Nerve Endings Firing Away

There are two ways you can ‘like’ a photo on Facebook when shared with Instagram. One is when you click the photo to enlarge it and click on ‘like’ and the second is when you just click ‘like’ in your News Feed without enlarging the photo. Strange, right? Especially since both ‘likes’ are for the same photo.

Instagram lets you connect to Facebook and share your photos on your Timeline the same time you publish it on Instagram. You can also go back to a photo in your Instgram and click Share on Facebook and enter a different caption than the one you used on your original image within Instagram. These two methods worked seamlessly before but nowadays are at best unreliable. You choose to share on Facebook and for hours nothing shows up on Facebook so you go back to Instagram and explicitly share again and now two copies show up. At other times, the first method works as advertised.

Back to the original problem of two sets of ‘likes’ on the same photo. Facebook changed the way Instagram photos showed up on the News Feed. Earlier it just showed up as a photo upload and marked it as Via Instagram just like it would if you uploaded it using iPhoto or Lightroom on your desktop. Now it classifies Instagram as an app and says, ‘XYZ took a photo with Instagram’ with XYZ, photo, and Instagram all hyperlinked. So if you like this ‘activity,’ you end up liking only this activity that has one photo, akin to liking an album versus liking a photo in that album. Only if you click the photo, you end up liking the actual photo. People in a hurry end up liking the Instagram activity involving just one photo whereas others like the photo. But strangely, those two types of ‘likes’ never meet.

Why would Facebook make this so confusing? If only they bought Instagram and made photos uploaded via the app, part of Facebook…oh wait!

It’s that time for the year again when The New York Times dusts off its archival pages and rehashes a column written when the telephone or even the telegraph was first invented. It is a column that continues to be popular even if most of its readers will go back to doing what the column laments. Technology as a conversation and real-world interaction killer; sounds ominous and even real except it never has been.

A businessman laments that he no longer has colleagues at work. He doesn’t stop by to talk; he doesn’t call. He says that he doesn’t want to interrupt them. He says they’re “too busy on their e-mail.” But then he pauses and corrects himself. “I’m not telling the truth. I’m the one who doesn’t want to be interrupted. I think I should. But I’d rather just do things on my BlackBerry.”

A 16-year-old boy who relies on texting for almost everything says almost wistfully, “Someday, someday, but certainly not now, I’d like to learn how to have a conversation.”

Source: The Flight From Conversation.

People are intrinsically social animals and they seek interaction. Technology especially innovations like Facebook has made it possible now to extend that interaction across geographic borders. You need not be limited by geographic constraints to seek people that you may or may not get along with or rather just do because you have no choice. You can share as much or as little as you wish with your friends without being rebuked because chances are they are doing the same too. Even in real life, whatever that means, not all friendships are equal much less soul-baring so why hold on to this ephemeral idea that ‘real-world’ friends are the real deal.

Some of my prized friendships have been with people that I met online and nope, I did not sign up on eHarmony. My then girlfriend and now wife read my blog (when I was more prolific) and knew more about my thoughts on things we didn’t talk about in real life and then ended up talking about them. As a graduate student, I wasn’t as close to some of my classmates in class as I am to them on Facebook. Technology, in fact, has been a boon to introverted personalities like me and has allowed us to reach out to the world in ways that were inconceivable in the past. So let us cut out the sanctimonious rebuke of holding on to our communication past in which everyone waved each other hello and wished everyone good morning in person. We all still wish each other and tell what we had for breakfast except we do it with far more people and across borders. So why is that a bad thing?

Sepia Mutiny is shutting down. Whether you liked them or not, the blog was a prolific and informed source of opinions on everything brown-related on this side of the pond. Admittedly, I too rarely read it nowadays but back in its heydays, it was the place to be. The comments section was a great place, even for a lurker, for thought-provoking discussions and dare I say, sometimes better than the original post itself. Many people wrongly compared DesiPundit as a FOB-version to Sepia Mutiny’s ABCD roots. DesiPundit linked to content but Sepia Mutiny created content which in my opinion is at least slightly higher in the hierarchy of blogs.

Some additional thoughts on why people had such strong opinions about Sepia Mutiny.

[Image: Stewart Beach; edited to remove people in the background].

We spent spring break in Galveston this year. We hoped this would be Ruan’s first experience of the sea. We stayed at a historic revitalized hotel in downtown Galveston, The Tremont House Hotel which gave us easy access to the historic district and the main street. For all practical purposes though, the Seawall Boulevard along the coast is the primary thoroughfare for Galveston. But it can get very crowded with cars and beachgoers. Galveston doesn’t really have much of a beach but it is the closest we can drive to. Corpus Christi has a better beach especially along the North and South Padre Islands.

As far as the experience of seeing the sea went, Ruan was quite perplexed with the whole water rushing up to his feet. He had never seen waves and the largest water body he has been is our neighborhood pool which was last summer when he was a mere four months old. He crimped his legs up and dangled in his mom’s arms as the waves washed below. Eventually he let his feet down and let the water run over his legs. But I could tell he was more comfortable on the sand which he explored to his heart’s content and even sat watching some college kids on spring break play catch. He is quite the people watcher so the spring break crowds on the beach was enough to keep his roving eyes busy.

