2010: A Year of Blogging, Curating, and Sharing Tech News

It was exactly a year back that I wrote about A Year of Change and New Beginnings, sharing my professional background and how the road looked ahead. At the time, I didn’t know that the photo I used for that post would turn out to be so apt for the year 2010. It has been an incredible ride!

Blogging at Skeptic Geek

In 2010, I wrote a total of 52 blog posts, meeting my target of a post per week. There have been many occasions where I faced writer’s block and felt stuck, but managed to push myself.

Except on rare occasions, I do not cover breaking news on this blog, preferring to share insights, opinion, and analysis. The recently created Facebook Page has just over 160 fans at present. I am happy that there are over 1000 RSS Subscribers to this blog, compared to about a 100 a year ago!

Also, I am grateful to the leading tech blogs who’ve linked to my posts (including TechCrunch, ReadWriteWeb, GigaOm, TheNextWeb, and Mashable) as well as the countless individual bloggers who’ve been kind to do the same.

Top Posts in 2010 (Page Views)

  1. Googler’s Take on Social Networking Reveals Chinks in Facebook’s Armor (15,657)
  2. EveryDNS.net Terminates Wikileaks.org DNS Services (9,676)
  3. Is Windows Live Delivering What Google Buzz Promised? (7,138)
  4. Get Buzz with RSS, feed to Facebook/Twitter (3,871)
  5. Google Buzz + Reader + Twitter + Facebook = Noise (2,566)
  6. The Evolution from Numbers to Relevance (2,508)
  7. Mapping Startups & Services Filtering For Relevance In A Matrix (1,505)
  8. Google Already Has An Invisible Like Button For Google Me (1,405)
  9. Optimize Google & Google Reader for Widescreen in Chrome (1,195)
  10. How I Live and Breathe Google Reader (1,118)

Curating at Techmeme

I have been privileged to spend the whole year working full-time as an Editor at Techmeme. The team of Editors is great to work with and there is so much I keep learning from Gabe.

This job also brings me in touch with many of the top tech bloggers, who continue to amaze me with their speed and sheer prolific output of posts they write. This is an amazing community of hard-working folks who dedicate themselves to breaking tech news and I am happy to be part of it.

Sharing on Google Reader and Twitter

In March, I described how I use Google Reader. At the time, about a 100 people followed my shares. Today, over 700 people follow my shares on Google Reader, and I am grateful to all of them.

Google Reader Sharing Stats

In July, I described how I use Twitter. The increased number of followers, list memberships, and Klout Score isn’t that important to me, as is the increased engagement I have continuously witnessed on Twitter. The most important metric for a curator is how many people actually click the links I tweet? Compare these stats from July 2010:

To these in 6 months, in Dec 2010:

Bitly Stats Dec 2010

Gratitude and Wishes!

As I have shared above, this has been an exceptionally exciting and productive year. None of this would have been possible without your continued support, encouragement, and feedback. Some express their appreciation publicly, others do it privately. I am sincerely humbled and grateful for all the feedback that comes my way.

DSCN7036

I hope you too have had a great year, and here’s wishing you Happy Holidays and a Great New Year 2011!

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HTC Hero with FroydVillain (Android 2.2) and Gingerbread Theme

It was with some difficulty that I bought an HTC Hero in my Nokia-dominated part of the world exactly a year back.  Earlier this year, HTC upgraded it from the antiquated Android 1.6 to Android 2.1 “Éclair”. However, my level of satisfaction with the phone kept dropping for several reasons:

  • I couldn’t use newer Android goodies available only in the 2.2 Froyo version such as Instant Search, Chrome-to-Phone, and many of the latest Google mobile apps
  • Very slow performance. The HTC Sense UI based on 2.1 was sluggish.
  • Inefficient SD Card Usage. Unable to install apps to the SD Card meant that I could install limited number of apps, while the SD Card remained mostly empty.
  • A geeky itch to play around with the phone settings, internals, theme, etc..

So finally, I caved in and rooted my HTC Hero with the excellent Android 2.2 FroydVillain custom ROM. The results are extremely impressive.

