A few days ago, Facebook rolled out yet another home page and almost instantly, everyone started frothing at the mouth. The interwebs were soon overflowing with rage: “How dare they”, “It sucks”, “Just when I got used to the interface, they went and changed it AGAIN”, “My mother can’t figure it out”, “Look, they moved these buttons from the bottom to the top”, “OMG, where’s my chat button”, “WTF, I can’t find anything” … and countless variations of the above.

I finally got my new home page today. It’s abundantly obvious that the Facebook team is trying their damndest to tweak and tune and refine the user experience. You can argue that if it isn’t broken, why fix it, but that attitude is a deathtrap for innovation. Sure, some choices are odd. The tiny blue-on-blue icons next to the Facebook logo were probably designed and integrated by a cocky 16 year old with stellar visual acuity and a 40″ monitor. Also, I’m from the ultra-conservative “all icons must have labels – and no, tooltips are not enough” school of thought so those are a massive FAIL. I’m not sure if those buttons are new though. I also don’t quite understand why Search is where it is. Search just feels better on the top right and Jakob N probably doesn’t like the idea that it says Search inside the text field but c’mon, at least it’s nice and wide.

Facebook’s growth has been explosive; with over 400 million active users, their commitment to the “iterate fast – release often” model is admirable. I just can’t comprehend the anger and hate. You bought into the whole 21st century, 24/7/365 always-awake hipster lifestyle – switching from Twitter to Flickr to Facebook to whateverthefuckisawesomeandsexytoday and yet, you can’t handle change? What the hell is up with this ridiculous sense of entitlement and why is everyone so monumentally aggrieved all the bloody time?

I still think Zuckerburg is a sly, little weasel and it still scares me when I think about what Facebook does with our clickstream data. But please stop whining every time they attempt to make the site better. Interaction design is fucking hard work. Perhaps you could spare a moment to attempt to understand what goes into creating such a massive platform that enables you to “share” every mundane detail of your life with your “friends”. A little respect never hurt anyone.

Every January, the faithful get into a fevered state of frenzy. It’s no different this year – except that Apple will unveil its “latest creation” at a private event and not at Macworld. The invitation they sent out to the media has splotches of paint on it – curiouser and curiouser! I wonder why they chose such an overtly fine art-related design element rather than a collage of media types. Maybe it’s because they think their latest creation is a work of art, in which case, it makes sense. Whatever this product is going to be, it will be a hub for all kinds of media and not just something people will use for painting and drawing.

A lot of people think that the Tablet is going to be a giant iPhone. However, none of the gazillion mockups doing the rounds depict an intelligent UI. I can’t even use my 3.5″ iPhone screen in landscape mode and so, the same UI simply will not cross-over to a 7″ or 10″ screen. This new product will boast a radically new multi-touch interface, based of course on Mac OS X (a flavour of 10.7 perhaps), but engineered explicitly for this device. And if the Tablet captures our imagination, it will be because of the UI and the apps designed specially for it.

Mr Jobs, in all his arrogant glory, doesn’t give a damn about the “consumer” – he builds things he wants to use himself and so, rest assured that there is a real problem he faces that will be solved by this mythical product. It doesn’t matter if we can’t figure out what that pain is yet. We’ll know in 7 days and will all begin to feel the same pain when he tells us to.

iPad, iSlate, Tablet – whatever. On the 27th of January 2010, we’ll want one!

I had to fill out a form for something or the other recently and this was one of the questions:

If you had the opportunity to attend a breakfast meeting with 6 people whom you admire, who would you choose?

Steve Jobs because he is a true innovator, sweats the details, builds products that he wants to use, and doesn’t fret about what other people think.

Angelina Jolie because she is a complete woman. She’s genuinely honest, has remarkable passion, uses her celebrity stature to make a difference, puts her heart and soul into every role, and is seriously stunning.

Ben Cohen and Jerry Greenfield because they combined icecream with social activism and built a successful company based on a 3-part mission that considered profits to be only one measure of success.

Roger Waters because he gave the world The Wall, The Dark Side of the Moon and Wish You Were Here.

