Skepticism Around Google Keep

What's Google keep
Google keep is a new note taking application from google which is pretty cool and feature rich. It is just out and will sure be much better in a couple of iterations. It is a highly anticipated and looked forward to product. There was a storm of blogs as soon as it was released, some appreciating, some criticizing while more comparing it with other products like evernote and microsoft note

Why Google keep is Good
Google is more careful with security and privacy than any other smaller company
Feature richness is vital which google will meet and beat shortly in a couple of iterations

Invalid Skepticism around google keep
A lot of blogs have shown insights into why google keep might not be a good idea to try, pointing the recent clean up of product line that google has done recently. But, what one needs to remember is google has always provided ways to export data. They give almost six months to one year of notice before they discontinue any service. They also provide ways to export data to a newer product(google notebooks to google drive) or to multiple 3rd party applications. We dont not want to be stuck in old products when technology is pushing the limits everyday. Change is inevitable and needs to be embraced when it is for good. I do not see any reason to worry if google will keep google keep or not

Customizable Gestures For Mobile Devices

Gestures: An Integral element of Human Computer Interaction on Touch enabled interfaces
With smart phones becoming smarter day by day, there is a plethora of gestures for controlling the devices and actions ranging from slide, pinch, single tap, double tap, two finger slide, three finger slide, four finger slide, flick, curved slide, edge to edge slide, horizontal, vertical, right, left, up and down gestures for each of the previous ones described. These are very important and make our mobile computing experience with touch screens faster and better.

Problem 
As the capability of smart devices is increasing, the existing number of gestures no more encompass all the actions that we want to do quickly and efficiently. So, smart device designers are coming up with more gestures. Samsung recently introduced some non touch gestures which utilise camera and proximity sensors on galaxy S4. Google glasses and smart watches necessitate non touch gestures. Which means, room for even more gestures. Also, each device has different gestures for similar actions. The patents and copyrights make it difficult for generalization. End result, increase of complication and the HCI experience is deteriorating

What needs to be done
A consortium for generalization of some standard gestures can be a good start.
Users should be able to choose or customize actions of gestures based on their needs(example in a mail app: what action right swipe and left swipe on an entry will do should be customizable. I might want to assign delete right swipe and left swipe archive while someone else might want to assign delete and mark as read. Game apps can allow players to choose actions for gestures, like i might want the game character to jump of tap rather than upward flick), this will help users remember what they configured and be more efficient. If implemented right this can of great help else can be a disaster. This can also show improvement in creativity of developers.

The above are just some thoughts, there is no proof of concept that above suggestion will show improvement in user experience. I guess, its definitely worth trying though

Iphone Buying: Apple Store Vs Carrier Vs Best Buy

A quick inquiry of costs involved in buying a new iphone with a 2-year contract with some carrier in US seems as if it does not matter where you buy the iphone from, be it Apple online store or instore or some carrier store like ATT or at a retailer store like Best Buy. But a closer look might yeild a different perspective.

Apple store:

• sells only new devices. Does not sell refurbished devices
• 16GB Iphone 4s with taxes costs approximately $255 in california. even though the advertised price is $199. Taxes are always calculated on the original price of the phone but not the discounted retail price
• apple has a no strings attached return policy within 30days of purchase
• apple is not responsible for cancelling the contract with the carrier. A new purchase is locked in catract only after 30days. So make sure you call the carrier to cancel the contract if you purchase and return a new phone through apple

ATT store 

• sells both new and refurbished devices. Refurbs are slighly cheaper ofcourse
• 16GB Iphone 4s with taxes costs approx $255
• ATT has 30day return policy but charges $35 restocking fees. There is no restocking fees with apple. Restocking fees is applicable even if the device is not taken out of the box with ATT.
• ATT takes care of cancelling the contract if the phone is returned with in 30days

Best Buy

• Sells both new and refubs. Refurbs are cheaper
• 16GB Iphone 4s with taxes costs approx $255
• Best buy charges no restocking fees within 30days
• They also have a buy back program
• if the device is returned between 2-4 months they pay approx $340
• between 4-12 months they pay approx $250
• between 12-18 months they pay approx $140
• best buy claims that the buy back rates are applicable as long as the device is working and nrmal daily wear and tear is ok
• let us say the iphone 5 is released next summer and some one who just bought iphone 4s in november wants to get iphone 5, he can return iphone 4s at best buy for $340 and get the iphone 5 from best buy. But the carrier will charge early upgrade fees of $250

