Vandan Desai

Introducing The Little Owl

We all have ideas that we would like to build and see them flourish. But thats the things about ideas, they aren't always good. The little owl helps you keep track of your good ideas.

Humane's AI Pin to start shipping in March

In today's context, Humane's AI pin is probably the first device where I see personal computing heading towards.

Apple's Scary Fast "iPhone" event

One of the most important announcement at the scary fast event came at the end.

Decentralize your Backlog

Ideas are cheap. They come up all the time and end up in the backlog. Remember, really important ideas almost always come back.

Pets!

Growing your online presence

If you have a blog, website, trying to sell online or have a small business - basically if you have an onine presence - a website; do not underestimate the power of Google search. Today, when you have to look for a service, a place to eat or literally anything

Understanding the Social app space

Ben Thompson on Stratechery Threads and the Social/Communications MapUnderstanding Threads and its threat to Twitter means understanding the current landscape of social media.Stratechery by Ben ThompsonBen Thompson Instagram’s Evolution has shown that this shift is possible, but the shift has been systemic and gradual — and even then

Reading while being away

I have been away for a few weeks, traveling and attending conferences. While the conferences have been giving me an insight into the amazing things organizations are building (very heavily focused on AI/ML), I have been reading some fascinating articles during my down time. How to start a Go

Landscapes & Macro

I think I’m getting a hang of this. I still struggle with composition on macro as I continue to shoot the two ends of the spectrum; landscapes and macro.

AI/ML reads that kept me intrigued this week

Cade Metz for The New York Times: ‘The Godfather of A.I.’ Leaves Google and Warns of Danger Ahead On Monday, however, he officially joined a growing chorus of critics who say those companies are racing toward danger with their aggressive campaign to create products based on generative artificial intelligence,

10 seconds!

It took me ~10 seconds to open the Apple's high-yield savings account today after answering ONE question and accepting the terms. It took me less than a second to set up my Apple Credit Cards cash back to go to my savings account. After playing around for about

An Apple a Day vs All Apple All Day: (Apple's “Healthy” Pursuits)

Its the automation and the ecosystem is why I rely on my Apple Watch. I don't have to exclusively perform a task to keep tabs, it just does it for me.

Coming Soon: New Update to LearnTheFlags

LearnTheFlag has been doing well and I have been enjoying using it with my son to teach him about the different countries in the world. The latest addition of the Map view and including the Wiki link has been great. The Map view is pretty simple. The idea was to

What Would Adam Say?

Is Apple a Blessing, or a Curse in Disguise? Apple's convenience, ease of use and Ecosystem is what people are hooked on. How long would it be until you are also banking with Apple products?

Evolving LearnTheFlags app

Even before I launched the app, it was evident from the TestFlight results that it was important to show the countries on a map.

Speed matters

Speed matters! Not just in Formula 1 but also in your product execution.

LearnTheFlags is Live!

We are live and you’re officially invited to see what’s new. Download on the App Store today. I got the mail a while back and I'm beyond excited!! Give it a try and on to Version 2.

Getting ready with my first (ever) App!

I have been testing my app for the last few days with friends & family and as of last night I have submitted my app to the AppStore 🤞🏽

Building an app to learn SwiftUI

Later, someone recommended me the 100 day challenge by @twostraws (Paul Hudson) on Hacking with Swift.

Shot on iPhone

It's amazing what Apple has achieved with this single product.

AI everywhere

I'm now on a hunt to find out applications that are now integrating these generative AI tools. It has been a while where I have been this excited and I look forward to see what new AI capability is someone going to bring out tomorrow.

Building and growing along with your product

To scale as a product manager means relinquishing control. When you grow, your product grows, your organization grows.

The Traveller is available for Print

This was from my most memorable impormptu trip back in the day. With no resevations or travel plan, the three of set out to capture some local sports and landscapes at a coastal town and ofcourse the food. Just because someone told us the sunsets are amazing at this beach,

French Toast: The perfect breakfast for a lazy weekend

I prefer thick slices of brioche bread and use a fork to batter them up or turn them around in the pan.

Handy Linux Debugging Tools

Linux has a treasure trove of utilities that allows you to keep tabs on whats hitting your performance. More on bash later where you can almost automate and create workflows.

How a glitchy controller started a trend

I see my son capturing videos, and now wants to have an Instagram/YouTube account for his Fortnite adventures.