  • The phone is much, much faster and very responsive.
  • My home WiFi connection with the router gets established within 5 seconds as compared with up to 1 minute earlier.
  • FroydVillain is based on the popular CyanogenMod ROM, and there are settings you can keep tweaking to your heart’s content.
  • Apps can be installed to the SD Card by default, and you get the latest goodies from Google.
  • Easily take screenshots of the phone on my desktop PC without even connecting the phone, using Pic Me.

On top of FroydVillain, I have installed a Gingerbread theme, giving the Hero the latest Android look.

Locked Home

For info on the how-to of the rooting process, I found the guides at The Unlockr worked for me, while some other methods didn’t. I also recommend ClockworkMod’s recovery app ROM Manager.

More screenshots after the break.

(more…)

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Introducing Editor’s Picks

As all readers of this blog know, I share interesting tech news and opinion both on Twitter and Google Reader. There are a few limitations involved with both:

  • Twitter is real-time and many shares on Twitter are easily missed. I am increasingly seeing people scan my Twitter profile to find older shares.
  • Not everyone uses Google Reader.
  • There are times when I want to draw attention to a specific part of the post, or make a comment about it.
  • Many people often find too many Google Reader shares in their feed and simply “Mark as Read” all of them. The truth is, not all shares are equal.
  • Many articles from around the web do not support RSS, and can’t be shared in Reader.
  • Finally, I would like to build a digital archive of my shares, without being too dependent on Google.

Hence, I have decided to start an experiment: Presenting Editor’s Picks.

Editor’s Picks will

  • Focus on articles that have a longer shelf-life than everyday tech news
  • Feature lesser number of shares
  • May be a good source for those who use Instapaper
  • Feature the “must read” kind of articles

I considered using automated tools to post my shares on this blog, either on a daily or weekly basis, but preferred to keep shares distinct from my own blog posts.

I am already using Posterous for sharing Cool Infographics, so am now using Tumblr for these curated shares.

You can, of course, subscribe to Editor’s Picks via RSS here.

Do let me know if you have any suggestions or feedback. Thank you for your support!

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Visit to Facebook India Hyderabad Office (Pics)

I just returned from a visit to Facebook’s India office at Hyderabad for a special event organized by Facebook for its strategic partners in India. I had a great time learning more about their Indian operations and about Facebook culture in general.

The office is beautifully designed and decorated with paintings made by the employees themselves. I have received many requests to get pictures of the office, so here they are!

The Charminar

A recreation of Hyderabad’s most famous monument, the Charminar (click to view in full resolution):

Charminar

Facebook Mottos

Mottos are painted on columns in great style:

Where The $$$ Comes From

It’s Not Only About India

Refreshments

It was especially great to meet and interact with Kirthiga Reddy, Director of Online Operations and Head of Office India, and Grady Burnett, Director Global Online and Inside Sales, who was visiting at the time.

The team is inspired, motivated, and ambitious. Here’s wishing them good luck!

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Living Real-Time Means It Is Now Or Never

I used to be a meticulous online bookmarker since the 90s. I used Yahoo! Bookmarks, then switched to Delicious (before it got acquired by Yahoo!), moving to local browser-based bookmarks, and then on to experimenting with Faviki, Diigo, and Pearltrees. After all these years, I am realizing that I don’t really use bookmarks in their true sense anymore.

Working in the field of technology news 24×7, I am consuming more information than ever before. How do I keep up with this real-time information firehose? That’s what I’d like to share in this post.

Background

Social Bookmarking – The Land Time Forgot by my friend Keith initially inspired this post, followed by the recent Does Anyone Bookmark Anymore? from the Sysomos Blog.

First, let me distinguish between two kinds of bookmarks.

Short-Term Bookmarking: Read It Later

This is epitomized by services like Instapaper and ReadItLater. You use these services when you come across something interesting, don’t have the time to read it immediately, and save it for reading later.

This is necessitated by our 24×7 online lifestyle, where we are more at leisure to read things on our favorite device screens at specific periods during the day.

Long-Term Bookmarking: Read, Like, Save for Reference

This is the traditional bookmark where you want to save a link for future reference because you liked it, and want to be able to reference it later.

For example, here is a Pearltree I created when Facebook announced its Privacy Changes last year:

Facebook Privacy

 

Today, I use neither of the above two kinds of bookmarks.

