apartmentadda, UI

Evolution of UI of Apartment Adda

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This is a post I wanted to write for a long time. Here are some screenshots of how Apartment Adda looked at different stages.

October 2007 : I spent a weekend creating a prototype of Apartment Adda. Got an open source web design template from owsd.org and was able to quickly create a working site.
We had one goal for our UI to begin with. When a user logs in he need not click on different pages to see what is happening in his or her Adda. In one click he should get to see all the updates and also get a bird’s eye view of everything – without getting flooded with information.
We finally came up with a dashboard design that will show the latest updates in nice little widgets – where each widget will act like a summary page for the detailed page.

After this prototype was done we used this to brain storm about Apartment Adda and flush out the stories.
Around September 2008 when I started full time development on Apartment Adda, I got one more template from oswd.org. Decided to go with Php and this is how the UI looked like.
Home Page :

Resident’s Dashboard :

Admin’s Dashboard :

While I was developing the site, simultaneously we got the help of a UI design firm – Cicada Media, Bangalore. Mr. Binil designed the vibrant Apartment Adda logo and Mr.Balaji designed the style sheets, buttons and layout. Many thanks to Cicada team for the UI upgrade of Apartment Adda !!
Here is how Apartment Adda looks as of today.
HomePage :

Resident’s Dashboard :

Admin’s Dashboard :

Thanks for visiting Apartment Adda’s Baby scrap page !!
tools

Green build !!

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For a developer nothing in the world makes him happier than a green build. ( Well of course there are things like Wii, a power book, an iPhone, an Audi A4 – but they all cost..a lot.). There was one suite that was failing the build consistently for the past few days. I could have just commented it out and said to myself – will fix it later. It is as bad as Satyam’s Raju inflating his accounts. Because the commented test will never get fixed ( trust me – it might get deleted but never fixed ) and more functionality will be built on this untested one. It is better to have a failing build than have a green build which just gives a delusion that everything is alright.

Anyway, I fixed the tests – it took some time but got a green build in the end and the world feels alright !

fun

Hi Renault…

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At times when I feel bored, I will randomly pick an ip address from the logs and see where it is from ( http://ip2location.com ) – and wonder of wonders – this ip address originated from Renault’s network in France. Hmm…when will Ferrari’s computer browse Apartment Adda?

politics

My advice to politicians – do not take credit for SDM winning oscar

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The  Congress spokesperson says that Congress has created a “conducive environment” that has led to the emergence of ‘Achieving India’ during the UPA rule and hence the oscar.
Perhaps he did not see the movie ? The movie glorified India’s slums and the filth that is associated with our country. And Congress has created a “conducive environment”. Amen to that. 
Please think twice before you try to take credit for everything. 
vista

Vista is an A$$

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In my blog post a year back ( http://kvrlogs.blogspot.com/2008/04/rendezvous-with-vista.html ) I had given a favourable review of Vista. Now i take everything back that I said.

Earlier I thought my Dell 620 ( had a Vista performance rating of 3.0 ) was not man enough to run Vista – so I was forgiving. But now I have a Dell Studio 17 which has a performance rating of 5.0 – and it is still troubling me.  Here are the reasons :
1. I have an apple USB keyboard with the mouse attached to it. Every time the machine comes out of sleep I have to wait 1 minute before it gets activated. And yes the year is 2009 and it takes such a long time for Vista to detect a USB device/hub. Good job.
2. BSODs – I see it 2 to 3 times a week. I still have not found a pattern and I do not have any freebies off the net. 
3. I am in Bangalore and power goes off frequently. And along with it my internet connection goes off. Mostly I will be connected to Apartment Adda through putty and it will stop responding. The CPU usage will shoot up to 100%. It took a long time before I found this problem. I started suspecting that my machine got infected and ran scan after scan. 
How did the kernel overlords allow any process to consume 100% CPU – that too a lowly SSH client called putty which is 300KB in size.
4. Search and Indexing is a joke. Microsoft is trying to compete with Google? Good luck. 
5. Finally, booting speed. It is as slow as Windows 3.1, Win 95, Win 98, Win ME, Windows XP. Nothing has changed. I have to start the laptop, go brush teeth, read newspaper and drink coffee, wash the cup, read A to Z to my son, and then when I come back it might be ready – or it might have installed updates and restarting.
Oh so you recommend trying windows 2007? And I have to pay for it. Naah – I think I have had enough with Windows OSes the past decade. 
Now I have Ubuntu on the other partition and it blazes – takes full advantage of the hardware that is offerred to it. I am going to format this machine with just Ubuntu in another couple of weeks. Wish chrome is ready for linux soon.
india, politics

