Author: Aravind Jose T.

A thing or two about History

The nature of History has changed. It’s no more a past-thing, but present-things with parts of future-things. The imagery of History we are acquainted with can be finally discarded. We have managed to catch up with our past which was lived by people who were busy setting up things and platforms that they couldn’t document much. So we had to appoint historians and we did, and they have done their job.

We can take it on from here. History is everyday. It changed it’s nature. Everything being done or happening anywhere is archived in real-time, seamlessly and almost automatically. There will be no more sitting-down-to-write-the-past. There needs to be only searches into the upto-the-second archive. What is left for historians to do is, maybe compile this archive, which is vastly spread-across, into different categories/time-periods to facilitate the searches and to offer content for those who are not searching for something specific but wants to know about things in general.

It’s a colorful future ahead and as such, the history will be colorful too.


The way Dustin Curtis does it

This guy, Dustin Curtis gets his portfolio built with unique designs for each post/article he write. Totally awesome.

Meet Dustin Curtis, an UI (User interface) & UX (User experience) designer. He’s the guy who voluntarily came up with a stunning redesign for AA.com (the American Airlines website) for which he was replied to by a lead designer at AA.com.

More importantly, it’s about something else that I typed-up this post. He lives at DustinCurtis.com which is a simple HTML page with some personal info and links to his best writings. It’s not just about the content but the way he presents it.

DC1

DCAA

Every single article has an unique design, which is custom-built for the subject. You expect a designer of his kind to have a portfolio page. But Dustin Curtis haven’t got one. It’s better to say he doesn’t need one. Every single article of him stands testimony for his awesome sense and skill. He creates his portfolio with the stuff he writes and designs for himself, rather than throwing up a list of stuff he made for ‘clients’.

Totally check out DustinCurtis.com, there are some really great pieces of art there.
Isn’t this a great way of doing things ? Yes, it is. Don’t you think.

Acer Aspire 5738G is home

Short review of Acer Aspire 5738G laptop and things to note while reading online reviews and opinions. And, a bonus tip where you could win a HP dv6 laptop and a HP Mini, together!

This post was typed on the good looking, great performing, well-built and extremely power efficient Acer Aspire 5738G laptop. After an extensive research on the laptop market, I made my decision in its favour and I must say, it proves to be a wise decision indeed.

Acer Aspire 5738G

My requirements just didn’t fall entirely under one category and that’s a big reason why it took a bit long in the research phase! I needed a  pretty much powerful processor – Core2Duo to be specific – and enough memory to complement it. I wanted the screen to be at least 15″ in size. And in order to stand eligible for the free Windows7 upgrade program, I needed at least Vista Home Premium to be factory-installed on it. Above all, I was on a limited budget. And there was this one, Aspire 5738G offering all these plus many features more (including a dedicated nVidia 512MB GPU). There wasn’t any reason at all, to keep me away from buying it. I got it for Rs.42,500 (including tax of 4%) which on batteries with power saver mode enabled, lasts for around 5 hours on minimal use and 3.5-4 hours on normal use and 2.5-3 hours with WiFi on; which is pretty great considering it’s performance.

The thing about product reviews

One thing that I learned about the (user-contributed) product reviews and opinions is that, always take them with a pinch of salt. Some people tend to talk about a product or post a review, when it malfunctions or doesn’t work the way they expected it to. Remember that while there is this guy who is disappointed with the particular product, there are hundred others who is satisfied and are happily using the same product.

Read (user-contributed) comments and reviews only to shortlist 3-5 products. Do not base your final decision on them. And  it’s advised to read the reviews at CNET,  TrustedReviews (UK targeted), PCWorld and such corporate reviewers. In this context, Test Freaks deserves a special mention. It’s a review aggregator. You specify a product and you get to see reviews and comments on it, pulled from all over the web. But what makes it really stand out is that they’ve got expert ratings and reviews too, apart from user reviews.

And one question I’ve been asked much is, how is it possible for a company, to offer something at a much lower price than another company’s product with similar specs. I think it’s the brand value that plays the big part there. For instance, HP has got a higher brand value than Acer and costs more with similar specifications. Also factors like place of assembling influence the price.

And hey, a bonus tip: HP is giving away 25 packages, each package containing a Hp dv6 entertainment notebook, a HP Mini, an awesome backpack and Syncables software to keep the note and net books in sync. A friend of mine, @binoyxj won a HP Mini the last time HP did a giveaway. Give them a try. You never know what’s the next awesome thing gonna happen to you.

Creative Commons and the like should go mainstream

It could be said without a doubt that there is a huge volume of proprietary scientific and technical information going under-utilized just because the licenses prevent them to be re-used or to derive from them. If CC and such open-rights are used to license these data, much more development could happen. Don’t you think ?

CreativeCommons explained

If you aren’t familiar with “Creative Commons (CC)”, here is what it is (quoted from the official website).

Share, Remix, Reuse — Legally
Creative Commons is a nonprofit organization that increases sharing and improves collaboration.

That is, unlike the mostly used copyright license, “All rights reserved”, which strictly restrict the use of works licensed under it, CreativeCommons allows the content to be licensed in a variety of ways so that it will benefit more people in more ways. There are four basic CC licenses:

  • Attribution: You are free to re-use the specified content, provided you give due credits (as set-forth by the creator)
  • Share Alike:  If you re-use some CC licensed work, you should license the new work under the same license as that of the original work
  • Non Commercial: You may use the content freely (attribution not necessary), but ONLY for non commercial purposes
  • No Derivative Works: You are asked to use the work/content as is, and not to modify or derive from it

You can license your work under any of these four or their combinations (like Attribution – Non commercial – Share Alike which is the license I use for this post and all other posts of mine on this blog)

Why CC should go mainstream

It could be said without a doubt that there is a huge volume of proprietary scientific and technical information going under-utilized just because the licenses prevent them to be re-used or to derive from them. If CC and such open-rights are used to license these data, much more development could happen. Don’t you think ?

Why not yet?

Because where CC license stands legally is still not clear. Thus, it is understandable that people refuse to license the results of their hard work under CC and see those get adapted or published without any credit.