Was clearing up my inbox today, and was surprised by how well Gmail was designed. One of great things about Gmail is that it is so easy to start with. However, it also means that you do not have to go search for power options. But they are there....dig a little and you will find a whole bunch of keyboard shortcuts which make managing email much easier. A couple of hours work, and:
Read + Unread: 10k+ -> 3.9k
Unread: 8.9k->2.6k
I really was abusing my inbox!!!
Having said that, at the finish of any good product is always a wishlist :) :
1. An option for me to set my own macros. Now, one of the downsides of allowing users to program macros could be not having a bound on the computation, that is, even if the rules we defined, one could always design a macro which would take up huge amounts of time. But if this were the only concern, Google could always provide this with Gears in the offline mode....
2. Views: When I was spring cleaning my inbox, I found that I had been subscribed to a whole lot of mailers I had no desire of getting emails from. Basically, email is a push model, and given that any person in my generation will spend an unhealthy amount of time reading emails, any content I can pull from the source, I would rather pull than have it pushed to me. But I also wanted to maximize my productivity and since the frequency of the email notifications from various sources differ, I wanted basically a view of my inbox which sorts by "most mails received from source", so I could just archive/delete those sources in one go. Underlying this is an assumption that you do not necessarily want to read every email that you get, but I think that is valid. Say, you were suscribed to the Newegg mailer, but having just bought a computer, you are out of dough and arent looking at those deals anymore. A couple of months later, you have no need to look at the weekly deals which are a month old....of course this would depend on whether people are proactive in keeping their inboxes clean vs how many people do a once a yr spring clean. But still, there are other reasons you would want a view of your inbox. If Google thinks this is a lot of computation, they can always provide this functionality only with Gears in the offline mode to shift the computation client side, but I think it would be a nice feature to have...
3. Labels: Allow me to merge and rename labels. Contexts change, what was important to me when I was in college back in undergrad is not as important to me now, and given I only want to keep track of a few labels, their granularities change. So, for example, if I was a member of the solar car team, and if I was a member of the computer society, I may have wanted to keep them as separate folders in the past, but given I can only spend so many hours a week reading emails, and that their email volume may have reduced since the programs died out or the people moved on or whatever, I may want to merge them a couple of years after since they have lost priority. I think merging labels is actually quite important.
What would be interesting to know is if&why these can (not) be implemented.
Thursday, April 8, 2010
Wednesday, May 14, 2008
Android projects
Was seeing a bunch of Android projects, and there seem to be some pretty cool ideas to toy with:
1. Traffic aggregator using Android GPS feature: All phones using Android will use the GPS feature to anonymously submit their positions using which a central server will calculate their positions and submit the traffic on the road to other users. One can only receive if they agree to upload information of their position (velocity). Works great only if scaled. Can use current Google maps traffic (only highways; how do they do it?) for initial runs.
2. FriendFinder: Finds friends in proximity. They can be idle, busy or available. Possibly sync calendars since Google calendar allows a 2-way transmission. Use calendars to automatically show friends as busy if there is a calendar event at that time. Use Facebook/email lists to find people. Rank on most recent conversations/most number of conversations?? Ranking a huge problem in location based services. Would not want to know if a professor is nearby even if I colalborate with him (unless I want to run the other way :D)
On the other hand, reading Stephen King's On Writing, has some good suggestions, like emphasis on story and characters, which I had not thought about. Very Mishra style writing, would not do well in Rushdie type novels. Have no breadth in reading. Should improve to find my own style. Also has some good points on adverbs I did not think about. "Elements of Style" and "Warringer's Grammer" is something I definitely need to look at.
Reading Startup....by Jerry Kaplan behind GO.....great book....really has inside scoop of both the Valley and the number of things an entrepreneur has to go through (that is if he is not being molley-coddled like Zuckerman, who seems to have this head on his shoulders despite it). Should finish reading the book, and then read it again after a month so seep it in....same for King....have to concentrate more while reading....not good to have to go back to books....too many books being started at the same time.....
Most news articles have this "Print" option on articles that adjusts the page width to fit whole screen and pushes away advertisements....saw it from Sourav Guha first (trust a political scientist to come up with ideas like these :D ) Marvelous....now I can really make use of a 24" screen the moment I get it....was getting worried about sited like NYTimes, which are ineffective on a 24" screen as they come.....so is this blogger site....too small a window, wonder how to change that??
