who himself is working for a software company:

Subject: FW: FW: FW: Please Read and Froward it!!
Dear Reader,
I am writing this behalf of my loving husband.
Everything was fine, me, my husband and our two children. We had a happy family. My husband was an Engineer in a big company. He comes home early and helps me with the house chores and plays with the children.
Our dreams were shattered in front of our eyes last week. It was a drunken lorry driver, came on the wrong side and hit us and went.
It killed my little baby girl and left my husband paralyzed. My husband is still in the hospital. His brain is damaged and he needs an operation. I need 5 lakhs s to save his life. I collected about 3 lakhs from my friends and family. I need another 2 lakhs.
I don't want to lose him. He was such a wonderful husband & father. He still doesn't know we lost our little girl. I am looking after my son now. Without my husband I won't be able to take care of him.

Please help me save my husband the one person I dearly love. I already lost my daughter and I don't want to lose my husband as well. Please help us.
Thank you very much for your love & support. May God bless you.

Yours Truly,
Nirosha Silva

(I know you don't like to forward mails. I am really sorry to bother you. If you have a heart and like to help a family, please forward this mail. Every mail you forward will add 5cents to AOL and they will deposit it to my bank account. This will help me save my husband.)

////////////////// Points to be noted here. ////////////////////////////////

1.) In the subject the Mail Server itself shows that its a SPAM

2.) The Content

3.) IT states "Every mail you forward will add 5cents to AOL", Here note that there is no Track Back url.

4.) If any service provider wants to pay for this kind of activities they might get a small space for donation in their website.

Note: If you are going to make a donation online, see if that the website is a legitimate one.

Also you might have noted and experienced as well that you would get money if you forward this mail to 100 people etc and so on. So inorder to do this the SPAMMERS they use the reputed companies name like Microsoft Corporation, AOL and so on. Also sometimes it comes with some attachments which might be a virus file.

Though there are Spam Blockers installed in the system, people anyway manage to get thest kinds of email and forward it to their friends in their contact list.

So it is in the hands of us, not to encourage these kinds of emails.

(Source: http://yuvi-internetsecurity.blogspot.com/)

Unit of Measurement

Below mentioned information will be useful for designers and developers which has been picked up from elementK's training files on CSS:

Unit of Measurement

pixels (px)
A standard screen measurement. One pixel equals one physical pixel on a computer screen, which varies with screen resolution. (For this reason, some consider pixels to be a relative unit of measurement.)

inches (in)
A standard English measurement. One inch is equal to 2.54 centimeters.

centimeters (cm)
A standard metric measurement. One centimeter is equal to almost 2/5 of an inch.

millimeters (mm)
A standard metric measurement. Ten millimeters are equal to one centimeter.

points (pt)
A standard print measurement. One point is equal to 1/72 of an inch. In reality, point values are not this precise on the Web, and vary according to the font face in use.

picas (pc)
A standard print measurement. One pica is equal to 12 points.

===========================

If you intend to use absolute units of measurement for any CSS property, pixels tend to be the most reliable across different browsers and operating systems. Pixels also make the most sense for the screen. Points and picas, for example, are units of print measurement that have no real meaning on a computer screen.
If you want your length values to scale from user to user, and from one output device to the next, use relative units of measurement. The following table lists the relative units of measurement in CSS.

Unit of Measurement

ems (em)
A standard print measurement. Ems are relative to the width of the uppercase M character of the parent element's font, or the inherited font size when applied to the font-size property.

x-height (ex)
A standard print measurement. The x-height is defined by the size of the lowercase x character of the parent element's font, or the size of the x character of the inherited font size when applied to the font-size property.

percent (%)
A fraction value based on the computed value of an inherited length.

You Tube acquired for $US1.65 billion by Google

The news that strike me today is "Google to acquire You Tube for $US1.65 billion." Now I am quite exciting to see new user interface changes on youtube.com which is already a nicely navigable site, but then Google is known for its usability designs.

