Rakesh Agrawal's Blog — Founder, Investor, Houstonian

Ooooh, I really like the new design for Google Groups. It was a great idea for them to thread stuff a la Gmail. Great job!

I read yesterday’s NYTimes article about Widgets and I don’t understand what the hubbub is all about. Widgets are simply a new way of extending web-based services to the desktop and webpages. The most interesting part of widgets, which is unfortunately ignored in the article, is that they represent a new paradigm for user interaction in the browser and on the desktop. The other interesting part of widgets are the web services behind them, but that’s obviously a story that’s already been well covered (heard of Web 2.0? :-)) The suggestion that people will suddenly start paying subscription fees for widgets is silly — yes, people might start paying for services and those services might include widgets, yes. Widgets being the driving factor being those subscription fees… personally, I don’t think so.

I was checking out the schedule for NAB this afternoon and I made the interesting discovery of their “Technologies for Worship” special exhibit:

The Technologies for Worship Pavilion is the one stop solution for church attendees. See the newest in audio, video, broadcast, computer and lighting technologies from top quality manufacturers. Take part in hands-on training, witness exciting product demonstrations and network with industry professionals who can help with your next product purchase, sermon series or building project.

Innovative stuff from the New York Times… An obituary video marking Art Buchwald’s death. I watched it for a few minutes and it’s a great time capsule. But I think I’d find it more interesting to see videos obituaries like this from everyday people as opposed to a famous guy like Art Buchwald.

I just came across the Design Goes Mainstream lecture series. It features lectures from:

January 24 – 7:00 pm
Donald Strum
Principal, Michael Graves Design Group (these are the guys that have been responsible for Target’s identity/commercials and a lot of their in-store products for the past couple of years)

January 31 – 7:00 pm
Lars Engman
University College Director, HDK, School of Design and Crafts at Göteborg
Formerly Design Director, IKEA

and

February 7 – 7:00 pm
Byron Merritt
Creative Director, Consumer Experience, Nike Global Brand Design
Formerly Practice Leader, IDEO

Sounds like a great lineup of speakers not to mention a great topic. If you’re in Houston and plan on attending, let me know.

I just discovered Blurb and I’m thrilled about trying it out. As someone who’s experimented with online printing services like Qoop, I think I’m going to like Blurb.

FEEDBACK:
(as I go through their client software (“BookSmart”) I’m going to post feedback that I have, as I have it)

– There’s a part of the wizard where it asks me to choose a theme/style. And it shows me these thumbnails… I want to be able to zoom in and see these styles up close and in detail.
– More style options wouldn’t hurt.
– The open file dialogs are custom-built, not the standard windows ones… so they don’t behave in standard ways. Like I’m looking at a list of photos in a particular folder and I want to sort them by date. It won’t let me do that (though the view I’m using does look just like the ‘detail’ view of the standard windows dialog)
– At a high level, I like the interface of the application once you get out of the wizard… the zoom is nice and fast, moving between pages is fast, the quality of the previews/wysiwyg is nice
– The autoflow feature (where you point it at a bunch of your photographs and it creates a layout for you) is ‘a few croutons short of a salad’. It incorrectly cropped a lot of my photographs (and I’m not sure how easy it would be to be more intelligent about cropping, I’d assume it’s not easy) and it when you go to change layouts, it could smarter. For example, I switched to a 4 photo layout on a page that it automatically chose a 9 photo layout for. Rather than “reflowing” the 5 photographs that got left out in my switch from 9 to 4, it just dropped those 5 photos. And what’s worse, when I reverted back to the 9 photo layout, I had lost those 5 photographs that were left out in the switch altogether (ie I had a layout with 9 spots of which only 4 had photographs in them).

Dare’s short and sweet post on the Apple iPhone summarizes my two comments on Apple’s product announcement from this week:

1) I find it hard to imagine being happy with the entirely software-based touchscreen interface that the iPhone will offer. I tried a Treo 650 once upon a time and using the on-screen dialpad with my fingers was incredibly annoying, in part because the whole screen is recessed. Of course the Treo 650’s touch screen is really just designed for use with a stylus, so it’s not the fairest comparison. But I’m going to give the iPhone a chance on this one. I’m sure Apple’s done something different through a combination of the touch screen technology and the software. But going in, I am skeptical.

2) Will this thing sync with Outlook and Exchange? I don’t care about email so much because I use the mobile version of Gmail, but having my calendar and contacts synced from outlook is important. Nothing I’ve read about the iPhone seems to say whether or not the device will sync with Microsoft’s stack on the PC, even though it has been mentioned (without any details) that the iPhone will sync with a PC. I’m hoping that Apple is will go after corporate users who will want the iPhone to sync with Exchange/Outlook… considering the high price of the device, it seems like this would be a wise strategy.

I’m not concerned about the issues that I’ve heard about other people sound off about… lack of 3G (I don’t really care because I’ve never had a phone with 3G), lack of removable battery (I don’t think I’ve ever bought a replacement battery for a phone, my phones always die before the batteries do), and closed system — ie no 3rd party apps (the fact that the phone has a browser built-in makes this a moot point, IMO).

UPDATE: Kathy Sierra writes about the iPhone user interface. When I said that I’m going to give Apple a chance on the touchscreen and the UI as a whole, this is why.

I’ve just kicked off about 23 simultaneous export jobs (give or take) from within Picasa — I’m exporting the more than 8,000 photographs that were taken by me, Johanna, and Donnie at my sister’s wedding at the end of December. It should keep my PC busy for a little bit… the question is whether Picasa will crash or not. I certainly hope it doesn’t.

An insightful quotation from Lev Grossman’s Time Magazine write-up on the Apple iPhone:

When our tools don’t work, we tend to blame ourselves, for being too stupid or not reading the manual or having too-fat fingers. “I think there’s almost a belligerence—people are frustrated with their manufactured environment,” says Ive. “We tend to assume the problem is with us, and not with the products we’re trying to use.” In other words, when our tools are broken, we feel broken. And when somebody fixes one, we feel a tiny bit more whole.