Read It Now, Or Never

I do not use any service that lets me save a link that I can read later. Because, by the time ‘later’ comes, there is already plenty of new stuff for me to check out.

Living real-time means it is always now or never.

What happens when there’s a really long article, say an op-ed, that’s making the rounds? I use speed-reading techniques, like these, to absorb the gist as best as I can, before moving on. New tools like tldr.it are coming up to summarize long articles for you.

Another factor is that if a really long article is really that important, it will be referenced, shared, and discussed in your own personalized online world sufficiently enough that you will have ample opportunities to read it later. As Mathew Ingram put it in 2008, “if the news is important, it will find me”.

Google Instant Search Works Better Than Bookmarks

Google’s stated mission is “to organize the world’s information and make it universally accessible and useful”. If bookmarks were the most efficient way of finding information for reference, you would think that Google would have produced the best bookmarking service on the web by now!

Have you read anything of the kind “Google plans to kill Delicious”, “Google introduces new service to obliterate Diigo/XMarks/etc.”? Probably not. Because, in my experience, Google Instant Search is far, far more efficient than any bookmarking service out there.

That is the reason why Google has not invested heavily in its obscure bookmarking service, but rather focused on improving its search engine and make it more efficient.

I am not exaggerating. You will find dozens of carefully curated links in most of my lengthy blog posts, but not a single one of them was bookmarked. All of them were instantly looked up in the process of my writing, without interrupting the flow.

What About Digital Memories?

In Timeless vs. Real Time, I waxed lyrically about the waning shelf-life of digital artifacts. My philosophy about stuff that is personally important to me is simple: I save it locally on my own media.

If there is any article, photo, music, or video that you would really like to preserve, don’t use any online service or social network to preserve it. Online web services may or may not remain in business, may or may not allow you to port data. Why take the risk?

Disclaimer

Finally, this post is not intended to suggest that everyone ditch bookmarking. Everyone’s requirements from their online lives are different. This post is about how I live in real-time, which may not be what everyone would like to do. What I do want to stress is that with this approach, I am able to consume far more information than I did previously, more efficiently.

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Skeptic Geek: Now on Facebook!

Though I prefer Google Reader and Twitter as my news sources of choice, many others use Facebook. Skeptic Geek Logo 75x75

A few weeks back, I decided to experiment with Facebook Like buttons on all my blog posts. The results were very surprising. Earlier, many of my posts became popular because they were shared by some influencers on Google Reader and Twitter. However, Facebook has surprisingly remained a significant source of readers.

More importantly, since Skeptic Geek is platform and company agnostic, posts become popular on different networks depending on the content. For example, my post on Is Windows Live Delivering What Google Buzz Promised? took a critical stance on Google, was not shared by any influencers I know, but has almost 950 shares on Facebook (at the time of this writing).

This is why I decided to put an end to my neglect of the Facebook Platform, and have chosen to leverage it. I remain platform agnostic, and will continue to be impartial in my critique of the social web. This is just another way of letting my readers have more choice in their preferred way of reading Skeptic Geek.

If you wish, you can become a fan on Facebook here.

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NYT Profiles Techmeme

From The New York Times:

One of the first Web sites loaded on Silicon Valley’s laptops and iPhones each morning — and then again and again throughout the day — is Techmeme.

Couple of factoids:

  • 260,000 readers who check it 3 million times a month
  • Techmeme plans to include cogent 140-character Twitter posts written by influential people as headlines

Thanks to Marshall:

“You definitely get a lot more traffic when you’re the lead story in a cluster on Techmeme, and it’s super high-quality traffic because it’s where a lot of industry thought leaders go to get their news,” Mr. Kirkpatrick said.

In the photo on the article, check out what’s lying on that sofa chair in the background. :)

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The Real Tablet Revolution

This is the slate I used growing up as a school kid. There was sibling rivalry over whose was shinier or had a larger “screen size”.

Slate

They are still used by some school children in India. Millions of them go to school today like this (image credit):

School Bags

With heavy burdens on their back, no wonder they hate going to school.

