TED stands for Technology, Entertainment, Design. It started out (in 1984) as a conference bringing together people from those three worlds. Since then its scope has become ever broader.

TEDx is an independent event that has the same theme as an official TED event.

Click here to see an introductory video about the TEDx program

Binny V A (organizer of Kochi tweetups, barcamps and more) has posted a tweet expressing interest in having a TEDx event in Kochi, India.

I was fortunately able to attend all the webinars and am grateful to Mozilla and the webinar presenters and their guests for allowing me the  opportunity to have insights into the Mozilla application design, production and shipping process.

Its a great move on Mozilla's part to start developing a more open contribution model. I see it as 21st century business move of not only allowing external parties access to source code and code contribution but also allowing third parties to contribute to the application design process as well.

While the Design Challenge invited students, I sent in my contribution since I am currently (early 2009) more of an interaction design enthusiast than a full time interaction designer. >>> Read More

Mozilla Labs' Pascal Finette posted a design challenge invitation on http://www.ixda.org/ . The design challenge is “What would a browser look like if the Web was all there was? No windows, no unnecessary trappings. Just the Web.”

The goal of my design idea is to reduce the use of the address bar in a browser as far as possible. There are scenarios where a physical keyboard may not always be available for use with web enabled technology platforms (eg. surface computers.)

One inspiration behind the design idea is that there already is a significant number of internet users who despite having a physical keyboard present for url entry, tend not to use the address bar that much if at all for web navigation (based on personal observation.) >>> Read More

An interaction designer defines the interactive processes of applications and products in response to human behavior.

What does that mean?

Interaction designers make things such as website services, software applications and interactive physical products easier to use by the general public or a specific set of users.

Do interaction designers make the product or service faster?

No, thats what coders do although interaction designers can make the site goal or tasks more quicker to execute by the user (rather than the computer) allowing the user to do more or view more information.

Do interaction designer make things look nicer?

No, thats what visual designers/graphics artists do.

  >>> Read More

To aid in my quest to be a better artistic visual designer, I've created Drupal Theme of the week on http://stevejbayer.com/Drupal-Theme-Of-The-Week to view some of the best designed freely available themes. These themes would be my baseline for creating a quality of themes that that I consider worth aiming for.

Do remember a Drupal theme mainly consists of HTML, CSS and images and does not contain modules or ajax for dynamic effects. Some php is used in the theme for assigning content regions.

While I won't be updating the themes only once a week , they'll give a rough idea how often I'll be adding what I consider a theme that adds to the user experience of your website.

What is user experience? >>> Read More

An article written by Jessica Twentyman titled 'Gestures will force the mouse into retirement' (which I first saw through an ixda.org posting) got me thinking on how the mouse as it was in 2008 could be expanded using multi-touch sensitive technology and accelerometers into a more effective 'application control device.' >>> Read More

About 6 months back I bought the ASUS EEE 701 with windows xp home (starter edition doesn't support networking) and a gig of RAM.

A month or 2 ago the 1000H in arrived in India and if I were to buy a new net book (ultra portable computer with no CD or DVD drive but with wireless and LAN connectivity, USB ports, monitor port and a SDHC memory card reader) it would be the ASUS EEE 1000H since its future proof as the following article proves it runs Windows 7 (the next version of windows to be released) quite well:
http://blog.laptopmag.com/eee-pc-1000h-runs-windows-7-well

While I was looking around for a IXD logo (this image really caught my eye but its copyrighted,) I came across the following article on how 'Interaction Design' was being pushed as a full fledged profession in 2003 by Bruce Tognazzini http://www.asktog.com/columns/057ItsTimeWeGotRespect.html

Did you know that ixda.org's original website's url after settling on the profession title of interaction designer was http://interactiondesigners.com/ ?