“.”

Been too busy scratching my balding head, sleeping and getting back to work for the last two months. Now I am a little too busy making sense out of the whole noise that is happening around me. Not the audio noise, the RSS noise! 61 feeds on Google Reader can make you feel a little worthless for the sheer lack of interest, time, inclicnations etc.

For the sake of junta who has seen me in person for the last one year, hey I am back to the world of Windows. Ubuntu was good. But was a little too geeky for me. Windows do SUCK too. But the whole I am familiar feeling is pretty nice (and i am on XP - ha ha Vista fuckpots)

Jokes apart, a few things I noticed around in this noise -

1. Twitter usage is getting a little painful. Is it not a lot better to talk to the person who sits 15 feet away from you? Ok you hate his / her face. Then call them up / message them / tell someone else who seems to pass by to pass the message. Please dont do the @someprick - Dude, had lunch? Its a little painful.

2. Women need to be respected. Happened to watch a few minutes of television recently and I bumped on this show called Splitsvilla (spl. chk). Dumb females, dumb guys, dumb channel and a lot of bitching, back stabbing, ass scratching and what not. My mother told me to respect women. I have seen women closely for some time and I feel they need to be respected (yeah dude, they can fuck your happiness if they want to. Much smarter in those respect than us ball beareres).

3. Web 2.0 is a bubble / is not a bubble / is a bubble / is not a bubble - Make up your mind / cant make my mind / make up your mind / cant make my mind. Web 2.0 is crazy. Internet junta is crazy. Internet is crazy. Hey, how would you like a package which remionds you to scratch a head every 3 minutes and waht about an RSS feed on your friends who scratches their head. You may even comment when someone scratches their head. Hmmmm…. lets call it Beta for now.

<6 months later>

“Head scratchign community raises $6 million” - What the…

<Interview>

“We are planning to move from our expert domain of heads to other parts of the body. VCs have shown interest in the move. Series B funding awaited” - internet!!!

4. Choosing to work is the concept. Its a matter of choice that human beings could make. I chose to work and not “work” my ass out for nothing. Well whatever that means.

5. Comics is all about copywriting. I can make a comic out of stick figures, templates (which a designer has touched just once), poorly taken photographs, Venn diagrams, charts, pies, graphs etc. Fuck you designers (hey, no hard feelings).

6. Love is a bitch. It fucks you up, fucks your brain and fucks your happiness. Yet,  you invariably falls for it. Idea! Lets make a website out of it. Whenever you falls in love, an RSS feed shall be generated and people could comments on it, give a thumbs up / thumbs down

There are quite a few angles in which Web Development completion processes could be approached.

“Process - really?” would be the first one to trip on!

It is not very uncommon for web development agencies working out a whole blueprint and road-map for a project, which possibly can never go wrong and finish off in two weeks straight.

“It’s a small, simple HTML site. The UI is simple and content is ready. I can finish it off in two weeks. Alright - troubles in the form of back-and-forth with the client might take a week more. THREE WEEKS! Final!!!”

Wrong my friend. Six months and 90% of the project over. In fact 90% of the project got over in two weeks straight. The ‘back-and-forth’ just seems to breathe down heavily on your nerves. Meetings, Strategies, ‘Push-up’, ‘Push-down’ - days; weeks and months seems to pass by till the domain name starts working.

“Release a beta version first. Let’s work on the live site and make it look better till we reach the benchmarks set for ourselves - in terms of quality, content, design, icons, background color (for God’s sake) etc.” - An agency model where accounting is dependent on delivery of websites - in a full and final form with ‘0% error’ in terms of copy, content, banners, links, ads etc., time can play a major factor. Deliveries do take major hits here.

Optimizing Deliveries

1. Staging server -

Any agency in the online business should have tie ups with Linux based and Windows based servers to host their codes. The URLs could be shared with clients, friends, critics, enemies, old crushes etc. for opinions on usability, mood, color, look & feel, click throughs, text, design, pictures, borders, icons etc.

2. Opinions -

Social Science aspect of internet can make anyone and everyone have an idea on the website. Pure psycho analysis at play.

