Gmail Chat: Now With Video and Voice

After having signed a deal with MGM Studios that would allow Google to stream full length movies and TV episodes on YouTube, Google decided to sprinkle some video on Gmail too. They spiced up Gmail with something that was long missing.

Gmail chat now does video and voice too. After having chat and rich mail rolled in a single package, video and voice chat comes as a welcome add-on. According to the GMail blog, they have tried to make it "an easy to use, seamless experience with high quality audio and video all for free." My first hand experience says they have faired very well in delivering what they tried for. It uses Vidyo technology which they say is covered under pending patents.

Both participants of the chat need to install a small package of video plugin from here to enable this feature in Gmail. The Mac installer comes as 2.4 MB download and the Windows XP version is a 476 KB initial downloader which then downloads and installs the remaining content. On the Mac, the installation DMG contains a .PKG file and an uninstaller. You need to quit all your browsers before installing it. The Mac version needs Mac OS X 10.4 or later and 5.6 MB of space. Once the installation is complete, it opens the Chat settings page in your Gmail account. The defaults worked fine for me. You can verify if your settings are correct by opening that little section that shows the audio input/ output levels and starts your web cam. The audio output levels here may sound a little low but this is just the level at which you hear the ring that is played for an incoming chat request. The troubleshooting link doesn't really offer any good help yet other than a three step installation guide.

Once everything is in place, you should see a green camera icon besides your name in the chat panel in Gmail. You could start a video and voice chat from the little popup menu on the chat window. A small panel slides up and starts your web cam. The other participant hears a ring and must accept the invitation to video chat before they can view your web cam. The visual and voice clarity is amazing here (unlike that in the settings verification page). It uses  XMPP, RTP and H.264 standards, so that level of performance is expected. You can pop that window out, just as you would during a regular chat to resize the video frame. To have a more immersive experience, you could turn to the full screen mode, which didn't fail to impress me.

What I didn't like was a little echo that I could hear at times. The echo cancellation option in the settings page didn't seem to have any effect in removing it. It didn't work for me if I set my status to invisible.

Overall it is an impressive move by Gmail. There's a good news for developers, for they can leverage this technology in their own applications too.

So, Gmail is indeed getting close to doing our laundry. You can read more about this feature in the Official GMail Blog here.

Wallpaper: Fireworks

Fireworks by ~MysticDews on deviantART

From a Combination of Words to an Identity

How do you come up with such fancy names?

Hello MysticDews, or whatever that handle of yours means.

Didn't quite get the tale behind your MysticDews identity.

This was a fraction of number of questions of that nature. A lot of people have been asking me about the MysticDews identity that I maintain throughout my social cloud. I wanted to do a post on this when I started writing here, but somehow it didn't seem appealing to me at that time.

So where did this MysticDews actually come from?

It happened one chilly morning, when I had to attend a lecture at my physics classes. As usual, I reached a little early and was wondering what to do. I walked on the grassy ground nearby and dew drops on the foliage caught my attention. I wanted to photograph it and asked one of my teachers if he could allow me to use his camera phone for a while. I clicked a few pictures and was so lost that I didn't notice that all my classmates had arrived and were watching me click those pictures. I heard someone whisper "He's a mysterious guy..."

The day continued, and ended with not even a distant particle of hint that it would be the making of something that I'll be identified as. Next day I couldn't attend the lecture and when I later met my friends, they asked me where did I disappear and that the teacher was asking about why the dew drop boy didn't attend. I replied, without much thought,

"The mysterious guy disappeared like the dews - Mystic Dews."

That's when I first used that name. Later in the night, while on the bed, looking at the stars from my window the sound of Mystic Dews kept ringing through my ears. I liked the fanciness of that name and the way it came into being - so much that I decided to use it as an identity for myself.

That is the story of MysticDews - from a combination of words, to an identity.

With a special thanks to all those who appreciated me for that handle, I end this post.. :)

Wallpaper: Flashy Lines

Starting today, I'll occasionally post links to wallpapers that I create. Don't expect posts titled Wallpaper to appear at regular intervals. At times there can be more than one in a week, and some times, there can be none for a few weeks at a stretch. Currently I'm designing them only for a resolution of 1280x860, but you could drop in a comment if you want it customized for a particular resolution.

So here's my first wallpaper for you all. It is hosted on my page at DeviantArt, click through the thumbnail to open the DeviantArt page for the actual file.

Flash Lines by ~MysticDews on deviantART

A Laptop for Children: How HIGs Change

The field of Human Computer Interaction has always interested me ever since I understood what it is. As an HCI enthusiast, I often find myself reading Human Interface Guidelines (HIG) of various user interfaces. Recently, I was reading the HIGs for the Sugar UI. For those unaware, Sugar is the UI used in the XO laptops of the OLPC project fame.

This UI has more than just fascinated me. It is a completely re-invented concept and it has been done very creatively. These laptops are primarily intended for use by children, aged 5 to those in their mid teens. So, how differently do you create an UI targeted for that age group?

Well, to answer that question, just imagine that you literally had to re-invent the wheel, that lets say, will be used on a vehicle for a specific user group. Akin to that, the task of designing an UI for children requires additional imaginative thinking and an ability to present things in the most simplified form. Besides, simplifying necessarily doesn't mean that the UI be stripped of attractiveness. In fact the UI has to be attractive as well so that children are driven to use it. The Sugar UI HIGs take care of the possibility that the the XO might be the first laptop that their users will own, meaning they might have no prior experience of computing. Further, they would like to explore things without having the fear of ending up in a blue screen equivalent.

What excited me the most was the change in metaphors used to describe the environment. Speaking of the Desktop metaphor, the HIG mentions:

While this metaphor makes sense at the office—and perhaps even at home—it does not translate well into a collaborative environment such as the one that the OLPC laptops will embody.