When Steve Jobs unveils the Apple Tablet in a few hours from now, I will be part of the thousands who will witness this revolutionary device remotely. But the real revolution in my mind will happen when such devices become mainstays in educational institutions worldwide.

apple_tablet

No doubt the tablet will be great for entertainment, gaming, reading, and news consumption. But no other application has a greater, lasting impact, than that which revolutionizes learning.

As Joe Wilcox describes it, a “unified content platform, mixing different media types and live information” holds tremendous potential during the formative young years of our lives.

Imagine a classroom where students had access to live information about any topic under the sun. That is the world I want my kid to grow up in. When that happens, it will be the real tablet revolution.

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A Year of Change and New Beginnings

The year end is a good time to share a bit more about myself, about this blog, and learn more about you. Skeptic Geek started four months ago. Discounting FriendFeed, Feedburner says there are already about 100 “true” subscribers. This really is a surprise.

I come from a world of cubicle farms in the software outsourcing industry and am a complete newbie in the social web. I joined:

My last stay in the US during ‘06-‘08 was to manage the development of a website for the largest automaker in America. The project was to provide 5 million+ auto financing customers with an account self-service website in order to reduce call-center costs. More recently, I worked in embedded software, working with real-estate developers in India to build intelligent digital homes.

My career has been in project management (requirements gathering, people management, scheduling, risk management, etc.), competitive research, proposals, business development and so on. I lived amidst J2EE, EAI, and RFPs. Two years ago, I had not even heard of Twitter or FriendFeed.

In other ways, by some standards, I am a veteran. I sent my first email in ‘89 from India when there were no ISPs here, and browsed the web with Netscape Navigator for the first time in ‘95 from Berlin. The first “computer” I handled was a Sinclair ZX-81, and the first PC in my home was a PC-XT with a 20 MB hard disk. In college, I learnt assembly language programming with the 8085 and 8086 microprocessors.

As you can imagine, this year has been a change in many ways. Taking a break from the enterprise software world, I ventured as a freelancer on the web. My experience is indeed useful to my work, but I found that I had to make a fresh beginning. You might manage a million dollar software project within budget on time, but a high-school tech enthusiast may be better informed, better networked, and write faster blog posts than you.

I started my personal blog on WordPress.com in Apr ‘07. For the past two years, my personal blog has been an enjoyable hobby for expressing my varied interests. I was a complete stranger in the tech blogging world when I started writing for MakeUseOf.com in Apr ‘09. After a few months, I joined Techmeme. It has been a good year and I feel grateful.

The social network I am most indebted to is FriendFeed. It offered me some of the best and brightest tech minds to network with on a platter. My networking journey, if it were to happen via any other network like LinkedIn, might have taken years. FriendFeed accelerated it to a few months. I have made many good friends there and elsewhere, many of whom have kindly added me to their Twitter Lists.

Road Ahead

These are my humble beginnings this year. I started this blog as a parking lot for my thoughts about online tech developments. My writing at MakeUseOf is for a non-geeky audience, and I wanted a place to pen more insightful posts. Never in my wildest dreams did I imagine that there would be anyone interested enough to subscribe. While I don’t want to write blog posts under any obligatory pressure, I do want to write regularly, at a slower pace of about a post per week or ten days. At this moment, it’s a long road ahead, and I don’t know what’s lying in store after the next bend.

Are you really out there, dear subscriber? If you would be so kind to let me know, I would be obliged. Do you have any feedback about my posts so far or about the blog in general? Would it be interesting if I bring an occasional India-specific tech angle in my writing that might be amusing or interesting to western audiences? Should I continue writing at all?

Finally, here’s wishing you a Very Happy Christmas and New Year! May we all enjoy a peaceful, connected, and exciting 2010!

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Writing for MakeUseOf.com

A lot of things have been happening at An Unquiet Mind. A journalist quoted me in the Hyderabad edition of The Hindu. AUM is now on Twitter here and you can see my tweets in the sidebar.

muologo

I have been chosen to contribute to MakeUseOf.com on a trial basis. I have loved MUO since a long time, and I am eagerly looking forward to writing about “Cool Websites, Software and Internet Tips”.

MakeUseOf.com has 54K+ subscribers, and is part of PC Magazine’s “Top 50 Blogs”.

This is my first foray into professional writing since 1996. Wish me luck! :-)

PS: Do you like the new About Myself?

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