Really,,, Lagge Raho Munna Bhai

Just a saw the movie yesterday nite and I must say that pls Lagge Raho Munna Bhai... you are doing Awesome. As the slogan suggest, the movie is not just about Munna Bhai and Circuit. This time they have a new friend called Bapu, Our 'Gandhi Bapu". The movie is not just about the GundaGiri but also about GandhiGiri. Its really a thought provoking movie like Rang De Basanti with a suttle funny events.

Should watch it with friends & family and try to implement GandhiGiri.

Tarikh pe Tarikh (Date keeps postponing)

Many people must have heard of this dialogue "Tarikh pe Tarikh" from Damini movie, it must be really frustrating experience to the people who are suffering from that syndrome of Government. It seems to be that government is reluctant to make decisions faster.

The same happened yesterday. The verdict for the Bomb Blasts happened in Mumbai, 1993. It killed more then 300 people and injured 700+ people, 139 people caught under the conspiracy act, 13 people died in the jail, few ran away, main accusers are still not caught, and again, after 13 years of long period verdict had been postponed for another month.

Isn't it really a "Andha Kanoon"???

Human Factors International - offers courses for being Usability Experts

Few days ago I was complaining to myself that WHY INDIA DO NOT HAVE ANY INSTITUTIONS FOR HCI [Human Computer Interaction] in INDIA. When I met Aadesh and Bhooshan, I came to know about really an interesting thing about Institute for Human Computer Interaction and that also in Mumbai [Bandra].

It came to me as a surprise that it's there in India. The name of the institute is "Human Factors International Inc". I visited their site that is http://www.humanfactors.com/ and seems to be very interesting to me. My friends who have attended these classes told me that it is really an amazing stuff to attend even if you have immense knowledge in Usability, it just change the way you look at the things in terms of usability.

That statement made me eager to know more about it and now I am planning to go for it in near future.

If you people know any other institutes in India, who offers such courses on usability, please, let me know.

Hear it and you will be laughing for sure.

A Good comic video found some where on Net.

7 Serial Blasts in Mumbai Local Trains

Alright here...

Luckily i left office at 7.15pm yesterday.. otherwise usually i leave by 6pm for the same route via train.

As soon as i got the news i stayed back in the office (ChurchGate). I moved from there at about 12.40am and reached home (Borivali) by 2.20am by road. Today, taking rest for the entire day.

Helpline:
+ 91 22-22005388, 24451515, 24452222, 26207254

Series of blast rocks Mumbai
http://broadband.indiatimes.com/videoshow/1735925.cms

Hospital wise list of injured and dead in Blast
http://mumbaipolice.org/images/news_cp/1blast/blast.htm

May God bless all the victims's soul and give peace to their loved ones.

Sketching --- wanna start again!!!

It's been more than 3 yrs that i have not done any sketching (pencil sketching or charcoal sketching). Well, as i am more relaxed nowadays..... i am planning to start it all again.

You can see the collections of all the sketches done by me at http://www.prashantpoladia.com/html_files/sketches.htm

Let me know your suggestions on it.

Is IT Salaries are at their peak level??

[image source: Corbis]

Just read the article today in Economic Times regarding "IT salaries soar as cos scramble for talent". It talks about the annual raise given by the Companies to its employees in India. It is raised from upto 20-30% on an average.

This is leading to the stage where India seems to be no more of Cheap Wages. People are visioning that it could be the threat to the Indian IT Market as the Foreigners will start looking at alternate option. As the expert says Indians needs to increase their talent pool to stay intact.

Pay Anyone Online

Wallet365.com, India's first e-Wallet is a revolutionary new service that lets you pay anyone, anywhere. It lets you store money, shop online and even receive money. Wallet365.com is absolutely safe, instant and convenient. All you need is a valid email ID. It secures you from the dangers of online credit card fraud.

Seems to be interesting stuff but the time will tell whether are there any flaws in it.

Stages of Design Process

This is an interesting stuff about "Stages of Design Process". The above diagram has been picked up from the book "Visual Research" of Ian Noble and Russel Bestley.

