This video contains content from Vevo, who has blocked it in your country on copyright grounds. Sorry about that.

Now thats just great. You put your video online and then block it off from large audiences for whatever reason. This is the kind of stuff that Inspires Piracy.

This video is blocked for your country!

Here’s what it fails to do though. While displaying odd sized images, it sort of leaves a lot of white space around them and you sort of don’t know exactly what’s the clickable area. An area demarkation to make the display more uniform with very light shade of “Google grey” might work wonders.

Also, they need to decide on the redundancy between the top navigation and the one on the left.

The website deals with Shapeshifter Skins for Mac OSX, the advertisement deals in actual Skin products. Probably time internet advertising started differentiating both.

http://interfacelift.com/themes-mac/index.php?sort=date&id=&page=2

(Actual Page)

Taking into account the fact that this type of advertising has been around for a while, and companies promoting them are well funded, in this case – Google, they should find a way to scan more of the keywords and then decide on the type of advertisement that get featured on these pages.

Another interesting product and more importantly a very urgently needed one. Tiring and boring are various other RSS readers which simply allow you to read, this probably allows you to do the same in style and with colors.

The product does have a hint of Sweeetcron in it though and the UXCron Interface, but I like it. I am a fan of that as well.

Pulse Interface

Today, in the fast developing craze over ipad and earlier over iPhone, we have somehow forgotten Apple‘s first try at building a hand held computing device that did not do so well in the market. It did have a host of features including a fully functional hand writing recognition which was fairly good by existing standards in 1998 when it’s development officially was shelved.

The Newton Handheld platform was only followed by the modified OS X platform for the iPhone 10 years later.

Newton (platform) – Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia.

Just a tribute to a pioneer. Not to forget what came first and where the “Pad” of ipad actually comes from. Probably just sentimental for Apple.

MessagePad 2000

This is what it looks like, simple and clear.

This little widget by Amit Agarwal captures what’s there on many minds with a simple tool to average out sleep cycles of Twitter users. And why just Twitter, I am sure it would make a very good Facebook tool as well to see what percentage or your friends are awake and asleep, even if it’s just a mathematical guess.

My Sleeping Schedule Generated by the widget.

The guy in the video is a what Youtube probably needed. Viewed more than 30 million times Numa Numa was a hit. I must have watched it a million times and it never fails to cheer me up on a good, bad or worse day.

Ah, there’s something about Gary Brolsma’s break-out web cam performance lip syncing and dancing to Moldovan pop music that one just can’t turn away from. Numa Numa was an instant viral hit when it was released and it has been viewed over 30 million times on YouTube alone (not counting duplicates).

Many would want to know what the song is, you can either go to the Youtube page and scroll through the comments or get this - Dragostea Din Tei by O-Zone available on Now That’s what I call Music – 58 – Disc – 2

via History of the Internet on Vimeo.

Probably the most simplest and best way this boring history has been illustrated, and that too in a manner which makes it actually interesting to a lay man.

I get these regular email from Youmint.com and I have no clue for why or what is their purpose. But today it was different, for once their mail looked a tad more inviting that the rest of them that piled up before this one.

I opened it and landed on a page. As expected it was some page with some advertisement about some holiday which I am never going to take. So I click on the Horoscope part on top left and get this. (I am reducing the amount of Junk that was written, just note the last line)

Libra (26 Feb, 2010)

“Good fences make good neighbours”, said Frost. It’s a good thing that you rubbish …   … brighter than usual for you, foresees Ganesha.

This Week

Heightened activity is on the cards, this week. All sorts of activities …   …move forward from your home and hearth mentality as you start focusing on the glow and glamor of both money and honey.

This Month

This will be a busy yet good month for you. …   … you will head for a foreign country. Your work will progress without any obstacles and you will find contentment in your line of action. And, this comfort may easily reverberate in your financial front too.

This Year

Sorry Due to Some internal error could not load the Data

Old mailer - Little boring and does not stand out

New mailer - Little bit more interesting than the old one, enough to make me click and check.

So Ahem.. What does that mean.. like there was so much data that could not be loaded. I like to be optimistic and think that all of it was good.

Anyway, for some sever error, my future is definitely unknown at the moment (also a 1/12th of human population)

Enjoy!

Midday website has spanning ads that do not go away!!

Off late I am coming across pages of different news websites and others that have more advertising per page than actual content. Now we all know that everyone has to make a buck or two but at what cost? Attached is a screenshot from http://www.mid-day.com/. I understand the fact that ads need to be there to support their infrastructure, but things that span over actual content blocking it is a bog no no. Could not get a screenshot without the spanning advertisement in the center, as it wont go away.

But thats not all. Then there are ads that are purely unworked on. Specially through Google‘s adsense. These are ads that look like no one has spent anytime on them. C’mon guys, you would not do that to television, then why the web? Probably because Google has little or no quality check in place to control that, after all they are making money and care very little.

This screen grab is from NDTV.com, a popular news portal. See the horizontal banner ad running in a box on the right side column.

It’s been a decade to full fledged internet advertising and banners, and I think it’s time that people actually spent time and money on them rather than copying and pasting a poor quality image and adding text from powerpoint.