“Hey this looks cool. I like the activity on the page. The flash was nice”

“What the f*** is up with the flash? The images are distracting me from reading the text”

“The font is just too cool! I am able to read through the content at 420 w.p.m”

“The font - bloody makes you rush through the page. Ever thought of stickiness factors”

OPINIONS. They never matter really in the face value of affairs. Yet, it opens up a huge window of possibilities and angles of looking at the same website. Quite a trip

3. Brainstorming

A little whiteboard activity. Take a repository of all opinions. Put the stuff up on sticky notes. The focus should be on collecting the opinions. The thinking hats could wait for a while here. The more the merrier!

Break down the opinions into pieces - call them “look and feel”, “content”, “usability”, “speed”, “creativity”, “size”, “Browser compatibility” etc. The same sticky note could appear in more than one bracket also. No harm.

Make sure this is a group activity for optimal results. Different human perspectives could bring out a lot of ideas.

4. Thinking Hats

Edward de- Bono! Six thinking hats. May sound a little formal HR training session here. But a try won’t be bad. Another white-board with the results. Lot of work - still worth it.

5. Screening

Once the ideas are in, screen the ideas out - at this phase, this won’t be much of a pain. We know the reasons, we know the game plans, we have tripped on the angles. We know the game now!!! Off to war! Lets sell the idea.

6. Sell Sell Sell

We should hard sell the ideas to the client now. Giving them too much time to look at the work and admire the same might just end up in weird results (read elongated, extended projects, tired people, boredom, de-motivation etc.)

“It’s a religion bro!”

“It’s a culture man!”

“Heck! The entry barrier is low these days”

“Do you have a killer idea? Its all about taking the initiative man”

Inside with people who think it a means of living and dedicating your lives to the ‘holy purpose’ - it is pretty much a big deal, as I see it now. Oh yes - people are saying “Web 2.0 is over! Its dead! Over!” too. Is it really?

Well, I try to look at it and understand the deal from two different angles all together. As an art and as a science. I have tripped on the web talks with hard core desginers, coders and with copy writers. Businessmen giving their ideas on the concept is another angle to it. But, do I see a connection here?

“It’s all about the user” - Right from the conceptualization to the Navigation to the content to the design to the marketing to the branding to the application of the ‘X’ (’X’ because I don’t have a good word for the thing - a website / portal / web application / desktop application - could really stand for anything at all). The whole idea is about making ‘X’ ‘user centric’

Now about the angles - production / marketing.

It may either start off as a Produce X -> Market X or as a Hype up X - > Produce X -> Market X.

The challenge here would be identify your role in the whole process - Hype / Produce / Market X (an idea on the Web 2.0 lines).

1. Leave your baggage and your past behind you.

Oh, so you have climbed Mount fucking Everest. Good shit.Get your stuff ready for what you gonna do now! Stay low! Stay focussed!

2. Imbibe in the culture changes.

It is important to have an identity of your own - whatever ways you may like to project it though.

3. Trip on the ideas and the intellectual stimulation.

Major intellectual masturbation leads to ideas in general and things to go about in day to day work. Brainfood - the only reason to try things!

4. People

Different kinds - different types - different destinations - same circle though!

5.Things and places

Its not just Broadband connection that matters. So many smaller trips leading to a massive BANG - thats online!

6. Have a goddam interest that necessarily does not involve computers or internet.

Generally ONLINE!!!

Thats what it is baby!

Post a few joints me and a friend decided to play this game where we take turns and write a line each.