It talks about the 4 stages involve in design process based on their research.
1st - Difinition
2nd - Divergence
3rd - Transformation
4th - Convergence

Starting from 1st stage of "Definition" where Design problems are defined and the appropriate data gathered after agreeing on design objectives in the 2nd stage of "Divergence". Once the objectives are all set, prototypings are prepared and they are evaluated in stage 3 of "Transformational". If the tests were not successful revaluation of design objectives takes place. At the final stage of "Convergence", effectuve measures are checked and improvements are recommended.

The book talks more about an introduction to research methodologies in graphic design. The subjects covered are INVESTIGATION, ANALYSIS, SYNTHESIS, COMMUNICATION, EXPERIMENTATION, AUDIENCE, CRAFT, PRODUCTION, MATERIALS, SYSTEMS, METHOD, PROCESS, SEMIOTICS, SEMANTICS, RHETORIC and DESIGN.

Windows Live Local

It seems to be the old news but i have just came across Windows Live Local. Its interesting the way they have worked on User Interface. The MAP features are very very interesting.

You can define your destination and get the Road MAP printed. Its really useful for the people who are new to any place and for those who want to explore more.

As we are going out for bowling on this Monday at Phoenix Mills from Nariman Point, i decided to pick-up the best route to reach there early.

I wish later in the future we will see the information on traffic jams which will update every 5 mins.... so people can pick up the best route.

BC Sutta - from Zeest Band

BC Sutta song is Composed and written by Zeest which is headed by Skip (singer, composer/lyricist, guitarist n bass player) and at present Umair is a band member. Currently Zeest is a duo of Skip and Umair.

It's a Height of creativity. They have composed a really great song. Must listen.
Its (A) Rated song. Download the song from here.

Related news on Mid-day
orkut / B.C. Sutta community

Lyrics of the song -
COUGHHSSS....OK THIS SONG IS DEDICATED TO ALL THE SMOKERS AND DOPERS BY ZEEST THE BAND...SO LETS HIT IT....BC SUTTA!

Dosto Mai BaiTha Mai Soutta Pee Raha
Abba Nay Mujhay SouTTa Peetay Daikh Liya
Ghar JuBB mai Phoncha Mujhay DunDa HoGaYa
B***C**** Soutaa Soutta Na Milla .......

----CHORUS----
B***C**** Soutaa MujhaY Soutta Na Milla
B***C**** Soutaa Soutta Na Milla
B***C**** Soutaa MujhaY Soutta Na Milla
B***C**** Soutaa Soutta Na Milla

ColleGe Mai GaYa MujhaY piYar Ho GaYa
OsnaY Bhi Mujh seY MeRa Soutta Cheen liya
SaRko PaY GhooMa Mai TanHa ReH GaYa
B***C**** Soutaa Soutta Na Milla .......

----CHORUS----
B***C**** Soutaa MujhaY Soutta Na Milla
B***C**** Soutaa Soutta Na Milla
B***C**** Soutaa MujhaY Soutta Na Milla
B***C**** Soutaa Soutta Na Milla

ShaaDi Howi Mai HusBanD Bunn GaYa
Raat Bhurr Thooka Mai Thukk K GiRR GaYa
KhosHiYo Ki KhaTiR MeRa SouTTa Chinn Gayaaaaaaaaaaa......................

B***C**** Soutaa Soutta Na Milla .......

----CHORUS----
B***C**** Soutaa MujhaY Soutta Na Milla
B***C**** Soutaa Soutta Na Milla
B***C**** Soutaa MujhaY Soutta Na Milla
B***C**** Soutaa Soutta Na Milla

B***C**** M**C**** B***C**** M**C****
B***C**** M**C**** B***C**** M**C****
B***C**** M**C**** B***C**** M**C****
B***C**** M**C**** B***C**** M**C****
B***C**** M**C****...................

Though I do not smoke, its a great song to listen. It got a bit more controversial as they have used bad words which is not accepted in indo-pak. I think we should change this. I don't understand why indo-pak do not allow bad words in audios and videos. Why they think its gonna hurt the indo-pak culture even though those words are used everywhere while having normal talk on streets... I don;t think kids will spoil. In other foriegn countries its normal.... they show what happens on the street.... then why not we?

