Gmail Feature Creep?

I Want Gmail to Let Me Separate the Mails From the Conversations.

Explanation- I was clearing my mailbox the other day, which is mainly filled with emails from InteractionDesigners mailing list IxDA. Now I had decided long back to read each one of these e-mails, specially the conversations that happen sometimes over interesting topics. I still want to, but- there’s no time!

So now I want to shorten my reading list from some 3500 unread mails to a decent number. Gmail search helped me there by filtering and deleting all emails with subject [Event], [Job], [Reminder], F2F, course, seminar, workshop (these become irrelevant after a few weeks anyway). Thanks to the members of the list who found this ‘usable’ way to separate mails!

What it did not help me with was filtering the emails which had no replies. I wanted to do away with those mails because they probably did not generate enough interest to start a conversation. It would have been a great time and effort saver if such a filter existed. I had to manually delete all those mails (about 10 out of every 50 mails).. phew!

Will the next gmail have this feature? Anyway, for now I am proudly sitting on 1875 unread IxDA mails :D

ps: I Want Gmail to Let Me Search for Posts That are not Tagged Yet
Explanation- Tags are the only way I can filter specific group of mails. Doesn’t that make untagged mails a unique group too? 

Filed under: Ideas

See Differently

There are lot of casual games which are fun to play as well as tingle your basic cognitive skills. For enhancing creative thinking, I would really look at this game I played recently called “Mystery PI- Vegas Heist“. Its a puzzle game which involves finding lots of hidden stuff at places around Las Vegas to solve a robbery case.

I say, this game builds creative thinking. How? well, it reminds me of my first week of design college. Our course guide during our creativity workshop talked about “making familiar strange and making strange familiar”. The exercises were aimed to
1. question our assumptions about what we see everyday
2. to establish that there is nothing called a ‘correct’ solution

This game opens our minds to seeing everyday objects in a different way. While we are searching for an object, the game hides the objects with these basic principles.

MysteryPI- Vegas Heist
(click the image for a larger view)

color (“air-pump”- the object and background have similar colors)
size (making a small object big or a big object small- a penny can be the size of a giant wheel)
form (“Lighthouse”- Notice where it is placed)
look (“Telephone”- photo-realistic or an illustration)
type (“Camera”- Can you spot the two types of cameras in the picture?)
perspective (the train looks very different from our perception when seen from the front)
cryptic (“toy deliverer”- who delivers toys?…)

I’m not sure playing the game once will permanently upgrade your creativity, but repeated exercises like these will certainly brighten the grey cells. Unfortunately, I expired my trial. Eagerly waiting to play the whole game!

Am a huge fan of PopCap games and the games they create, not the ones they publish. But this time, I’ll make an exception. Also, check out the awesome player profiles that they base their games on.

Filed under: Visual Thinking

“Bad ol’ puddy tat!”

So finally, I’ve hopped on the twitter bandwagon. I was avoiding to signup for the service for a long time, ignoring all the praises and accolades from bloggers. Its odd how services doing something so basic like ‘What Are You Doing Now?’ becomes a rage. And would you want to tell that to everyone, anyway?

There are almost a million people twittering around the world now (not counting other similar services like ‘jaiku‘ and ‘pownce‘). Its still used mostly by hi-techies. Probably its the ‘presence’ factor that works for techno-enthusiasts, who keep staring at digital displays all the time- PC, phones, TV, PSP…

Like wikipedia says about Tweety- “Tweety is, for the most part, a good-natured character happily spending life in his cage or a nest.”

Now I’ll have to write something witty and play twitty… another burden of technology :(

Filed under: Uncategorized

Leecher!

Site leeching may sound terrifying and a bad, bad thing to do (hogging bandwidth and other excuses).
But its not. I love it!

It works for me because-
1. I like to read. When a whole site is on your computer, It becomes like a book.
2. You dont need to be online to view it. No loading time, no server timeout, no downtime..
3. The sites that I leech are mostly text-based. So its fast and does not take much bandwidth.

It would not work for most sites today with their regularly updating content. But still there are some useful ones like the latest ones I leeched-

Creating Passionate Users- An inspirational Blog about Innovation and People (the author has discontinued writing, but its already a cult blog- so no problems of updated content).

HowtoGimp- Been trying to use GIMP for sometime now instead of Photoshop. Hope this site helps..

Other categories of sites that can be leeched- movie sites (I leeched whatishematrix.com in college- more than 600MB of videos, pics and interactive flash content!- and all accessible anytime!!!) and tutorial sites.

Filed under: Theories

छोड़ कर सकता हूँ?

New Google Translate with new languages added- including Hindi. I decided to test drive it.

You are looking good- आप ध्यान दे रहे हैं अच्छा है
Let Go- जाने दें
Let Us Go- चलें
Please Let Us Go- कृपया हमें जाने
I want to leave- मैं चाहता हूं कि करने के लिए छुट्टी
Can I Leave?- छोड़ कर सकता हूँ?

Ouch!! I got a sore bum from the ride. Wanna try?
Do try their transliteration feature. That’s the one I love!

Filed under: Uncategorized

Physical Hyperlinks

Physical Hyperlinks

“Cell phones and bar codes are beginning to turn the offline world into an Internet. First you put a high-density bar code on any object to encode information about it, including audio or video. Then you put software in a cell phone so it can scan bar codes and get the information.

This is happening in Asia, and just beginning in the United States. You can point your phone at a food item and get nutritional information. You can point it at a billboard to download a movie trailer. You can scan a printed newspaper article and watch a bar-code-linked video on your phone, or point your phone at a house for-sale sign and get the real-estate agent’s details.

On the upside, this means the speed and convenience of cyberspace will soon pervade the physical world. On the downside, the invasiveness and din of cyberspace will come with them.”

How Its done?

“QR Codes storing addresses and URLs may appear in magazines, on signs, buses, business cards or just about any object that a user might need information about. A user having a camera phone equipped with the correct reader software can scan the image of the QR Code causing the phone’s browser to launch and redirect to the programmed URL.”

Filed under: Copy+Paste

My Two Statuses

Be Easy

A ‘vella’-ble

Filed under: WordPlay