mitalify

Syria | via The Washington Post

Fri, 10 Feb 2012 14:50:00 -0800

Its disgusting what Assad is doing to his own country and his own people. The only way I can even comprehend this is that the man is pure evil. Some incredible (although very disturbing) images in this gallery.

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The Hacker Way

Wed, 01 Feb 2012 19:24:00 -0800

The Hacker Way is an approach to building that involves continuous improvement and iteration. Hackers believe that something can always be better, and that nothing is ever complete. They just have to go fix it — often in the face of people who say it’s impossible or are content with the status quo.

Hackers try to build the best services over the long term by quickly releasing and learning from smaller iterations rather than trying to get everything right all at once. To support this, we have built a testing framework that at any given time can try out thousands of versions of Facebook. We have the words “Done is better than perfect” painted on our walls to remind ourselves to always keep shipping.

via allthingsd.com

Congrats to Mark Zuckerberg and the whole Facebook team on their IPO filing. You've not only built a large and extremely profitable business but an awesome company culture!

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Jodhpur & Jaisalmer, Rajasthan

Sat, 21 Jan 2012 12:58:00 -0800

Over the holidays Bob and I went to India to visit my family and we all went to Jodhpur and Jaisalmer in Rajasthan. Some photos below.

Driving into the desert. Jaisalmer is almost at the Pakistan border. We saw tons of BSF (Border Security Force, a division of the Indian Army) trucks on the way.

Lunch break at a hotel half way from Jodhpur to Jaisalmer. The whole group - my dad (as always glued to his phone), mom, sisters, kunal (brother in law) and bob.

Bob was very jealous of all the Rajasthani moustaches. Here is one of his favorites - the doorman at the lunch place.

Mandore temple and gardens in Jodhpur. This is only one of the tons of beautiful temples here.

Sunset in the desert was really beautiful. The desert camp had tons of peacocks, some of whom watched the sunset with us.

The folk singers at the camp happened to be really good, which helped because it was ridiculously cold and hard to sit around outside for very long. Not that being "inside" helped since we stayed in tents.

Tourists watching the sunrise on top of dunes. We abandoned our camel ride up the dunes after my mom and little sister fell off a camel, and walked up instead. There was a great little chai and noodles cart on top of the dunes.

The Mehrangarh fort in Jodhpur alone was worth the trip. The Jain temple inside the fort has some of the most beautiful sculptures I have ever seen.

See the full gallery on Posterous

The queen's bedroom inside the fort - the balls in the ceiling are from belgium and reflected the oil lamps to light up the whole room. Innovation in the 15th century!

Patwon Haveli in Jaisalmer. Haveli literally means mansion. This one was built for 5 brothers in the early 19th century and is still occupied by their descendents!

See the full gallery on Posterous

And of course no trip to rajasthan is complete without shopping :) At a textiles shop in Jodhpur.

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Why Facebook's Seamless Sharing is Wrong | via ReadWriteWeb

Mon, 21 Nov 2011 21:20:00 -0800

I don't know why the world's leading designers on social media user experience would have made something as creepy feeling as the way this new seamless sharing was instituted, but I wouldn't be surprised if it's because behind the scenes Facebook is built by arrogant young people living charmed lives and sure they know what's best for the rest of us. There's something about new features like this and the way the company talks about them that feels fundamentally patronizing.

via readwriteweb.com

Yet another scathing and and spot on article about the extremely poorly executed open graph and "frictionless sharing" that Facebook rolled out recently. But the best part of this story is Marshall's analysis of why Facebook would do such a thing - because in fact it is largely built by a bunch of know-it-all young people.

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How Facebook is ruining sharing | Molly Rants - CNET News

Sun, 20 Nov 2011 16:14:00 -0800

Sharing and recommendation shouldn't be passive. It should be conscious, thoughtful, and amusing--we are tickled by a story, picture, or video and we choose to share it, and if a startling number of Internet users also find that thing amusing, we, together, consciously create a tidal wave of meme that elevates that piece of media to viral status. We choose these gems from the noise. Open Graph will fill our feeds with noise, burying the gems.

via news.cnet.com

Great article on the awful "zombie posts" that have taken over Facebook since the Open Graph launched. Even if you dont read it all - the parah above captures it perfectly.

