Layman's take on travel, technology & everything | Doesn't need to have a super brain, Just do your bit
Finally June 20, 2012 happens be the day and it arrived.
The arrival was delayed due to my change of mind about color at the last moment, which was silver earlier but changed to white at the end. Its over you to tell me if I made a right choice about color.
As about the model, then the choice is Tata Indica Vista VX Quadrajet Refresh (Sedan Class). Ufff… long name.
The last week been kind of lucky for me and one of the sample is here …
The readers who are not on twitter, might not be aware of the name @24hoursloot, the Pune based company which makes innovatively designed custom T-Shirts, While they are in the business of online sales of T-Shirts, they continuously run twitter promos in which they ask to RT their T-Shirt link and choose one of the person to gift the same T-Shirt for free. These promos run daily basis and finally after many attempts, I was the one to win one from them.
It took less than a week for them to ship it to me and lovely was to see that the link sent to me was given with the choice of selecting a size for me or even male/female T-Shirts options.
I am sure you wanna try some luck of yours as well… go for it, I am enjoying my own.
In last few years, we seen the internet world moving from IM/Chat rooms to blogs, then to social networks and finally micro-blogging world like twitter. We seen the rise and fall of many brands and also the growing fanboyism from loyalists toward them. We seen brands going for their audiences via print media, TV media, digital media and via words of mouth.
Lots of things got changed in these years and we seen lots of changes in the way, brands interact with their loyalists. But last Friday, July 01, 2011, something happened, something such big that no one would have ever imagined. At least, I never imagined anything like that will ever happen to me.
Continue reading “Thanks @Nokia, never imagined that I would be part of world’s biggest #FF ever”
While everyone was writing their part of farewell to 2010, I didn’t knew what I should write about it. There been a lot of things that I could have written about in this farewell post, a lot of things that happened in the year, a lot of feelings that I gone through, really a lot .. has happened to make the same year a memorable or probably one of the most crucial one for me.
Let’s go through the flashback ..
So I am back again over the same issue that big names continuously skipping on, may be in thinking that touch technology is the future, either be with it or be out of race. My opinions are/were never against touch screen technology. Its always been about the ways, its being handled now days.
It might be the case that I may look like alone in the crowd arguing over issues with touch screens repeatedly and some again may feel like calling me a cribber, but this been a blog about the layman always rather than experts or geeks. Even if less bloggers picking on it, I still believe that there are many, who still feel in the same way as I am. Its just not the touch vs non-touch debate, but about making touch phones more real.
After having a top of line Nokia touch phone in hands and being through some other big names of touch world, I am back again to point out some of serious issues that could be corrected, if people get to know that there are issues rather than thinking that they will find out those issues themselves. Let’s see what some of the issues are and what could be done about them …..
Blind and naive typing methods
In general, this issue isn’t against only Nokia, but its about most of the touch screens out in market. When it comes to typing, you feel like living in DOS ages, where every way was going through that same c:\>
Its not hard to understand that the issue behind is the little real estate provided to design the interface, but still that captcha bug represents whole buggy touch keypad design, which relies more on our memory than the visual approach (for which, the touch screens were standing for in the first place).
Leave the captcha words at the first place, they already annoy sometimes (they tend to get this much complex that become a problem for humans itself, not only computer), think of common scenario. You were about to login into your one of the social account, I say and someone calls in the middle. You have typed the user name and now you were up to entering the password, but that annoying call takes up your 10 mins and when you come back, whoooa what was the site and what was the user name I was typing? Oh! you can always go back and check that..
What about some long list of drop down in some site says Forum Nokia device specification page and you wanna navigate to some specific one? Oh!! yaa… there is a way out of the page.. great intuition.. thanks for forcing people feeling done with touch screen phones.
Though I will also agree that there are other advantages of touch screens, when it comes to typing. You got some word wrong at the second last line while typing and you just touch right there correct that. You have to select one word from somewhere and its just stretching a finger. Its sure not like that typoholics have all the reasons for hating only.
Conclusion and suggestion A full screen keypad app popping up whenever you find a place like typing, just screws the ‘awesome’ experience to live on a touch screen or whatever you call it and only aliens could call it intuitive or whatever they mean in their language.
People might be making it fun to type with things like Swype, but why not anyone coming up with some kind of transparent keys design or even split keypad design (under making on Symbian^3) that may let the text boxes be text boxes with their own nature (plain text or password text) and doesn’t make you feel alien-ish when coming from a Non-Touch background? And yes! inline auto correction of words do help a lot.
Screen Real Estate is too important to be wasted
I am not much into other platforms, but as much I see, its very much specific to Nokia. They not only love their ‘ideal’ 360×640 pixels, but seems to be thinking that a filled table took more beautiful than an empty one.
Do you know there are many, who are switching to touch screens only for the sake of few cm’s more of the screen.. like going from 2.6” to 3.2” or 3.5” even if they kind of hate those touch screens many times due to issues like I mentioned above.