Broken strings attached to a puppet with brains. In my mind there is some thing which hurts. Pain – is it real or just a cloud of words humming on my brain? Should I ever meet her. I can hear someone strumming a guitar so cool that it sounds like from a pair of speakers. Who the fuck do you think you are?” And then I love her. I am a traveller. Lands, cities, towns, villages – just pages of the book that I am. Zero. Yes, that’s how I feel right now, said she. And may be you had lost it by then. I bumped on her people who looked suspiciously at me. Kettles blowing steam. Trucks whizzing by. Whores standing for a daily living. The Bombay outskirts can get dramatic at times. Must be 4 AM now. What do you do for a living? You are kidding me. How does it matter. Questions, answers, one-liners, challenges, flirts, sweet talk – it was a bustling office. But there were so many other questions you didn’t answer. How come that never bothers you? The feeling of freedom from firm strings – psychological and physical takes me to insomnia. It destroys you suddenly. But that kinda sinks in very gradually. And then you go, oh yeah! Destruction – beginning or end? I am waiting for a Big Bang at a Bombay outskirts check point. Father or Mother, who do you like more? Silly I know, but it’ll answer a lot of my questions.Her grey blue eyes looked so deep into mine. Help me! Love me! Is she like my mother? Go home you fucking faggot. And then he killed him. An understatement to cold blooded murder. I flee. I fly. No strings attached – yet with a confident sense of direction. Is this Bombay? Beethoven’s broken guitar. Yes, Beethoven had a guitar. An elec-fucking-tronic one at that. I gotta check my email now and delete the spams, you know those ones that sell you long penises

Joint ocean stairway imaginary as it soared in depth.

Been reading a lot about Web 2.0 and got absolutely mind blown by the possibilities and the cool factor involved in the whole deal. Even took up a job in an Online advertising agency to know what the deal is all about. My reading goes something like this -

Web Development projects need a lot of talent in the first place. Strategists, Information Architects, UI professionals, Front end developers, Server side scripters, copy writers, content writers, Relationship Executives, Computer hardware junta, Chai walas, Rickshaw drivers, Office space, intoxicants and of course fast, decent and reliable broadband connection.

Going about the activity in a very White board kind you may divide the process into seven broad categories -

1. Information Architecture Phase

2. Project Management phase

3. Wireframing

4. Design Mockups

5. Front end development (XHTML, CSS, Javascript)

6. Back end development (CMS, PHP, ASP, .NET)

7. Quality Assurance

Information architecture is the baby of all AOE geeks. An architect could spend long hours, days or weeks tripping on ideas, competition, functionalities, features and what not. A few techniques here and there like mind mapping, Card sorting and related jazz could get you a lot of dope on things that could be done, could not be done, should be torn and shot into a trashcan (from a distance or point blank range). A lot of new age websites do have a lot of architecture behind it - Look a facebook, cleartrip or Orkut for instance.

“Should I allow a first time user to read some random astrology stuff?”

“I could make a seasoned user ‘SLAP’ a fried. What about a ‘THROW A BEER’ or rather just ask them to chill out and watch a movie”

“Do you just want to go to Delhi? No hotel booking? What about sight seeing? Oh, so you are an executive. Would you like to surf the net when you land? Have you thought about where you will pee? do you know the Vadapao vendor at Banglore?”

Information Architecture - Microsoft Visio - Kivio (Linux users anyone?) - Dia (Less sophiscated Linux Users - anyone!!??)

But hey, business is not for you to trip on arbit stuff. Ever thought about this concept called time? Or about these homosapiens called clients? They would enjoy the Vadapao questions for sometime till money and opportunity costs come knocking hard on the doors. Speed up architects - 5 minutes remaining!!!

Project Management - The whole planning can start here. How much time to create a wireframe, how may days for an approval, how much time and how many resources for tech work etc. Can get to your nerves in a ‘tight’ project or can trip on timings and processes. Use MS Projects, Gantt Charts, Project trackers and all the corporate tools here to make an effect!!!

Wireframing - The IA (Information Architecture) looks for hundred and twenty two things on the homepage. All of them look good. All look important. All look cool. All need attention.

“Whatever happened to the clean white breathing space jazz - make another heavily cluttered shitty looking website guys - way to go” - the necessary evil guy in all Web development agencies - comes in the form of Relationship Managers, Front End Developers, “Experts” and random guys who appear out of nowhere - Popup blockers do not come in real life!!! (SAD!)

Wireframing to the rescue!

These guys are Gods. They can make an over crowded Mumbai local look good - Ah! Put the long distance travellers inside on the seats. Put your bags on the overhead compartment. The young and adventurous on top of the train (careful - just dont balance yourself using the overhead lines). They talk in terms of placeholders, link holders, usability, 508 etc. Take up the responsibility of Riot Police in a web agency. Good people, nice people. They dream in B&W and has really fast fingers - shortcuts on Autocad and stuff - must have a good sex life! Enjoy making chaos look good! Butterfly effect???

