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Showing posts from October, 2014

Hard hard user interfaces.

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Started as someone doing ActionScript in Macromedia Flash I got into Human-Computer-Interaction after watching Jeff's Hann's multi-touch work. That's the power of a really cool demo that inspired the birth of NUIGroup community which spawned 1000s of makers all around the world making their own projector camera multitouch systems. All of it became mainstream once Apple released the iPhone to the world, and also gave birth to my interest in human-centered engineering. I spent some 10 years after that playing with sensors, haptics, and gestural interfaces through multiple input modalities but nothing stuck as much as multi-touch did. Thanks to Apple's execution. Everyone's phone/tablet interaction is default multitouch. (unless you have a visual impairment). Primsense evolved into Kinect, then came Wiimote, Leap but nothing stuck.  for speech, it was Amazon's Alexa. Latest news , that its going to lose Amazon 10B.  Like I am writing this post through my keyboard a...
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to write poems or to study poetry?

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It was almost the same time 3 years ago when I headed to Boston to pursue research at Fluid Interfaces Group at the MIT Media Lab. Time flied, too fast to perceive it went by.. The life before that was that of running around, seeking each resource actively, hanging onto IRC channels, attending FOSS events, to learn and to meet people in the virtual world of infinite internet. My undergrad college was in the middle of nowhere , with a sorry state education system, and marred by favoritism based on caste and regions. The only escape for the bunch of us was the infinite world of internet and some awesome friends we met during the hostel days back in Bikaner/Rajasthan. We had lost hope to the point that we decided to stop giving a damn about my GPA- to the point that we would travel during our semester exams as we saw no point in taking them (even if we did, we knew the result)- at best IT jobs. It was hard to explain to parents. I was lucky to have really good mentors from childhood-...
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discordant yet musical whistles

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My house in Delhi has a guard that walks around and whistles all night to keep the thieves away. I am still amused by the fact how the entire street comes together and contributes and hires the guard, instead of complaining and waiting for the Govt. to solve their issues, which is slow as heck. Its like a citizen contributed and distributed parallel police with evolving protocol, when the systems don't work well. Atleast it keeps the societal interaction intact and neighbors talk, which i believe is a good thing- communities being vocal about their issues. writing this at 3AM while everyone sleeps and guard is awake. 
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