mindposts V2.0

Thoughts swishing in my head ...

Its been great seeing iMP come along so far. Messageboards are going live soon. Looking forward to that. I would love to have an open source development for myBBCplayer. ( I am working on that now).

When I reflect back and see how far we are in the trial, I realise there are so many things I would like to change once we get to the next stage. First on my list is Accessibility. Went to RNIB last week and asked one of their staff to download and try iMP. I have never cringed so much in my life. It was a humbling experience. I am amazed how much I take my visual sense for granted. It was mind boggling. One thing I want to avoid is ghettoisation. I feel all of us share some of the same situations as people with accessibility issues in our day to day lives. I cycle around London. There have been times when I wished my beloved SPV C500 could detect I am cycling and talk aloud any incoming text messages or meeting venue details on my outlook calendar. A spinvox with modal intelligence?

Multi-modal access needs to re-defined. We really need to understand what multi-modes are. One more thing I am keen on trying for myBBCplayer is leveraging existing webservices like FURL, delicious and IMDB. There is no point in trying to recreate the web internally. We need to join the dots. That's what I believe Web2.0 is. Joining the dots, making meaningful connections and better relationships for our customers/audiences/users/whichever is the politically correct term today.

Ancient dinosaur wakes up

Haven't posted for a while. What does that mean?
I normally don't post when there is way too much happening in my life, and me being an indisciplined beast...I feel finger-tied. More than having a camera on my phone, I would like to shoot the thoughts ( ie.. take a picture before you get any ideas) in my head.
I heard somewhere...
" When you don't get what you want ...you get an experience
So what if you don't quite know what you want?

At the Beeb, we have another restructure..Just thought of a new management game that might remove the stress off re-structuring (for management)... we make bespoke Lego blocks of individual organisations and the management can 'Build' their dream teams/castles/project teams. It will acts as therapy and a great visualisation exercise. Then they can see for themselves how this 'organism' will work. I believe more than creating toys for kids ( who are spontaneous and inventive either way) we need better visualisation kits for management. AND I DON'T MEAN POWERPOINT.

So what else have I been upto.
1. Imp V2.0
2. Ideas Commons (Ground up Innovation at Beeb)
3. Nesta Creative Pioneer scheme 2005
4. Cross-platform integration across devices and disciplines. Might be talking a bit more on this here.

..Just listening to the Shipping forecast ...I can go to bed like a baby now ;)

"I love deadlines. I like the whooshing sound they make as they fly by. " Douglas Adams

Right, so here I am desigining for the Hitch Hiker's Guide to the Galaxy's.... initial smartphone/Pda site. Looking around for XHTML pointers. Something that really made do an about stance. Open Wave. I so love this site. Pity we don't have Open Wave browsers that are decently well adopted here unlike the US :(
" Think vertical, not horizontal.
Most mobile devices have a vertical layout, and users scroll downwards to get more content. Forget anything you've learned about users viewing the middle of the screen first: they view the top first on mobile devices. Therefore, avoid navigation bars, tabs, and side-by-side positioning. Design from the top down."

Its great to be able to have a go at things once you've done the below:
1. Washed all the laundry for the year so your laundry basket is completely empty (and its not yet Dec 30th)
2. You went running and felt really good.
3. You make a nice risotto with lovely Cep mushrooms that you had to pay through your nose at Borough market ( £3.00 for 4 of them... YES! But they were so worth it!) The risotto is great though... Good enough to take to work the next day.
5. You manage to indulge in your pet fascination of making jewellery and realise its decent enough to give as a Christmas gift
6. You get too charged up and decide the world hasn't yet seen a "kick-ass mobile XHTML site" yet. You work on that. What else can a gurl want on a quiet Sunday! I am so happy I feel like giggling :)))))

" How to do Mobile XHTML sites"...stuff I have been browsing :
tapa sized paper on XHTML dos & don'ts. Rating: ***
Decent oveview Rating: ****
Got to make up my mind on this one. Rating: Figuring out :\

So you want to give a "powerful presentation" Become an Actor!!!

