Vijay Krishna's Notes http://vijaykrishna.posterous.com Most of my notes as a student of computer software and everything around it. posterous.com Fri, 25 Mar 2011 05:54:36 -0700 Startup http://vijaykrishna.posterous.com/startup http://vijaykrishna.posterous.com/startup There is this whole new revolution taking place with a sudden escalation in the use and making of software tools and products and the internet. There is so much one can seem to do and achieve nowadays. Almost every other person seems to be getting the next big idea and launching it to make decent wads of green. Well, many, like i did in the first statement of this post, are claiming this to be a direct effect of the explosion internet and software. But then again, there are other factors. For starters, the lack of good jobs. Let us face it. The IT Boom may have gotten in a lot of jobs around the world, but the fact remains that these are nothing jobs. They do not have nay perks, no security, zero retirement plans, and the ability to support only a single person. And let us face another fact. The number of intelligent people in this world are increasing, else this wave of entrepreneurship would not have been this sustainable. The number of smart people in this planet have outweighed the number of good and well paying jobs. Look at it this way, before Google and Facebook came to the big stage, all an IT professional could talk about was working for MS, IBM or Yahoo one day. And then came along Google, followed by FB, and they became the next big firms to work for. Every time there is a new firm which comes on to the big stage, the aspirations of the job seeking crowd becomes more and more tangible. And this is possible only if regular graduates and engineers look at starting something new of their own. Why i spoke of Google is because it is the 2nd reason for this startup craze. You see, before Google, all the other firms were formed ( i.e. were startups) back in the 80's. It was almost like  everyone forgot the meaning of the word entrepreneur. They could not look beyond working for existing establishment. The Google and Facebook stories have changed exactly that. They are the modern day startups, who have gone on to challenge and dominate global competition in their areas of expertise. Funny story is that before they came into being, they already had people working on similar products and software, which was being commercially used. Be it search or social networking. Yahoo search and Orkut came before Google search and Facebook. Yet, they triumphed over them. And mind you, both Yahoo Search and Orkut were good and popular products in their time. This very fact, that the new kids on the block could show the way out to the old ones, and that too so quickly has showed people that if your idea is worth it, then there is really very little stopping you. Self employment is a concept that is gaining popularity as days pass by. Now people have gone beyond the idea of making it to the big screen. They are contended with being simple one to two man teams making some kind of profit from some kind of business. The idea of being a independent consultant or a free lancer is also setting well with the new young guns today. The whole scenario looks so promising that even kids, from both schools and colleges are doing well with the whole process of making money. What ever be your qualification, if you have an idea you can sell, then this is a fantastic time to invest some time and startup. Its time to make hay while the sun shines folks, and this hay sells!

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Fri, 04 Mar 2011 18:25:54 -0800 Featured People - Facebook http://vijaykrishna.posterous.com/featured-people-facebook http://vijaykrishna.posterous.com/featured-people-facebook In the current UI of Facebook if you want to add a relationship you really have to do a little bit of a treasure hunt. That is unless you know exactly where it is. You have to go to Profile>Edit Profile (a grey colored button right below the Home-Profile-Account tab strip)>Featured People. There are issues with this whole mechanism. And this is just one of those things that does not make Facebook's UI "idiot proof". For starters let me point out that the section Featured People does not strike, to most people, as the place where you would manage relationships. Then the whole ordeal of getting there in the first place is difficult. Now for an important feature, such as relationships, this should have been given top access. Now i understand what Facebook has done. It has tried to give the best access and usability to its most used features such as the wall and the News Feeds. It is brilliantly done. And for most people, setting relationships is not on a high priority in their TODO list when they are on Facebook. While all this is done and done well, the team at FB seems to have lost the bigger picture. It has never been able to make the UI very idiot proof. A new user will be lost and the Featured People example was one of the more basic ones. Taking a more sensitive approach, the designers at FB should have come up with a different name rather than, Featured People. Most of my friends on FB, like to keep such information, namely their relationships and family members, away from the public eye, while wanting to establish it in a private manner. Which i think is fair. So, in a very basic sense of the word, "Feature" is not the right way to put it. You never want to feature your lovers or family members. Would you? Today a colleague literally yelled at me for the same thing, while we were debating about it. I could not get his point at first. But the more i thought about it, the more i realized that all my family was under this section called Featured People. I did not particularly enjoy the feeling  i got after that realization. Apart from the name, why is all this in a different tab/section all together, at least the relationship and family bit? Should it not be a part of your basic information? Even if you think that it should not be so (and i will agree with you there), can it not be under a different tab called Family? Why can it not be that simple? As a defense FB will say that you can not only add your Relationship status and Family Members under the tab of Featured People, but you can also add a custom list of friends or groups. This i found after a thorough combing of the whole UI. So when you look at it like that, "YES", it makes sense. But then again, why can't there be a different section for such lists and groups. At a very fundamental level, i would not like to put such groups and my family together, period. Now all that was the sentimental part of the debate. Let me get down to the usability of something as important as relationships. If you go along the same bandwagon as FB has today with featured people, you realize that your friend's list should have the family list as well. Whats more, it should also have a separate link which shows your relationship, in case you have filled it up. While it does not do the relationship bit (thats the first deficiency), it does give you a list of your family. But to get to the whole list of your friends you need at the least two clicks, the first one is required to take you to your profile page. That is very strange. It is a social networking site. To not give a single click access to your entire friend's list is gross foolishness. FB is a fantastic networking tool with its feeds, updates and likes. But it can never be a true social networking site until it gives people and relationships a higher priority. Right now, it is just giving their latest doings that extra importance.

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