Google Plus Circles Venn Diagrams

Circle is a very common word of usage to describe a specific set of people a person is to connected to in some way. It is a very nice easy adapt word used for categorizing friends on google plus. Though the name says circles and UI has a few circles for adding friends to on google plus, it does not fully exploit the advantage of using circles for such concept. Circles have special properties both mathematically, socially and philosophically. Some of the changes which can enhance the usability of circles are as follows

• Use a venn Diagram which in turn can
• take the advantage of intersections, unions and exclusions to categorize people into multiple categories in one step rather than having to add one person to multiple circles
• human mind can process this kind of visual data better
• The size of the circle can be proportional to the number of people added to it
• If a specialised dot can represent oneself, then the distance of this dot to other other people in a circle can decrease as the communication, likes between them increase. But all the dots are restricted to move with in their own circles.

facebook password history

How much password history is facebook storing. I entered an old password by mistake, Facebook gives me the following information along with a login failure message

• the password entered is an old password.
• The date and time when it was changed.
• the computer and the network from which the password was changed is also suggested vaguely

This can be a  potential hit and try hack to gain access. The old password on facebook can be active on some other accounts that the user uses.

Why does facebook need to store password history at all

Excel to custom character delimited value text(similiar to csv)

Recently after spending a lot of painful hours on trying to convert a excel file to a pipe or tilda or hash delimited value text file, i figured out a very easy solution to implement this on a windows xp machine

Setting up custom character as the default delimiter

From the Start button on the MS Windows task bar, highlight
Settings and select the Control Panel. In the Control Panel window select
Regional and Language Options.
2. In the Regional and Language Options window, select the Regional Options
tab, click the Customize… button.
3. In the Customize Regional Options window, select the Numbers tab.
4. Set the List Separator field to a pipe-delimited symbol | by pressing Shift and |. (You can set any other character you wish)

5. Click OK to close the Customize Regional Options window.
6. Click OK to close the Regional and Language Options window.


Convert MS Excel to the Custom character separated value text file

7. Open MS Excel.
8. In the menu bar click File and then click Open.
9. Choose the excel format file that you want to convert.
10. After excel opens and the data is loaded, In the menu bar click File and the click Save.
11. In the Save As window select CSV (Comma delimited) from the Save as type:
dropdown list and click Save

Don't forget to revert back the default delimiter setting else you will see a lot of unwanted of behavior in alot of applications, MS word, Excel, etc

Favorite poem for 3rd grade

Veer Tum Badhe Chalo

Veer tum badhe chalo
Dheer tum badhe chalo

Sath me dhvaja rahe
Bal dal saja rahe
Dhvaj kabhi jhuke nahi
Dal kabhi ruke nahi


Samne pahad ho
Sinh ki dahad ho
Tum nider hato nahi
Marg me ruko nahi

Veer tum badhe chalo
Dheer tum badhe chalo

Badal garajte rahen
Megh baraste rahen
Bijliyan chamak uthen
Bijliyan tadak uthen

Veer tum badhe chalo
Dheer tum badhe chalo

prat ho na raat ho
Sang ho na sath ho
Surya se badhe chalo
Chandra se badhe chalo

Veer tum badhe chalo
Dheer tum badhe chalo 

बढ़े चलो
-द्वारिकाप्रसाद माहेश्वरी

वीर तुम बढ़े चलो
धीर तुम बढ़े चलो

साथ में ध्वजा रहे
बाल दल सजा रहे
ध्वज कभी झुके नहीं
दल कभी रुके नहीं

सामने पहाड़ हो
सिंह की दहाड़ हो
तुम निडर,हटो नहीं
Marg me ruko nahi

वीर तुम बढ़े चलो
धीर तुम बढ़े चलो

प्रात हो कि रात हो
संग हो न साथ हो
सूर्य से बढ़े चलो
चन्द्र से बढ़े चलो

वीर तुम बढ़े चलो
धीर तुम बढ़े चलो