ESPN Adds A Much Needed Nice Touch

ESPN has added a cool new navigation feature on its front page. Instead of clicking on the sports to go to that particular page, a mouseover event gives the user a neat little dropdown box, listing all the key links for that page, hence saving a step. Take a look:

I visit ESPN multiple times a day, so this is a welcome step. Cool thing is that the dropdown box also displays your favorite teams for quick access to their respective pages. Nice design touch, ESPN!

The Art Of Reading: Take It Slow

A very interesting article in the Guardian about the benefits of “slow reading":

So are we getting stupider? Is that what this is about? Sort of. According to The Shallows, a new book by technology sage Nicholas Carr, our hyperactive online habits are damaging the mental faculties we need to process and understand lengthy textual information. Round-the-clock news feeds leave us hyperlinking from one article to the next – without necessarily engaging fully with any of the content; our reading is frequently interrupted by the ping of the latest email; and we are now absorbing short bursts of words on Twitter and Facebook more regularly than longer texts.

Which all means that although, because of the internet, we have become very good at collecting a wide range of factual titbits, we are also gradually forgetting how to sit back, contemplate, and relate all these facts to each other. And so, as Carr writes, "we're losing our ability to strike a balance between those two very different states of mind. Mentally, we're in perpetual locomotion".

People were reading less even before the boon (or curse) of the internet. All the internet has accomplished is to accelerate the process, turning most of us into a gaggle of professional skimmers. Defenders claim more can be read in the same amount of time. In essence, volume is king. Time, valuable as it is, is to be commoditized, its benefits maximized.

I’ve suffered from this malady for a long time. I use to believe that I needed to cram my head with all the knowledge that I could get my hands on in the shortest possible time. I realize now how much time I wasted with such nonsensical thinking. I learned that acquiring knowledge for the sake of acquiring knowledge is pointless.

Knowledge needs purpose. What that purpose is depends on the individual: it could be internal, external, or both. For me it is a bit of both: internally, for self-improvement; and externally, so I can better understand the world. And the only way to do that is to process the knowledge. And this takes time. Skimming bypasses this process all together.

We need people to think, not just consume.

[via arts & letters daily]

Google: A Simple Choice

This whole China-Google troubles is rather irritating in that choices, for Google, are rather simple: comply with the law and make money in the world's biggest online market or leave the country and keep a clean conscience.

China is not a democracy. We know this. China does not respect, which we in the free world, call human rights. We know this. Yet the expectations for China are the same as a democracy. It's an incongruity that seem to be overlooked by some critics. China is a sovereign country, whose laws we may not like but nevertheless must comply. We would expect the same of any Chinese company operating in the United States.

That Google is wringing its hands over the matter is just drama to me.

CNN's New Look

CNN has redesigned its web site. Here’s a screenshot of the main page:



Very nice!

Gee This Blog Sucks...

As everyone well knows, I’ve blogged very little om the past few years. Mostly, I’ve just lost all interest, contributed by the fact that my writing was increasingly becoming repetitive—hence boring. I know I have this blog, but I’ve written only 400 posts in nearly three years; when in my hey day I use to write over 500 posts a year.

I have also noticed that the quality of my writing has deteriorated exponentially. Just read posts from my old blogs (here and here). I swear I didn’t write any of it, but I did. What the hell happened?

Yahoo Mail's Redesign

Yahoo (NASDAQ:YHOO) has updated its e-mail interface:



It has a cleaner, less cluttered look; and fewer ads. Yahoo has also decided to add a new application window containing many of its applications just a click away. All in all, I really like it.

Varnam Is Moving On Up

For those who don’t already know, JK has joined the cabal of do-gooders over at National Interest, hence his blog has a new address:

http://varnam.nationalinterest.in

Update your bookmarks and RSS readers accordingly. Congratulations to JK, this move will be a step-up in terms of more exposure for his blog. Just beware of the haters out there. Don’t let them get you down.

Funny Family Guy Episode

One of the funnier episodes of The Family Guy I have seen in awhile. Stewie essentially builds a transporter and kidnaps the the cast of Star Trek: The Next Generation so he can spend the day with them. The voices are those of the original cast.