Hence, these comparisons were redefined to create a simple, realistic user interface for children.

Applications are referred to as activities. Children can better relate with an activity instead of an application. So they could have writing activities, drawing activities or may be singing activities that are analogous to a text editing application, drawing, and AV recording applications. Besides, every activity can be a shared activity. An activity can be shared in a mesh which is a reference to the local network. The document gives an example of the web browsing activity. It says that unlike the normal isolated browsing, here you could browse as a collaboration with your group. Privacy in this case is implemented at a different level. Because children will be the primary users, sharing becomes the essence of all activities. Although users can alter the privacy settings if required.

The desktop is replaced by Neighborhood. A user can see other users and groups in their neighborhood. This view shows the group size and the activity around which the group is centered. Users are represented by the XO icons, and you can get more information about the user by clicking on the icon.

The menu bars are replaced by the Frame. But the Frame does more than just provide access to menus. In my opinion, this approach is much more efficient than the currently prevalent desktop layouts. It leaves more room for activities. The frame gives you access to places, people, objects and actions. The frame occupies the boundaries of the screen and remains hidden unless needed. One edge of the frame also doubles up as what we know as a clipboard. Users can place objects, like images, audio clips, links on the frame and then use them later to paste them on bulletin boards, in other activities or on other friends. So it behaves similar to clipboards on other operating systems and at the same time, provides drag and drop support, allowing selection from existing clipboard items, clipboard history and previews.

The hierarchical filesystem as we know on our computers, is replaced by the Journal. the journal maintains a log of whatever the user does. It saves things automatically letting users focus on the activity completely. The journal uses an intelligent algorithm that guesses forgotten entries and offers to delete them to maintain storage space on the laptop.

Files are not treated as they are in normal computing. Each file is an object which in turn is an independent instance of the activity which was used to create it. This way the children can access their creations directly, without having to associate them with an activity. So, a story will remain a story, and not a collection of words that needs to be opened using a text editor.

Besides these, there are a lot more analogies and innovative concepts brought up in the Sugar UI. Just reading those guidelines has changed the way I look at user interfaces and the way interfaces can be designed. (Ok, that happens to me after reading any HIGs...)

Those interested, can read the Sugar UI Human Interface Guidelines here. I also found this interesting picture on Flickr that would help Apple users to correlate the concepts used in Sugar with those used in our Leopard.

BarCampMumbai4

The two day BarCampMumbai4 concluded last Sunday. I had the pleasure to be present for the unconference on both days. Besides the knowledge that I gained, it was great meeting my twolks (twitter folks, for those who can't figure that out) and new people.

It started on twitter, with people discussing about the BCM4 days ahead of the actual event. I wanted to attend BCM3, which took place last year, but unfortunately I couldn't. So this year, in spite of unending college assignments, I firmly decided that I will be attending BCM4. Unlike earlier BarCamps, BCM4 required participation from all those who attended it - you either present a session, or volunteer for other activities. After remaining awake for two nights and filling up pages with stuff that teachers never really check, I reached the venue - SJM SOM, at IIT Bombay on Saturday morning, for day 1.

The day began with registrations and we received a geeky t-shirt from the platinum sponsor for the event - Directi. (I always wanted a t-shirt like that, as much as I want a tattoo like this one.) We later proceeded to the SOM Well and had our breakfast (credits to Vipul Mathur for the attractive picture). Then after a short introduction session by Abhishek Thakkar, began the sessions. Most of the sessions were focussed on startups. Established people talked about their success stories and gave some valuable tips. There were a few product demoes which invited lively discussions and feedbacks. I won't get into details of the sessions as a list of those can be found here, on the BarCampMumbai's website.

More interesting than the sessions was meeting my twolks (ok, I wasn't following all of them earlier, but now I am). I met Preshit, Shadez, Aalaap, Unitechy, DanishKhan1, Asfaq, aDeSe, dhempe, PunkPolkaDots, Netra, UrmiRaj14, Maharana, VipulMathur, santoshp, and Shwetank at the tweetup that we had near the coffee shack at IITB. (If I'm missing out someone, please let me know).

Day 2 was more interesting, we had a small introduction session, wherein everyone present at BCM4 had to introduce themselves in a 20 second time span. Later we had an interesting session by Appu and Vipul Mathur, both photography enthusiasts and excellent photographers on Photography Communities and why should we be sharing our photos.

While listening to the sessions, a bunch of us, including me started a community effort that we code named Houston Wayfinder Mission ;) As DanishKhan1 described it, it is a top secret, and any disclosures might lead to serious complications. Preshit proved that one can be famous on twitter without even having an account there. The Houston Wayfinder Mission is still continuing on twitter, with Wayfinder updating Houstons on the current status regarding the subject. Well, this might not have made sense to you if you are not one of the 5 Houstons or Wayfinder himself (oOps, itself, I mean ;) )

With all that fun, and after-BCM4 Minute Maid sponsored by Preshit, BCM4 had a happy ending. I'll be a regular at BCM from now onwards and hope to present a session sometime.

Photographs from BCM4 have been uploaded on Flickr and can be found here.

BarCampMumbai4

BarCampMumbai4

So, this is going to be the first time that I'll be attending a BarCamp. Though I was late in registering myself, and that was because of a busy college schedule and a long stream of assignments and submissions. In fact even now, after being awake for two continuous days, it is now getting beyond my limits. I really need to catch some sleep now to be fresh and alive for tomorrow's hopefully eventful day.

Anyway, I'll better end this post before the sleep monster completely pulls me down. I'm hoping to learn something new at BCM4, and expecting it to be as exciting as it sounds. Also expecting to meet my fellow twitterers.

See you there...