Scott McCloud because Understanding Comics was phenomenal and helped me learn a lot about sequential art, design, and the importance of thinking about every little pixel you place on a canvas.

“The only people for me are the mad ones, the ones who are mad to live, mad to talk, mad to be saved, desirous of everything at the same time, the ones who never yawn or say a commonplace thing, but burn, burn, burn, like fabulous yellow roman candles exploding like spiders across the stars …”

Jack Kerouac

Since 2001, I have received a steady stream of messages from people, especially students abroad, who found the Eqbal Ahmad site I produced very useful. Back in the day, when this site was built, there was no Wordpress nor countless other open-source tools that would have made producing a site like this a breeze. The idea of developing a community platform that Eqbal groupies could contribute to, seemed so radical at the time! All those nights and stolen moments between other deadlines, the never-ending agony of trying to get code to compile, ‘forcing’ everyone at b.i.t.s. to read Eqbal … what heady times

This morning, I woke up to the best Eqbal e-mail I have have received:

My name is Carol Stock. I had the immense honor to work for Eqbal as a secretary for two years in the late 1970s (or early ’80s?), during the time he was advising the PLO, writing guest columns for the New York Times, and serving on the editorial board of Race and Class among many tasks.

So I read, and reread the writings he has left us, and I am indeed grateful for the website from which we who love him still can obtain some measure of comfort and inspiration. No, he will never be forgotten.

Trivia: I received immense flak from someone ‘important/stuffy’ who thought the inclusion of a Pink Floyd quote to honor a man like Eqbal Ahmad was terribly inappropriate. BAH!

http://www.bitsonline.net/eqbal

Today would have been the last, heady day of the Shanaakht Festival 2009. Today, CAP was going to present an exciting and diverse range of events; a kabaddi match, discussions with iconic Pakistanis, photo exhibitions, street theatre, and oral histories of the partition generation. Today T2F was going to host a story-telling session with Mrs. Raziuddin who played in the lap of Josh Sb as a child and was one of the first women in Karachi to drive a car, run a business, and make a film. Today, T2F was going to host a Mushaera featuring Karachi’s leading Urdu poets. Today, ADP and other musicians would have started arriving at the venue to set the stage for Raag and Roll. Today, thousands of Karachi’s citizens would have thronged the Arts Council to participate in a free, open festival celebrating our history, art, theatre, poetry, music, and resilience.

Today, why aren’t we all at the Karachi Arts Council, instead of sitting at home and writing frustrated blog posts? Answers will vary depending on who you ask. I think, as always, the real answers to such complex questions, are blowing in the wind.

Much has happened in the 4 days since the occurrence of the “incident” that unraveled the Shanaakht Festival 2009 in under 10 minutes. The press has misreported and reported, apologies have been rendered, threats have been issued, FIRs have been registered, government lackeys have lashed out at CAP, and aggrieved parties continue to expound their views on blogs and social networks. Many have spoken volumes by choosing to remain silent.

My earlier post on the Shanaakht mess has met with considerable criticism; which is absolutely fine – many valid points have been raised – but I am pained to be included in a group that one blogger writes about “… and it continues with tacit support of our so-called liberal intelligentsia”, because I commented strongly on the stupidity of the artwork. I have also been blown away by the inability of so-called educated people to read, analyze, and process.

After watching “Judgement at Nuremberg”, I lay in a crumpled heap for 2 hours, unable to speak for fear of throwing up. The film taught me, in no uncertain terms, about the granularity, complexity, and multi-hued textures of situations. Opinions evolve and can change over time. One can’t go through life being glib about everything, especially when commenting from very safe distances.

On a side-note, I tried to reconvene T2F’s Nadeem Aslam reading and conversation session at a venue that had earlier promised support to T2F following its eviction. Quite understandably, they said NO owing to security concerns. This is exactly what I expected following the Shanaakht fiasco, when I said that all our work will now be threatened and destablilized. This is why judiciousness and prudence is necessary in this environment, if you want to keep plugging away and making a difference. I don’t think that makes one a sell-out!