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Jeff Bezos Owns the Web in More Ways Than You Think | Wired Magazine

Tue, 15 Nov 2011 08:53:00 -0800

via wired.com

Steven Levy's interview of Jeff Bezos in Wired is definitely worth a read. His focus on building a company that creates real customer value is great to see. Silicon Valley vcs throwing money at "entrepreneurs" looking to make quick exits should take note.

"There are always shiny things. A company shouldn’t get addicted to being shiny, because shiny doesn’t last. You really want something that’s much deeper-keeled. You want your customers to value your service. And there are companies that haven’t gone through tough times, so they’re not really tested."

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Do I owe this to my women's college education?

Fri, 30 Sep 2011 23:54:00 -0700

I came across this wonderful article in HBR today about how women tend not to talk in professional situations and at the workplace when in the presence of male colleagues.

There is of course lots of evidence that this is in fact the case, but I have personally never been one of those women. I've always been happy to speak up even in meetings where I am the only woman amongst 25 men... which has often been the case in my tech career.

Lately I have been wondering whether my comfort with speaking up has something to do with the fact that I went to a women's college. College is the first simulation of a professional environment for most people. In my college (Mount Holyoke) there were no men in class, even in my computer science and discrete math classes. So there was no opportunity for me to second guess my own knowledge in the presence of men as Ms. Johnson describes. I wonder whether this tendency of women not speaking up in male-dominated professional environments is less prominent amongst women's college graduates?

When I went to Mount Holyoke, my decision was based 100% on what school gave me the biggest scholarship grant. I had no intention of seeking out a women's college and I honestly did not appreciate being at a women's college while I was there. It is only now, many many years later, when I come across articles such as this one, or Sheryl Sandberg's TED talk, that I think that perhaps its partly my women's college education that gave me the conviction and confidence I have in myself.

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Comptoir Des Cotonniers - The Film AH2011/12

Sat, 17 Sep 2011 15:52:00 -0700

via comptoirdescotonniers.com

One of my favorite stores - Comptoir des Cotonniers - have made a sweet film to showcase their fall - winter 11/12 collection. Love it. Really makes me want to move to Paris.

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Google Loves Lucy!

Sat, 06 Aug 2011 13:57:00 -0700

Google doodle today in honor of Lucille Ball's 100th birthday is so cool!

http://searchenginewatch.com/article/2099931/Google-Loves-Lucy-Lucille-Balls-...

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Google+ Circles - a skeptic's view

Sun, 31 Jul 2011 13:15:00 -0700

Disclaimer: although I am a (recent) Google employee, I have nothing to do with the Google+ team or product strategy. My opinions are my own and not Google's. I have been using Google+ since end of May.

----------

Google+ is clearly Google's best attempt yet in entering the social ecosystem. In fact many people, including myself, are actually quite surprised at how good of a first version it is. Some of us had given up on Google doing anything interesting in social.

But IMO, the feature touted as the biggest innovation of Plus -- Circles -- is also its biggest drawback, and could turn into the achielles heel that hampers the growth of the social network.

What's wrong with Circles?

Google+ asks users to manually organize their connections into groups (Circles). While privacy is definitely a big positive of this design, and pretty much the reason Google+ does this, there are some serious negatives.

A major annoyance with the Circles feature is the need for a lot of upfront work, and ongoing maintenance. Others (@Kevnull | Yoav Shoham | @FastCompany) have also written about the tediousness of this task, and the inevitable inaccuracy of the result.

The tedium is easily apparent to anyone who's been on Google+ for the last few weeks. I have ~800 friends on Facebook. The thought of adding them all to Google+ and painfully categorizing them into Circles is daunting enough for me to not have attempted that task. In fact the majority of my connections on Plus are in my "Following" Circle - people I dont know at all but follow their posts, filled with primarily the same people I follow on Twitter already. I would be willing to bet that if Google published results of Circles created by Plus users, we would see that only a small fraction of users have bothered to create any Circles of their own beyond the default ones (Friends, Family, Acquaintances, Following).

As for the inaccuracy - few relationships in life are permanent (only family.) Co-workers leave for other companies, friends move to other cities or become not as close, even husbands and wives break up. For Google+ to work as intended, all of these relationship changes will require users to manually update their Circles. I highly doubt that the vast majority of users - like the 750 million currently on Facebook - will bother with this level of maintenance of their digital relationships. And this innaccuracy will have serious privacy implications, thereby negating the only real reason for Circles. (e.g., I continue sharing stuff meant for Google coworkers with my Googlers Circle, while half of them have left Google for competitors.)

But wait, there's more... like how the hell does this work?

