i.justrealized

And yeah, it wasn’t all that good. I got the invite some time back. I was preoccupied that time and I didn’t really explore well till today. Pogo is another one of those browser that does the 3D thingy (not that we actually need another more of those).

I wish the browser makers could wake up one day and understand that 3D browser is not something humans want - maybe cyborgs could’ve totally drool all over - but not humans.

Pogo does a few things wrongly, they tried to reinvent the way people bookmark without a strong social element. They put all the 3D engine into this collections thing that look really cool if not for my 770 delicious link that basically hung the browser for a couple of minutes ’cause it’s generating screenies for the bookmarks. The 3D uses JavaScript which tends to give warnings due to script running too slowly.

And what’s with different names to the word ‘bookmark’. Internet Explorer calls it ‘Favorites’. Firefox calls it ‘Bookmarks’. Pogo calls it ‘Collections’. If I wrote a browser, I’ll call it - let me think, okay - ‘Elephants’. Whatever.

Another cool thing is the history browser, also uses screenshots of web sites. Pogo, unfortunately, is not intelligent enough to know how to give the appropriate screenshots, the offset is usually wrong and the screenies are either too big or too small never just right.

To worsen what already is bad enough, it uses Firefox 2 instead of 3 as the back end. Firefox 3 sorts out lots of memory issues and it’s amazing that I can now open 50 tabs and till smile. By the way, in Firefox 2, I used to open 50 tabs and chat with my friends on MSN just ’cause the browser is taking eons to respond. In Pogo, opening 12 tabs makes me cry.

On the lighter note, Pogo does have a nice logo. (Somehow reminds me of string theory.) I felt it could’ve been packaged into a Firefox plugin instead of compiling a whole browser out of it. Associating a web site with a screenshot is not enough, the screenshot is just too small to allow me to know what I am clicking on.

My impression of the browser wasn’t good, it’s trying too hard to be different but has not necessarily succeeded in the usability department. Good try on aesthetics. The social element is missing too and there is no way to way any Firefox Add-ons which is just a deal breaker. Stars! Yea, 2 stars out of 5.

[Pogo is just a project name and would probably be called AT&T Freestyle, AT&T Lenz or AT&T Bezel.]

Hooray, CNET announces a redesign and gives a preview. A screenshot depicts a million characters:

Begone yellow. Or gold, whatever you call that color. To me, that color, that yellowy CNET color looks old and tiring. It did not portray well what CNET has to show - new technologies. The new colors are much better, softer and more professional. (more…)

Visit Yyyyyyy.info. Okay maybe not.

The designer sure took a lot of effort to make this map but the map is not really useful.

The thing about buses is that their stops are quite close to each other and to map out the whole bus track without a physical map as the background just looks too confusing. This map requires an engineering degree.

To me, it’s like an art exhibition in the bus interchange, a welcome change to Mas Selamat posters.

We really should avoid bus maps looking like London Underground’s.

I was going to my work place the other day and I took a bus that looks like this:

Looks really strange to me. The design is not really practical. I think it probably is some special tie-up with Nokia or something. Was just thinking the bus could have carried a lot more people.

But still, it looks refreshing. I sat on one of those white chairs. There is even a fake bar top. What’s up with buses these days?!

Well, if you have the time, you can read the following. It’s very interesting to me - the way IKEA place effort in their design process and tweaking their designs to achieve greater cost savings.

“When we decide about a product, we always start with the price,” Deboehmler said. “Then, what is the consumer need?”

“When we start in the development process, we say we’d like to have a cabinet to hold a large screen TV that’s 42 inches, and priced out to come in at X dollars,” Marston said. “OK, now we’ve said we want it to retail at $500, arbitrarily. What can you make, what can you design, to make it at that price?”

From the beginning of the process, a variety of people get involved. Those include field technicians who are able to see what’s needed in the creation of a new product and determine if Ikea has already designed something similar that can be mined for parts or design inspiration.

Another example is a packaging technician.

“They’re always part of the team from way at the beginning, when the product is designed,” Deboehmler said. “We always have to find the smartest way to do something so that it can be flat-packed and minimize waste of space when transporting.”

With the Lillberg chair, the idea was to build a prototype at the factory–which the team did–and then to see what they had on their hands.

“After many, many days of trials, we thought we had it right,” Deboehmler said. “‘OK, this is the product.’ Our designer was on his hands and knees. Then we got it back to (Ikea headquarters in) Sweden and started taking it apart again, and decided we can make it better because we can fit more in the package if we changed the arm direction.”

By making a small tweak in the angle of the chair’s arm, she elaborated, the designers and packaging technician figured out they could get more of the chairs in a single shipping container, and that, in the end, meant a lower cost to the consumer.

“The arm (change) meant huge savings,” she said. (more…)

I updated my blog layout. Things are pretty messy in the past. The colors did not look right, the links aren’t working and I lost interest.

Theme: Dialectical subtlety

The key focuses of this theme are elegance, readability and simplicity.

Some powerful WordPress features - such as previous post links, categories and trackback information - are sort of removed or made less obvious. Tags are preferred over categories too, it is also the main method to sort the posts. (more…)