Here are some excerpts from an article i came across that would be useful to get to know Adobe AIR.

Published 28 May 2008 by Gil Harland

AIR stands for, the Adobe Integrated Runtime (AIR) and is one of the latest interesting development from Adobe.

AIR runs on Windows, Mac OS X and a very usable Beta version for Linux. It installs the first time you download and run an AIR application, much in the same way that Flash is installed on a computer if the user visits a web site using Flash and they don’t already have it installed.

AIR applications run on the desktop and are half way between web based applications (which run in a browser) and full blown desktop applications such as Word or Photoshop.

Developers can create AIR applications using the HTML, CSS, Javascript, Flash, Flex (A flash framework) and PDF knowledge they already have and AIR acts as a wrapper that allows them to run on the desktop and go beyond the limitations they would normally have if they were running in a web browser.

AIR applications differ from current web applications because AIR applications do not run in your web browser and therefore are able to use desktop features such as full drag and drop between applications, save files to the local hard drive or network and store data locally in a database.

When compared to traditional desktop applications, AIR applications are simple to deploy, easy and cost-effective to build, have better web integration and will run on all three of the major operating systems.

AIR is also smart enought to know when it is and isn’t connected so you can create programmes that work with online data and use the local database as a fallback if the connection to the internet is dropped.

more on AIR at Adobe® AIR™ Applications Wiki

Download the latest version of Adobe AIR

RefreshingApps.com – Showcase for Adobe AIR Applications and Resources

10 Adobe AIR -Must See- Applications

Adobe AIR Marketplace

After being conditioned to UCD in grad school, Agile or Extreme Programming can be quite unnerving when you initially start out in a company that practices this methodology.

Here are some resources out there to start an initial phase of “getting used to”

Adapting Usability Investigations for Agile User-Centered Design
by Desiree Sy
Source Journal of Usability Studies, Volume 2, Issue 3, May 2007, pp. 112-132
[Do download the pdf of the Article Adapting Usability Investigations for Agile User-Centered Design ]

Clash of the Titans: Agile and UCD
By Richard F. Cecil
Source UX matters, Published: December 18, 2006

How to incorporate user-centered design into agile development methodology
Activator: Pawan Vora
Source Usability Professionals’ Association (UPA 2004 Idea Markets)

I found a lot of resources in slideshare and added them to my favorites with the tag “agile”.

An excerpt from Building the UX Dreamteam

IxD means defining system behaviors to answer the question “how does a user take the action they want?”…”

What motivates me to become an interaction designer…….unable to tolerate bas experiences and interfaces? Sometimes my tolerance level is high just because of a product being popular but then i realise i dont belong to that league, i cannot deal with mediocrity.

I am not a great designer, i am not perfect but i am sensitive to environments and experiences which enable to work towards my obession of becoming a perfectionist.

A couple of months ago, we got home a DVD player, with such an interface which represented the computer folder icons that my mother completely freaked out that she wont be able to operate though she knows how to use a computer.

my Yahoo! India email sign up experience:(i wish i had saved a screenshot of the page!) I got two options,

to retrieve my mails from the US database or wish to retrieve from the India database at my own risk (that is they could not guarentee the security but it would be faster)

Seriously! i was offended!! or is our Email Internet security system really that bad???