Forming Self-Organizing teams

Give your self-organizing team they autonomy they need and control the chaos.

Banana UX for Product Managers

Having worked as a UX designer, this is possibly one of the best way to explain User Experience Design to anyone, let alone product managers.

The Western Ghats!

About two decades back I picked up my first film based camera and started my journy in photography.  Living close to the Western Ghats, I gravitaed towards landscape photography almost instantly. About 50 miles from Bangalore, on the way to Mysore (SH 17), there is a small town -  Ramanagara.

How Apple has so far avoided layoff: Lean Hiring, No Free Lunches

These numbers are simply staggering.

Writing effective One Pagers

You know your one-pager is working when it sparks a conversation and interaction within the team. These conversation help create shared understanding around values, outcomes, impact, opportunity, viability and risk.

What’s the best camera?

I cannot stress enough but emphasize that the best camera is the one that is always on you. Once again waling my 4 legged friend for an early morning walk / play / run at Myrtle beach. The sun was just rising, but I was too late, lazy and tired to set

A thread by Nikita Bier on Product Management & Entrepreneurship

A thread by Nikita Bier : After 10 years of building consumer social apps, I've decided to start exploring new areas. Building these products is an unforgiving grind—but I learned a lot along the way. For those embarking on this path, here's everything you need to

Winter Mornings!

When you have a dog, the most annoying thing is that rain or shine, hot or cold; you got to take him out for their early morning walk.  The best part of walking your dog in winter are the magical sunrises and the colorful skies that are hard to miss.

Focus on the One Thing!

Today, instead of making a long list of tasks, I simply look at my agenda and identify what's the one thing that I do today will have the highest impact.

What happens when a CPU starts?

Came across this fascinating text file today https://lateblt.tripod.com/bit68.txt. Reminded me of my Computer Architecture class in college. Two things stood out and is proably the most important information: Generally, when a CPU chip first receives power, it must be reset by receiving a pulse on

Why employee churn is lethal to Software

Even as a product manager when I pick up a software to further build it out, certain features need context becasue outright they just feel weird. Only after talking to first generation product manager, it becomes clear why a feature was built the way it is.

Measuring HTTP Performance

In order to effectively measure HTTP based application performance, it is important to understand what happens when you type a URL in a browser and hit enter.

Reading list for the new year

The 10 biggest scientific breakthroughs of 2022 The 10 biggest scientific breakthroughs of 2022From photos of the infant universe to an energy advancement that could save the planetThe WeekHarold Maass Nuclear Fusion, James Webb Telescope, Universal Flu Vaccination, Changing an asteroid's trajectory and so much more along with

Study suggests hardware buttons are quicker & safer compared to touchscreens

Hardware works. Hardware is also expensive! Software is simply flexible compared to hardware

Continuing with Macro Photography

Continuing my experiments with marco photography. So far its just still life as I want to make sure I understand the macro world a lot better. Specially the light and the distance I need to have between the lense and the subject. Also, I need to improve my core; cause

Reading List for the Holidays

0  P-22: Rest in Peace Iconic L.A. mountain lion euthanized after ‘extraordinary life I first saw the picture of P-22 in front of the Hollywood sign on the National Geographic Magazine Cover a few years back. It was a fascinating story of how a Mountain Lion (P-22) survived crossing

Product Management Gyan: Market Segmentation

At a startup or when finding new TAM's in an organizaiton, as a Product Mangaer you find yourself at the helm of building a new product. One of the very first step is doing Market Segmentation

Are you also Closed Captioning?

I highly recommend to get a good quality sound bar. Make sure your sound bar has atleast 3 channels, so that the center (dedicated) channel will give you the dialogue and the remaining background sounds are channled through the other speakers.

Apple Pushing to Launch Search Engine to Rival Google

For Apple to work on a search engine akin Google means that the opportunity is much larger than $15 Billion.

The Backbone Controller

I have tried multiple controllers for the iPhone for myself and my son and the Backbone controller by far has been one of the best. If you are in the market for one, give Backbone a try.

How not to be scared of food

Too much food, too much calories and very little exercise

ChatGPT: A new toy!

AI is real (or has been real for a while) and you are only going to see it grow from here on. There will be years before this will be far from perfect but thats the nature of AI/ML. It takes time to get better.

Morocco! What a team! 🇲🇦⚽️

Morocco’s history-making run saw them become the first African nation to reach the semi-finals and now the #4. What a team! What a run!