Film Vs Novel

The controversial film The Da Vinci Code is in news from last few weeks. It has some fictional interpretations of Christian history. It is based on the bestselling 2003 novel The Da Vinci Code, from author Dan Brown.

Please check more information on it at wikipedia. TheDaVinciCode

As i have heard the comments from the people who have read the novel as well as seen the movie... they says that novel is worth reading and it has more powerful content than the movie. Though the film earned over US$224 million worldwide.

Computer Related Repetitive Strain Injury

[image source: www.cyanss.demon.co.uk]

How often you feel strain in your body while being in front of computer for hours and hours. I do feel such a strain very often. This dilemma prompt me to look for right solution for it. As always i googled it and found interesting stuff on Computer Related Repetitive Strain Injury.

Do check it and impliment that in your routine life while working in front of computer.

Also, do not forgot to let your friends and family know about it.

Health Advice

Here are some of the best web sites you can trust for reliable health advice. [content collected from Sci-tech section of Mumbai Mirror Newspaper]

www.nhsdirect.nhs.uk
This comprehensive site should be a first stop for definitions of conditions, treatments and tests.

www.netdoctor.co.uk
The health site has easy-to-user pages packed with userful information.

www.cancerbackup.org.uk
The website of the innovative cancer phone-line founded to rid the desease of the silence that surround it.

www.childrenfirst.nhs.uk
This site is the one of use if you want help for explaning conditions and treatment to children.

www.aids.com
Find FAQs and general information about HIV and AIDS.

BSE SENSEX DOWN by 1111 pts

As i started gaining more interest about Share Market, just heard from my friend Chetan Jain that continously on 3rd day BSE SENSEX is down.... and this time its worst ever hit of SENSEX history i.e. 1111 pts down. Its a huge correction to the market. You can get more information from http://www.karvy.com/ and http://www.stockholding.com/.

Though it being the worst news for the short term investors but it seems to be good news for the long term investors as this is the right time to buy shares [once market get settled].

IE7 Has Tabs

IE team are gonna launch IE7 with Tabs this time and this is confirmed news.

It seems to be that they have realised their mistake of not opting for Tabs earlier. Tabs are useful feature of Firefox which i think people have liked it.

For more information please visit their blogsite.

AJAX of Flash? or Flash is AJAX?

Reposting it as few important comments were added recently.

I would like to hear from the experts of Flash, Flex and AJAX Platform on this.

As recently seen at gmail & heard more about AJAX and its use on various blogs. The question that prompted me to look over the net is Flash Vs AJAX and here is the list which i found the appropriate for the answer:

1. Flash is Ajax, or Flash vs Ajax, at the Ajax Summit
2. AJAX vs Flash
3. Flash & Ajax
4. AJAX vs Flash
5. Are you using Ajax

I will be glad to recieve more information on it and your thoughts.

css3 is Under Development

As you all must be knowing that CSS level 2 was developed my W3C in May 1998. In that various new things were updated.

Currently, CSS Level 3 is under development and W3C is maitaing the progress report for the same. If you want to follow the development of CSS3, click on the below mentioned link http://www.w3.org/Style/CSS/current-work#table.

Guidelines for Usability Designers

Few questions which needs to be answered before designing the User Interface for an application are:
1) Who are the users? Their age group? Their Specific Location (if any)?
2) Will user be trained before they will use the application?
3) How much automated task should be provided and how much left for the user?
4) Will the application be shown on other gadgets like PDA and Mobile? 5) How much compatible it should be.
5) Will the machines needs to be remembered few tasks?

Few things which should be included:
1) Ease of Navigation
2) Consistency need to be followed
3) Help Section
4) Error messages should be specific
5) Helpline Number to solve the query quickly.
6) Standard look of icons and an option to show Icon and Text together.
7) Search functionality
8) Differentiate links from normal text (best would be to underline it)

After designing the application few stuff which needs to be checked are:
1) Can user really be able to complete task?
2) How easy it was?
3) Do they require more training and support files?
4) Keep testing

Let me know if i have missed anything.

terabyte - petabyte - yottabyte

terabyte - petabyte - exabyte - zettabyte - yottabyte!!!