I just went for an amazing training course called "Powerful Presentations" Makes one think from my erratic weblog that all one does at BBC is go for BBC training courses! Well, to be honest this course opened my eyes, body language and voice in so many ways. I know that we have come across statistics which say that 70% of all human communication is non-verbal etc, read this then humbling is the word. Especially working in a large organisation where words and the spoken word establish who you are ( Apparently all first impressions are made in the first 15 seconds) this course really helped me... thanks to Sandy Miller and a lovely bunch of enthusiastic lush BBC people I was training with. Everytime when things get me down and I go on a training course like this I realise why a place like BBC rocks. Someone like me who doesn't even own a TV ( I know this sounds odd and very academic, but I have never been in any particular country for so long that I got myself a TV!) and I believe in Web and DVDs (sad) but I actually go away on holidays and watch TV in hotels and it feels like a treat. Like I said all very odd! But also for me (to be honest) quite uplifting. I do not want to get sucked into sitting into front of a TV all evening. I would rather binge watch Little Britain, Office and Yes Minister (my father loved this and I was bought up on this in India) I love cooking in the evening and reading but anyway I am going on a tangent. I think everyone should at some point of time in their lives try a bout of acting. Its good for your soul. :-)))))))

On Gujarat, On Being Truly Agile & Rock climbing

Just back from the glorious mountains at Aviemore. Rock climbing has taught me more about being 'Agile' than what 'Agile software development' hopes to incultivate through careful workshops costing £500 at nice cities which double up as weekend break. Okay, to be honest, this is what I learnt. All interpretation left to the minds of the reader:
1. Never stand for too long on the same spot. Keep moving. You might not know where your next foothold is. Its okay. Go find out. But don't get too attached..aka. *stuck* by the allure of stability.
2. Learn to shift your weight. Don't concentrate all your body weight on the same foot which is taking all the weight. Do vice-versa. If your left foot is taking the weight, shift your body mass to the right foot.
3. Its okay to let-go. Leave your position and limber your arms to allow circulation. Use your *belay* and relax. Take a break
4.Its okay to fail. A *cragg* /mountain is like a good mind problem. You gotta figure it out. You can either throw brute force and almighty body power or pure technique. It ain't matter as long as you scale it and get to the top. {I like this honesty!. All that process is great, but hey, at the end of the day you want to be at the top of the mountain.
5. Learn to trust people. You *have* to trust people to get to your desired result. If you can't let go and trust people, you will never reach the top of the mountain. That wil be frustrating
6.Have a good time.At the end of the day life is too short. If you are not having a good time, you should not be doing this in the first place. Enjoy each moment. If its too painful to go on, learn to let go and find another foothold.
Now its all about applying all these *learnings* to *my context * Hmmm...nice!

And something totally unrelated. It made me very very angry, as I quite agreed on it Bharat Mata ki Jai!

BBC XML Training course notes

History

XML eXtensible Markup langauage (1997) [22 pages of a-4]
SGML: Standard General Markup Lanaguage (70's) [670 pages of specs]
XML is a subset of SGML
Well formed XML is well formed SGML
What's happening to HTML?
V1.0 to curernt V4.0.1
Is now XHTML, they took XML vocab and applied to HTML
eg:

Close all elements
try1
Quote attributes: < example this="pink"> So he said
Correct nesting
All elements are lower case (Case sensitive, single words)
Alttext is PCData ( parsed character data)
All attributes are name/value pair

MathML describes maths equations in XML
DocBook: Used in publishing industry managed by Oasis
This is amazing, UIML!!!
DTD: Document Type Defintion (20 years old)
XML Schema (latest used by W3 and Microsoft)
RelaxNG ( Does all of XML Schema, 80% functionality, 20%complexity)