Its true that most of them ask for bigger screens to watch pictures/ movies/ web pages with ease and get ready to compromise on many of their conveniences by going over touch screens and if you ask me, then keeping those 1 cm thicker Options and Exit buttons is really kind of some crime.
Yes! they started doing better with opening the web browser in full screen by default, but haven’t layout of Opera or Safari reminds them that people could manage with smaller and intuitive buttons as well? Same story again, if you compare their Photo Gallery with Android ones. Is glassy interfaces and eye candy transition effects going to take ages to deliver?
Its good that finally more RAM and hardware acceleration is making the experience smoother than ever but after the long insistence over the low RAM, now Nokia seems to have gotten the another bug of sticking with a standard resolution like 360×640. Haven’t the whole internet was buzzing with praises when they delivered the resolution of 800×480 with Nokia N900? What’s point in going back what they started once?
They say its that for sake of the various devices\ existing apps, they offer and some of them might be of lower resolutions due to uniform support, price compromises or smaller screen sizes like 3.2” but tell me, isn’t it’s like naive web designers, who start with the approach of assuming the website resolution fixed at 800×600 or 1024×768?
Remember making use of each and every pixels was one of the reasons that make S60 devices to be called as smart once and Gravity like apps as legends.
Conclusion and suggestion Are you again going to start the similar mistake that you kept on doing by insisting over lesser RAM and user storage for years and devices over devices? Take my word, don’t do that. You can’t afford more mistakes, if really wanna come back. You have to provide as much real estate as possible even in those little 3.2”, 3.5” or 4” and it will not only ask for higher resolutions but also some intuitiveness as well. If your developers can’t think of that then ask developers like Janole@mobileways.de, but its nothing like that you will catch up later on, its right there, right now.
Don’t ask users to spend same amount of time as they would have spending on Computers
Its again becoming a Nokia specific issue for the most part.
Almost every analyst kept on saying to Nokia that Symbian became the burden for only one fact, they tried to rebrand a non-touch OS into a touch one. Otherwise S60 and S40 operating systems were never that bad or hated in communities, neither they are even now. It was similar kind of mistake that desktop emperor Microsoft did, when they approached the smart phones. They thought that the same interface with minor adopting will sell as people will feel more ‘familiar’ to that. You seen what happened with them, haven’t you?
You are a nerd or geek, if you are seen on computers for most of the time, but you look like a confused person, if you seen fiddling to many folders and menus for performing a simple task on any smart phone. When we call Smart then it goes to have everything right there, when you need that anytime. Don’t tell me that people haven’t kept on warning you about the fiddly navigation system on S60 V5 and Symbian?
It was fine with non-touch phones to have those two buttons at the bottom approach, but Nokia and Microsoft should have got the point in 2007 only that this kind of button approach isn’t going to work with touch phones as well. Ribbon approach as started by Apple in some extent and now being followed by Android or Bada as well was sure a better way to go.
Even if something is not that simple, it can be made to look simple that’s the design part takes place. Making more efficient-n-capable apps is another thing and making them look really simple is another thing. I guess developers doing their jobs perfectly, but designers not or the demarcation line between two has been blurred out since the OS design.
Conclusion and suggestion What about keeping all the things full screen all the time and a customizable ribbon appearing from top, bottom, right or left edge of screen holding the running apps or frequently used apps? Remember such innovations are already in place with your system only, when we get last used symbols on pressing # or those last dialed/ SMSed contacts system in S40 phones, when trying to send a new SMS. Its not totally an alien idea to you, is it?
No! I don’t have that small blogger syndrome, neither do I think that whatever words get thrown over some web page reach to right people straight away, but it never stopped a layman from talking. Everything takes time to get matured in order to serve us better, but its the opinions that bring those changes possible in lesser time.
I still have a hope that the touch screen fanatics will listen to the concerns, which non-touch fans find hard to live with, whenever they want to like touch phones. They may not be echoing the words that hard, when someone says something in favour of non-touch phones, but I still believe there are many, who wants a few changes in touch world… am I wrong?
I know its being obsessed with blog stats, I know some might even say that its kind of show off, when some of the blogs get around 50000 hits on daily basis, but let me say… its not a small feet for me, each of the views counts a lot for me and I really really wanna thank you all for making it happen.
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Yes!! today morning, Layman’s Take reached to the landmark of 100000 views, despite of the fact that people were to bear some of the terrible grammar mistakes in my posts here (I write in one go in short time available to me, but I know thats not an excuse, taking care of that)7, but still they kept on reading and I kept on writing … many of the times, even without caring that if anyone give a damn to what a Layman thinks.
Many of us think that its embarrassing to public the blog stats, because those are not always gigantic like big names often show, but today I wanted to shout because its sure a worth for me even if, I never exactly wrote for these stats (or might be I did).