I think these words might be sounding unknown to you. Well, i am not talking something silly. Normally "Gigabyte" is the famous term what we hear so often, atleast me. "Terabyte" is equal to 1000 GigaBytes. The U.S. Library of Congress has claimed it contains approximately 20 terabytes of text.

Have a look at the table on the right of this page on wiki for the term "Byte".

barCamp mumbai

I Just came back after attending barCamp Mumbai for the 1st time at Pawai IIT. Sorry buddies not to mention about this event earlier, 'caz I myself came to know about it yesterday night through Arindam.

Well, I was not aware of what it will be all about. When i reached there with Sagar and Surojit at about 1.30pm, I found the list of interesting sessions to attened. There were 28 sessions to attend.. out of which i attended 3 of them (as i reached late there). Next time, i will make a pont that i reach on time. :)

1st Session - Mobiles, Micro-content and Moblogs" conducted by Veer Bothra.
What i liked was: the idea of sharing mobile photos over the net in 4 easy steps using their company's product called mobylog. User can upload the photos using GPRS to their email IDs, Flickr and at personal website address.

2nd Session - "RIA/Flex" conducted my Manish Jethani
What i liked was: the showcase of Flex's capabilities, his explanations on differences between Flash AS 1.0 and Flash AS 3.0 and the way he settled the debate on Ajax vs Flex raised by Mahesh Murthy.

3rd Session - "Search engines, marketing and mathematics" conducted by Mahesh Murthy.
What i liked was: the indepth knowledge on the mechanism of Google's Ads Space, the way they sell the Ad Space and the way their company called PinStorm offers solutions to the advertisers by evaluating meta tags.

I hope, barCamp people will make their events more noticable, so more people can attend it.

THE WEBBY AWARDS

The leading international award honoring excellence in Web design, creativity, usability and functionality. The site's URL is http://www.webbyawards.com.

They have total 69 categories from SPECIAL ACHIEVEMENT HONOREES, ACTIVISM, ART, ASSOCIATIONS, .... till ..... WEIRD, YOUTH. Among those, my favourite is BEST VISUAL DESIGN - AESTHETIC, BEST VISUAL DESIGN - FUNCTION and BLOG - CULTURE/PERSONAL.

I hope someday (in next 2 yrs) my work will be posted there too. Even if it will be in nominees, i will be happy. I know, to get there not only i have to work damn hard but also need to stick to the basic standards.

All Tips and Guidelines are welcome!!!

VisiBone Country Chart

Have a look at the world's first map of internet country codes by VisiBone. It also have Phone codes [alphabetic and numeric lists].

May be somewhere, to you or to your friends/kids this will be helpful.

I wants to express my thoughts. Help me!!!

I always feel i am bad at expressing my thoughts. This itching prompted me to look for the improvement in it on google. So here i am. And, I found this interesting blog of Wayne Hurlbert who talks about "Better writing through blogging".

I am also reading few articles and books. I hope!!! one day i will start using word at the right place and with correct grammer.

Any other helpful note on the same will be highly appriciated.

Discovery Channel

Yup! I know, i am not talking somehing new here. I was watching Discovery Channel yesterday on TV, so suddenly thought of checking their website. Its really amazing to see how well they have covered the most of the topics.

Its Discovery Channel's website [http://www.discovery.com/] and the navigation is in Flash. Its interesting to see that big sites like discovery are using Flash in their website for the navigation and it has been used neatly.

SketchUp..... a Google's new 3d Product

While going through my friend's blog (Keith), i found an interesting stuff about google's 3d product ie SketchUp.

SketchUp is a simple but powerful tool for quickly and easily creating, viewing and modifying your 3D ideas.

Try your hands with it, its really a cool thing.