There are further issues around the sheer confusion of how Circles work and what you can and can't do with them. Circles seem to be closest to Twitter lists. They are great for filtering your inbound stream but useless for sharing out. I can easily see what my Photographers Circle has shared today, but if I wanted to share my latest photo project with them, I cant - some of them may not have added me to their Circles, and those who have may not have added me to their photography Circles, etc.

What if I wanted to discuss party planning options with my closest girlfriends for one of our friend's baby shower? It is pretty near impossible to figure out how to do that on Plus... in fact it may actually *be* impossible. If you know how to do this - please enlighten me! On Facebook - you simple start a message thread with the 5 friends you want to do this with. Since friendship is a 2-way street on Facebook, you can private message any of your friends. But on Google+ Circles are a one-way relationship (like Twitter) so you can't private message anyone. But shouldn't Plus at least have the equivalent of Twitter's DM?

I could go on and on...

Implicit Circles may be an answer...

I am not pretending to have answers to the Google+ Circle problem, but at least part of the answer may be implicit, algorithmically created Circles. For a company as obsessed with the algorithmic solution to any problem as Google is, I am surprised they did not build at least some algorithms around Circle creation and maintenance into Plus. Something like: use my corporate email and school email to automatically create and maintain my co-workers and classmates Circle - is so obvious that it seems strange that its missing. But beyond that, Google could use my location, interests, events, and contact frequency with connections to automatically create or at least suggest Circles for me. This would at least take the tedium of categorizing all your connections upfront and further maintaining them out of the picture.

As for the confusing way Circles are structured, a much needed feature is a concept of "Shared Circles" or groups that apparently Google is already working on.

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This is the web right now - The Oatmeal

Thu, 28 Jul 2011 09:32:00 -0700

Jump to a section: Apple | Facebook | Google | Tumblr | Netflix | Spotify | Pandora | Microsoft | Social Traffic

P.S. The above artwork is from this comic

Note: The downloadable .zip file contains individual PNGs which can be opened by any image editor, as well as the original Adobe Fireworks PNG file, which is named tumbeasts_fireworks.png.
Also, a big thanks to Sam Spratt for this amazing Tumbeast illustration:

You can see more of his work here.
Also, there's a bunch of funny Tumbeast stuff on Memebase as well.

via theoatmeal.com

Hilarious as always. #stateoftheweb

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29 life lessons learned in travelling the world for 8 years straight | via Fluent in 3 months

Tue, 19 Jul 2011 08:46:00 -0700

via fluentin3months.com

This guy is clearly a lot braver and most importantly *freer* than I am. Great post.

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still no Flash on iPad!

Wed, 13 Jul 2011 21:29:00 -0700

It feels like all the hot debate about the lack of Adobe Flash on iPhone and iPad has died down. Somehow everyone seems to think its OK that a $700 device whose main purpose is browsing the web, just doesn't render a large portion of web content.

Even I had stopped complaining about it until I had another infuriating no-Flash-moment today. I was on the bus on the way to work, going through news on the iPad when I found out about the Bombay blasts. Both my sisters live in Bombay. After calling them to confirm they were ok, I tried to find video coverage from Indian TV stations, which are a lot more comprehensive than anything on CNN or BBC. One of the best Indian TV stations - NDTV has an entire section of video devoted to this news. Of course, I could watch none of it on the iPad. It was beyond ridiculous!

Apple needs to stop pretending that its lack of Flash support on iOS has any other reason than the fact that browser-based flash games will completely cannibalize app store revenues. We don't care about your business model conundrums, Apple. Just get Flash on the iPad.

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Poetry Bombing

Sat, 02 Jul 2011 00:58:00 -0700

Just came across this video via @booooooom of a Miami artist who sews little bits of poetry on to thrift store clothes. Inspiring to see people do interesting things with their time. I play with my cats :/

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Mayor Bloomberg calls for major immigration reform | via Techcrunch

Thu, 16 Jun 2011 18:32:00 -0700

It’s what I call national suicide – and that’s not hyperbole. Every day that we fail to fix our broken immigration laws is a day that we inflict a wound on our economy. Today, we may have turned away the next Albert Einstein or Sergey Brin. Tomorrow, we may turn away the next Levi Strauss or Jerry Yang.

via techcrunch.com

Go Mayor Bloomberg! Much of the immigration reform discussion in the US centers around farm workers and laborers (not that I have anything against them). There is little focus on the fact that the green card process for educated, accomplished professionals is so completely broken that its basically a joke.

