You can ponder over the beauty of this equation while includes Pi, Euler’s number, one and zero. Most people find it equally mysterious too, in terms of what it does. Here is found a simple 1st grade definition for the equation.
“As you walk clockwise around a circle, facing the direction you’re moving, the center is directly to your right”.
- Euler’s identity in simple English
I literally want to own every new piece of technology, be it gadget, a service, or app. Being in India, this has not been always possible. When the first nexus device was introduced, or when spotify was launched, or even when Google introduced Paid applications, none of which was available for a Indian technology enthusiast living in India.
When I was in the valley for a couple of weeks, the most exciting thing to do for me was to grab all the geo specific goodies as long as I can have it. First I went on a bought a Nexus 4, Surface Pro and some other gadgets. It was easier with these physical gadgets as I could carry them with me, wherever I go ( even when I travel back to India). But it was not the same story with software subscriptions and services.
Since it understood that my IP is within US borders, it showed me all the cool stuff, like Music, Movies, TV shows, apps like Spotify, Groupon etc, on the play store (which I couldn’t even view when in India), but it wouldn’t let me install (or buy) them. Everything worked seamless with my Indian Credit Card.
Fix: Went to the Google Account Settings and changed my Country to US and bazinga! it opened up access to everything at Google Play.
Back in India: When I came back to India, my account was still working. I even tried buying some music and TV shows from India.
The next one in my wishlist. But it was much more crazy. I tried changing my country settings, but it wouldn’t still let me download even the free apps, as it kept throwing country setting errors. After so much toiling I had to create a new US Amazon account with US bank credentials and stuff.
Back in India: So far everything works fine even when I am not accessing the store from US. I didn’t try music, movies etc.
After using the free trial for a couple of days, I couldn’t resist going premium (world plan). It works seamlessly across the globe, it was even mentioned in the documentation clearly. Only catch, I have to use a US card for the subscription, it wouldn’t accept an overseas card.
Once I tried Spotify and read I explored other streaming services and stumbled upon Rdio, I just tried the trial. But it was a very annoying experience, as they kept sending me daily emails to switch. Once back in India, as I was still getting these emails, I thought I have had enough, so I clicked unsubscribe. To my amazement, I was shown a landing page, “This service is not supported in your region”, I cannot even unsubscribe to their useless newsletter unless I fly back to US. Worst of all!
Netflix was the most fun thing I used when in the States, loved their ubiquity across devices, and simplicity of interface, but the moment I leave the US border, I lose all the awesomeness. No more netflix.
I had my iDevices linked to my Indian Apple ID, so when I went to US it would still show me US only apps, but I cannot purchase them unless I get a new Apple ID (I didn’t try changing my country settings, so don’t know if that was a fix).
I am a big fan of Flipkart and their Music Store (Flyte) from where I could purchase songs at prices like 10 cents (5 Indian Rupees). I also keep a lot of prepaid credit in the flyte store so that I can just download my favorite albums when I need. But it wouldn’t work once I access it from US.
.Internet has made the world open and smaller. But it still has lot of issues when it comes to content and border laws. Virtual goods, their pricing and taxation are not still in the best shape. It is obviously not in a great state when product developers have to write extra code to make sure the content is not available to certain geographies. I wish this changes in the next couple of years. It would be great for the consumers, content creators and startups!
I have always said that, Android has a lot of learning curve compared to Windows Phone or iOS. And I had this conversation in twitter, where someone asked me, “Slide to unlock is same in all platforms”. That is the typical analytical developer take on a UX feature.
I would buy my mom a windows phone or an iPhone. But never an android phone. That’s the failure of its UX.
— Narayan Babu (@nyn) February 10, 2013
I use Android day in and day out, my startup strives in the Android ecosystem, but still I will not hide the fact that the Android UX is very confusing. It is super effective for people who are ready to spend time and learn, but there is a lot of learning.
Since the first iPhone we have seen hundreds of slide to unlock implementations, a dozen or so just in Android. But anything that slides and unlocks just doesn’t make the cut.
Look at iOS
If you look at the iOS lock screen, there is a tight one dimensional groove with a glossy shine that marquees towards the right, and we subconsciously know we have to slide it. It urges you to! I have seen first time kindergardeners, grandmas getting it. They just slide it when they see that. I have really spent hours thinking how they brought that kind of simplicity to the design. Extremely amazing!
The Windows Phone slider.
I have felt the Windows Phone slider is equally intuitive. The moment something touches the screen, the vivid wallpaper just bounces a bit, revealing the home screen underneath. It literally teases your curiosity and makes you swipe the screen up, so that you can see what is behind. I have seen a lot of first time touch phone users effortlessly navigating to the homescreen, unlocking the phone!
Android?
