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.. :)

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.

Some see Something Missing, I see a Revolution

[Ahh... my first tech related post.]

Keeping it aside and coming back to the topic. The unclear title- "Something Missing"

Though i'm quite late in writing about it, but today i realized something, a revolution which many people are failing to see.

Well, a few days ago, Apple released its latest addition to the MacBook family - The MacBook Air.

Amazingly thin, actually the thinnest notebook ever, Aluminum body, 3 pounds weight - So beautiful!

13.3" Glossy LED display, Ambient Light Sensing illuminating keyboard,

2GB standard memory, Solid State Drive, Intel Core 2 Duo, Slimmer battery - So much, in So Less Space

Hidden ports, Mono speakers (thoughtful people use earphone, stereo enabled), 802.11n WiFi, Bluetooth 2.1 +EDR

See the complete tech specs here.

True, So Many Innovations, So Little Space.

So far so well, people were amazed at its introduction, but then soon it dwelled in that the beautiful MacBook Air lacks an Optical Drive. It was disheartening for some, but on the other hand there is a group of people, including me, who see an upcoming revolution in this.

In this age of connectivity, where we have WiFi, Bluetooth and most more importantly, the Internet, the removal of an optical drive can be viewed as a revolution instead of a shortcoming. With Online backups, online file sharing and storage services and a lot of bandwidth at our hands, we just do not need to search for optical disks anymore. As for applications, the increasing bandwidth makes downloading them convenient too. And anyways if you have a good computer, you do not need to re-install the OS every 3 months ;) and hence, no re-installing of applications too.

I personally have started to get into this phenomenon of not using the optical drive as much as i used it previously. Backups, application downloads, files, etc - the internet does that all for me. I wish to see my photos, there is Picasa and Flickr and lot many photo sharing sites, i need information - Wikipedia is ever ready to help you, for other files there is MegaUpload and 4Shared. For videos - YouTube.

Plus, I don't have to bother about managing them, no more creating local folders for images of different events, tagging them, no more creating text files for storing information, no more local folders for videos, no more grouping files together by their type locally, the above services do them more gracefully and conveniently. Or still if I can't find what I need, just a simple Google search proves helpful. Just as we have web based emails, we have web based storage for every other thing too.

We just need to see things differently, instead of getting disheartened for lack of something, try to see the newer avenues that have come up. The world is no more what it was when you started reading this post, it has changed a lot. See things in a different way, you'll never find anything missing.

Oh, by the way, just how the hard-bound diary, got transformed into this online blog!

Amazing, and so true.

By the way, for just those who can't afford to assimilate all this, the MacBook Air takes care of them by this wonderful feature called Remote Disk.

You have it - you enjoy, You dont - sit back!

It was not long back, when we were taught in schools about the 3 basic needs of mankind. Textbooks and teachers listed them as follows:

• Food
• Clothing and
• Shelter

Do these so called facts still hold true in today's world? In my various encounters with life, I have realized that whats said above is probably not true anymore. I am not saying that things have completely changed, but at least the order in which these needs appear, has. With the passage of time, a relatively newer need has surfaced and has gained prominence over the others. In today's world our top most need is something which we can never get enough of...

Money..

Money, which Wikipedia defines as any token or other object that functions as a medium of exchange that is socially and legally accepted in payment for goods and services and in settlement of debts.

But is has surely become more than just a token or an object. Money is inevitable. We need it to live our lives. The system of the world says so. If you have it, you enjoy, if you don't, sit back. We need money for food, we have to buy it. We need it for drinking water, we have to pay our water bills or again, buy bottled water! People who stay far away from their dear ones, have to again spend money, to talk to them. So its money again to even talk to our dear ones. We need to pay our telephone bills, we pay for the internet connection, we pay for snail mails (people do use it). So its money again. Another strange thing here is that to do all this, the money we pay, goes to people we might never even talk to or even see. According to me, (though my view, in the big picture, doesn't count!) we need to change. The concept of money should be virtualised. We can have a world were money doesn't really exist. We can think of it as an improved version of the Barter system. We can have our knowledge and skills being exchanged for services and goods that we use or buy. Or we can even think of a world where money can be replaced by virtual money. As an example, consider a system where all payments are made using the prepaid balance in our mobile phone accounts. We go to buy something, and the retailer could deduct money from our prepaid account. Similarly, we offer our services to someone, and we get our prepaid accounts credited with the appropriate amount. Every payment could be made using the simple mobile phone. And now, because of the advent of technology, the same money could be used for variety of purposes like talking, surfing the net, etc. Though this is a far fetched dream and just a dream, it would really be a great idea to virtualize money. Then perhaps people will be more happy, because their needs will be intertwined with their services they offer. Till something like this happens, if you have it, enjoy, if not, just sit back!