Domitilla seems to have written this cool paper on Molecular Biology which is the third most downloaded paper in Nature....looks like she hit a jackpot....relief for me since now I know what it takes....
Next steps:
1. Interconnections: Radia Perlman
2. Advanced Perl Programming: Srinivasan (have to go through a short Perl tutorial first)
3. Android programming: Do it using C+ Perl
4. Finish Startup...great book!!
5. Read Rushdie...tough read...but should be better after reading King....
6. FINISH KING!! end part taking too long!!!
7. Get "some" writing done...not blogging....writing.....thinking of a 200 word story....see where it goes.....
8. Ease back into work....
Music discoveries:
1. Killers: Read my mind
2. Coldplay: God put a smile on your face
3. Audioslave: Like a stone
4. Live: Dolphin's cry; Drama
5. RHCP: Dani California
6. Tom Pretty: Last Dance of Mary Jane (gross video...absolutely gross)
7. Alains Moristte (spell?) : Head over Heals
1. Traffic aggregator using Android GPS feature: All phones using Android will use the GPS feature to anonymously submit their positions using which a central server will calculate their positions and submit the traffic on the road to other users. One can only receive if they agree to upload information of their position (velocity). Works great only if scaled. Can use current Google maps traffic (only highways; how do they do it?) for initial runs.
2. FriendFinder: Finds friends in proximity. They can be idle, busy or available. Possibly sync calendars since Google calendar allows a 2-way transmission. Use calendars to automatically show friends as busy if there is a calendar event at that time. Use Facebook/email lists to find people. Rank on most recent conversations/most number of conversations?? Ranking a huge problem in location based services. Would not want to know if a professor is nearby even if I colalborate with him (unless I want to run the other way :D)
On the other hand, reading Stephen King's On Writing, has some good suggestions, like emphasis on story and characters, which I had not thought about. Very Mishra style writing, would not do well in Rushdie type novels. Have no breadth in reading. Should improve to find my own style. Also has some good points on adverbs I did not think about. "Elements of Style" and "Warringer's Grammer" is something I definitely need to look at.
Reading Startup....by Jerry Kaplan behind GO.....great book....really has inside scoop of both the Valley and the number of things an entrepreneur has to go through (that is if he is not being molley-coddled like Zuckerman, who seems to have this head on his shoulders despite it). Should finish reading the book, and then read it again after a month so seep it in....same for King....have to concentrate more while reading....not good to have to go back to books....too many books being started at the same time.....
Most news articles have this "Print" option on articles that adjusts the page width to fit whole screen and pushes away advertisements....saw it from Sourav Guha first (trust a political scientist to come up with ideas like these :D ) Marvelous....now I can really make use of a 24" screen the moment I get it....was getting worried about sited like NYTimes, which are ineffective on a 24" screen as they come.....so is this blogger site....too small a window, wonder how to change that??
Domitilla seems to have written this cool paper on Molecular Biology which is the third most downloaded paper in Nature....looks like she hit a jackpot....relief for me since now I know what it takes....
Next steps:
1. Interconnections: Radia Perlman
2. Advanced Perl Programming: Srinivasan (have to go through a short Perl tutorial first)
3. Android programming: Do it using C+ Perl
4. Finish Startup...great book!!
5. Read Rushdie...tough read...but should be better after reading King....
6. FINISH KING!! end part taking too long!!!
7. Get "some" writing done...not blogging....writing.....thinking of a 200 word story....see where it goes.....
8. Ease back into work....
Music discoveries:
1. Killers: Read my mind
2. Coldplay: God put a smile on your face
3. Audioslave: Like a stone
4. Live: Dolphin's cry; Drama
5. RHCP: Dani California
6. Tom Pretty: Last Dance of Mary Jane (gross video...absolutely gross)
7. Alains Moristte (spell?) : Head over Heals
Thursday, December 6, 2007
The falling American dollar
I read this article about the benefits of a falling dollar. Apart from making the exports more competitive, which accounts for about $ 1 trillion (approx 7-8%) of the economy, it does not add any other major reasons why Americans should not be concerned.
A couple of good points though:
1. Most goods imported from Europe are luxury, so they hit only the higher economic segment. The cheaper goods come from Asia. Will the falling dollar not affect these imports? Are most currencies in Asia linked to the Dollar? And would continued fall of the dollar not drive these investments out of Asia?