In Cupcake there was no touch unlocker, you had to hold a button to unlock the screen. From there they tried different variants, tried to do too many things (unlock/mute/camera). But never once they could convey the primary premise which was to reach the home screen. I have seen people struggling to unlock even the Jelly Bean of the newer Jelly Bean phones, primarily because the premise is very abstract, it is not clear how far to which direction should you slide to reach the goal, and for that matter, what is the goal you’re trying to achieve.
Hope Matias fixes it soon.
I had done a small social experiment on the usability of smartphones (for first timers). Read about it here.
I really don’t endorse the concept of ‘being a fan’. But some things go beyond our control. Some people just own you with their mere poise and humility of character. Sachin is one of them. Like a billion (or more) other people who grew up watching him play and grow and become this unstoppable Hulk of cricket, I too caught up the habit. More so, because I loved the game, not just Indian cricket. I have admired the shuffled pull that Lara used to play, or the near perpendicular turn that Shane Warne delivered occasionally.
But this habit went beyond all that, like every other habit, this one made me crave for more. I got frustrated when I didn’t see him bat every week, even more when the Indian team was batting and only he was missing. I got irritated when he’s not middling the ball, or when he defended tentatively, without moving forward or backward. You have watched him so much that you start hallucinating on what he is thinking on the field. When he looks grim faced, when he looks jovial, when he is laughing hysterically.
But I think Sachin himself knew about the drug he had become to the crowd, and hence slowly brought down the dosage. After the world cup, he become sporadic when it came to his ODI appearances, even when it were twenty20s on IPL, he took his breaks. Trying to bring people back to their sanity. And of course, the rest of the team did their part too by trying to put up the worst possible show at every tournament.
And now, when I was already starting to get shivers before the Pakistan series, Sachin just pulled the plug. He is not playing anymore, we are not going to get even the vaccine level dosages of Sachin. What a shocker! For a guy like me who haven’t yet built an alternate habit like smoking or drinking, it was a real hard week to while away. I didn’t know how to vent out my frustration. The only solace was reading all those sugar coated pro-Sachin farewell posts on the internet, or the vintage clips on youtube.
Now, let us hope he manages his test career cautiously rather just snapping out of it like he did on his ODI career. And for myself, I learnt a lesson. Being an addict is not good, even if it is Sachinoholism.
Today Indian Government hanged a dreaded terrorist named Kasab Ajmal, after close to 4 years trial. He was the part of the 9 member team which ransacked Mumbai and killed 100s of innocent people. And this has initiated an online debate on whether Capital punishment should be exercised at all.
If you look at it logically in a larger point of view, the society has to protect itself. At a cost effective manner too. Assume, hypothetically an individual is a threat to the society. There are two solutions to it.
- Either create a system where this individual will be permanently trapped and he won’t be able endanger the crowd (prison).
- Eliminate him
The choice between these two rests on
- the degree of threat this person poses
- against, the reliability of the prison system, and its ability to shield him away from the society in a cost effective manner.
In Kasab’s case obviously it would have been a very risky proportion to just keep him in the jail, (risk escapes, extortion requests etc). So hanging was the practical solution.
For ideology sake we can say, he should have given life imprisonment, but again you are keeping a risk open. And a major one in this case. As he has already killed a lot of people. So this is more of a preventive measure to ensure safety of a larger crowd.
Still it can debated that we don’t have the right to take life of another person, so on and so forth. If you see, society is completely built on compromises. It is designed to cater to the average (to below average) individual, more so in a democracy. Reservations, tax slabs, social restrictions and rules on marriage, are all examples of compromises. Individually these may not be advantageous to each person, but collectively, the society might benefit from this.
Generalizing further, the arguments where you say,
doing X is not ideologically right. But I don’t know what is the alternate solution (there are no alternate solutions).
does not have any value, in my opinion. You are not giving any (better) choices.
I am not saying we should start hanging every other criminal. If you see in the last few decades on 3 people (including Kasab) have ever been executed by India. I am only saying we should use the above metric and weight what is the best option. For the society.
Death sentence is not a way to teach the offender a lesson, or to scare people from doing similar deeds, but to protect the society from him, the dire consequences that they may have to face if he runs free again.
~~~***Before iPad Mini***~~~
Me: “I can’t really find a difference between a retina and a non-retina display. I mean, in real life!”.
APE: “Fuck you! Retina and non-retina are incomparable. I can’t even imagine using a device that has a non-retina device, since I started using retina devices!”
~~~***After iPad Mini***~~~
Me:”iPad Mini? What about the non-retina display?”
APE: “Fuck you! It hardly makes a difference. You should see how vibrant the screen looks! And you know it’s very light and handy and blah blah (features unrelated to display)”
Moral: Apple fans will find a reason to ‘fuck you’. No matter what.