What is Apple's App Store's future plans?

According to Bloomberg's Mark Gurman, Apple now has to deal with the Digital Markets Act, that was recently passed by the European Parliament. And this would mean Apple will require major changes to Apple’s business beginning in 2024. Jason Snell writing for Six Colors has one of

Spider-man: Across the Spider-Verse; CAN'T WAIT!

I absolutely loved the graphics when the first Spider-Verse came out. The second one looks even more aweosme. Really looking forwad to this one.

Shaping Patterns

For thousands of years the gusty winds at the pacific have been hitting this crater and shaping patterns on this rock.  I've always wondered how these would fare in the next few thousand years...

Tesla releases holiday update with Apple Music, Mahjong, and more

Hallelujah! Now I know what was that call all about between Elon Musk and Tim Cook.

Apple's Ad Service - lets look at tracking

I have already said, that the services pie is gong to grow a lot bigger for Apple and advertisement is going to be one of the major drivers for this.

Spent quality time on Twitter this week

I spent some quality time on twitter this week. I closed my NetNewWire App and had my twitter feed up all week.

Hawai’i

I spent 7 days in Hawai'i - Maui and Big Island. When the day came to travel, I knew it was too short of a time to see either of the island. So we hand picked a few places and experienced Hawai'i as much as we could.

Some mindful reading this week

For me, typing is thinking.

FTX

Two really great articles that tell you what exactly went down at FTX. Fascinating read!

Feds likely to challenge Microsoft’s $69 billion Activision takeover

Josh Sisco for Politico: The Federal Trade Commission is likely to file an antitrust lawsuit to block Microsoft’s $69 billion takeover of video game giant Activision Blizzard, maker of the hit games Call of Duty and Candy Crush, according to three people with knowledge of the matter. A lawsuit

Amazon Alexa is a “colossal failure,” on pace to lose $10 billion this year

Yes, Apple HomePods are expensive. Well, hardware is expensive and you can’t sell devices at a loss for a decade. Let that sink in.

Fastly Subdomain Takeover $2000

Today, I am going to share how I found Fastly subdomain takeover vulnerability and earn my first four digits bounty. Let’s get started. What a fascinating read. Alexander Thangavel walk through the subdomain takeover vulnerability. This was an edge case scenario and only exploited when specific conditions were met.

Inside Matter!

Inside of Apple Watch vs. Pixel Watch pic.twitter.com/AQjo6OPeGz — Joseph Cohen (@josephcohen) November 3, 2022 cool.

Apple is building an Ad (Services) Empire

The highlight for me during the entire earnings call was that Services now account for 33% of Apple’s gross profit and the fastest-growing segment in FY22 - up 14% YoY.

Moonwalkers: New options for the commuter

Moonwalkers are show attachments with motorized wheels - like Heelys that you see kids wearing around. But these are for adults and according to the company behind moonwalkers - they boast that it can increase the wearer's walking speeds by 250%. I have lived in Princeton and worked

GitHub hits $1 Billion ARR

Frederic Lardionis writing for TechCrunch: “We kept GitHub GitHub and it remains this independent entity within Microsoft similar to LinkedIn,” he told me. “I think we did a fantastic job with doing this and kept GitHub in its original form. You don’t see more Microsoft in GitHub.com than

User Experience (UX) Metrics for Product Managers using RUM

RUM has been around ever since I started my first job (well over 20 years I recon) and the issue I fell is that people still don’t realize how best to utilize RUM.

Apple (still) exploring iPads with larger screens

In my humble opinion, merging the two platforms would simply be a disaster. There is continuity now between your Mac and iPad; and it works amazingly well! That's blurry enough for me.

The new iCloud experience is here (Public Beta)

It's fast and looks great! Needs more widgets :) https://beta.icloud.com

Elon Musk's open letter to Advertisers

Dear Twitter Advertisers pic.twitter.com/GMwHmInPAS — Elon Musk (@elonmusk) October 27, 2022 I also very much believe that advertising, when done right, can delight, entertain and inform you; it can show you a service or product or medical treatment that you never knew existed, but is right for you.

Obviously we'll have to comply...

