Emergintex

More than a year ago, we talked about a fundamental change in how we use the content available on web. We called it the begining of LifeStyle 2.0. What we were looking for, was how the content and technology providers enable us, the end users, to have ready access to the web, via devices that are more suited in the living room (or the kitchen, or vehicles).

Om coined the term Sofa-Web this morning, and this past month and half we have been seeing the war of the consoles taking place at every best-buy, costco and so on. These game consoles all had pretty much some access to the web, but mostly to their own services. XBox had Marketplace, I am not sure what kind of service PS3 has (if it has something).

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I was lucky enough to get a beta invite from the Venice team, and would be writing up a fast-track review for the service tonite.

Watch this space for more details, tomorrow!

Technorati tag: The Venice Project

I have been using soonr for a long time now, but honestly, it has been on and off. when I am too busy, getting a lot of mails, I tend to check my emails from the road (have it as home page on my pocket IE).

it has been a very good user experience so far. thing I like about this little framework, is well, its little-ness.

there has been one constant enhancement that I would love to see, and I am sure, other users would love too.

seeing that soonr has the framework in place, to relay your emails from your desktop to the central servers, from where the devices can pull the information via a browser. so far so good, and it works flawlessly.

what I am looking for is, why cant soonr team write a messaging client for windows mobile 5, such that it installs it within the messaging framework on the device, and a small layer that would translate the information on soonr’s central servers and push those out to the devices. this eases out the small ‘open-browser-to-see-emails’ issue & blends the information with the right service on the device, messaging service, which would allow soonr to leverage the device’s notification system effectively.

hope someone from soonr reads this and lets us know whether this is in plans or is not feasible given the current architecture.

but all in all, a wonderful service.

While the video sharing market is hot, (or getting cooled off?) by the recent Google-YouTube acquisition, I had a chance to take a look into Microsoft’s foray in this domain – Soapbox.

As opposed to most of the new web based services from Microsoft coming under the Live.com branding, Soapbox is (at-least at the moment) branded under the MSN Videos brand umbrella. Maybe that is more-so to encash on the traffic that MSN Video is generating.

Coming to the service itself, there are something I immediately liked, and even thought are improvements from the current players (YouTube). Things like you can keep on browsing the videos while your current video is playing on the side. Soapbox has a neat AJAXy browse panel where you can see next videos, and your current video is playing on the right side, un-interrupted. Same goes for the comments, where you do have to scroll down, but not the whole page (like in Youtube, you miss the video when the scroll is wayyy down).

The current theme of User Interfaces that we are seeing from Microsoft camp (Live.com and its subsidiaries), are neat and airy. A user can feel breathing in those user interfaces. Not in Soapbox. To me, it was literally being in Soapbox, too tight and crushed. Maybe this is meant to happen if you want to show the active video surface on the same view as your browse controls. So I can live with it. But then the colors, since the site doesnt have any themes/skins, We are forced to live in the black/blue/gold color scheme, which adds to the tight/crushed feeling when you are in. This was the first time I was forced to use the Zoom functionality of my browser (IE7).

Are we ready to put it out on IE7? Because this might be some CSS issue, but going full screen on my browsers (IE7 exclusively) I do see a very bad looking panels on the bottom (if I scroll past down to the lower end). Looks kinda bad and un-professional. Hope this goes out in Release.

Coming down the actual video part, I dont think it is a Media Player in there, as speculated by lot of others, but is an embedded Flash Player. So, far I havent been able to view a single video in High Res, so kinda disappointed there. There was one High-Res video, but it kept on Buffering/Loading after every 5 seconds of play, on my DSL connection. So if it is bandwidth issues on Soapbox, it needs to go away before we come out of Beta.

Uploading your videos needs you to fill out a all required form. Again the controls are tight, low in height. Again the color combination of the site plays another negative for me. Fillable fields have black background, which is taking us away from a standard. Right now I am trying to upload a ~40MB video (.AVI) to see how the performance scales from what I see on my local machine, compared to what Soapbox shows me. I might need to post an update here once the upload is done. Its 28 minutes already.

Navigation: Navigating aids on the left side, are all you can want. The nice drop effect they have when you select something goes well. Videos can be tagged, so you can search for tags. Or you can search for categories. A tag cloud on the main page helps you find popular things right off the bat. Full marks as I said, for navigation and search.

There are some nice ways to report abuse OR Report a violation of your copyrighted material. I havent seen how this used to be in YouTube (I am sure there was a mechanism).

so, overall I would have loved to see it more relaxed, roomy interface. As I said, navigating and finding something is super easy. Browsing for more videos while actively seeing your current video is now possible!

