Yay! New look for the blog!

Back in the US now, been flirting with dandelife.com for sometime now, but that doesnot let me experiment with these fancy web widgets [i just added a recaptcha for my mail at the bottom of this page], so its back to blogspot.
This was a good time, I got to do some serious affinity diagrams, personas etc. Also, as usual, took the opportunity to add some wonderful books to my IA kit
- My usability bible, Contextual Design - Holtzblatt and Beyer
-Designing the obvious - Robert Hoekman Jr
-Design for Non Designers - Robin Williams

While I have read the COntextual Design book many times, it has always been a borrowed copy. I have been wanting to get my own copy for quite some time now, and its going to be used rather frequently.

I am reading Designing the Obvious currently, watch this space for a review real soon...

hmm - rainy sunday afternoon

Its a rainy sunday afternoon and i decided to drop by, for the sake of old times. A few rants first.
1. Information overload is here...ive got 3 books to complete reading, plus a thousand blogs, websites, youtube - the list keeps growing. Unfortunately, time is not an elastic entity.
2. Broadband connection. MTNL, it has been so far. Was pretty good till about four days back when it suddently decided to go beserk. There would be five minutes of acyual connectivity in an hour. Today has been better, but the unpredictability scares me.
3. As an information architect/usability analyst - there's the world out there waiting to be discovered. I have hardly touched the surface and knowing how much there is to know, thrills me and scares me at the same time. Pretty UIs are the last things girrl!

OK - now for some good reads:
1. Mythical Man-Month - Examples are dated, but the concepts hold good to this day. Will add to your ammunition when dealing with a difficult project manager, and help you if you are the project manager.

2. Thoughts on Interaction Design by Jon Kolko - Practical, to-the-point, humourous

3. Interaction Design Patterns - Jenifer Tidwell. Need I say more?

ugleah.com - enjoyed reading the examples, and the presentation on paper prototyping.

Google reader - had discovered it sometime back, now that bloglines is officially websensed - have reverted to it once again.

Nuff for today. Have decided to update this blog more frequently...

Designing for 90%

Wanted to check this out at the Cooper Hewitt Musuem, but as luck would have it, its closed this sunday:(

http://www.cooperhewitt.org/VISIT/

Askville - An alternative to Google?

Had a chance to check out the new 'Ask Me' service launched by Amazon - Askville.
Google failed me when I was trying to fing Hindi numeral names from 1-50 for Mishti, which is when I posted a question on Askville. Bingo! In the next 10 mins, I had not one, but two sets of URLS to follow, and pretty accurate at that. The person who answered goes by the name of EddieNygma, and has answered diverse questions ranging from 'opinion on the best in permanent adhesives' to 'finding prints by Brian Andreas' and everything in between. All in all, this person had 35743 quest coins at the last count - one for each question answered...quite sometthing!
So curiousity piqued, I posted a second query about adding a dropdown in an excel sheet - and again within 5 minutes, I had an answer, albeit not a very good one, for it was the standard excel help text that I couldnot comprehend in the first go.
Success of Google search result depends on the accuracy of the query - but when there are humans at the other end interpreting your search queries, it can be pretty awesome!

Blogging after a long time!

Hmm - Its been a busy month or two, coupled with no internet access. SO after a period of mind numbing work, am back for a spin in web world.
After hearing a lot of positive feedback on the new Yahoo Mail, decided to see ot for myself. Yeah, and came back absolutely inpressed. Right from the demo widget to the MS outlook interface. Although, I am a bit used to having mail grouped by conversation, eager to give this a try.
Another fave site ok-cancel.com seems to be hibernating, so caught up with the cartoon strips I had missed reading earlier.

Ashish passed me this link yesterday
http://labs.adobe.com/technologies/apollo/
Hmm, wonder how I missed that...trouble keeping up with the latest trends.But seriously, that IS the logical next step.
Ashish was laso raving about the single number service offered by www.grandcentral.com
Amazing concept, especially when you are paying for incoming calls.

This is my current list of daily fixes:
techcrunch.com
Digg.com
del.icio.us
bloglines
boxesandarrows
orkut.com

Hmm, when did rediff and msn get knocked off from this list? Real 'News' don't matter anymore?
Gmail

Websense and Broadband

After having a completely free rein of internet in Delaware, I am back in Mumbai now, and back to reality. Thud. The Mumbai office is heavily websensed-the websensed categories include the company name, what more can I say.
Anyways, so that means no IMs, no sites that fall under Finance, Travelling, Shopping, Entertainment, Social Networking, yadda yadda. Even checking emails is a pain, cos every other page takes you back to the 'blocked' message.

I shifted home a year back, and getting broadband was always on the to-do list. I had been pretty casual about it so far, as the places I worked with so far never really had a 'policy' regarding internet usage. And ofcourse, as a usability engineer/web developer, the internet was my playground.

All that changed when I got back to office this month, and therein began my hunt for an ISP who would give me broadband. The ISP of choice, Hathway, refused connection to my building-cable guy monopoly! MTNL, has this rule, where your application gets cancelled automatically if you are not available when the friendly-phone-guy drops in. So the form I had filled last october had been anulled even before I knew, and it took me a year and a half, inspite of living in the financial capital of the happening IT place that is India, to get a broadband connection.

Anyways, hopefully, the wait has ended. The connection is pretty fast, and all that I need to know now-is how much it will cost me EOM. Will keep you posted. Till then, happy surfing!

Googling Prachi Sakhardande

I just googled myself and got a few interesting results:

http://pms.rediffblogs.com/ (Didnt know it existed!)

A link to my linkedIn profile (never used it ever - I am a true-blue orkuteer)
http://www.linkedin.com/pub/1/623/a94

Some recipes I had put online, eons ago
http://www.bawarchi.com/contribution/contrib3532.html

Strangely, blogger, flickr and orkut are nowhere on the list. Why?