Google Logos

When Google was a Stanford research project, it was nicknamed BackRub because the technology checks backlinks to determine a site's importance.

Google - our favourite search engine, displays different logos from time to time. Here are some of my favourite google's holiday logos:

1. Leonardo da Vinci's Birthday - April 15, 2005

2. Leap Year - February 29, 2004

3. Happy Valentine's Day! - February 14, 2004

4. Google celebrates Einstein's birthday - March 14, 2003

5. Father's Day - June 16, 2002

For more of these logos, click here.

Microsoft's XBox 360

Microsoft's XBox 360 is the future of digital entertainment. It boasts of the most popular and stunning games, a DVD player, internet connectivity, and plethora of intelligent services. With so much to XBox 360, some people have gone to the extent of saying that this is not merely a gaming console, its here to change your lifestyle in social terms forever.


Unlike the first-generation XBox, the 360 is sleek and concave, with optional face plates and a glowing green on/off button. XBox 360 is very un-Microsoft because it reaches acme of innovation and as we all are familiar with Microsoft's bullish work culture and with innovation least on its priority list. This has been made possible because XBox 360 was developed in a far-off simplistic, unimpressive Microsoft Center called The Millenium. This is the place where all the Microsoft's money losing projects are done. But in this project Bill Gates is betting billions of dollars. XBox 360 has been driven by one of their head shaven whacky VP named J Allard who is often called as "Baby Gates". Even Bill Gates admits that he and Allard are very alike and share the same insane passion for the technology. Here's J Allard for you (the brain behind new XBox)




Microsoft has sold 20 million of XBox 360's predcessor since its introduction in 2001. The machine has outsold Nintendo's GameCube console and has seen its momentum grow dramatically as it gets more mature. Despite its successes, the Xbox is merely an also-ran when compared to sales of Sony's PlayStation 2, which launched a year earlier and has sold nearly 87 million units. By being first to market in the next generation with the launch of XBox 360, Microsoft hopes to reverse its market position with Sony and take a leadership role in the industry.

Visit XBOx 360's home page.

Organic Information Design

Very few design techniques exist for modelling dynamic information which is primarily because dynamic information continously changes data taken as input from one or many sources. Very few techniques exist for visualizing dynamic information because of the extremely large quantities of data is to be considered and also extents and bounds of the data set are not clear as well.

Organic Information Design is a design technique that augments the perception of qualitative features of dynamic data by co-relating the design to the traits of organic systems which respond to a complex and changing enviornment similar to that of dynamic information.
This design technique maps the nine properties which are necessary components of primitive oragnic systems to design of dynamic information. These properties are listed below and what they mean in this design technique is listed:

1. Structure - It talks about how the nodes of the system are associated with different sizes and shapes.
   
2. Appearence - By changing the size of some of the nodes, appearence of the system changes and those nodes call attention to themselves.
3. Metabolism - The rules of metabolism are at the heart of what drives the system, the basis for what will result in an appearence that is qualitatively 'well fed' or 'sick'.
4. Growth - In computational medium, it refers to changes in the underlying structure of the data coming from an information source. Atrophy allows element to wither and die when they become no longer pertinent. A balance of growth and atrophy is important because the presentation space on hand is finite. There are both physical and cognitive limitations that affect the presentation space.
5. Homeostasis - It balances the system and does not allow values to run out of control which might cause the system to blow up. For example we can apply certain maximum limits to the values.
6. Response - There are three sets of response-stimulus rules: composition rules, data rules and interaction rules. Each rule taks about the response of the system when an activity occurs.
   
7. Adaptation - It brings with it ability for a visualization to stretch, allowing the representation to slowly shift based on new input.
   
8. Movement - Due to nature of human visual system, movement immediately attracts attention and control focus. By definition, it is one of the most dominating factor in temporal behaviour.
   
9. Reproduction - Here we are considered with the scenario of what happens when new data is added to the existing system, causing new elements to inherit characteristics from siblings that already exist in composition.
   

Organic Information Design is very useful for qualitative representation of information but fails for quantitative analysis or information which lacks structure.

"Organic Information Design" is the master thesis of Benjamin Fry submitted to MIT, Media Labs. To read the complete thesis, click here.

Technocrat speaks

A budding ICT (Information & Communication Technology) engineer from a burgeoning institute namely Dhirubhai Ambani Institute of Information and Communication Technology (DA-IICT), who has always been in love with technology, takes a step further and moves into the phenomenon world of blogging .. why? Well, in this global scenario and with the advent of digital media, its technology which definitely moves one and all and with blogging gaining hyperbolic popularity in a very short period of time, it was only inevitable that this techie explores the world of blogging.

technophobic.blogspot.com is a space where this techie will be running loose to satisfy his urge of sharing knowledge and strengthen the never ending learning curve.
Hoping this to be an eternal technological endeavour!!

-Arpit-