Archive for the 'master' Category

Misc Tech Bits

nirav February 17th, 2007

Here are a few miscellaneous tech bits you may want to try out this weekend!

Yahoo! Pipes

Gina Trapani on Lifehacker says:

Yahoo! PipesAs a prolific netizen, you generate lots of web-based feeds: your Flickr photos, your del.icio.us bookmarks, your weblog posts and your Lifehacker comments, to name a few. Instead of going here, there and everywhere to see all the content you create on the web, combine it all into one master feed using with the newly-launched Yahoo! Pipes.

Vista’s Sideshow

Asus Laptop with SideshowImagine an LCD screen on the outer case of your laptop. Even when your computer is in the sleep mode, you can use this screen to quickly check up an email or find a phone number. Now think about doing this from a remote control. Or your phone. Now, stop imagining, since it’s real! Windows Vista has a Sideshow feature that allows you to do it, and Asus has built a laptop that uses it nicely! There are even things that support sideshow, including a remote control and laptop bag!

And by the way, you can download many other gadgets to run on this, or even create your own! Microsoft has taken the idea of Widgets a bit further pretty nicely this time!

Offline Zimbra with Firefox

Chris Double put up an example of using Zimbra (a web based email/calendar system with heavy AJAX use) offline. He says:

Zimbra is heavily ajax based and gives a good idea of how difficult or easy it is to convert an existing application to use the offline support. For this first cut I made Zimbra work when the browser is in offline mode and provide the ability to browse the email folders, and view messages while offline that are held in the Inbox and Drafts folders.

He used DOM Storage, Jar file protocol and Offline events to achieve the feat. He even has a nice screencast showing the stuff. This is quite neat, since occasionally connected model of computing is very much going to be mainstream in the next few years.

Design Master Class - Mumbai

nirav February 7th, 2007

Albert Harum-Alvarez (of SmallCompany, one of our partners) conducted a Design Master Class in Mumbai today. It was fabulous! Albert is a user interaction design expert and his teaching style is amazing. Someone said he “slaps you gently” and I could experience that throughout the day! We learned about design, good design, different layout styles, design principles, meanings and design, and a whole lot of things. Reviewing work of the participants and coming up with solutions in areas where we were stuck was a rewarding experience.

I think we will not think the same way, when we are working on our next programming aspect. We are going to turn to user model from machine model!

Thanks Albert for the wonderful class! We look forward to more classes in India!

A few photos up here!