2. Prices in the US remain the same....again subject to the point above, but point taken, though this may not remain so.
3. 1985-1990 dollar fell but the economy did well....why? And why should it repeat?
4. China would not cash in on its dollars....completely agree, it would lead to much political instability and hamper Chinese growth, something the Chinese government is counting on for its sustained presence in China.
But the most important point is the loss in credibility of the dollar. The point is that other economies are rising, and investors will be more reluctant to put their money on the American economy instead of other more growing economies.
1) Does the fact that the other economies in the world are doing better and contributing more (Africa, India, China as an example) automatically imply that the strength of the American economy is becoming less important? Does this mean the dollar will continue to remain low?
2) McKinsey came out with a report saying that USA would remain the leading economy for the next 2 decades. Does this mean that other economies (since most are based on some form or other other on the American economy) continue to play second fiddle?
3) How is the money flow for business networks (upstream-downstream) for those completwely excluding the American economy growing? If this reaches a critical momentum, it may marginalize the American economy faster than one expects. That is, if the number of trade cycles (manufacturing, processing etc) between say Europe (value addition), China(manufacturing) and Africa (raw materials) increases, this may undermine the value and strength of the American economy. Is enough attention being paid to these sectors? All it needs is a critical mass.
All said, I hope things work out!! After all, I just got a job in the American economy!!!
A couple of good points though:
1. Most goods imported from Europe are luxury, so they hit only the higher economic segment. The cheaper goods come from Asia. Will the falling dollar not affect these imports? Are most currencies in Asia linked to the Dollar? And would continued fall of the dollar not drive these investments out of Asia?
2. Prices in the US remain the same....again subject to the point above, but point taken, though this may not remain so.
3. 1985-1990 dollar fell but the economy did well....why? And why should it repeat?
4. China would not cash in on its dollars....completely agree, it would lead to much political instability and hamper Chinese growth, something the Chinese government is counting on for its sustained presence in China.
But the most important point is the loss in credibility of the dollar. The point is that other economies are rising, and investors will be more reluctant to put their money on the American economy instead of other more growing economies.
1) Does the fact that the other economies in the world are doing better and contributing more (Africa, India, China as an example) automatically imply that the strength of the American economy is becoming less important? Does this mean the dollar will continue to remain low?
2) McKinsey came out with a report saying that USA would remain the leading economy for the next 2 decades. Does this mean that other economies (since most are based on some form or other other on the American economy) continue to play second fiddle?
3) How is the money flow for business networks (upstream-downstream) for those completwely excluding the American economy growing? If this reaches a critical momentum, it may marginalize the American economy faster than one expects. That is, if the number of trade cycles (manufacturing, processing etc) between say Europe (value addition), China(manufacturing) and Africa (raw materials) increases, this may undermine the value and strength of the American economy. Is enough attention being paid to these sectors? All it needs is a critical mass.
All said, I hope things work out!! After all, I just got a job in the American economy!!!
Tuesday, December 4, 2007
OpenOffice.Org
I just managed to download OpenOffice.org on my Vista.....just because I so badly needed a word processing program. And it is not bad. Though I do not know about porting it to Word. I may not need that though....I just converted these pages right into .pdf and .html. And I tried Comic Sans MS (since most non-Macs do not have Lucia Grande....a notable exception being blogger....though I do not know why it has such limited fonts while publishing the blog!!) along with the shadow effect, and though the shadow does not make much of an effect on the pdf, I can now make a decent web page for documentations without having to learn html programming....I think it should make a web page real soon.
In other news, I found enough resources to work on my term paper. My topic will be on self organization of economic systems. I think Schumpeter came out with ideas on evolutionary economics and they are trying to come out with some methodologies for it.....I think!!
Can not wait to get onto Linux....I think there can be very many things to try out there!!
Also, I need to learn some kind of a scripting language like Perl or Python. And on hwo to interface it with the web page. That is, how to use a program to go visit a web page, manipulate the information on it (on your own computer!!) and get data sets out of it. Though this may not be helpful all the time, this along with a scripting language could be powerful.
Here is a small project that might be worth trying:
Build a web crawler to find out the number of web pages containing certain keywords and then run a clustering algorithm on them. I think the field of information retrieval is quite cool! It is just that working with so much data makes the results that come out seem so much better and cooler!! Of course, when things don't work, then making them work also takes a lot more effort.