The blog started in 2006 and after writing over Indian Idol specifically, I kind of abandoned the writing for most of the times (more due to time constraints and may be due to lesser reasons to write)… which easily explains that why I got just that many views in last few years, which I am getting in one month now days. This all changed once I started to write about Smart phones and came in touch of amazing Nokia Community.
The mails from you all kept on reminding me that what you are appreciating and what you want me to write more on … those lovely conversations became such an obsession that even after spending work hours from 8AM-8PM, I managed to kept myself awake till late nights to bring what I felt worth for community.
Even after temptations, I took a decision once that this blog will never go behind advertisements ever and will be plain and simple in the way, it’s today, no matter how big or small it gets and I am still on my words. Its voice of a Layman and it will be.
This all is dedicated to Nokia, Womworld and 1000 Heads people
Do you know since I got in touch with Womworld/ Nokia, this blog has received more than 75% of its views by this year only (till now, its more than 77k so far this year), obviously I has to dedicated this to them first and then to all of you amazing viewers.
I receives dozens of mails daily (at times I was getting hundreds) over things related to sys admin or purchase of new Nokia device or just for some info or advice. Other than Nokia, I have also received a number of offers to write for some respected blogs (which I would love to, once I started managing my time more well and have more resources and contacts), received some free books and a number of invitations. Believe me, I reply each and every one of them, either I could offer something big or not, but still each and everyone of them is same important to me as I am myself.
The short post is just to thank all of you for making Layman’s take reach here and a reminder to myself that its time to get serious now.
Decision; Is taking one decision enough to end the battle? How much one could fight for, when he know that he would be known as winner either side in ways, but will loose everything from inside, from everyside? Many tearful days, nights, weeks and even months, much pain all the way and just then you realize that where Arjun was, when he ended up loosing “Gandeev” and crying all the way in middle of battlefield.
Sometimes you left with thinking that there is no place in the world, you might call as happy land, there is no one, who could have lived all the way just to make you happy, unfortunately not even you yourself. Everyone feels it at some point of time in their own lives. Its complicated, much more than you would have thought, much more than I could tell here.
The human life itself has made up of so many completely unknown and complex chemical combinations that even after thousand of years, we are struggling to make a meaning about, how could we have found that what could have made us happy? Which decision we took wrong, which path we didn’t insisted a little more harder, what was that we should have left behind, when was the moment, Arjun should have picked the Gandeev to loose the battle or to loose the meaning of losing?
Many of you might not find a meaning around what I writing here, some of you might even guess right or 
wrong, doesn’t mean coz I will never be here to answer for. Just because I ended with no answer. Sometimes one asks himself, did Arjun won something at the end? Did he chosen the right path to move on? Was he shown the real insight of the nature by Lord Krishna himself? If all of this really immaterial then why to fight for, why to live for, for whom?
Ajruns will keep on hearing and will keep on winning the battles to keep the nature on course, they will keep on doing what’s being made them realized as their “Karma” and at the end, only they will be ended with tears in legs of Bheeshma begging to forgive them. Bheeshma may forgive Arjun, but will Arjun smile again like once he did in embrace of Bheeshma?
Whom should he had blamed?
The mother, who divided his bride in all his brothers and brothers, who took the decision proudly? The brother, who lost him, lost his wife, all things he earned and all the things he didn’t even had right to bet on, in a bet? And why only brothers, when even his Gaandeev didn’t moved an inch, when his brother placed everything of him on a bet? Why Krishna still decided to come with him without his army?
Or
He should have blamed the elders sitting around in the same palace, watching the show from their respective seats as they knew what’s keep their interests? What remained wrong in killing them, when they already participated in a thing that leaves nothing behind to live for?
Perhaps Arjun would have not taken a moment to take a side, if he wasn’t feeling that either sides lost him and more importantly, he already has lost himself. Truth is just that “neither side was worth fighting for, nor even his own life was left to be worth it”.
Unfortunately, the decision was taken for him, not only even at that day, but at everyday before; not even by one side, but by both the sides with same cruelty. His tears were as immaterial that day as they were ever. Not for one, but for everyone. He was not to be called coward at that day, he was already at everyday before.
There is still an Arjun; confused and stuck up. His mind becomes Krishna to give the ‘answers’ but heart doesn’t and still the question remains, why Arjun fought? What his “Karma” bring for him? If you don’t have to wish for anything and just have to do (as Geeta says) then why is this life and why we need Krishna’s words? Why Arjun fought?
Perhaps, Arjun’s Gaandeev was only way for Bheeshma, was only way for Karna, was only way for Drona and all the people, who continued to live in misery, but couldn’t have accepted it. They could have ended more gracefully, but Arjun was to go for the last misery of his life to pay for his indecision or rather than weaker judgments at moments.
I know just one could read it right … but does it matter? Bheeshma will still die? Arjun will still loose the battle.
Nitish Kumar
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