Now some may argue that if you do put ads, things are bound to get cluttered. Not necessarily, just see Exhibit A: Wired.com

Wired.com homepage, smart balance and placement of ads work towards building the look of the page. Quality of ads matter as well.

But what if you want to play football and your Gym bag was big and already carried a Basketball, a Hockey Stick, a Baseball Bat, a Cricket Bat, a Tennis Racquet etc. Would you still carry all of them to the Football field? My guess is not, you would locate a smaller bag.

At this point, some may argue that softwares are like tools and not balls, but even then, I rarely see someone putting the Soldering Iron with their Wrench in the same box.

And that’s exactly the problem with too many internet based services getting clubbed and combined together. When I want to mail, I just want to mail. When I want to edit my documents, I just want to do that. When I want to speak to someone, I just would like to do that. These are options that should be separate, not because it’s easier to have them like that, but it’s human to have them like that.

However, there are many internet based services that are trying to combine all this on to a single webpage and calling it a dashboard. It’s good, but as long as that shows only the highlights and details are well segregated. What they need to list down are the services that Need to be separate and The services that are auxiliary like chat, tweet, global positioning etc. If it’s not done that way, your user may soon find his Football and Wall Street buddies on the same dining table. Sure there can be overlaps, but not a complete one, and it can be a disaster.

What would work?

1. Segregate the Work and Play software (Linkedin and Facebook)
2. Segregate Productive and Communication software (Google Docs and Gmail)
3. Segregate services like Photos and Videos (Like Youtube and Flickr)
4. Bind all these with Social and Professional Networking software (Google chat riding within Gmail)

It was supposed to get me updates from Picassa, Blogger, Flickr, and some more things. But initial experience soon became a pain of repeated comments and updates. Simple things are not sorted out. Things like sending me an update on my own comment. These kind of things just highlight the fact that the product or service has been thrown out in a hurry.

Then there are status messages. Which are pretty much like tweets and they appear in your inbox. Personally, I would like to keep status updates separate from emails, they are really not the same things. But it does not end here.

When you comment on a status message, the complete chain of messages as a single email update is mailed to you. It’s cute when there are 5 comments, and plain irritating if there are more than 30.

Have a few questions for Google

1. What’s the need of getting into social networking when there are quite a few of them that already work well. Why not collaborate and improve upon it.

2. Why not innovate and improve upon instead of barging in suddenly. Gmail is simply popular for its efficiency. Gmail is yet not perfect and still has a lot of scope for improvement.

3. Why so many products? We all thought Docs was a great idea. But it seems thats not getting any better any soon.

“We did not enter the search business, They entered the phone business. Make no mistake: they want to kill the iPhone. We won’t let them.”

- Steve Jobs, ipad Launch

And many of us completely agree with Jobs here. It’s almost like there are people in Google sitting and waiting for new products to come out which then they can “Improve” upon.

Make a product that’s needed, if it makes people go “Wow!” on day one, that’s a plus. Probably Buzz is a good product, but the premature launch of a buggy product just killed it.

Livestats

LiveStats by GoSquared – Real-Time Traffic Monitoring for your Site.

The software gets you live information on who is visiting your website at any given time. But what’s stunning is the User Interface that does the job. Even though I have no utility for this kind of a software, I am tempted.

The product gives detailed information about the visitors, their IPs, the country they are from including a small flag, what operating system and which browser they are using also in visual form, how much time they are spending on which page and much more. All this in a delicious visual format making the boring thing of Site Stats so much more interesting.

Credits Balance on Face/book

Was just going through the new new new Facebook User Interface and I noticed this. Seems like Facebook wants to get serious this time around in making money.

Clear monetization of existing services. Let's see how that goes.

And inside it has these options. (Shown in second image)

Just came across this post while browsing for 3D Topic Browsers in Jquery. It’s a simple Jquery funcltion to flip a container within a web page. I think, it’s a great idea to have spot reply forms created with these. They will give a blog very ‘Dashboard – Widget – Settings’ kind of feel. Will give it a test drive soon.

Jquery Flip Content

This is a video of an anamorphic, time traveling DeLorean (Mr. Fusion and all) I made in my basement. The image was made using only painter’s tape and elbow grease.
And, it makes me happy every time I look at it.

- Wablamo (on youtube)

I think it’s pure fun. Even more fun if you are a DeLorean fan.

This is just a broad overview.

Social networking sites as we see today consider the later to be their primary user. Sites like Google, amazon etc consider the former to be their primary user.

The idea has to slowly shift to combine the both, to invite the “accessing” user to “provide” more often, and this can be done only when the “process of providing” becomes a lot easier.

Apart from that, now we have to keep in mind the 3rd kind of user. “The Bots”, or crawlers from various search engines. Yes, a site has to be easier to crawl for information as well, and easier it is to do that, the better chances of it’s visibility on various search rankings.

What’s next?

The move should be to design for the 2 types of users and try and merge them. This would lead to a steady flow of updated information (not just about status messages and tweets but relevant information). The move has already started, and personal computing devices and slowly changing sizes and shape to aid in the process. And designs have to mirror the same sentiments.