Interesting way of reading news

Have you got bored reading news headlines on those news websites and newspaper.

MSNBC brings a whole new concept of reading news. By games and by visual separation.





This is very good example of visual design. Interaction design doesn't score much here as users get engrossed in the game and forget to read the news !!

Better you play it and read between the balls !!

Another step forward

Just an edit to this post. I am facing problem uploading/embedding my flash file in wordpress blog. They have banned it for security reasons, unless I host it on my own. So I am figuring it out how to do it. Till then my entries will keep on coming on blogger account at MyDailyFlash.

Now my Flash work is at Wordpress

Taking a step further towards making my online presence and knowledge more wide, I have added a new blog for displaying my experiments with Flash one a day. And this time I have made it in wordpress. As it gives more flexibility in design and adding content. Though I had a tough time getting my conceptual model of wordpress right. Ya ya I am an old blogger user.
So here you go >>

Localization

I found this on Windows 7 beta download site

Microsoft is seriously considering India as one of the largest consumer market for their product. And it can be seen by what is called localization. They are offering windows 7 Operating System in Hindi language. So without thinking I have started its download and will experience it.

My entry in Kirupa FXpression 09

After a long time Kirupa has hosted a competition of special effect with circles on his forum.
http://www.kirupa.com/forum/showthread.php?t=316544
All Flash enthusiast must be aware of this forum. If not just visit and start enjoying Flash.

Why quit Google?

Ever since I have graduated from my college, I always dreamt of getting into this internet giant. But here is what Techcrunch has come up with. Letters from ex-employees of Google mentioning why they left the company.
Well I do agree with them but most of it has just come out because of the inability to settle in the big organization and follow a hierarchy (I am amazed it's there in google too).

Disclaimer: By no means I intend the hurt the feelings of Google. The content presented here are for the sole purpose of making things transparent and amusing.

My blogs' DNA Blueprint

Hey all blog and web freaks with a little bit of biological bend. Check this out. Well that's DNA blue print of my blog by WEB2DNA. My friend Atish brought it to light. You might also want to check out another application that shows your webpage as graph. The link is inline on web2dna webpage.
This is utterly new way of representing a page on web. And see how beautiful it brings out different information.

www.kumarahir.com

That's the name of my new domain.
So this Diwali I resolved to get myself a playground aka domain and webspace to play around with different applications and experiments and host my portfolio.

Tips for Bloggers

Those of you who want to add a little bit extra to your blog, be it hit counter or site map or statistics or a new show off image gallery there are many free 3rd party widgets available. But they come either with price or advertisements. But why pay them when Google allows you to do so in house. Hmmmmm.. so the question is where is it?

Well I was trying to search for the same answer and I landed up on TipsforNewBlogger blog which lists down different methods that are simple and inherent in Blogger that we can use to enhance the richness of our blog.

Happy blogging !

Design resource

This is a nice collection for getting enough to start the work and boost your brain

Interesting menus - Some Google work
http://www.google. co.uk/landing/ thingstodo/ #tip36

30 Beautiful Photoshop Illustration Tutorials
http://sixrevisions .com/graphics- design/30- beautiful- photoshop-
illustration- tutorials/

Phonographantasmasc ope - Must see!
http://in.youtube. com/watch? v=to99C-0cLGE

80 Graphic Design Links You Can't Live Without
http://outlawdesign blog.com/ 2008/80-graphic- design-links- you-cant-
live-without/

7 Ingredients Of Good Corporate Design
http://www.smashing magazine. com/2008/ 10/06/7-ingredie nts-of-good-
corporate-design/

Top Ten Things They Never Taught You at Design School
http://www.designob server.com/ archives/ entry.html? id=121

Graphic Exchange - portfolio
http://www.graphic-exchange.com/aabout.htm
got this from Dhairya

Google goggles

Ever been in situation when you had just hit send button of your email and repented of not doing so?? Well many of us have been victim of such conditions when we do that's not intended or that's not the right thing to do at that time.

So gmail team has come up with a new feature in their labs edition. It's Gmail Goggles.

What goggle does is to divert your attention to some other thing when you are going to take a critical decision so that you get enough time gap to rethink on it. It does this trick by giving you simple math problems of addition, multiplication etc. when you hit send button. Once you solve the problems correctly your message is send. And yes you still have time to revert or discard your message. You can set time when you want this feature available. Say Friday nights after parties you are most likely to be in unstable state of mind. So you enable this feature to work for Friday nights. And then whichever mail you compose and send on Friday nights will encounter goggles filter.
To enable this option go to Settings and then Lab option tab.

