Here are 2 really nice articles on Eye Tracking studies...
- The Best of Eyetrack III: What We Saw When We Looked Through Their Eye
- Scientific Web Design: 23 Actionable Lessons from Eye-Tracking Studies
This post is going to be a hack of some Google Maps and SIMILE tools. Thru this post, I will be documenting my Treks and Drives in and around Mumbai (and refer to some useful resources for the same). So, if you are looking for information on Treks around Mumbai, this is probably not the right place.
Currently, this is a basic map and I will try and add images and time lines into this. The post will be refreshed as and when a new trek is added (for that please check the post time and date created of this page).
First Created: 9/6/07, 08:27 PM (Basic Map)
Latest Edit :9/6/07, 12:17 PM (call - Babel translator)
Update (19th Nov): Sometime after I published this post, the Cricket scores results have stopped coming on Google Search results.
Sometime back during the Cricket World Cup, Google Engineers in India came up with a nice gadget on Google Desktop to get Cricket Scores right on ones desktop. Live.
Now, Google has gone one step ahead and integrated cricket scores into Search. Brilliant! Ever since this got done, I have simply gone to Google and typed 'cricket' to check the score on the first result. I am sure its pretty popular and catching up (check Google trends and peaking of searches around September - most probably because of this integration)
One of the biggest reasons I do it, is speed. It means a lot, especially in the parts I come from, where many users still reach the Web via a dial-up line. Most often, I just want a broad update than ball-by-ball coverage. For that, its very annoying to load a full page (70+ Kb in size) with lots of text and even more ads (check this).
So, why wait for 1+ seconds when you can get it in less than a second (time taken on my comp to load a standard score page on a Cricket website and Google). And, the score update, taken from about 2-3 cricketing websites (ws-3.willow.tv, www.cricinfo.com, www.cricbuzz.com), is almost instantaneous. Either Google is crawling these sites really regularly or it has some sort of an understanding to share data and has a mechanism of regular updates with them. Now, if its the later, these websites better charge Google for the content they are providing.
There was one flaw in the reporting of scores on Google though. Nothing some additional programming could solve. Sometimes, the score shown is lower in a subsequent search. This was because Google was loading it from a different website (time stamp??) .
Logged into GMail in the morning and found out a strange message staring into my face.
It came as a total surprise that GMail was checking the Firefox extensions I was using.
I always noticed Firebug tracking errors on GMail but never new that it could make GMail slow as I thought that the errors were tracked on page load. Then realized that it was the new GMail 2.0 interface I was using.
There was talk all around that GMail would be rolling out the new interface. But I always thought that this would be tested first in the typical Google way, with a 'New feature' etc., link on top. Not rolled out in a blanket manner.
The Official GMail blog says, "One side effect of this change is that if you're using third-party Gmail extensions, they're likely to stop working. We've contacted a number of the developers behind some popular extensions and provided them with an opportunity to create fixes, so check back with them for updates. We're sorry that it may be a bit of a inconvenience, but we're trying to make this change as smooth as possible."
Cricket watching on TV in India is a big annoyance now-a-days. With commercial interests reigning supreme on the Cricket Board as well as the Broadcasters mind, its no more cricket watching with ads in between the overs; its advertising watching with cricket in between! Live!!
Every possible inch of the screen is being used to generate revenues or tell us something.
Sample the number of thing on screen nowadays (atleast in the recent T20 and India-Australia series).
a. The big and ugly channel logo.
b. The BCCI logo.
c. The horizontal advertising banner.
d. The advertising banner during slow motion
e. Don't know what they call it - But the ugly banner on 2 sides of the screen. 3 sides sometimes.
f. The sponsors logo on the various scorecards / statistics banners. Sometime its just the sponsors Ad/message and no statistics.
If you are watching the match on TataSky then there is more...
g. VC# right in the center of the screen.
h. Scroller urging you to dial in and report piracy to 'TataSky' or Scroller advertising a new sports package.
i. 'Active Sports' logo urging you to click a button and go to the Active sports section
j. Yellow envelope icon on top telling you there is a message for you (mostly advertising a special package or movie).
and God forbid if it happens...
k. The 'Search and Scan' banner flashing incessantly. It happened in the T20 semis (probably due to some 'active' button programming error at TataSky's end. The damn thing kept flashing every second, over and above the ads and annoyed me to no extent!
l. TataSky logo - a partnership with the channel.
Now, that's more than 10 things on my screen!
The image is composed with all elements I have noticed on screen, but you get the idea.
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