Mighty Microsoft proves to be sloppy here

Microsoft is also not always right. nad the pictures below clearly shows their lack of homework or testing whatever.
They just cannot ignore that there are many browsers other than IE.

Windows Vista Site in IE

Windows Vista Site in Firefox

Windows Vista Site in Flock

Windows Vista Site in Opera 9(Worst Among the lot)

Map mania

My House

My College

The last Samurai

I am SAD today ...really I am. We 35 guys came from West Bengal to Chennai... young, entusiastic, dream in eyes and now only I am left, staying still in Chennai. Everybody left ...everybody. Today one of my mansion mate(last bengali)is leaving and as he said I guess he is leaving permanently leaving his job :(.

I remember those early days now... lively, full of fun, training in SlashSupport was awesome. Excellent guys, and we have heard some trainers of Slash commented that this is the best batch in training ever in Slash. Yes really we were.

But the good things didnt last long. We seperated, somebody like me joined Sutherland. Some continued in SlashSupport.

Time passed and we started feeling homesick. Tamilnadu seems to be a foreign country me. The main problem here is lack of ability of adoptability of people. People are too conservative and self-community-centered. Language is one major problem apart from that food is also a problem.

I am still surviving and with this new job I will stay here and no plan to leave now. But I feel very alone, like lost in the woods.

Now again I recall what this BPO industry have to give to youth(most of my friends used to work in call centers) ... They are really ruining Indian youth, it's dismantalling a whole generation. And I hear that someday after 10-20 years our then President will utter "Opening too many BPO industry was a Historical Mistake" like our formar Chief Misinster Mr. Jyoti Basu commented, on the issue of abolishing English at school level syllabus in early 80's that eventually paralised a whole bengali generation and we are suffering now.

I feel lonely at the same time scared too .

Google Video free Today

Thats quite interesting. I saw few videos. infact this is the first day I visited Google Video. Wish it is free forever and I can watch all Charlie Chaplin movies ...

Is BPO Industry ruining Indian youth

Actually I was thinking why are we so excited about BPO, i.e. Business Process Outsourcing.

If I am not wrong BPO in word means when a company outsource part of its job to another company specialized in than.
Now this defination doesnot contain any term called Call Center.
But I am sure you all know today atleast in India BPO is synonymous to Call Center.

Now if i am right, the average age of ppl working in call center is23-25 years. And most of the company have very high attrition rate.Why? BPO can earn you hell lot of money if you are good at (every bodywant to be good when comes to job), you can enjoy a diff lifestylewhich many has dreamt of in his/her teens, ppl at your native will beamazed how fluently with a strange accent you speak english.
Then why ppl leave job...pressure is everywhere and you know beforejoining that you have to work at night shift. Then where is theproblem.

I think problem is not with the yought but with nature of the job.Its ruining the youth, its making them unsocial, unimaginative, infactunproductive.
What do they produce actually ...nothing. Helping a stupid foreignerwho dont know what is Icon, what is Power button is worthless. Is thisis the cause that our parents admit us to colleges?????

To spend the most valuable amount of out time over phone, readingthe same script and dealing with fat, rude and a rich guy who think wecannot speak english, whereas British who actually speak english loughat that english in pity. arghhh...,is mear waste of time I belive. We need more entrepreneur who will not do job but produce job.

I Dearm of that India ...

Principles that form the foundation of good design.

While searching I found a very good section on UI Design and Usability in IBM website. I found this article named Design basics very helpful. Its quite a long article and captures some pretty obvious facts but a good read for newcomers like me. So I though why not share the essence or points i learnt or gatherd from the article. It may be helpful for ppl who dont have time to read such a long article.

And you may also take a look at other sections too. Nice read, I belive.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Keep the interface simple and straightforward. Basic functions should be immediately apparent, while advanced functions may be less obvious to new users.

In addition to providing assistance when requested, the system should recognize and anticipate the user's goals, and offer assistance to make the task easier.

To give users control over the system, enable them to accomplish tasks using any sequence of steps that they would naturally use. Don't limit them by artificially restricting their choices to your notion of the "correct" sequence.

Users should not have to learn new things to perform familiar tasks.

Where you can, use real-world representations in the interface.

Users should feel confident in exploring, knowing they can try an action, view the result, and undo the action if the result is unacceptable. Users feel more comfortable with interfaces in which their actions do not cause irreversible consequences. Encourage User

Offer a preview of the results of an action when it would be inconvenient for a user to apply the action and then reverse it.