In my case.... after having spent close to 15 years in the US, with an undergrad degree from a top school and an MBA from another top school and having worked at Microsoft, Yahoo, EA, I was only able to finally get a green card after I married a US citizen! Why? Because I am an Indian citizen, and green cards are given out by quotas. This is quite possibly the most anti-capitalistic, anti-meritocratic and basically anti-all-things-American process employed by the US government. It is LONG overdue for a change.

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Google “Offer Ads” — In The Wild | via Searchengineland

Wed, 15 Jun 2011 13:15:00 -0700

This is noteworthy because it shows Google’s “offers” portfolio is going to be larger than daily deals and success is not entirely contingent upon that individual product. Google intends to enable advertisers to broadly get in on the Offers/Wallet infrastructure.

This also shows how Google will connect AdWords to offers and later redemption, for a kind of “closed loop” or quasi-closed-loop transaction. Google will likely provide analytics on the number of CTRs that lead to “saves” that in turn lead to redemptions — online or off. Indeed the Offers-Wallet “value chain” will lead all the way from the SERP to the point of sale.

via searchengineland.com

Greg Sterling pretty much nails it. Google is the only company positioned to play across the entire value chain of offers from discovery - purchase - redemption - analytics - optimization, both online and off. And that's why I'm here! :)

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NPR Fun Facts - English Bulldog

Tue, 14 Jun 2011 13:22:00 -0700

via nprfunfacts.tumblr.com

"Due to inbreeding, the English Bulldog's pelvis is not wide enough for a head to pass through, so all puppies must be born via Cesarean section."
Loving @NPRFunFacts !

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It’s Not About You | via NYTimes.com

Wed, 01 Jun 2011 15:59:00 -0700

but it’s nonetheless true that life comes to a point only in those moments when the self dissolves into some task. The purpose in life is not to find yourself. It’s to lose yourself.

via nytimes.com

.
Great article by David Brooks. Interestingly this is also the Hindu philosophy of Karma. Most people in the west confuse Karma as being some form of you-get-what-you-deserve cycle. But in Hinduism Karma is a simple concept of "doing" or "acting" your tasks and duties without questioning their or your purpose.

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Uber Birthday BBQ!

Wed, 01 Jun 2011 12:03:12 -0700

Happy 1st Birthday Uber! What a great way to celebrate your early adopter community.

---------- Forwarded message ----------
From: Uber <support@uber.com>
Date: Wed, Jun 1, 2011 at 11:32 AM
Subject: Uber Birthday BBQ!
To: Mitali <xxxx@gmail.com>

Hey Mitali!

Uber just turned one in San Francisco! We've partied with you in the dark, but this time, we want to see you in the light! So, we're hosting a free BBQ on Saturday, June 4th at Great Meadow (corner of Bay Street and Octavia by Fort Mason) from 1pm to 4:30pm.

For those who RSVP, we'll have burgers and sausages grilled on site by the BBQ Boys (veggie burgers if you prefer) and a variety of side dishes. For drinks, we've been told we can't legally supply alcohol, but we'll have some Uber koozies on hand to keep your choice of beverage covered and cool :)

So come party with the Uber team as we celebrate one year of SF Uberness and let us thank you for your support with some BBQ!

Put in your RSVP here.

P.S. We won't let a little drizzle stop us (we'll be setting up some shelter), so ignore the forecast and RSVP "Yes!"

Follow @Uber_SF on Twitter \| Like Uber on Facebook \| Forward to a Friend
Copyright © 2011 UberCab, All rights reserved. San Francisco Riders Our mailing address is: UberCab 182 Howard St Ste 8 San Francisco, CA 94105 Add us to your address book
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Why can't all music locker and streaming media players just get along?

Wed, 01 Jun 2011 10:52:52 -0700

As a long-time Amazon MP3 customer, I was really excited when Amazon Cloud Player and Cloud Drive launched and now Apple set to announce its own iCloud service next week at WWDC. This is all awesome. But I still cant play my Amazon mp3s on my iPhone very easily - I need to download them to my computer, and upload to my iPhone using iTunes. Ugh. And I bet when iCloud does launch, it will only work with music purchased through iTunes and not Amazon mp3 or uploaded music. Double ugh. Why are we consumers putting up with these horrible user experiences? After all I paid for the song - so don't I own it now? Shouldn't I finally be able to play where ever I want?

Why cant we just get along?

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