I can’t wait for him to stand up freely and walk around. Wading out to the sea and playing the waves will be much more fun. He doesn’t seem afraid of the water but we will know for sure when we take him for regular swims in our neighborhood pool over the summer. I’m not a good swimmer and it is something that I regret not learning to do well as a kid so I hope Ruan doesn’t make the same mistake.

Chris Prillo’s dad, a Windows XP user is shown the Consumer Preview of Windows 8:

Change is good but as I mentioned in my quick review, it shouldn’t be that drastic as to alienate your base. It is like Google+ trying to imitate Facebook, Windows is letting Mac’s modest gains among consumers scare it into trying some radically different. Windows 8 would’ve been great on a MSFT-recommended tablet and once you get people used to the interface, you port it to the desktop. This also gives you time to iron out any usability bugs.

Taking cues from the feedback on his video and also from the last word by his dad, he gave his Dad a Mac to use for the first time. Although the following video is 30 mins long, it is fascinating to see someone who is not at all familiar with the Mac interface potter around trying to figure stuff out.

Like Chris says, “there’s no such thing as a perfect operating system. They all have their strengths and weaknesses; it’s how we navigate around them to suit our needs that makes the difference for each of us.” But it does matter if a computer works hard enough to make the user interface easier and more intuitive.

The Curator’s Code will use a symbol resembling a sideways S to express that a piece of content came directly from another source, and a different figure — a curved arrow-like symbol — to signal what is commonly known as a “hat tip,” or nod to a source that inspired a further thought. The Curator’s Code supplies the appropriate symbol and then the blogger or writer simply puts in a hyperlink behind it as they normally would.

Using a Twitter context involving talking about the new iPad and its competitors, I see if talking up your qualities is an inherent American thing to do while downplaying and being modest is an Asian thing.

There is a new version of Windows out there. Right now, it is at a Consumer Preview level. Regardless of my infamous Apple fanboi status in the Twitterverse, I had to try it out. I managed to installed Windows 8 Consumer Preview on my now-six-year-old Lenovo Thinkpad. That by itself is commendable since I couldn’t install Windows 7 on it. But what do I think about it after I have installed it?

[Photoset on Flickr] These are the moments when Facebook comes in handy. I got a notification that one of my undergrad juniors had tagged me on a photo album. Generally when this happens my heart sinks as my retro ugly mug is broadcast to everyone on my current friends list (that’s why Tag Review rocks) [...]

Flickr has gone from being the community site for photographers to being just a cloud storage for photographs, at least for me. Most of the blame lies in Flickr’s refusal to give their Home Page a much-needed overhaul in terms of sharing and discovering great content that is regularly uploaded to their site.

[via Nightline on YouTube; Original here]

Apple recently allowed ABC News’ Nightline to tour their FoxConn manufacturer to give American viewers an inside look into the working conditions. It is balanced and fair reporting and touches on several aspects unique to China. The reporter even visits the villages the young workers come from to contrast the working and living conditions there. The hunger to work long hours is palpable among the thousands who line up everyday outside the FoxConn gates and from what I saw, the conditions although arduous seem to be safer than any place in India I have seen. It can be likened to migrant workers who come from U.P and Bihar and live & work in Dharavi. There were similar reports about warehouse employees working for Amazon in potentially unhealthy conditions…in the United States!

Of course, the working conditions could be better but as long as no one is enslaved, misled or duped from their honest wages, there is not much here to complain about. As consumers, we too are similarly free to not buy products that we consider, as per our relative standards, are made in unsafe conditions.

I want to re-plug my Favorites blog (RSS feed) once again. This is a blog which is my archive for interesting stories, writing, videos, or photos. Actually, it is more of a personal archive but if I’m collecting interesting content, why not share it?

The reason for my re-plug is that I’m discontinuing my Asides or quick links on this blog and instead will just post those links on my Favorites blog. I don’t post sundry links there and update it only infrequently throughout the week; only exceptional content makes it on there. I also collate my sources. I have a widget on the front page (below the first post) of this blog that will show the five most recent links. I hope you enjoy them too.

Chandresh Maithil, 28, who will be graduating this year, is channeling his skills and knowledge in setting up kindergartens for children. Maithil’s kindergartens, which will be called ‘Naani Ka Ghar’, will operate with the help of the retired and elderly people. I’m confused. Are these establishments kindergartens or daycares? If they are the latter then Maithil may be on to something but if they are kindergartens then he has a distorted view of early childhood education.

Joshua Topolosky, editor of the tech website, The Verge shared his office workspace. Apart from being clutter free for a guy who probably reviews a dozen gadgets a day, the first thing that you notice is that large vertical monitor displaying tweets.

Can we have something similar on our walls?

Apple unexpectedly announced the next version of their Mac operating system, Mountain Lion. Unexpected because it has been mere seven months since Lion, the previous major upgrade was released. You can get the rundown of all the interesting features of Mountain Lion on Apple’s website or Andy Inhatko’s review. Messages (SMS + chat) on the Mac apart, this post is about the two killer features that I consider very important.