Update: My upload finally finished and can be seen here:

Video: Euphoria – Mehfuz

Technorati tag: Soapbox, MSN Video

I have been getting a lots of hits on my blog, through this Google Search, which I believe is due to a very true User Interface glitch by IE team.

It was pretty easy in pre IE7 era to look at the browsing history, by clicking on the History button right there, in the dead center of the toolbar. Under IE7 this has been moved significantly hidden location. It is now under the Favorites Center panel on the left, which you can bring up by clicking on the ’star’ on the left side. Once you have the Favorites center up and showing, you will see the History button on top right, within that panel.

Hope some of you find this useful, as I certainly was lost the first time, in trying to view the history. Then I looked at my hits and noticed most of you are coming here, to find ‘where the history is located in IE7′, hence this small post.

A lot of hype going on in the VoIP market at the moment. You are wondering how many companies (Vonage,Sunrocket,Jajah…) are providing how many ways of doing basic telephony utilizing VoIP. At the face of it, all you ever wanted was talk to someone, be able to let others leave you a message if you are not able to pick the call ( voicemail ), then you probably needed to access your voicemails over the web. With all the numbers you now have to manage, your friends and associates are tired of keeping track of you based on what day/time it is , the same way you are tired of tracking their numbers!

I would say GrandCentral solves EXACTLY one of the above problem point. Merge all your phone numbers, disconnected until now. A Simple user interface shown below solves this problem, which for me is **THE BEST** to solve this problem (so far).

You start off by choosing a number of your choice (based on availability shown by GrandCentral, during registration).

Once you have a GrandCentral number (ONE number for lifetime), you can enter your other regular numbers (cell, work, home etc..) using the above interface. You are all set. Now whenever someone calls on your GrandCentral number, all your above phones will ring. Dont worry, you can group the numbers so that you assign your contacts a group and then configure what groups ring into what phone. Smart. Thats like assigning rules to your emails in Outlook. who goes into what folder

There are lots of other useful features when you create a account:

1. Set what the callers hear when your number are ringing. MP3’s can be uploaded.
2. Record a conversation at the touch of a key while the call is on.
3. Assign a calling number into Spam group. Your phones will NOt ring at all, if another call comes from the flagged number. Think of this as a Junk Email (Call) Filter.
4. Neat UI to listen to your voicemails and record your greeting.
5. Download your voice messages in individual MP3’s or forward it to other phone. (Thanks Vincent)

What you would probably want to see in GrandCentral:

1. *Bulk* download my voicemails as MP3. Probably a batch process, driven by a search Query. I create a search based on all calls between so and so OR all calls to such and such group. Hit Done and I get all the voicemails downloaded, as individual files intelligently named, in a zip.
2. What IF GrandCentral doesnt woo you anymore. How can I associate my much used GrandCentral number with myself now.

Rate plans what I can get from the site are as follows.

Overall a service worth trying.

Burrp! a ‘user-driven-review’ system, which recently opened its services for restaurants (and clubs, and cafes…) for Mumbai,India, has announced that they were able to achieve first sign of success. By generating revenue.

This is good for a service which is still in its early stages, and is surely a push to them. I am not sure what the revenue was from, but I guess it could be from a partnership with some local business in some form.

Right now the team is in US, doing fundraising rounds to take the service to a next level. We wish them luck and hope to see Burrp! expand to other cities soon.

UPDATE: The technique didnt last long. I took my iPod out for a walk, and it started clanking again.  

Well, this isn’t exactly emerging technology, but felt like posting it out here.

My 4th generation IPod died this weekend, and all efforts to revive it were in vain. The Menu + Select option to reset the pod were futile, with metal clanking noise coming in from the iPod. I gave up this morning, accepting the fact that it is dead.

I Googled the trouble one last time (iPod shows Folder Icon with exclamation icon), and came across something where it was suggested to drop your iPod on the floor (from approx. 3 inches) OR hit it on the right side. I looked at the iPod and decided to do so. After a couple of drops, raising the 3 inches to almost a ~12 inches, nothing improved. Then I tried dropping it on its right edge, and try again. Lo & Behold! It booted up nicely into the main menu, and gave access to my music. The tracks played smoothly and its charging up now.

Not sure how long this will survive though

The above image was posted from Windows Live Writer…and it seems to be uploaded nicely to the blog.

Editing old posts is as easy as editing a document.