nStation

I’m going to extend my online presence on Technorati. As a procedural measure I’m supposed to have this short code (2CS29C43BNQS) on a blog post so that they can verify authenticity. I also made the decision to make the ‘blog’ part of the site strictly journalistic. So here we go with the very first blog post under the new web address, nstation.org on this Programmers’ Day.

I used to be a OneNote fan. From a short 'to do' list to a lengthy 'how to' article was captured on OneNote. Those days are gone. Surfaced again is EverNote; the product Microsoft (almost) killed with their vivid note taking tool. This time however it has bubbled with all the timely features. You can write a note once and access it from anywhere in the world. But if you prefer not to put your sensitive data out in the cloud, you can simply choose not to do so. The facility of syncing notes with a portable USB drive is also part of the package. Long live the notes war! More »

Seven used to be the luckiest number. At least that’s the impression I had until recent developments. On numerous occasions I have heard people say ‘lucky seven’ when making references to favorable outcomes. But this year things have become a little different. The Chinese consider eight to be a lucky number and have gone great lengths to prove it. According to this Wikipedia article, Chinese believe that eight is lucky as it sounds like ‘prosper’ or ‘wealth’ (in their language of course). I guess you know why Beijing officials want to start Olympics on this date at 8.08pm specifically; neat. More »

Note: this post is no longer relevant as the theme has changed since. nStation has a new theme from today onwards (July 16, 2008). This theme is a fresh design I came up with a couple of days back. It took me about a week to complete the design and another week to develop it to a WordPress Theme. This theme is more modern looking than the previous two. There is adequate white space surrounding objects and consistency has been preserved across pages. I have also made every attempt to make it look good on all browsers. Different sections of the theme (header, main menu, content area, etc.) have different appeals to it so that they do not conflict with each other in appearance. More »

Microsoft is the best source when it comes to good windows user experience etiquettes. This post is about another good example from Microsoft on providing appropriate feedback to the user.

I experienced this as I was installing the Windows Live Mail program on my laptop. After I started the setup program I notices two very interesting messages appear on the setup dialog box that actually made me smile.

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I managed to squeeze some time to write about the ‘edit post link’ despite my laziness and lack of time to write the article on ‘Breaking the Blog Paradigm‘. WordPress theme developers are probably familiar with the edit_post_link() template tag that I have mentioned above. Although the only thing this tag does is to create a link (see screenshot) to edit the current post (or page) that you are looking at (given that you are also logged in), has a very user friendly aspect to it.

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One of the interesting RSS feeds I subscribe is Giveaway of the Day. February 24th Giveaway of the Day is Typing Assistance; a software tool that gives word suggestions as you type leaving no misspelled or mistyped words. The irony here is that a comment made on the Typing Assistance’s page led me to a similar open source software called AllChars. AllChars seems to be a mature enough candidate that does a very nice job for heavy-duty users of the keyboard. Funny, how a commercial source directs me to a non-commercial open destination. Indeed another good example of the open and connected nature of the Internet.

As I've mentioned in an earlier note, the traditional paradigm of blogging is non-intuitive. There are many elements in this metaphor that doesn't improve usability of a blog-site. So I thought of changing all that and creating a new user experience based on a different paradigm. With this there isn't just a blog, but many other elements that can show off personality very effectively. Although I don't have enough analytics evidence to cover my argument (yet), the improvement in readability and structure looks very promising. If you are wondering what I'm talking here, or interested in knowing how I did it, an article explaining the revamping process will be posted after the weekend. Blogger's Dilemma courtesy Cox & Forkum

Time pass by and we celebrate the new year. This is a perfect reminder to us that once a moment in time has passed by, it’s irretrievable. It is up to us to learn from past mistakes and adjust accordingly to face new challenges in the future. A very happy new year to everyone who stumble on my blog and and lets learn from 2007 to make a better 2008.

We love long weekends. I thought as my new year note this time I’ll post all the long weekends (imposed to Sri Lanka of course). Some of them are convertibles by adding a leave to the list yourself. Hence the list goes: More »

Checkout the website of the local design house ‘We Are Designers’: they showcase a decent portfolio and some attention-grabbing lab work. Despite all this, their own logo reads ‘die’ horizontally down. The design house doesn’t strive for excellence in their own work?

Logo designing or branding is an art needs to be dealt with utter caution. Often design houses that make super brands fail to take their own brand to the next level. This short post is not to criticize a brand that in my opinion done without considering all ‘sides’; but to make aware the fact that, branding isn’t just painting a portrait.