And hell, they got it right!
Two and a half things I don’t like about the new Twitter design
Two and a half things I don’t like about the new Twitter design
I woke this morning, finished some chores and got to my desk. It’s Saturday, I have some time to catch up on my reading. I fire up Twitter and notice that I have a new design. A new home page. Maybe this is an initial knee jerk reaction that we Internet users are famous for, but I do not like two things at a very fundamental level and then another half.
First – My Tweets are not where my eyes go first
Well, we’ve all hear of the F pattern and shit. There are honorable exceptions that break this rule and still are excellent interfaces. But, the new Twitter is not working for me. My eye instinctively goes to the top-left (add 200px on the Y axis) and I do not see any tweets. I see a box which tells me that I am Gurpreet Singh and I have very few followers. It’s a good for nothing box early in the morning. Where are the tweets? Twitter wants me to move my eyes to the right to get my morning fill.
Twitter's new homepage design
Thinking of a business idea
Thinking of a business idea
Some entrepreneurs just seem to magically find an idea and get super-passionate about it. Others find it very difficult to fix on an idea and belabor on them for months. These usually are people in regular jobs who are trying to take the plunge. They’ve been conditioned over the years to be risk-averse.
In this short piece, I wish to introduce a few resources which might help structure your thinking and seed some ideas.
Equity Business or Lifestyle Business – Decide!
This is an important question to answer early on. What is the dream that you see, when you see yourselves starting your own business? I was made aware of this difference through this article.
Speed up your website (explained in simple English)
Speed up your website (explained in simple English)
Many of my clients are non-technical business people, but have to take technology decisions. I have been thinking of starting a series of blog posts that explain technology concepts that they usually encounter, in simple English. So here’s the first one.
Ever got a nagging feeling that your website is slow? I am sure your technology guy would brush it aside blaming your Internet connection. Truth is that, most websites are not fully optimized. There is always enough room to push the bar. There are techniques you can use to give an illusion to the user that your website is fast. This is the place to understand them in simple English and get after your technology guy.
Try to score your website using Google Page Speed to see how well is your site doing. It gives useful tips for improving the speed, but in technology heavy language. These are simplified in this blog post.
I am assuming knowledge of some basic concepts about the web, here. They are…
Native mobile apps Vs. HTML5 mobile web app – the debate & the Indian context
Native mobile apps Vs. HTML5 mobile web app – the debate & the Indian context
If you have a service delivered via a website and are actively looking to catch up to the ‘mobile wave’, you probably would have thought about this – Should I build a mobile website for every platform and maintain it. I find maintaining one platform.
Well, though your worry is well formed, the sad truth of today is that you might have the do that. HTML5 mobile optimized websites are a great contender, but here is a framework to help you decide which way to go.
Three cases when you should native mobile apps
- When your app’s core idea depends on certain hardware based calls (example: camera based, accelerometer based etc.), then you should build a native app. This does not include location based information from the device, the HTML5 standard includes geo-location APIs.
- When your app’s core idea is to be a utility which is useful off-line. For example, expense tracking is best as an app as the user would expect to be able to track even on a flight when her phone is off the network. There are many more examples of this – note taking, music player, currency calculator, food log, even games.
- When you wish to use the app stores as an important distribution channel. This category is mainly for media houses who would want their media to occupy mind-share of the masses. Apps are a serious channel which cannot be ignored.
