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Just another iOS bug

Be on iOS 8.3, Be friends with someone who’s shared their location with you through iMessages, Open iMessages, Click on Details, Click on the Map, Lock the screen.

Unlock, Messages has crashed.

iOS 8.3 did nothing for me. Nothing. It was the the most worthless upgrade I’ve done in iOS.

Mobile Internet, learn this from your predecessors

tl;dr – mobile web should show ads between text, not as weird popups.

The Internet has superseded the rest of the mediums – newspapers, magazines, books in most ways. But there’s one thing that all of those older technologies did better than the Internet – show ads. The ads in a newspaper are perfectly placed, extremely clear in their presentation and positioning and incredibly non-invasive. Of course, it’s an apples to oranges comparison ever since the advent of video ads and GIF eyeball grabbers on the Internet.

And to an extent, desktop Internet has done well in terms of their placement of ads, but the absolute loser in that respect is the mobile Internet. So much so that this is the best description of the mobile web experience –

What the mobile web needs to learn from all it’s predecessors (and even desktop Internet) is that the right way to show ads is still to use the white space. Don’t bog us down with crappy popups that are difficult to close and app offers we don’t care about. We care about the content. Give it to us. 

In between the blocks of text, throw in any kind of ads, GIFs, crappy video and app offers that you want. But the first and foremost thing we expect to see on our mobile phones is the content. Do not hide that from us. If you do (and you do), we’ll remember never to visit your site again (and we do).

Welcome Back!

Here’s to another start for the nitinkhanna.com domain and associated blogs and paraphernalia.

 

What happened?

Well, My site hoster – heliohost.net killed my account because I did not log into CPanel for 30 days. I did not receive any warning emails or support after my account was killed. So, my databases, uploaded files, URLs and blogposts were all, well, to simply put it, destroyed. And let’s not even get me started on the setup I did to post to Facebook et al from my blogs!

But, all of that comes later in another blog post. Right now, I’m excited to be back! I’m rebuilding my site and have learned the eternal lesson – Backup, Backup,BACKUP!!! 🙂

 

See you all, right here, pretty soon! 🙂

N

 

Birthday Musings

As I leave another birthday behind, my head is pounding and my body is sleep deprived. I realize that I’ve not slept comfortably last night and that I should have.

My mind wanders towards those older times when, as a kid, I used to sleep at 10-10:30 PM on April 3rd and did not get up before 7 AM on the 4th. I’d be greeted by my family and wished a Happy Birthday. Then I’d go to school, a bright smile on my face, and take care of the events of the day. When I came back from school, we’d have a party with all of my friends.

What changed? Remaining awake till after 12 midnight became a habit. Then, celebrating the beginning of my birthday became a habit. This, in turn, led to a habit of sleeping late and getting up late and what follows is a cycle of watery eyes and burning foreheads. I realize now, how sleeping on time, waking up on time and going through the day before celebrating the happy occasion was a great idea, not just for me, but also for my parents. The world works on fixed schedules. There are no special off days for individuals, just holidays for everyone. Time and tide wait for none.

Perhaps, I should go back to that model. Perhaps, in this fast paced world of Facebook notifications and instant messaging, it is a good idea to unplug from that connected life at the right time of the night and drift into a peaceful sleep. Perhaps I need to stop attending the midnight masses.

Or, maybe not. There’s plenty of time to grow up. Now’s probably not it. 🙂

Wall Gardens on the Internet

There’s a lot of talk about sharing and being social on the Internet. Well, the trends say otherwise.

 

I recently wrote about how sharing is dying because of the numerous social networks. It seems that people want to share more but privacy concerns and the changing model of social networks is not allowing that anymore. I almost wish we were back to the “Have a webpage, will talk to the world” times.
http://nitinkhanna.com/sharing-but-no-joy/
Validation for this comes from an unexpected corner. A conversation between a few networking professionals on twitter was about this very topic. The irony of the situation – the way twitter is modeled right now, I saw any part of that conversation only because I follow each an every one of those individuals involved in the conversation.
The whole discussion revolves around the idea that the Internet itself is getting more social. Everyone is trying to create social networks around their products and this is fragmenting the concept of true sharing on the Internet, which at one time was all about hosting a webpage where your thoughts were readable by anyone who knew the URL. To add to this fragmentation, the concerns that every country’s government is having about the privacy of their citizens are causing those social networks to be more closed than open.  In the above tweet, @EtherealMind has a very important point. The Internet was pretty social before these social networks came along. I guess the only point I’m making is that if you really want to be social on the Internet, start a blog, post on it and tell your friends to tell their friends about it.