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Shazam A Song, Just Like That!

October 6, 2018 Design Happenings Technology
Shazam

I was late in discovering Shazam, just like some other apps, but I don’t regret it. I love listening to any form of music and being an ‘old schooler’, the “independent” sorts, I’ve not pledged my allegiance to either Apple Music or Spotify, although it’s becoming inevitable to avoid. Meanwhile, I’m satisfying my urge of listening to soul-stirring melodies through the droves of FM stations of this city who cycle their playlists like kids on a carousel ride, so you can’t miss out on any song now, can you? I also follow an alternative method to understand & discover different kinds of sounds, by visiting the various outlets & malls in & around Toronto. As I’m sifting through the garments or enjoying a meal I’m patiently listening to a soothing melody or a foot tapping anthem that would eventually stick in my head and wouldn’t let me breathe easy until I’m able to locate its creator’s credentials. Ugh! And a Google search would only be fruitful if I got the lyrics right which is challenging in all that chitter chatter in the vicinity, so Nah! Enter, Shazam.

Though I was always intrigued by this nifty app since even before Apple acquired it there wasn’t a practical use for me to experiment with Shazam, but its time had finally arrived. It was simple. I launched it and found the circular ‘S’ logo throbbing and inviting me to tap as a tune played at a busy H&M outlet. Even though it was faintly audible the microphone on the iPhone deftly captured the notes, and in a jiffy, it displayed not only the name of the artist but also the colourful album art, the lyrics, while giving me the choice to buy it on Apple Music. It also added it to a ‘My Shazam’ playlist so I won’t lose the information! The ‘Shazam-ing’ is so seamless & quick and searching for new music has become simpler and more exciting, and enjoyable now. No more anxiety over unknown melodies, eh. I never thought I’d say this but then Google feels weak for a change! So, if you’re late to the party just like me, give it a shot.

Instagram Old and New App Icon

Instagram Used Co-Creation For Its New Icon Design

October 13, 2017 Design

Last year, Instagram changed its skeuomorphic icon branding to a purplish logo and it was only recently that I came across the design process on Fast CoDesign.

Instagram’s Design Head Ian Spalter, guided the branding exercise into a co-creation session. The write-up from the FastCoDesign article mentions…

At first, Spalter was most concerned with figuring out what elements people recognized most about the admittedly very complex and highly detailed Instagram logo. So he started by asking the whole company to draw the logo from memory in 10 seconds or less. “That gave us a sense of what was burned in,” Spalter says. What emerged were the camera lens, the rounded shape of the icon, and, surprisingly, the little black viewfinder in the top right corner.

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Grammarly

Here’s How You Can Check Your Language Now

January 22, 2016 General Technology

What could be apter than using an app to check your language? Just as the ubiquitous spell check became a formidable innovation in the Word doc era, verifying your language has become a necessity for bloggers, serious writers, and students today. Personally, I need to frame my thoughts correctly to sound better in English, and always looking to convey the right meaning but there’s little help to verify what I have written. So while I was watching YouTube an ad caught my attention, and I thought let’s give Grammarly a try. I installed the Mac app (v1.4.20) and here’s my take.

Apart from the concept, my full credit goes to the designer(s) and the developer(s) working behind the curtains on creating the minimalist user-interface. Once you open the app you just cannot resist starting to type a few sentences to test it out (mine ended up becoming a blog post). Though I wasn’t confident earlier on using this app, I was anxious to lose data while moving from the ‘Advanced Issues’ tab back to my writing, but it was seamless. Moreover, if you still fear being hunted down by the ‘grammar nazis’ there’s a handy Chrome extension available on the Web Store to help you check your language in emails, social media accounts, and other online docs. It was smooth going moving to and from my write-up on WordPress Blog using this extension while correcting the language in a separate window.

Grammarly has the potential to become the next Evernote for writers, especially useful for students if they open up their premium features to free subscribers, such as checking for plagiarism and improving their word choice which is important to make posts and articles concise and lucid. You can also export your write-up in .txt format though that isn’t a big deal when you can easily copy/paste into a text editor and continue editing. Overall it seems that the approach is to give a hassle free text-editing experience with bare minimum features, even excluding the routine print option for that matter. So for those who would love to check on their language quick and easy, get Grammarly today.

Google Reader has arrived

December 27, 2005 Design

Google ReaderFor me, the discovery of the RSS Feed was the single most brave achievement of 2005. The readers gave me an opportunity to compile several chunks of good information from the feeds at one place. I first began by using Newsgator because of it’s online capabilities and I was quite happy with it. Later I switched to Mozilla Thunderbird (yes you heard that right) which is also an excellent RSS reader. it also allows categarization in folders so I can have all my Apple Macintosh related feeds sitting pretty in a folder by the same name. Thunderbird was by far the most loved one but it required installation and wasn’t available online. Not that I travel much but it’s helpful if I can check the same feeds from home as well. But if you are looking for an installable reader, switch to Thunderbird.

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