Apple’s Craig Federighi and Greg Joswiak (@gregjoz) join @JoannaStern at #WSJTechLive to discuss products, privacy and power at the tech giant https://t.co/fNo2JGwMB4 https://t.co/aGrTlZrUo4 — The Wall Street Journal (@WSJ) October 26, 2022 Greg Joswiak (Joz) remarks when asked about EU regulations mandating a USB-C

Absolutely love these one off data correlations

Cricket is a religion in India. And when Virat (King) Kohli was batting the way he was after a couple of years; everyone stopped and watched. I remember witnessing such moments when Sachin Tendulkar was playing an innings of his life.

Gas app was able to cut Redis Engine CPU utilization by 80%

Today we cut our Redis Engine CPU Utilization by 80% and survived to live (and grow) another day! We were CPU constrained & maxed out scaling limits for our ElastiCache cluster. We had 2 hours to reduce utilization before our next traffic surge or we were toast. What did we

Merck pays Moderna $250m for personalized cancer vaccine

Kristin Houser writing for Freethink: A personalized cancer vaccine: Moderna’s cancer vaccine works differently than most vaccines because it’s designed to treat an existing disease rather than prevent it entirely. It’s also personalized for each patient, while other shots are typically mass produced and distributed to the

New Products from Apple

iPad We didn’t get to see yet another Apple event in October as expected but we did see new product releases. New iPads and AppleTV were announced, and a short video was perfect to digest what was accounted for each new devices that came out. The new iPad is

Apple increases its subscription prices

Benjamin Mayo for 9to5Mac: The Apple Music monthly price has been upped by ~$1 for individuals and ~$2 for families. Apple TV+ is rising by $2 (which only has one tier and supports Family Sharing on all plans). Apple One is also going up by approximately $3 per month And…

Good to see Apple folks at Formula 1’s Austin Grand Prix

It was hard to miss watching Tim Cook wave the checkered flag at the Austin Grand Prix. Also present was Apple’s exec Eddie Cue Which would have prompted that Formula 1 is coming to AppleTV. Unfortunately, ESPN renewed its contract to air Formula 1 through 2025 this weekend. Apple

DacheQL

DacheQL is a lightweight caching tool for GraphQL. I loved their Demo gif.

How to learn modern Rust

Came across this gem of a repo on Github today - How to learn modern Rust. This repo has some great collection for you to get started on rust to implementing some complex projects. What a great repo. Instant start and bookmark.

The 20 Fastest Growing Jobs in the Next Decade

Jenna Ross writing for Visual Capitalist: The tile and the choice of visualization caught my eye. The visualization especially does a great job as it very clearly tells me what will matter in the future and what is becoming obsolete. # 11 on the top 20 fastest growing job did raise

Apple is now gonna be a Bank

Will Feuer at WSJ: Once users set up their savings account through the Apple Card, future rewards from the card, called Daily Cash, can be deposited automatically into the savings account, Apple said. Users can also add their Daily Cash rewards to an Apple Cash card, which is a digital

Now Even Science Grants Must Bow to ‘Equity and Inclusion’

Lawrence Krauss writing for WSJ: Starting in fiscal 2023, which began Oct. 1, every proposal responding to a solicitation from the Office of Science is required to include a PIER plan, which stands for Promoting Inclusive and Equitable Research, to “describe the activities and strategies of the applicant to promote

Meta’s VR announcement at Connect 2022

Lipstick on a pig by Nick Heer: Zuckerberg preemptively responded to criticisms like these by reminding everyone that this category is just getting started. But that is a bit of misdirection. Oculus, the virtual reality hardware company Meta bought, was founded in 2012; Meta bought it in 2014. On a

Google says Matter is still set to fix the biggest smart home frustrations

Jennifer Pattinson Tuohy writing for The Verge: We’ve committed to our new Nest Thermostat being on Matter, and we are still evaluating if the learning thermostat can handle Matter. It does have Thread. But just because it has Thread doesn’t mean we can run Matter on it. So,

Mt. Rainer still eludes me

I have been to Washington state several time and I still haven’t been able to photograph or see Mt. Rainer.

Instagram is dead

What a wonderful piece of writing by Om Malik: It was a wonderful gathering place for photographers to showcase their work and build an audience. Not a day goes by when some photographer friend or the other bemoans how Instagram is no longer a place for photography. When I started

Carbon, a new programming language from Google, aims to be C++ successor

Existing modern languages already provide an excellent developer experience: Go, Swift, Kotlin, Rust, and many more. Developers that can use one of these existing languages should. Unfortunately, the designs of these languages present significant barriers to adoption and migration from C++. These barriers range from changes in the idiomatic design

Bun

Kind of excited about this project and its prospects: Bun is a modern JavaScript runtime like Node or Deno. It was built from scratch to focus on three main things: Start fast (it has the edge in mind). New levels of performance (extending JavaScriptCore, the engine). I'm most

Apple Apps enterprise ready?