I think the other day, Google returned one of the blogs I had made private in their search. This angered me quite a lot. When I make a blog private, it should not be visible to the outside world!! There is a reason I am making it private! Another thing about Google that pissed me off was their lack of support to enable a 2 way syncing with the Google calendar. I need some place to store my online journal where it won't turn up on Google searches.....and hope Google does a Google-worthy thing with the calendar. I would really love to use it!! This is another place where learning to manipulate web data using scripts may help!! Go Python....go perl!!
The next 3 weeks are going to be hard....I do not know how I am going to manage....and yet I try to find time to blog!! Either I must be getting really stupid, or it must be the guys at Microsoft, because I could have sworn I was not able to find out how to open a file in the new Windows Media Player.
Things to do before I can breathe again:
1. Finish term paper for CSCS (and return the library book before you have to sell your soul for the fine!!)
2. Clean up concepts on probability.....this includes random processes, more problems on random processes and even more on random processes!!!!!
3. Finish writing the test cases for the smart motor and find out other crappy errors which could never occur.
Tomorrow, I think I will read through the manual and find out all the things which can stop the motor. Then I will need to make the if conditions. I will also need to make the module which reads from the CAN bus. Will have to ask Mike about the module and structure of the message. I think this project gave me a good exposure to a fairly medium size project spread over many files. Now I can try to make the communication code with Domitilla a little better.....more spread out and modular.....will be fun to build the structure of the code. Also, I get a strong feeling it will help understand other open source projects.
It has been 2 hours....its almost 1 in the morning....and I'm still blogging!! Man I waste time!!!
Off I am now....to try study....hopefully!!!
In other news, I found enough resources to work on my term paper. My topic will be on self organization of economic systems. I think Schumpeter came out with ideas on evolutionary economics and they are trying to come out with some methodologies for it.....I think!!
Can not wait to get onto Linux....I think there can be very many things to try out there!!
Also, I need to learn some kind of a scripting language like Perl or Python. And on hwo to interface it with the web page. That is, how to use a program to go visit a web page, manipulate the information on it (on your own computer!!) and get data sets out of it. Though this may not be helpful all the time, this along with a scripting language could be powerful.
Here is a small project that might be worth trying:
Build a web crawler to find out the number of web pages containing certain keywords and then run a clustering algorithm on them. I think the field of information retrieval is quite cool! It is just that working with so much data makes the results that come out seem so much better and cooler!! Of course, when things don't work, then making them work also takes a lot more effort.
I think the other day, Google returned one of the blogs I had made private in their search. This angered me quite a lot. When I make a blog private, it should not be visible to the outside world!! There is a reason I am making it private! Another thing about Google that pissed me off was their lack of support to enable a 2 way syncing with the Google calendar. I need some place to store my online journal where it won't turn up on Google searches.....and hope Google does a Google-worthy thing with the calendar. I would really love to use it!! This is another place where learning to manipulate web data using scripts may help!! Go Python....go perl!!
The next 3 weeks are going to be hard....I do not know how I am going to manage....and yet I try to find time to blog!! Either I must be getting really stupid, or it must be the guys at Microsoft, because I could have sworn I was not able to find out how to open a file in the new Windows Media Player.
Things to do before I can breathe again:
1. Finish term paper for CSCS (and return the library book before you have to sell your soul for the fine!!)
2. Clean up concepts on probability.....this includes random processes, more problems on random processes and even more on random processes!!!!!
3. Finish writing the test cases for the smart motor and find out other crappy errors which could never occur.
Tomorrow, I think I will read through the manual and find out all the things which can stop the motor. Then I will need to make the if conditions. I will also need to make the module which reads from the CAN bus. Will have to ask Mike about the module and structure of the message. I think this project gave me a good exposure to a fairly medium size project spread over many files. Now I can try to make the communication code with Domitilla a little better.....more spread out and modular.....will be fun to build the structure of the code. Also, I get a strong feeling it will help understand other open source projects.
It has been 2 hours....its almost 1 in the morning....and I'm still blogging!! Man I waste time!!!
Off I am now....to try study....hopefully!!!
Sunday, December 2, 2007
The last 3 weeks as a student....for some time at least....
The final 3 weeks as a student are here....only 3 more weeks to go. And not an easy 3 weeks at that. I just came out of a 5 hour session of solving assignment questions and could not come up (in a combined effort) with half the answers :( Things are always tougher when you have to wrap up projects!! But some things to look forward to......