Useful Threads of Flash by CyanBlue

While surfing came across damn useful link for Flashers. So, i decided to have it on my website http://www.prashantpoladia.com/flashThreads/. Please go through it and pass it on to all flashers. It will be definately useful to them at some point of time.

This list has been provided by Jason Je known as CyanBlue. He is Certified Macromedia Flash MX Developer.

PS: Most of the stuff in those threads are based onFlash MX which might not work in Flash 8.

Heuristic Evaluation

Heuristic evaluation is a discount usability engineering method for quick, cheap, and easy evaluation of a user interface design.

Heuristic evaluation is the most popular of the usability inspection methods. Heuristic evaluation is done as a systematic inspection of a user interface design for usability. The goal of heuristic evaluation is to find the usability problems in the design so that they can be attended to as part of an iterative design process. Heuristic evaluation involves having a small set of evaluators examine the interface and judge its compliance with recognized usability principles (the "heuristics").

Now, your immediate question would be... "How do i conduct the Huristic Evaluation?"... right?

So, Conduct a heuristic evaluation.

Prototyping

Prototyping is the process of quickly putting together a working model (a prototype) in order to test various aspects of the design, illustrate ideas or features and gather early user feedback. Prototyping is often treated as an integral part of the development process where it is believed to reduce project risk and cost.

Often one or more prototypes are made in a process of incremental development where each prototype is influenced by the performance of previous designs, in this way problems or deficiencies in design can be corrected. When the prototype is sufficiently refined and meets the functionality, robustness, manufacturability and other design goals, the product is ready for production.

Source : en.wikipedia.org

High Dynamic Range Imaging (HDRI)

High Dynamic Range Imaging (HDRI for short) as a set of techniques that allow a far greater dynamic range of exposures than normal digital imaging techniques.

For more info on it please visit Brajeshwar's Blog, where i have read about it.

Validate your webpage with W3C Validation Service

W3C Validation Service is a free service that checks documents like HTML for conformance to W3C Recommendations and other standards.

By keen i tried www.google.com and surprising the result was "48 errors" http://validator.w3.org/check?uri=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.google.com&charset=%28detect+automatically%29&doctype=Inline ..... Well.... my website www.PrashantPoladia.com also has "51 errors" this is bad side of me.... but i will definately keep eye on this to change that to "100% ok" result.

And known sites which have passed through this test are:
Oinam (brajeshwar) and Microsoft

Check your sites too...... its interesting.

Nature of Human Computer Interaction

Nowadays, as i am reading and learning more about Human Computer Interaction, i have came through this useful information to share with you.



The above diagram explains "the nature of Human Computer Interaction" in more clear and broader sense in form of a diagram.

I hope it is useful stuff.

Do you know the LONGGGGGGGEST word in English?

While surfing the net i found something interesting to let you know......

Taumatawhakatangihangakoauauotamateaturipukakapik-imaungahoronukupokaiwhenuakitanatahu is the Maori (language) placename on an otherwise unremarkable hill which is 305 metres high, close to Porangahau, south of Waipukurau in southern Hawke's Bay, New Zealand.

The placename is often shortened to Taumata by the locals for ease of conversation.
The placename on the sign that marks this hill is spelt as Taumatawhakatangihangakoauauotamateaturipukakapikimaungahoro-nukupokaiwhenuakitanatahu which roughly translates into English as The brow [or summit] of the hill [or place], where Tamatea, the man with the big knees, who slid [down], climbed [up] and swallowed mountains, [to travel the land], [who is] known as the Land Eater, played [on] his [nose] flute to his loved one. At 85 letters, it is one of the longest placenames in the world. There are several alternative translations and variants in spelling.

It has also been spelled as: Tetaumatawhakatangihangakoauaotamateaurehaeaturipukapihim-aungahoronukupokaiwhenuaakitanarahu, which is 92 letters, and has been entered into the Guinness Book of Records as such.

The longer version of the name is apparently more recent, or perhaps more formal. There are claims that the longer name, which is now shown on a sign, has been in use all along by local Maori. The Welsh argue that the longer name has been contrived to be longer than Llanfairpwllgwyngyllgogerychwyrndrobwllllantysiliogogogoch, which some others argue was contrived to be the longest British place name in the first place.

