“உள்ளம் உடைமை உடைமை பொருளுடைமை
நில்லாது நீங்கி விடும்”

மன உறுதியுடைமை ஊக்கம ஆகும். அது இல்லாதபோது பொருள் உடைமை நிலைக்காது
மறைந்துவிடும்

wish i could embed google indic transliteration widget into wordpress

My xDesign team (Software Experience Design team + UCD Product team) is in the midst of setting up a design blog called design @ Sun.

And for some shameless self promotion, i’ve been selected as a blog hero

Movies : Also watched ” Lage Raho Munna Bhai” yesterday ( yea, only yesterday) and was ROFLMAO!

Blogger Buddies : Here are some my new friends with existing blogs and old friends with new blogs.

Its on! Over 250 campers have logged in at BarCamp Bangalore 2.0 Am at Conference Room 2 : Also see Bar Camp 1.0 Met the usual suspects like Sathish, Kiruba, Arun Ramarathnam and loadsa new geeks.

02 : 00 pm
Kribs is talking about Proto.in. Proto.in will showcase and present 30 most promising start-ups from India, apparently being inspired by Demo.com They have received 50 nominations so far and a Panel will choose the top 30.

Each start-up gets exactly 10 minutes, within which a demo of the prototype needs to be presented. The event is scheduled to be held at IIT Chennai.

12 :15 am
Aditya is talking about Innovation in IT Services companies.

11:30 am
Amit Pande from Oracle User Experience group is now talking about User Experience & Usability Testing.

He begins with a video which compares and analyzes the interaction between an user and calender-website, by means of a role play.

He moved on to talk about what is Usability Testing and explained in-detail how the tests done with some cool example videos. The video demonstrates a formal Usability Lab test. Amit also talked about gathering user inputs using think-aloud-protocol and briefly talked about Eye Tracking methods that generate Gaze Plots and Heat-Maps.

10:45 am : Sowmya Karmani is talking about Web 2.0 Models.

1 : Advertising
2 : Subscription : Eg Flickr
3 : Transaction :

- Where’s the money, honey? She’s of the opinion that Web 2.0 firms aren’t making enough or any money.
- Value Propositions need to continually change and evolve for product differentiations.
- Someone asked if www.SalesForce.com be called as Web 2.0 company?
- Is Web 2.0 a bubble that’s about to burst?

Landed-up at 8 am at Thought Works‘ campus in diamond district. Amit was already in tweaking his slides. He’s talking about Usability Testing and also showcasing some cool videos.

Me caught Live-Blogging :

There are plenty of themes and plugins and are relatively easy to install.

Wordpress should let their users easily customize their themes.
A wizard based theme-cum-plugin editor should let the users pick and choose plugins/ 3rd party tools ( like Google Analytics, Google Adsense, Tag Could, Recently Commented, Bookmarks, Flickr Photo Gallery, User Location Graph etc.,).

Users must also be able to tweak layouts, using use a “drag-n-drop” feature in order to arrange ‘individual portlets’ and get instant preview of the layouts.

From FooCamp to BarCamp to DCamp, its time now for Blog Camp , India’s biggest Blog Unconference at Chennai on Sept. 10

Blog Camp Wiki

Ruchi from Podmasti.com handled most of the Podcasts of Bangalore BarCamp .

Organizers – ClockWise : Jessica, Jace, Muthu & Manish. Sathish went missing.

When Venky, me, Sathish and Animesh walked-in at the venue ( Yahoo’s new campus on Inner Ring Road), Alex Muse was already at the reception shooting all the campers along with their name tags. Jay was setting up the white boad when campers could schedule their talks.

Sathish, Shyam, Anita and Muthu

I did present a sleepy session on xDesign Process and Desgin principles with examples.( zzz). Need to find another topic next time ( guess i am DONE with this.) I was hoping to make it more like a many-to- many conversation typical of a BarCamp, but it kinda went the typical “Conference” manner. Met up with Suraj Hattangadi from FirstUsable, Shankar, UI Designer at Riya.com, Shailesh Bhat, Product Manager at Yahoo. Param walked-in when i moved on the “Summary” slide.

Had an interesting conversation with Harish Kumar from OneBigWeb, who calls himself a “Software Designer”along with Shankar.

Magic at the Bar!

Arjun and Arun from Taazzaa.com

Jace’s a cool photographer : And this is me

BarCamp Photos | Arun’s Pics | Podcasts from PodMasit.com | Videos

Technorati Tag : BarCamp Bangalore

BarCamp Chennai held at Anna University did really rock! And How? Like a Hurricane!!!

Camp at Anna University :

Man, there’s something awesome about Chennai. Guess, its the PASSION with which the organizers, presenters and the audience interacted. Coupla demos did have some initial hangups, but hey what’s BarCamp without all these goof-ups.

The Ramanujam Center at Anna University was jam packed (about 80 geeks) with a majority of ‘em havin a laptop and connected to the net. A handful of bloggers were doin live bloggin and updating their blogs with photos. This is a new experience for me.

That’s moi talking about User eXperience Design at BarCamp Chennai

This is not my first presentation at Anna University. Last year, i did give a similar presentation on Usability on World Usability Day at Anna University. The audience were very tech savvy. Questions were flying like arrows!

Fun on the Beach

Later in the evening, we all drove down the awesome East Coast Road ( ECR) to Casurina Bay to chill out at the beach!

After sendin down some fresh juice ( man, i got my leg royally pulled here again) by these Chennai blogger gang. ( Sathish from SAP Labs, Adel from Transindia, Shyam, Kiruba from www.sulekha.com , Rupya Ganesh etc…) Also had great conversations with Amit Ranjan from www.uzanto.com , Arjun Ram from www.taazaa.com, Arun, Charles from Zoho AdventNet, Atul Chitnis, Ranjit and lotsa other interesting people!

BarCamp Bangalore is on April 22nd. I am one of the organizers and have loads insights /ideas learnt by participating in the Chennai Camp.

Later, Madhu asked me to witness “the dessert” ( water melon) gettin soaked & treated with vodka and with a variety of other coloful add-ons. Its a pity that i had to leave without relishin’ it.

Prabhu was in the process of updating his blog by connecting his Nokia N70 to his Dell laptop. Soon, Anita, Geetha, Boony, Murali and coupla other blokes joing the party. Got to chat with Chandrachooyee on gmail.

The staff at Shiok were very eager to attend to everyone’s needs. The snacks were awesome. The drinks ( mine were non- alchoholic : lime + pineapple juice with peach schnaps) were exotic. The crowd was goofy and fun-loving. The bar was dim lit with soothing interiors. Finally paid 300 bucks and hit the roads.

In short had a GREAT TIME and in the process got my leg pulled royally by these jokers

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Watched Aeon Flux. Okie dokie movie.
Was expecting lotsa sci-fi stuff, but surprisingly there weren’t so many.
Charliez Theron was the only consolation

Also watched Charlie’s Angels 2 again. Lazed out at Barista & Landmark zzz