Apple announced new features for their messaging platform. While all of us can enjoy editing and unending the messages and complain that Twitter can't get a simple editing feature; there is something else that no one has mentioned yet. Even Apple Mail now boasts about Unsend Mail, Schedule

Happy Sweet 16 Kajol!

Happy Sweet 16 Kajol!

gqt

Off late I have been dealing with API at work and home, REST and GraphQL. Came across this fantastic utility today - gqt. It's a simple GraphQL client, but runs in the terminal. Using this in Visual Studio Code's Terminal is so helpful when you don&

IconFactory's WorldWideWeb

I absolutely love IconFactory's apps. I use at least 2 or 3 of them on almost a daily basis. Iconfactory's developer Craig Hockenberry announced a new app recently and it home for me. The Mac and Web have a long history together. From the very beginning,

Markdoc

Came across Markdoc today, made by Stripe. Stripe is know for its excellent developer documentation - well it has to be, its probably the most important feature for the company. If you go through their documentation is not just a good reference guide, but they also allow you to interact

Drama at Twitter continues... 🍿

Well, everyone wants to make sure they get a fair deal: Elon Musk says Twitter deal on hold pending details on fake accounts; shares sink 9%. Elon Musk announced Friday that his Twitter deal is on hold until he receives more information about how many fake accounts there are on

mitmproxy2swagger

Came across an interesting library (or tool) - mitmproxy2swagger that reverse-engineers REST API just by running the web app and sniffing traffic in the background. Once you are done, the tool allows you to download a yaml file. Open up the file in Swagger and voilà! Beautifully formatted API endpoint.

Moving away from 1Password

I have been using 1Password for a very long time. However, for the past year or more, I have come to rely on Safari (on macOS, iOS and iPadOS) to suggest me strong passwords, storing them for me and ultimately, me making a manual copy/paste to 1Password. Last month,

Kadri Kambala

The slush track comes down to a stand still, with no wind you can see the reflection in the water. The adrenalin is running high and with a crack of the whip the the silence and stillness brakes into chaos. Kadari Kambala or also calls the slush Olympics in Mangalore,

One of the best CLI utility I have used in a while

Having worked on Linux early in my career, it is hard to get away from the cli. I continue using cli as much as I can and am constantly on the look out of tools that can make my life easier. Last week, I came across The Fuck utility. This

Microplastics are confirmed in human blood for the first time

Brad Bergan for Interesting Engineering: These tiny particles can move freely throughout the body, and become stuck in organs — which could cause significant health issues. But now that we know, scientists are on watch to understand the full scope of effects — both short- and long-term, on human health. It'

Go 1.18 released with Generics support

Go 1.18 isn now generally available. This release supports generics which a lot of us have been waiting for. This is still the very first version to support generics and I believe this feature will gain more support and updates in the upcoming features.

Star"bucks"!!!

With the earnings season in full swing, this tweet just blew my mind: Wow Starbucks, what a great gig. Starbucks has ~$1.6 billion in 'stored value card liabilities' i.e. the Starbucks Card. So ~6% of the firm's liabilities are comprised of coffee addicts paying

The New York Times buys Wordle

New York Times buy Wordle: Wordle was acquired from its creator, Josh Wardle, a software engineer in Brooklyn, for a price “in the low seven figures,” The Times said. The company said the game would initially remain free to new and existing players. I'm very happy for Josh

Emotional Intelligence - An example

Justin Bariso writing for Inc. on explaining emotional intelligence when reporters asked Tom Brady if he was going to retire after the Bucs lost to Rams last weekend: Never make a permanent decision based on a temporary emotion. Nice, short and simple read, but does extremely well to explain how

Scaling with Process vs. People

Marty Cagan writing for SVPG on scaling your product with people instead of processes: I loved reading this article particularly because he simply uses quotes from former CEO’s who have focused on people rather than processes to scale new heights for their product. My favorite quote here is from

The 5G Airline Controversy: What is it about?

5G versus the airlines is potentially a real issue, rather than a bogus threat. But it’s likely that the parties involved will work out adjustments soon. Which is a good thing.

What's in a Good Error Message?