Dawn New Design Sucks

I use to be an avid reader of Dawn, one of South Asia's premier newspapers. It seems they have rolled out a complete redesign of their web site.



To be honest: I don't like it. Though aesthetically pleasing, and gentle to the eye, it is a net loss, in my opinion. What was gained by good locks was lost in functionality. For example, if you want to access the newspaper's editorial, op-ed and letter pages, you have to scroll all the way to the bottom of the web page - below the fold, so to speak, cleverly hidden in a gray box with opaque letter. A poor design decision.

I say bring back the old version of the web site. Sure it was an eye sore but at least everything was easy to find.

3G iPhone Out Today: Will It Be A Success

Starting today you can buy the new 3G iPhone from AT&T (T); and Apple (APPL) has also launched an apps store, where you can download third-party applications for your iPhone. Personally, I find the whole experience underwhelming and a bit overrated. Regardless, I found this ad on Apple's site to a bit amusing:



The phone may be half-price, but your cell phone will almost double because you will have to subscribe to a data plan and pay extra for SMS and other features. Is it worth it? Not to me. But this won't stop the crazies from buying one.

Why not just get a Wi-Fi equipped phone - like a Blackberry? Want e-mail? There are plenty of free e-mail services that provide POP access, like GMail. Why pay extra when you don't have to?

Will the 3G iPhone succeed? Initially, yes; but the cost of ownership is still prohibitive for many people, including myself. Plus, it's a closed, proprietary system. I much prefer open source applications written in Java.

Slew Of Books On Sub-Prime Mortgages

As is my habit, I browse Amazon.com for the latest in books, DVDs, and music. Books about the sub-prime meltdown are already starting to come out.



Nothing sells books like misery.

Apple Releases 3G iPhone..Like, Whatever

Wow. Apple announces the 3G iPhone. Arguably one of the worst kept secrets in history.

The Circuit: Very Funny

Deepak Ananthapadmanabha-- yes that's his name-- hosts this funny and irreverent web-only series about technology.

Addicted To Twitter?

I use the following Twitter services:

• TwitPic
• Twhirl
• TweeterFeed

And I publish to Twitter via txt, im, web, and e-mail. I guess you can call me a Twitter maniac.

Twitter Is Back. Thank God!!!

Twitter has been facing some growing pains this weekend with an outage of some kind. Thankfully, it's back up and running, and all lost posts returned to their rightful place. It's strange. A technology I once dismissed as trivial and overly simplistic is now a critical part of my life. I love Twitter.

Laptops In The Classroom: A Distraction?

Laptops have become so ubitiquous in classrooms these days that I'm probably the last of my generation to take notes with pen and paper-- and I'm only 35!

I'm not a Luddite. After all, I'm part of the PC generation, but I do believe there's a time and place for everything. Sitting behind a screen, anonymously pecking away at a keyboard, doing God only knows what is not a good way to learn, in my opinion. Laptops also get in the way of the teacher-student relationship, fragile as it is, distracting students from giving their professors their undivided attention, the only thing they demand.

So put away that laptop, if only for a moment. Is that too much to ask?

Bloggers Are Writers Too

JK has written a great post about the writing process, something I'm keenly interested in as well. JK says that we bloggers can benefit from a more disciplined approach to writing as practiced by professional writers like Orhan Pamuk, Suketu Mehta and Kathy Sierra, all of whom JK profiles. An important quote:

Pay attention to the structure of the post, spend time editing it and finally make it interesting to read.

Lessons I have repeatedly learned and forgotten (often within seconds of each other). It's hard enough to write something interesting on a daily basis that the blogosphere demands, but writing and then editing is a never-ending struggle for me. This is why I write so infrequently, and when I do, the most I can manage is a few paragraphs, often only a couple of sentences (that is why I like twitter and tumblr so much). Writing is not easy. I can take comfort in the fact that writing is not suppose to be easy-- even for professional writers!

There are two things in my mind that can make a blogger better: reading and writing Obvious, I know, but hear me out. It's no coincidence that good writers are often good readers. Good readers in that they not only read widely, but pick good books to read. Quality is important here. After all, reading John Grisham, Tom Clancy, cereal boxes, and People magazine will only take you so far. Not surprisingly, most writers read the classics. Classics are classics for a good reason, they are a fount of good writing. Bloggers should read more of them.