Happy goggling.

Idea Generator

We often fall short of ideas. Majorly when we are looking for them. Remember one of those brainstorming sessions. How many ideas did you generate 10? 9? 15? But what if you want more of them. And whacky ones. There are lot of methods and formal skills to generate ideas. But the tool I am going to show will just lay enough foundation for new ideas and get you going with the whackiest idea in the world to play with.

IdeaGenerator
The tool works by combining three random noun and/or verbs creating a name of something which is out of the box. You can scroll through one word with single click or have some random creation by clicking on shuffle button.
Try it. It's real fun

Cheap softwares

Well don't raise your ears here.
By cheap I mean cheap on computer resources. Today softwares are studded with extra features and information other than it's main functionality.
Take for example mp3 player software. The main function is to play the music. But software make other information/features available and make them CPU and memory expensive, consuming more runtime resources like RAM and CPU.

• Different type of views for the list of songs-artist, genre, album -why the hell do we need to see songs in different ways. we just want to listen. show them in the most easy way and that's it.
  
• equalizer. that's fine for music composer. Apart from presets how many of the music listeners do actually use this feature.
  
• themes- customization/ornamentalization of the player is ok to certain extent. but why would a listener bother to change each and every button of the player?
• visualization. apart from parties while doing some other work will a listener bother to being a viewer too?? No need to have flowers running all over your computer screen and consume important resources while you have more important things to do.

So in a nutshell I was looking for some mp3 player which will just let me listen songs and be very delicate on my CPU and RAM.
And I found "sheep's billy".

Billy is a lightweighted no nonsense audio player that allows you to quickly play an entire directory of MP3 files. Though it doesn't support all the file formats, it is very quick and prompt.
Get Billy here >>

Also take a look at other application the guy who call himself "sheep" has developed. All feather light applications. Well this has motivated me to build something like this myself.
Adobe AIR. You can build widgets which are very lightweight.
Hope to post it soon.

designflavr

As usual I was surfing Internet and came across this very nice site which a good resource of illustrations and compositions. designflavr hosts works by different artists just like deviantart does, but this one has got a taste of it's own. I liked the works of many artists and thus it gets place in my inspiration section.

Maps

Recently I started playing with map api available online. There are different service providers for this maps like Yahoo, Google, Microsoft, Nasa, and many more. So I just thought of some ideas that can be used with map. I have been messing around with them since last few days. Though haven't developed any cool stuff got to know the nitty gritty of their working. Now with this knowledge I think take it forward to build some cool applications on top of it.
Well this becomes my part time activity. I would like to do something good in it. I'm totally into it right now.

My portfolio

It's been quite some time since I updated my portfolio with recent works and projects.
Do visit and comment. >>

Design inhibition

A nice article on what inhibits innovation and design in industry

BusinessWeek article

My blogger type

Got the link from Kanan to know what kind of blogger I am.

You Are a Pundit Blogger!

Your blog is smart, insightful, and always a quality read. Truly appreciated by many, surpassed by only a few

What Kind of Blogger Are You?

Embedding flickr slide show in blog

Dig those flash Flickr slideshows? All that’s needed is a bit of code to embed them within your website to give your readers something dynamic.

<iframe src="http://www.flickr.com/slideShow/index.gne?user_id=12345678@N00&tags=foo" align="middle" frameborder="0" height="500" scrolling="no" width="500"></iframe><br />

Place this somewhere on your website or within a blog post. Change user_id from 12345678@N00 to your flickr id, which you can find out with this idgettr. Also replace foo with the tags of the photos you wish to display.

Other parameters include the following:

* contacts=
* text=
* tag_mode=
* favorites=
* group_id=
* frifam=
* nsid=
* single=
* firstIndex=
* set_id=
* firstId=

Rahul Sharma-new age Santoor player

Rahul Sharma son of Pt. Shiv Kumar Sharma plays Santoor to touch young hearts. I visited his site and they have put entire album for his audience to listen to and get enchanted. The site is also very well designed to enter the moods of the sound produced by this lovely instrument.
The site is >>

Managing design(er(s))

Management I would say is not as difficult as organization.
Or is it vice versa?

Well without getting into the complexity of words let me come to the point.
While reading through the posts on IXDA I came across this nice site of Luke.


Look at the way he has designed his website.

Also take a look at the navigation system.
All the elements of design as mentions by Jesse Garrett >> have been truthfully followed.
The site ends up in my inspiration section.
And following articles which are on design management that can be followed when I land up in the industry are really good.
Though I have just skimmed through them, the visuals meant a lot.
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