No one would be so bothered about usability tests as a Wireframing executive. Navigation, User Science, First time user, Seasoned user - they know it all (better know it all - its your website, its your money)

Design Mockups - Creativity vs. Science. The ultimate dream that comes true! Arts meets mathematics - I am so bloody excited.

The B&W user centric Wireframes comes out of the sixties in Eastman color (READ WEB FRIENDLY COLORS - capitals to disturb the reader and to make my point so clear - clearly I am no wireframe expert)

The Web 2.0 of rounded edges, over sized icons, reflections, Sans Seriff fonts - design mockups!

Watching a design mockup is more or less like watching a whole website in jpeg format. Clients love them. Their trip starts here! Straight from the logo to the (c) Copyright font. Relationship Managers have a time here selling the designs - usability, business ideas, users and the general bored guy hitting Google to fight sleep at work - no one is spared here - we need every single net user on the planet to come here and “Register with us” or “Pay us for whatever we sell”

Approval - the necessary evil to trip on your remaining Web 2.0 dreams. No one - not a single web developer is advised to go ahead with the coding of your webpages without being 100% happy with the design mockups - [The text (copy in advertising language) is NOT A PART of design mockups].

Copy Writers and Content Writers can work parallely on making the captions, the initial content, the messages etc. at this point of time. Design mockups do have a big part in the fonts, font sizes, font colors etc. Again being “web friendly” when it comes to the text is of mighty importance. We dont want our copy to look like shit just because some jack asses do not like Mozilla!!! What if some non tech savvy 20 words a minute, 55 year old - “We never used computers on a daily basis” rich guy actually wants to “Register” or “pay using Paypal”???

Front end development - XHTML / CSS / Javascript to put it in very concise and simple terms. All the designs (in form of Photoshop drawings, Flashes etc.) is converted into HTML (HTML 4.01 with external CSS - in detail). The weight of the website, the way it loads, the closeness to the design etc. all depends majorly on your front end coding.

In fact initial marketing of the website (Search Engine Optimization) could start off here. It is recommended to first finish off with the coding and think of SEO later though.

Two forms of coding as on date (with Divs and with tables). Anyone who uses tables to do their stuff needs to be kicked on their crouch immediately. It sucks - why? too heavy! But Divs takes an insane amount of time - worth it also!

Backend Development - Most websites are just about information - We are this, we do this, please get in touch. However, there are a lot of websites which develops a special kind of relationship with the user such as E-commerce, Publishers, Financial Services etc. They need to be updated regularly, collect data and respond accordingly, put fresh content regularly etc. A simple HTML / CSS site could end up shitting bricks if these things are needed.

ASP, PHP, .NET etc are certain computer languages capable of doing all these things. You may need to build a CMS (Content Management System) or do a little bit of programming or develop logic (like how you add friends in orkut, surf images on Flickr, poke chicks on Facebook and so on). Backend Development - Geek paradise!!!

Quality Assurance - Yes! The website is live! My product is out! I am so HAPPPPYYYYY! Hold it mister. Your website sucks! It has a million spell check errors, links that do not work, Sitemap which does jackshit and site looks like a rebellious teenager’s room on Internet Explorer 6. Now what!!!

Yes, sit and do your quality checks. Make a list of bugs, check them out once done. Patience, time and peace - three very important qualities needed for this exercise. Ususally done on a staging server (you would host the website on a free server / paid server with a funny URL and test it before hosting it on the domain which you paid for).

GO - LIVE - Yes, the site is live. Now what?????

1. INTERNET MARKETING - SEO, SEM, PPC, PPA, Social Media, Affiliate Marketing, Email marketing, Banner ads, Offline marketing, Google page ranks, Yahoo page ranks - Its a different ball game then.

2. SITE MAINTENANCE - Update content, remove un-necessary content, archive stuff, new pages etc.

The tip of the iceberg ends here!

Some stuff I stumbled on! Couldnt help but share it!