Young Indian Cricketers..... Rocks!!!

Yet another series victory mark for the Indians in their pockets. Although 6 key players of England did not played the series because of personal and health issues, but still, winner is a winner "JO JEETA WOHI SIKANDAR".

One of the important thing which came out from this series is the PERFORMANCE of the YOUNGSTERS, the power and commitment of NEW COMERS. They were looking confident and their performance was of THE BEST. Just few years ago Indian team was all depend on experince people like Sachin, Ganguly and Sehwag, but from today's match youngesters have shown that its no more like that...... we can still fight and win the match without the key players and its no more singles man's army..... its all about team work.

Anyways, still wants to see SACHIN, SEHWAG and KAIF to back in the team and i am sure if the our team keeps continue to have such a winning attitude... "Boss!!! World Cup won't go anywhere".

Flash Information Visualization = Great User Experiences

This article was first published by User Interface Engineering in one of their e-mail newsletters. www.uie.com
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Giving users access to huge, multidimensional data sets has always been awkward and clumsy, until now. By combining the latest generation of tools, such as Flash, ActiveX, and Java, with the latest research from the little-known field of Information Visualization, we can provide user experiences that dramatically help users achieve their goals.

For instance, how would you design an interface to help find the ideal home in a database with thousands of listings? Until now, many designers opt for HTML, incorporating a mix of drop down lists and a keyword-based search tool to help users narrow down their choices.

HTML handles data clumsily and makes filtering results cumbersome. With keywords, designers have to know what words people will enter, including all the mistyped versions of those words. What if there are too many results? How does a design encourage a user to narrow down the homes, and identify criteria that are important to each specific user? If the results are too few, how does the design let users know what the scope of the database is? And how many times are users willing to recast their search?

Users may struggle to get at a reasonably narrow dataset, and fail to get insight into what the data is telling them. They fail to find a home that best meets their criteria, even though that home may well exist within the database.

It’s a frustrating experience both for the designer and for the user. Fortunately, there’s a little-known group of researchers that have been studying these problems for a long time: their field is called information visualization, and it provides very promising solutions for how to manipulate and display massive amounts of data.

To see examples of how information visualization can help, we need to look no farther than the work of Ben Shneiderman and his fellow researchers at the Human Computer Interaction Lab at University of Maryland. Ben founded HCIL in 1983 and they have done incredible research in this field, including dynamic queries, fisheye menus, and zoomable user interfaces.
For example, dynamic queries allow users to ask “what if” with their data and get an immediate response. It single-handedly resolves most of the problems with traditional database query methods using HTML.

Ben's team developed a technique known as starfields, which formed the basis of a product called Spotfire, which uses dynamic queries as its foundation. If a user were to find the ideal home using Spotfire, the process might go something like this: Beyond number of baths and bedrooms, users may want to decide on a home using sophisticated variables, like how close the house is to where they work, how land value has changed over the past 20 years, and the house's distance from public parks and shopping areas.

A user might start with some portion of that data, seeing it displayed in a two-dimensional space as a scatter plot. Then, much like a slide rule, she could adjust the ranges of several variables by sliding the pointer for the minimum and maximum ranges. Instantly the data would change to reflect her new ranges.

As well, some data could be viewed using size and color. If the user wants to look at homes within 30 miles of work for her and her spouse, homes that are 10-20 miles away might be labeled with a yellow square, with homes more than 20-30 miles away as green squares. Another variable — square footage of the house — might be visualized by the relative size of each square, the biggest homes being the biggest squares.

Eventually, through a process of taking big pictures of specific variables and narrowing the scope, a user might arrive at a small data set of homes that best fit her criteria, evaluation each of those in detail.

What makes the field of information visualization exciting for today's designers is the advent of graphical development tools like Flash, Active X, and Java. These tools can help utilize the latest advances of information visualization. Using them, developers can create interactive applications that deliver instantaneous responses to complex queries of large data sets.