Mr. “Ad”vani

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Hello Mr.Advani – err..”Ad”vani. You are killing me. You are there everywhere – wired posts, slashdot posts, lifehacker posts. One Mr.Obama had tremendous success by working the internet machine – but it will not work for you. Here is why.
1. Ads annoy people – especially if it is not targetted. Why should a prosperous India ad show up when I am reading about Pirate bay’s defence or some tech forum topic.  If I am reading about a political blog or on some serious concern related to India then there is some sense. Just throwing money and plastering an ad everywhere will not work. 
2. Is it a wholesome media campaign or your campaign team has bought a big bag of google adwords? I close my laptop, open Indian Express and if I read some thought provoking Ad it will sure impress me. 
3. The “How” is missing. I agree Mr.Advani will try to make India strong prosperous and all that. And so are Mr.Manmohan Singh, Mayawati, Jalalalitha, Laloo etc.  – but “how” is what I want to know. Answer me – either in your speeches, print ads or even in those google ads. People are way too smart to be brainwashed these days.
So till then please stop these ads – they are doing more damage than you guys can imagine. 

blah

The Facebook somersault

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You would have heard about facebook changing its TOS and reverting it back. Only google is allowed to own you and everything you create – no one else. Facebook tried to change this and failed miserably. 

Perhaps facebook can change its motto to “We also claim we don’t do evil” and perhaps people’s perception might change and they can own the rest of the content google does not own.

Jokes apart, I am liking facebook. I created an account a year back but only recently I got on facebook – and find so many of my friends partying over there. Facebook feels more mature than orkut and the applications seem to be well evolved.  I feel it is somewhere between Orkut and linkedin.
And I liked the facebook page concept – created one for Apartment Adda  http://www.facebook.com/pages/Apartment-Adda/67354785534 . 
25 things about me seems to be quite interesting – planning to write one sometime. Also planning to check out the facebook APIs.. watch this space for a facebook app from me – once I hit the magical dev complete status for Apartment Adda !!
gizmos, india

When will Kindle launch in India?

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Hi Jeff Bezos! How are you doing? Feeling recession pangs? Don’t worry – you have got a solid business. You can recession proof further and consider expanding to India. When are you releasing kindle here btw? This is the one gadget I really really want. 

  • I have 30 or so books in my reading list ( in shelfari ) and none are available in India. 
  • I feel guilty when I buy books – dead trees and environment and all that. 
  • I need to search – lot of times I would think of quoting from a book but feel lazy to go search through the book
  • Can read multiple books at the same time
But please please please do not do an iPhone in terms of pricing. Thank you. 
inspiration, movie

An inspiring movie – 300

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Last weekend we saw the movie “300” – the amazing story of a crazy bunch of 300 Spartans who bring the mighty Persian army to its knees – almost. Had I watched this before I started working on Apartment Adda , I might have only appreciated this movie for its slick production and technicality. But I was emotionally involved and felt charged up while seeing this movie. 

The Spartans believed firmly in their abilities – all their life they practiced for this one day. They were able to draw all their life’s experiences and lessons to this one fight – which they know is extremely hard and odds are stacked heavily against them. Yet, they hold on amazingly as wave after wave of attacks hit them. It is a fantastic story that will inspire you and push you to do things that seem daunting – just like running any startup.
Like the Spartans, Apartment Adda is a lean team now  – and we are trying to build useful features, build a brand name, sell the product, support our customers, fight the recession’s scary omens and some more – the challenges that are confronting us are numerous. But what drives us is the sheer enthusiasm and determination to grow this little baby of ours into a great portal – that one day Apartment Adda will be counted with other useful and much loved Indian portals like a rediff, or yahoo or a money control. I wish I can imbibe atleast a fraction of the audacity and determination of those mighty Spartans.
 
Do  watch “300” – and let it inspire you to do amazing things. 
Ok… now I will put my sword back in it’s sheath 🙂 Shinnnng.

Here is the life story of a speck

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