Been on the ‘Shambho Mahadeva’ mode for quite some time!

This mode calls for the following - if not attained, efforts needed in these directions -

1. Try to be on ‘auto-pilot’ mode of life

Take life as it comes. Get philosophical on a Gita sort of way - All that has happened is for good, all that is happening is for good and all that will happen is again for good!

2. Try to be on ‘formula - one’ mode of life

You keep milestones, aims, progress cards, aspirations, dreams, hopes etc. and all time sober should be spent on reaching these aims.

3. Get your hands dirty

Try anything and everything - no matter how dirty or nasty it would become. Experience and Exposure are natural by-products.

4. Look before you leap

Evaluate, Evaluate, Evaluate

5. Work hard, work smooth, work mad

Toil your ass out like a mad man - no matter what the outcomes are. Good results - nice. Bad results - Oh shit! should have done it the other way round. Nice anyways. Now I know how not to do it

6. Fuck it! It ain’t worth it

No matter whatever you do, there are always fingers pointed at you. No one realizes the undercurrents. Why worry then. Go take a vacation, smell the flowers, follow the eagles, listen to the sounds and all that blah!

7. Sleep less

All the names we seen on history textbooks - not the ones on the prehistoric ages - slept less! They took a lot of time awake tripping on stuff that could make them another chapter in an eight standard textbook. Full on!

8. Sleep a lot

Keep your head in peace. The only result of sleeping less is more time awake. Dream! Your life is worthless without dreams!

9. Work out!

A healthy body houses a healthy mind!

10. Chill out!

Well - chill out! Keep it cool baby!

So, every odd number takes you to the right and every even number takes you somewhere else! So much for principles and ethics - Shambho Mahadeva!

A lot of funny, crazy and interesting things happening around these days.

Work as usual is the most blizzare of all. Internet medium, web development, advertising, branding and a sheer inexperience in all these concepts do call in for desperate means. ‘Web’ persons and ‘ad’ persons with differences in opinions; ‘UI’ and ‘creative’ with differences in opinions; ‘Content Writers’ and ‘Copy writers’ with differences in opinion; hell the ‘tea’ persons and ‘coffee’ persons could have differences in opinions. Looks like the whole world revolves around differences in opinions. Are we gazing at a whole new paradigm shift over here with every tom, dick and harry wanting to move the online way?

I think we could start off with a whole new breed of people down here. Yesterday a colleague of mine was tripping on the concept of pure human breeds becoming the ‘in thing’ in say a hundred and fifty years from now. Gone are the days when a ‘Half mallu - Half gujju’ or a ‘Half sindhi - Half telugu’ used to amaze people. Good old down to earth mumbaikars being emotional over their South African and Australian expat girlfriends / boyfriends seems to have take Globalization to a whole new level in itself. So a pure ‘Tam Bram’ in a 150 years from now could actually just be a thing to watch out for.

Looking at this concept above, we need not wait for a 150 long years to trip on the ‘Once upon a time pure Web person’ or a ‘Once upon a time pure Ad person’. Online baby - it fucks you up! So grow up! Keep quiet and accept the facts. Your ’scenes’ might just be ‘less’ in the days to come (some chutney lingo to the uninitiated).

Wait! Did I just say Globalization some time back? Did we all not trip somewhere in the late 90s (ya, i was a little school boy then wanting to go to America) that the internet and ‘computers’ will change the world? Did we all not watch Arnold movies where our hero beat the shit out of bad ass aliens disturbing the peace of the Globalized world with his big ass guns, coolers, and bombs he keeps in his back pocket! Forget for now that this Globalized world usually revolved around some buildings, statues and bridges around New York or California! Still, the very internet which is supposed to take globalization to the next level is fighting over their local egos - ‘web’ vs. ‘ad’ and ‘UI’ vs. ‘creative’!

Something is weird! Serious weird! Should I just dial up a super hero - someone like Captain Planet to tell these kids to chill out! Or even a Shaktiman who comes spinning down through these crazy internet browsers and give you a speech about respecting elders, avoiding jaywalking and to tell these kids to chill out! I have already kept my “Sorry Shaktiman” speech ready!