Call me crazy, but lets face it, there is something pretty cool about “load shedding”!! Pakistan has a way to let her big city dwellers know when 1 hour of their lives has gone by. How? Either our non-UPS electric appliances wake up or go to sleep, every hour, by the hour.

I’m not exactly sure how, but I ended up on this link today and I feel like a kid at a carnival. While many animation solutions work only on the latest browsers and operating systems. Animate.css works on the following, flawlessly. 

Apple Safari version 4.1.3

Installed on Mac OS X version 10.4.11

Running on a 1.5 GHz PowerPC G4 processor (PowerBook G4)

with 512 MB DDR SDRAM

That’s how days seem to be passing these days. *blip*.

Don’t even seem to have enough time to sign in on Tumblr and post something. This post, just to break the silence. *whew* now that this is off my chest… COMMAND+T … open the Obscure UX basecamp. *gulp*

Insights from Syma Ahmed (http://symaahmed.com) about how “Happy” Facebook makes us… I feel for all the kids these days who conduct most of their social interaction online. Unlike days of yore when we had SO MUCH MORE FUN with our friends in the “real world”. If we stalked girls… it used to be on the streets or their paparazzi photo albums that they would show us in private and in confidence! 

Now we’re talking! Excellent job Leap. Awesome human computer interaction, I need one of those.

Deadly me! On the Obscure ‘dirty’ wall

I thought I had seen enough weirdness in my life when I saw the Pakistan Railways website. Then it happened… I accidentally clicked the “Public Notices” link. Lo and Behold… I clicked a very curious link on this page “Marriage Coaches”. It opens in a new window and a MS Word document gets downloaded. It’s a MUST read! I have never seen anything THAT ridiculous! Have a jolly good read. 

Here’s the thing guys… if your product is not really ready for launch, then DON’T launch. 

First of all, why exactly are you shoving Picasa photo albums down my throat? Why do I HAVE to link it? And if I HAVE to link it then why exactly are you asking me to press a button? It was the only possible button to be clicked for joining Google+ after I clicked the “Join” button! How about you just tell me… “Hey Ahmed, we will be linking Picasa photo albums”. Oops! You couldn’t really say that now could you? Especially the part where you say my name? It’s the name bit by the way that really ticked me off… keep reading… 

My name is “Ahmed Shuja”. First name “Ahmed” and Last name “Shuja”. It has been this for more than 3 decades. Search for this name on your search engine (probably the only Google product that actually works) and you’ll find out this is the name I am “commonly referred to in real life”. 

Guess what, you picked up my name YOURSELF from my Google Account information. I didn’t even have to type it into any text fields myself. How come my name doesn’t comply with your naming policy? You should probably talk to my parents about this one any way. Probably they didn’t review your extremely ambiguous naming policy back then. 

Check out the screen capture below.

There’s a neat link, which says that I should provide more information if you’ve made a mistake. I clicked it. To my surprise and horror I ended up on a contact page that was so confusing that, yes, you guessed it, I closed it! hoping that you will figure out that my name is OKAY on your own some day and un-suspend my profile! because currently as per Google+ the brief description of Ahmed Shuja is “Your Profile is suspended”

Sorry lads, if not too much, I’m a little more than that. 

Here’s the bottom line. I do not wish for Google to “Approve” my name. Even in the online world, my name is “accepted” by every other possibly website and social network. Yes that includes Facebook, Twitter, Tumblr, and many others. 

I really don’t have so much time to wait for Google+ to “Approve” my name. Or even to delete my profile. I’d be happier ignoring it completely, considering the fiascos that I have had with the same some time back. 

My last bit of Advice to you… Joining a web application is supposed to be the easiest for users, not the hardest. Focus on that in your product design if your product really is just a me-too product! 

Best Wishes,

First name:”Ahmed” Last name: “Shuja”

UCD in the lavatory! LHE-ISB motor-way stopover

Space age mannequin at a store window in Lahore - weird!