Dinner with Bill Buxton

Bill Buxton was here in Bangalore as part of Techvista 2007, and the kind folks at MSR Bangalore had arranged for a dinner meeting with him for the design community in Bangalore. It was an interesting set of discussions that ranged from music to iPhone and everything in between. A very nice event and it was a pleasure to hear Bill talk on a wide variety of subjects including his collection of pens both digital and otherwise. Ken Perlin was at the dinner as well and for those of you are not aware of his work on procedural animation, it may make sense to check out this site (apparently this is based on his research on a former girlfriend).

By the way, Bill his releasing his book (mostly to be unveiled at SIG-CHI) and Dave has some notes up here...

PS: Muthu has an post on his blog about the event...

53 CSS-Techniques You Couldn’t Live Without

Great list of CSS techniques... Now all you need is a combined cheat sheet...

MS Firefox 2007

It's better now... like seriously...

Somebody is having a lot of fun here, and not sure how long the prank will last before the site gets taken off... enjoy it while you can...

Tog on iPhone

Tog analyzes the iPhone.

Kawasaki's promoting Linkedin

Or should I say evangelizing, as that is the what Guy Kawasaki is best at. The last two posts (1 & 2) have been about using Linkedin. By the way, Linkedin added a new feature where you can look for answers to your questions, it's pretty neat...

Wikiseek Open Beta Is Live

Wikiseek is a search engine that indexes only Wikipedia links. Created by SearchMe, and it is an interesting (if limited) alternative to Google. According to the schpeel:

1. Wikiseek searches Wikipedia, and the "external links" of Wikipedia
articles. These are considered authoritative Internet sources. This means
that the search results are only as comprehensive as Wikipedia. Wikiseek is
NOT a search engine of the entire World Wide Web.

2. The current index is not dynamically updated. Extremely new content at
Wikipedia will not be reflected in our index.

3. We are testing an 8-bit character set version of the software. This means
that extended international characters will not be displayed. Ultimately,
Wikiseek will support international character sets.

Techcrunch has some update on it as well...

What does it take to be a design manager?

Erin Malone has a great post on design management and what it takes to be one. These are more practical points that she brings to the fore, and gives pointers to people aspiring to be one, maybe a follow up on some of the nuances of design management would be nice...

PS: You should also read Christina Wodtke on the possible choices you have...

A periodic table of visualization methods

A rather interesting visualization of the various visualization techniques. Makes a good reference page...

Apple introduces iPhone, Apple TV

The whole blogosphere is abuzz with the Macworld Keynote (video here) where Steve Jobs announced the much awaited iPhone (name still debated) and Apple TV (or is it iTV?)

Microsoft is using a fairy tale to promote office

This comic fairy tale takes you through the improvements in Microsoft's new Office interface.

Your reading trends

If you use Google Reader for reading your blog feeds, then this is a nifty addition to the already cool set of features...

Easy7 Bangalore

Yesterday, I was at Easy 7, India's 7th Annual National Conference on Advanced User Interface Practices, at The Leela Palace in Bangalore. A nice, compact conference that featured four speakers speaking on six topics. Surya Vanka from Microsoft was speaking on Design innovation and innovation culture, Sarah Bloomer, touched up on UI tools and about converting research into design, Bill Scott of Yahoo! touched upon AJAX UI patterns, while Jeremy Ashley spoke on selling design within the organization. The topics were interesting but somehow there was a feeling the speakers had to hurry things up as the time alloted for each presentation seemed limited. But the effort on CHI South India's part was quite good, and here's looking forwared to Easy8.

PS: Bill Scott has an update on the event and also a link to his talk presentations

One laptop per blogger

On the lines of the One Laptop Per Child project, Microsoft has instituted the One Laptop Per Blogger project. :) Old news, I know, but still worth posting...