Entries from December 2005 ↓

Got this email today as a forward:

As I was passing the elephants, I suddenly stopped, confused by the fact that these huge creatures were being held by only a small rope tied to their front leg. No chains, no cages. It was obvious that the elephants could, at anytime, break away from their bonds but for some reason, they did not.

I saw a trainer near by and asked why these beautiful, magnificent animals just stood there and made no attempt to get away. “Well,” he said, “when they are very young and much smaller we use the same size rope to tie them and, at that age, it’s enough to hold them. As they grow up, they are conditioned to believe they cannot break away. They believe the rope can still hold them, so they never try to break free.”

I was amazed. These animals could at any time break free from their bonds but because they believed they couldn’t, they were stuck right where they were.

Like the elephants, how many of us go through life hanging onto a belief that we cannot do something, simply because we failed at it once before?

How many of us are being held back by old, outdated beliefs that no longer serve us? How many of us have avoided trying something new because of a limiting belief? Worse, how many of us are being held back by someone else’s limiting beliefs?

Whatever you can conceive and believe, you can achieve!

When we design web applications, do we put technology on top or the users? I like to try out the latest technology and would incorporate it in the project! Most of the time, we do not pay attention to how a user will use our application, just how we can put things together on the project. We think about user interface but not the user experience!

D. Keith Robinson has written a nice article about this on A List Apart. It’s a nice read even if you skim through it. He explains with example what good and not-so-good user experiences could be!

He says:

Not understanding the core needs, problems and desires of your customers is a recipe for disaster on the web and no number of “killer features” will get you around that. Focus on the core needs or problems and deal with them first. Don’t be blinded by technology or your own assumptions.

BTW, if you liked the Christmas special header on my blog, you might want to check out some more that we did:

http://www.magnet-i.com/christmas/christmas_blog.htm

These designs are based on the Wordpress default theme. It’s really easy to integrate them, because you simply have to replace the kubrickheader.jpg image in the theme’s images directory.

They are not free, but I think our design team has come up with some cool blog headers, greeting cards and newsletter designs. We can even do a full custom template!

Looking at this, I think we should start a WordPress professional theme collection site! Going through the hundreds of themes is tedious, a selection of the best ones, plus the option of custom design, should work good!

What are microformats?

Designed for humans first and machines second, microformats are a set of simple, open data formats built upon existing and widely adopted standards. Instead of throwing away what works today, microformats intend to solve simpler problems first by adapting to current behaviors and usage patterns (e.g. XHTML, blogging).

I was researching about hCalendar format for a prospective project and hit upon Microformats! It’s quite cool to add microformats to your RSS feeds!

We are carrying out a series of sessions on creativity and problem solving in Magnet right now. It’s already been six sessions and I want to write about them here! Actually I am planning to do a podcast for them. Wish I can do it soon!