Hide will remove

Friend: There is a usability problem with Google Reader friend's shared items

Me: What is it?

Friend: Every time I load up yours, it comes with your profile, which is fine for the first time.

Me: Ya

Friend: I actually know you for about 8 years now and you dont need to be introduced again and again

Me: Hide friend will take the friend out of the list

Friend: Yes, exactly. I do not want you to go away, but i dont want your visiting card on my face either.

Friend: Would you beleieve, I clicked 'hide Umesh' button, realised what it does and then repeated it again after few weeks, because I forgot what it did. So intuitive.

Me: Its so obvious. Some one must have shouted at them already.

Friend: Well am reminding them again here.

My friend has become an angry young usability man

Wordie Error

Wordie is another favorite. I use this to maintain a list of words that Iget to know for the first time or the ones I get the spelling confused with or the ones Iusually forget. Its fun. Recently Wordie seemed down for a couple of minutes. I got this message.



The concept of Wordie is a little tough to explain or to digest initially. Its not a useful service at first site. Wordie is targetted towards a very niche user segment who get giddy thrills out of the inherent beauty and elegance of words and language, enjoy exploring the history and etymology of words, and fill the vacuum with witty banter - as some one said. It seems even they know about it. But as I always say it all depends on how you can think of making use of these applications as a part of your day today life.

A part of the New Age Web Messages series

Speaking Tamil in Chennai is an annoyance?

My friend and Tamil writer Sathyarajkumar visited Cleartrip.com after reading a lot of good things about the site and their communication skills here on Whitespace. But what he read about Chennai city on the Small world section of Cleartrip hasn’t amused him even a bit. The annoyance point of guide for Chennai city says

People in Chennai are generally averse to speaking in Hindi which makes it difficult to converse with the locals, especially if they are not conversant in English either. To make things more uncomfortable, the climate in Chennai is exceptionally hot and humid.

On his Tamil blog post Sathyarajkumar asks how speaking in one’s own mother tongue can be considered as an annoyance for others. He is basically OK with the fact that the site is pointing out that Chennai people dont speak Hindi but what he is not happy is the head under which it is said. Cleartrip is a Mumbai based company but did they conclude that only Hindi speaking crowd fly to Chennai to consider it as an annoyance to all the other Indians? Also note how the second line starts by saying “To make things more uncomfortable…”.

It’s true that giving out facts about places are extremely helpful for the people who are traveling there for the first time, but it has to be in a way that it doesn’t affect the sentiments of the local public and also taking care of Indians as a whole; not only North Indians. I’m a Keralite and I had never spoken Hindi in my life until I went to Pune for a living where I had no other go than to speak Hindi as no locals there understood Malayalam. Now will that be considered as an annoyance?

The following is my suggestion for the Non Hindi speaking point for Chennai and I don’t think it should be featured under the head Annoyance.

Non Tamil speaking travelers to Chennai may find it difficult to converse with the locals as they don’t speak Hindi or in some cases English.

What if my destination is flexible?

Almost all the flight/train ticket booking sites allow me to search for availability keeping my travel dates open or flexible to the nearest one or two days. This is usually done in order to find availability or to get better deals if you are not particular about a date for travel. Flights offer different ticket rates for different days of the week and also times of the day. I recently had to make a lot of air ticket bookings and that’s when I realized about one more option of getting cheaper air tickets… my destination. What if my destination is also flexible? I’m hearing you asking…

Are you kidding?

No I’m not. Let me explain. I have three airports situated at equal distances from my house in Kerala; Kochi, Kozhikode and Coimbatore. And while I was searching for flights to all the three airports in order to find availability, I found that flights to Coimbatore are generally available and also cheaper. That’s when I was wondering if the air ticket booking sites could introduce a new feature of having my destination also flexible and also give me all the other airports near the one which I primarily searched for.

I know it’s a little tough implementing this on the search page without making the page complex. But then that’s the challenge. When implemented that will be a killer feature. Is my favourite booking site Cleartrip listening? If you do this you will the one of those booking sites which not only allow travelers to book their tickets hassle free but also recommend them ways of saving money. Wouldn’t it be cool if your site can tell the user who just ran a search for flights from Bangalore to Pune that he can also try searching for flights to Bombay and he might get a better deal?