Good error messages are important. When things go wrong, these error messages are the only communication channel between your software and customer. A good error message will allow your customer to recover well or submit a support ticket - and thats $ we are talking about.

Makar Sankranthi!

Down south, in a small village near Hasan in Karnataka, IN the celebration is a tad different. Here the farmers along with their bulls jump over burning fire to ensure the evil spirits stay away from their fields and help get a good crop yield.

The secret of the macOS Monterey network quality tool

Dan Petrov found a cool new utility: It seems that Apple has quietly added a new tool in macOS Monterey for measuring your device’s Internet connectivity quality. You can simply call the executable networkQuality, which executes the following tests: - Upload/download capacity (your Tx/Rx bandwidth essentially) -

Killing a feature is also important

When it comes to adding a feature to your product, there are countless ways of doing this - and we still mess it up. However, when it comes to killing a feature there isn’t much out there.

Sleepy Hollow Farm at Vermont

One needs to be here early morning before sunrise to capture the view; but I had to settle for the sunset. This view ain’t too bad. The History of Sleepy Hollow Farm | How a Humble Vermont Homestead Became an Instagram Icon Good read!

Learning golang - my journey

As a product manager by trade, I don’t need sit and learn programming languages as I’m not expected to site down and write code. But the engineering in me wants to keep building. Looking at data is a big part of my day-to-day work. You might have a

Product vs Feature teams

The lack of giving up control and delegating to your product team is probably the biggest reason I see very few product empowered teams.

Lillies

Tight & Loose Cultures and its impact

You have to listen to the podcast to understand why a country or its culture is shaped the way it is. It's not just entire countries, but even states within the US have tight or loose culture.

Applying a ‘Time-To-Market’ KPI in product

It is very common to get into the phase of doing more before releasing to the market. The TTM metric forces you to be frugal about your MVP.

Your Product is already obsolete - How to Survive

All startups go through three distinct phases – birth, growth, and survival. You start by making the product work, then you have to grow the product, and then, crucially, you have to focus on survival – on keeping it relevant.

New User Onboarding & Time to Value

When customers first sign up for your product, they will either get what they are looking for; or they won’t…

Avoid feature bloat and deliver your product strategy

Features too have an iceberg problem. They may seem to be small features but turn out to have huge costs. This can happen when you decide to ship a feature for a specific customer or a use case instead of shipping new products.

Measuring Feature Adoption

When it comes to SaaS Products, product managers typically have product adoption as one of their top KPIs to track; especially when launching a new product. The logic is pretty simple, improving product adoption means higher retention, lower churn and move revenue.

I prefer Black & White

I continue shooting macro with flowers and with a proper macro lense that I picked up. The more I look at it; I prefer black & white considering the fact that these are extremely colorful. What is your preference?

Meeting Holland!

Product Roadmaps

Simply put, a product roadmap is a high level plan that organizations use to communicate their plans to achieve their product vision. Product vision is typically driven by the Company’s overall vision.

Measuring your WiFi Quality

I live in a townhome and this router sits on the first floor. With all of us working from home; the connection has been spotty in some of our rooms. The download speed is great when you get a good connection but the stability is worst.

User Experience (UX) Metrics for Product Managers

These tools ensure quality. This helps with SEO, accessibility and best practices and measures performance metrics. Performance metrics are important to understand how your page loads as this impacts user experience.

Vermont Fall

When (& Why) to adopt Kanban

One of the biggest frustration with the scrum model is the last few days of sprint where everyone is rushing to deliver what was committed to at the beginning of sprint, cause splitting user stories or carrying them over is bad practice.

Continuing on Macro photography

I continued to dabble with macro photography. Still understanding how to use the lens, where to focus and how much and the importance of background. I wanted to isolate the subject in this case so I went with a completely black background. A few more pictures to look at -

Product Metrics: How & What

Software products today are much more complex (in a nice way). Some of this complexity comes with a treasure trove of data. We then integrate with other software & SDK’s which help us understand users behavior and experience.