Sophisticated tools that work like Spotfire are still uncommon on the web. But some simple implementations of these concepts are available today. One modest, but effective implementation is the used car section at http://www.cars.com/. It is a simple direct query interface for quickly finding the best used cars. Like Spotfire, it uses sliders to display the cars available according to the customer’s specifications
For example, to narrow the age of a car to just four years old or newer, with a click of the mouse you can slide a marker along the Year bar until it reaches 1997. Instantly, the number of results changes from 102 to 86 cars. No hitting submit and waiting for pages to download. Using the Price bar, you can quickly see that there are no Grand Ams at $14,000, so you slide the minimum price marker to $12,000, and the maximum price marker to $16,000, and by the time you let go of the mouse, the system tells you that there are 33 cars within this range.
There’s a similar implementation at http://www.bluenile.com/ to build your own ring.

We're already seeing designers integrating the world of information visualization into their work. Another research contribution, the hyperbolic tree browser by Ramana Rao at Xerox PARC, is now commercially available. (To see a tree browser in action, check out http://www.inxight.com/.) To see a treemap of stockmarket data visit www.smartmoney.com/marketmap.

We think that the exciting research that Ben Shneiderman, Ramana Rao, and many others have done is finally going to make it mainstream in the next few years. This will dramatically enhance the user experience when dealing with large, complex information spaces. •

Thanks,
Prash

TG GOOGLE BROWSER

Wow this is an amazing stuff that i just got in touch with http://www.touchgraph.com/TGGoogleBrowser.html

Check out by yourself, just type in your website URL and you can check with whom you are linked up and many more details.

Must see it!!!

Prash

copy paste between 2 computers?

hi folks,

This is the interesting stuff which i read on my friend's blog site (keith).

"Ever been on two computers at the same time and have to copy text from one to another, use a messenger right that's the easiest. If you use an Remote Desktop then it starts to get a bit painful, well don't worry there is a solution for that now thank's to another good tip from Lifehacker.

Well you can read the article about copying and pasting between computers at Lifehacker. "

One more way is to use Google mail and save it as a draft. :)


Cheers,
Prash

What is a user interface?

User Interface (or UI) is one of those jargon-y terms that you hear from computer salespeople and other techno-geeks, but that you may have never heard defined. It's not a hard concept to understand, though. It's simply the parts of a computer and its software that you (the computer user) see, hear, touch, or talk to. It is the set of all the things that allow you and your computer to communicate with each other. For example, if you are reading this on a computer screen, then you're looking at part of a user interface right now. The screen is showing you these words, communicating a message to you.

Like any good communication channel, a user interface is a two-way street. You don't want to just see or hear whatever the computer puts in front of you, you also want to tell it what you'd like to do. For instance, to get to this web page, you "asked" your computer to show you pages on a certain subject. You may have used a mouse to point and click on a button or word, or maybe you spoke instructions to the computer. However you express it, everything you tell the computer is input; what it conveys to you is output. The ways you can receive output and give input depend entirely on the user interface.

The best user interfaces are the ones you don't have to pay much attention to. They make sense to you and do what you expect them to. When an interface is easy to use, you can spend your time doing your work instead of looking everywhere for the right button or key to press. It's almost transparent--you can see right through the interface to your own work.

[source-IBM]

Usability Experts are in Demand!!!

Hi All...

This is my 1st blog, so guys, pls excuse me if i type/say anything wrong :) here.

Yesterday, met Aadesh Mistry (accidentally) at Churchgate Station in train when i was returning my way back to home. Well, i met him after a long time and it was pleasure meeting him, though he was busy with his personal SMSs (won't mind Aadesh). Aadesh is working in TCS as Usability Interface Expert and doing a course of Human Computer Interaction.

I feel really happy to know that more people are getting into User Interface fields and the demand for such a profile is also now in focus. It's great to know that people are trying to deliver what end user would be more comfortable in using it.

I am hoping to see a Degree Course on HCI (Human Computer Interaction) in India.

Thanks,
Keep Bloging,
Prash [www.PrashantPoladia.com]