1. Buy a new hard disk so that I get it just as exams get over....not before so I do not flunk the exams, not too late so I waste time....
2. Install Ubuntu:
a. Move all data into hard disk
b. Install the OS
c. Add Compiz fusion and hope it works on the RAM I have!! Pros: Scale (Expose)
d. Google Desktop for desktop search
e. Some kind of a tool for collecting web data in a decent manner and making a proper journaling system for it
f. Configuring other options to my liking
g. Learning scripting languages like Perl and Python
h. Learn enough to write a web crawler....without having to go through the entire tire of C!!!
3. Read all the left over material that has been piling up
4. Read some of the books I have been dying to read!!
5. Catch up on all news feeds
6. Make an active blog...
7. Get some exercise. A study just said that sitting down automatically stops the burning of fats!! Didn't have the courage to meet the rest of the article!!
8. Get up really really late!!
9. Catch up on all movies and TV serials!!
Like I said.....only 3 more weeks to go for heaven!!! There is also a HDTV in the Commons for me to get my grubby hands on!!!
1. Buy a new hard disk so that I get it just as exams get over....not before so I do not flunk the exams, not too late so I waste time....
2. Install Ubuntu:
a. Move all data into hard disk
b. Install the OS
c. Add Compiz fusion and hope it works on the RAM I have!! Pros: Scale (Expose)
d. Google Desktop for desktop search
e. Some kind of a tool for collecting web data in a decent manner and making a proper journaling system for it
f. Configuring other options to my liking
g. Learning scripting languages like Perl and Python
h. Learn enough to write a web crawler....without having to go through the entire tire of C!!!
3. Read all the left over material that has been piling up
4. Read some of the books I have been dying to read!!
5. Catch up on all news feeds
6. Make an active blog...
7. Get some exercise. A study just said that sitting down automatically stops the burning of fats!! Didn't have the courage to meet the rest of the article!!
8. Get up really really late!!
9. Catch up on all movies and TV serials!!
Like I said.....only 3 more weeks to go for heaven!!! There is also a HDTV in the Commons for me to get my grubby hands on!!!
Thursday, November 22, 2007
In pursuit of perfection
My biggest worry is getting everything right in anything! I have tried time and time again to work on it. Like when I get on a new machine, I type the Hello World program, hoping to get it right the first time. Simple program, nothing as complicated as the others I write otherwise.....should be a piece of cake......But then I find the compiler screams out...the problem it seems is something to do with not including the path of the compiler in my $PATH variable. And just like that, I could not even get "Hello World" running on the first try!!
Have a lot of trouble regarding this.....back in school and college it was cool to know the method and the answers but make careless errors. However, slowly the world is getting more and more unforgiving....mistakes are being punished more severely than ever before. The stakes are getting higher. There have been numerous debated on hitting home runs vs singles. In the McKinsey Mind, the author makes a case that hitting singles is far better than home runs (at least if you are at McKinsey) because home runs raise the expectation and then disappoint. Well, looks like I am a home run hitter. And looks like consultancy is not my cup of tea in that case. To me, it looks more like home run hitters belong to the world of venture capital (not entrepreneurship, because you work on only one idea and have to get it right). The problem with that of course is the lack of money :P It is after all what the VC gets to the table :|
The only other options are to look at improving on this elusive skill others call perfection or to remain in an insignificant position where mistakes don't matter. And since the later is not looking like much of a pick up line.....any suggestions on the former?? Anyone??
Have a lot of trouble regarding this.....back in school and college it was cool to know the method and the answers but make careless errors. However, slowly the world is getting more and more unforgiving....mistakes are being punished more severely than ever before. The stakes are getting higher. There have been numerous debated on hitting home runs vs singles. In the McKinsey Mind, the author makes a case that hitting singles is far better than home runs (at least if you are at McKinsey) because home runs raise the expectation and then disappoint. Well, looks like I am a home run hitter. And looks like consultancy is not my cup of tea in that case. To me, it looks more like home run hitters belong to the world of venture capital (not entrepreneurship, because you work on only one idea and have to get it right). The problem with that of course is the lack of money :P It is after all what the VC gets to the table :|
The only other options are to look at improving on this elusive skill others call perfection or to remain in an insignificant position where mistakes don't matter. And since the later is not looking like much of a pick up line.....any suggestions on the former?? Anyone??
Friday, August 17, 2007
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