But reading takes time. Time is a precious commodity in our fast-paced culture, where bite-sized blog posts is all we have time to digest. We value doing many things as possible in the shortest span of time, hence the mantra: volume is more important than quality. I suffer from this problem acutely. I'm always obsessed with reading as many books as I can before I die, only realize that there was no way I was going to read all the books I wanted to read, even if I did nothing but read and live to 200. It's just not possible. So I have become more pickier in what I read. And instead of trying to read a book as fast as I can. I read slowly. Letting the author's word sink-in. To meditate on the books meaning. In my opinion, a good book cannot be read once, but twice, even thrice. Each time something new, absent in previous readings, comes to the surface.

The second part, of course, is writing. Reading provides a foundation, in that you learn what good writing is. Nevertheless, reading and writing are two different functions. I've read Charles Dickens or Jane Austen and wonder why I can't write like them. My writings are consistently filled with choppy sentences (or run-on sentences), grammar mistakes, misspellings, incoherence, or is downright banal. The only way to improve my writing, I find, is practice, practice, and more practice.

Yahoo! Mail And Spam

I don't know what the deal with Yahoo! Mail is lately but the increasing levels of spam is troubling. Ever since the switch to an AJAX-powered model, spam has been simply out of control. Much of the spam are porn-related and dealings with prescription pharmaceuticals (the usual suspects).

I would gladly switch to another e-mail provider, but switching e-mail addresses these days is akin to switching phone numbers-- a royal pain in the ass; something to be avoided at all costs. Yahoo! Mail is my lifeline in this electronic world, so I'm willing to to tolerate a certain level of spam. Nevertheless, I have my limits, and unless Yahoo! rectifies the situation quickly, I will be forced to go elsewhere, like GMail, whose spam filter works much better than Yahoo's.

Private Phone Companies Gaining Ground In Bangladesh

The Bangladesh government showed great nerve when it shutdown a money-losing entity like the Adamjee Jute Mill, after failing repeatedly to make it profitable. It should do something with the Bangladesh Telegraph and Telephone Board (BTTB), the state-owned telecommunication company, which is bleeding red ink as nimble competitors steal its customers. Some choice quotes from this Daily Star article:

The number of private land phone users more than doubled in 2007, while state owned BTTB saw its number of subscribers drop, being unable to compete with the better service and cheaper connection of its private rivals.

So far BTTB has been unable to capitalise on this market as it is burdened by a reputation for bureaucracy, delays and hidden charges.

Among the private PSTN operators RanksTel is the largest with 1.13 lakh customers by the end of 2007, up 148 percent in the year. RanksTel started commercial operation in April 2005 and invested around Tk 300 crore to expand its services.

“From the beginning, we have followed a strategy of bringing the telephony services to the customers' door,” said Masrur Nawaz Waiz, head of operation and coordination for Rankstel.

“It is very easy to have a telephone within an hour if anyone wants it now, this is a real contrast with the past when it was so tough to get phone. This change helps us to attract customers,” Waiz said.

“In the case of BTTB, its bad reputation for not providing services in time to the customers is the main reason for them loosing customers,” said a high official of Telecom Ministry, adding that BTTB will lose more customers in the coming years even after restructuring.

The accompanying graphic says it all, in my opinion. But unlike Adamjee and Biman, BTTB is a good candidate for privatization.

The days of government owning the lines of communications—telephone and telegraph, radio and television, and postal services—are long over. The telecommunication industry has become too fragmented (and less strategic) to be controlled by a monopoly, and the loss of revenue for BTTB is commensurate with this fragmentation.

Microsoft Goes For Online Gold

Microsoft has just announced a bid to purchase Yahoo. No surprise given the latter’s poor performance lately, making it a good takeover target—plus Microsoft has the cash. I think it’s a good fit. By purchasing Yahoo, Microsoft gets a bevy of online companies with great brand recognition. Honestly, hard as Microsoft has tried, it’s MSN properties lag behind both Google and Yahoo. I hope the deal goes through.