Namespaces are used to distinguish between two DTDs
Book
xmlns:book="book_namespace"
smlns:person="person_namespace">

xmlns_person="person_namespace">
Make name spaces look like urls that you own

xmlns:b="http://www.bigroom.co.uk/book"
xmlns:p="http://www.bigroom.co.uk/person"
xmlns:xsi="http://www.w3.org/2001/xmlSchema_instance"

xsi:schemaLocation=
"http://www.bigroom.co.uk/book
http://www.bigroom.co.uk/schema/book.xsd
http://www.bigroom.co.uk/person
http://www.bigroom.co.uk/schema/person.xsd>

More on this at
XSL Extensible Style Language
XSLT & XSL-FO

Of revolutionaries & meaning of work

"Create like a god
Command like a king
Work like a slave"
Hmmm...

GUY KAWASAKI rocks..and I met him nine years ago. I was 19, impressionable, it was my first time abroad and I was presenting Infarm

Have been training on Flash Application development at Media training. I wonder if I can launch a rocket with Flash MX 2004 Professional....Its astounding..yummm..now all I need is a nice juicy mobile project...

A peek into the google consciousness

Its quite interesting to check your visitor stats to see how your blog came into being of the 'Google consciousness' that infact...you exist! I love the fact that it picks up this selective words from your experiences and makes you the number 1 result for something you just recorded as a passing recording of something you were present at, just noting itdown in this handy online notebook. This is how I see *my typepad*, i just can't seem to marry the richness of my notebook with this! It all feels a bit concerted somehow. You write like you say "Hello, Hello, checking 123..." when you do a mike sound test. Its this slight conscious feeling of being "onstage" at the same time just doing a routine check to see if your sound system is working fine...I quite like the fact that my blog doesn't have any comments...I feel more like a bathroom singer to be honest....only that my *real bathroom* in this case still tends to be my good ol dog-eared sketch book. Is it because:
I don't notice it?
Why does it feel familiar?
Is it because I don't needs to insert tags to make this bold?
I know most of this is second nature for people who blog a lot...

OK..enough of this..cool things I discovered in the microcosm of thingies
A lovely lovely *real* person
An interesting new description for an activity I engage on most projects

I want to fly away

Working on iMP interaction & application design for tech trial. Listening to Sigur Ros. My eyes blur over with Visio, thinking of error dialogs and grandmother interface design. I am missing home. It late. I want to hear a glacier breaking and join the sea. The urge to hear silence somewhere in nature is overwhelming right now...in the wilderness.

Its ironic designing for broadband and yearning for real life.

Another reason to get out there...the things screenland does to your head...

Back in London

So I am back in London. Got back from SF/Etcon. Spent some time at Redwood Shores with my sis & bro. Debating on the pros & cons of flexible working, mobility and general idea of connected groups working in diffrent parts of the world..all very cool, except it throws human relationships out of order. I remember giving one of those ultra thin digital cameras from gadget shop to my sis when she was in Geneva for 6 months working for the WHO (Tht's The World Health guys, before you get any other ideas). She wanted Anirudh (hubby) to share her experiences of things she was doing etc.
Even with all this rah-rah about the power of MMS, I would just like a simple connected web appliance, tht just shows moments in the day of one's life, when one presses Record + Share I remember seeing zillions of interaction design student projects which have dealt with ambient communication etc, how come we still don't have something simple like a piece of furniture with internet connectivity tht just shows up a screensaver type thing of moments in someone's everyday life. Anybody know anything about this? Basic, easy to use, not too fussy and over designed.
Its funny, but lately my rants have been against Over design and the lack of serendipity in everyday digital experiences I think this shall be my pet themes for this year. I want to create things that will recede into the background, not be a completely designed experience, a bit like a blank slate, tht others can modify and scribble on. Maybe I am finally realising what Jan Tschichold used to go on about.

Life is very much like good typography. Its only when its not really there, that you notice its absence

Hmmm...