Trying my hand at Macro Photography

With the pandemic in full swing, there isn't much to do sitting at home apart from trying your hand at new recepies, wokring or reading a book. Shot this with my 24-105mm and a 31mm extension tube. Holding the camera and manual focusing ain’t easy. Somehow managed

One more gadget: The Ember Mug 2

It keeps my coffee at my desired temperature. The battery on this lasts long enough for me to take my mug and walk around or go to a hour long meeting. Because of the ceramic coating, they do feel fragile, but I’m assuming the stainless-steel makes it durable.

iPad Pro gets a trackpad

iPad Pro was announced this week with a load of Hardware goodness. But what got the most attention was that iPad Pro now has a trackpad. Well, the Magic keyboard did (not the iPad) and the iPad OS was updated to support the trackpad. You can always get the regular

Dropbox: Rewriting the heart of our sync engine

Once you have a successful product at your hand; things start to get complex. It's not that the world has got complex problems; adding features and at times making this simple add complexity.

Apple’s Worldwide Developers Conference 2020 kicks off in June with an all-new online format

Apple Newsroom: “We are delivering WWDC 2020 this June in an innovative way to millions of developers around the world, bringing the entire developer community together with a new experience,” said Phil Schiller, Apple’s senior vice president of Worldwide Marketing. “The current health situation has required that we create

perf top for debugging and checking if your app is hogging your CPU

You can look at performance of an application by multiple means. You can use synthetic tools like Google Puppeteer and Lighthouse to see the performance of a web application. But what about that server-side code that sits in the background to process and serve this data to your application.

Science is not easy

Hah!

It’s Roadmap season

Within the organization Roadmaps are a fearcly debated topic. It's not the principle of a product roadmap; it's the misunderstandings they bring.

Chi Town

Chicago, on Lake Michigan in Illinois, is among the largest cities in the U.S. Famed for its bold architecture, the city is also renowned for its museums, and I would totally avoid the aquarium.

Pittsburgh

Pittsburgh

Salmon Curry (Kerala Style)

This different way of cooking Salmon just blew my mind away. Simple and yet so tasty.

Yogurt Curry (Dahi ki Sabzi)

Comfort food. Simple, fast and tasty.

Egg Masala South Indian Style

This South India Egg Masala style is one of the simplest and easiest egg recipe.

Old Monk Sticky Chili Chicken

Similar to the fiery chicken with tequila and lime, this experiments with replacing tequila with rum. And you cannot go wrong with a combination of spices, honey and rum.

Coconut Milk Braised Chicken Legs

One of my favorite things about this dish is you can get a great meal for 2 without messing up your kitchen. All you need is a baking dish - a cast-iron skillet is perfect.

Technology is changing us (for the good I think)

Designing for mobile is different and not just with regards to the shape and size. Because mobile devices are lighter and more portable (in some cases), we find it more convenient to use them. And because we use them so often, we feel a unique, emotional connection to them.

They have the best views

New York is one of the best places for photography, but to capture the skyline of New York, especially Manhattan; one must go across the Hudson River.

Every single Kramer entrance

Every single Kramer entrance!

Yours Truly speaking to SBS Radio - Australia

Yesterday (Today) I had a short conversation with SBS (Australia) Radio's host Mosiqi Acharya on how to click amazing photos on your smartphone! Spoiler Alert: The interview was recorded in Hindi. Head over to read the conversation in English.

Documenting UX

It does capture details; however, chances are when I see someone else’s wires, I may not like a solution. How do you support your solution?

Banner Blindness

The most prominent result from the new eyetracking studies is not actually new. We simply confirmed for the umpteenth time that banner blindness is real. Users almost never look at anything that looks like an advertisement, whether or not it's actually an ad.

Please add "AI" to your Ads...

By now I’m immune to the ads that show up on the website and thanks to Readability, I don’t have to look at them constantly. When these ads started, they were irrelevant, some non-sensical ad would just show up randomly on the webpage. However the business model worked.

Graphic Recording for Documentation

So to solve that issue, what I did was come up with a story line - one liners (and explanation when I had to explain a concept) with bit sized graphics.

Outlook for iOS - job well done!

Acompli released an Outlook like app last year and Microsoft did not waste much of a time in snapping up this company. The result, Microsoft official Outlook for iOS app and in quick time. Microsoft launched Office for iOS and Android sometime last year.  The lack of Outlook as an

How much (Prototype) Fidelity?

Following up on my article I wrote some time back, "Wireframing is NOT Prototyping" - a common question that got asked was, well if its not prototyping, what is it and what level of fidelity one should expect? I have read books and blogs and a lot of

Wireframing is not Prototyping

The last few years the wireframes have looked more and more different and detailed. Images, actual look and feel, every single mouse movement or tap or gesture and what happens next, etc. That definitely throws cheaper and faster out of the window.