Users should be protected from making errors. The burden of keeping the user out of trouble rests on the designer.

Personalization: Allow users to customize

The following are visual design principles that promote clarity and visual simplicity in the interface:

* Subtractive design - reduce clutter by eliminating any visual element that doesn't contribute directly to visual communication.
* Visual hierarchy - by understanding the importance of users' tasks, establish a hierarchy of these tasks visually. An important object can be given extra visual prominence. Relative position and contrast in color and size can be used.
* Affordance - when users can easily determine the action that should be taken with an object, that object displays good affordance. Objects with good affordance usually mimic real world objects.
* Visual scheme - design a visual scheme that maps to the user model and lets the user customize the interface. Do not eliminate extra space in your image just to save space. Use white space to provide visual "breathing room"

"We have nothing, nothing here,"

"We have nothing, nothing here," says Hadija Adem, 40, who has lost three children during her 10 years at the camp.

Abdi Ali Hassan, 45, recalls "We saw a foreign charity man here last year. He came with a lot of armed Somali guards. He did not talk to us but took lots of photographs, but that is the last we saw of him," he says. "We go into the city every day, we try to get work and the best paid will be one dollar a day. If we cannot find work we have to beg or look into the dustbins."

"There was one poor woman who had been trapped in her home for 15 days by the bombing. The day she came out, with her baby in her arms, she was shot. We found the baby trying to suckle his mother."

"He was a good boy. He went out to get food for his mother and brothers and sister. I ask Allah every day why this happened ..." Her voice fades away.

Is this the world of tomorrow we want ... this blog is not about discussing these stuffs but I cannot resist myself showing it to my readers.

These are the words by people of Somalia from a report published in The Independent under the heading Aid fails to reach the poorest in war-torn Somalia

I think I am in love again ... with Flock

No i am not kidding, but the counterpart is no girl ...he he as you might think. Its Flock.
I think this is what people call love at first sight. It looks cool, behaves elegently and have nice feature. What more you would like to look for in your partner.

Yes I cannot leave Firefox. I am kind of married to her ...he he like amny others. But Flock is like a fresh air ... a cute little angel at your neighbour enough to make you inflatuate at any age.

So what Flock offers. It has integrated Photo Uploader, that means you can upload and share your flicker moments directly from your browser.

It has very nicely integrated and indeed very nice looking News reader. The best feature is its full story retreaval. And its blazing fast belive me.

You dont have to worry about bookmark imports and did I say that it imports your browsing history too.

And Search facility is very good.

On the downside ..its bit slow at start, and doesnot offer you to select the page you want to go back. Thats all i point out at the first sight.

Anyway try it out. Belive me you will not be disatisfied.

Gliffy : Visio on web

Recently I found a very nice tool.Its name is Gliffy , its a flash tool to draw Flowchart,UI wireframe,Floor plans,Network Diagrams etc. It do it very efficiently and the software itself is fuzz free. Just login and draw. It has automatic versioning and you dont have to worry about accidental delete. It works fine in both IE, Firefox as well as opera.

From Gliffy Site :

Gliffy Inc. is a next-generation rich internet application company based in San Francisco, CA, USA. Our mission is to provide platform independent internet applications with rich user interfaces for collaboration. Since May of 2005, Gliffy has funded development of our technology through bootstrapping and OpenLaszlo consulting services.

Recently the software I am working on I am using it for initial UI Prototyping and me and my PM are quite happy with its effectiveness. Great work from Gliffy guys. Hope to see more extensibility, like making own element would be at my hot list.

Cheers

Represend your site structure in a graph

While digging I found this cool tool.
Have anybody tested this before. If not I would say its worth a try. What it do is simple. It represents the hirarchical tag structure ofyour website. And now how it will help you.

1. It will help you understand the structure of your website in form of a raph.
2. It will let you understand the dominance of the tag in your website.

http://www.aharef.info/2006/05/websites_as_graphs.htm

Web Operating System

It calls itself a operating System, though dont expect it to perform even .1% of Windows that we use now, but it shows that future is here. When you dont have to login to your own desktop to work on your system
LOgin form anywhere in the world and get the same desktop you use at your personal system. a OS that not only resided on your system but also on the web.

As of now this OS ... EyeOS dont do much expect basic stuff, not even a virtual office but it shows what is coming next.

In fact it has a feel of a desktop, file save, delete feature, messaging, even you can ceate your own aplication ...cool huh

take a look and yes do I mention it looks very nice and elegent too