Since my stance is considered dubious and sketchy by some, I hereby declare my demands and an urgent call for a protest at the Karachi Press Club and other venues:

MY STANCE
I unequivocally condemn the violent attack of 8th April 2009 on arts, culture, and our freedom, and stand in solidarity with all voices of resistance

MY DEMANDS
1. Complete withdrawal of the FIR
2. Protection to be guaranteed to the organizers of the festival and the artist
3. Action to be taken by the government against the attackers
4. Retraction of the government’s statement supporting the armed attack on civilians

9 days have passed since the attack on the Shanaakht Festival 2009. I wrote the post below in a fit of rage and distress. Based on new information and people’s reactions, I now believe I should not have said all that I did, on a public blog. I certainly have a right to my opinion, but for someone who was preaching judiciousness, I think I didn’t practise it myself. I am not ashamed to admit mistakes; we’ve all learnt a lot from this incident, and in the wake of the deals that our government is signing, more so than ever, we need to stick together, collaborate, and avoid saying and doing things that cause divisiveness. One voice in my head tells me to remove this post altogether. Another voice tells me to remove certain portions. There is no right answer and I admit I’m confused. If I’ve done any damage, it’s already been done and Google has cached it. So, I’ll leave the original post as is, lest I then be accused of tampering with content because of sinister agendas.

Much has already been said and written about the Shanaakht Festival 2009 and the subsequent cancellation. My stance, very quickly, since there is a lot of BAD STUFF happening and my brain and heart are devastated …

I am enraged about the shutdown of the festival barely a few hours after it began with such vibrancy and energy. The pain of T2F’s eviction from its original premises was somewhat alleviated by the excitement of being at the festival and being able to continue with our programming for 5 days in a public space.

I will attempt to put my rage and aggravation into perspective …

Everyone, not just an artist, has a right to self-expression. Governments have no right to muzzle independent points of view or interpretations of events. That’s obvious. I am not an idiot and don’t need to be told that.

HOWEVER …

The reality is that we live in a city that makes international news, every single day, for incidents of violence and terror. Against this chilling backdrop, artists, curators, organizers of public festivals, and anyone working for the cause of arts and culture need to be cognizant and sharply aware of reactionaries, political workers, double agents, the evil designs of members of spaces designed to support the arts, the sensibilities of the junta, the games people play, and everything else that you can’t possibly pre-empt. This makes doing anything at all extremely difficult. And that is our challenge.

And so, the very act of submitting an artwork for a free, open, public festival being held in the heart of an out-of-control city, displaying BB sitting on Zia’s lap, indicates that the artist is disengaged from reality. The work itself was monumentally stupid. I say this not as a PPP or BB supporter but as an individual who can’t suffer fools.

Moving on … the idiotic artwork was submitted to VASL which curated the Sohni Dharti exhibition. Apparently CAP was asked if the work should be included and gave it a green signal. VASL should have rejected it upon receipt.

CAP has duly acknowledged that this ‘offensive contribution’ should not have been put up and have apologized repeatedly through press releases and at a press conference. I’m glad that they are taking responsibility. However, I am appalled that VASL has not.

My elevator pitch: I strongly oppose the inclusion of the above mentioned artwork in the festival on the grounds of lack of judiciousness and prudence. I even more vehemently condemn the manner in which PSF and PPP workers lodged their protest; i.e. by storming the Arts Council with guns and sticks, spreading terror and mayhem, hurling abuse at everyone in sight, and destroying art and property.

As a CAP founder member and as a collaborative participant in the festival, I have some questions:

1. Why has VASL not stepped forward and acknowledged their role in creating this mess?
2. Why has the government condoned the manner in which the armed hoodlums lodged their protest?
3. What was the role of the Karachi Arts Council in the attack? Why were they not pro-active in handling the armed, violent attackers? Were they complicit?

All art and cultural activities will now be further under attack in this city. We don’t have the luxury of making mistakes like this. We have to live for our causes, not die for them – and to fight obscurantism, oppression, and extremism, we need to be smart, savvy, and strategic.

Oh, and for all of you who think that the show should have gone on, PLEASE, get real. I was there throughout the attack. There WAS firing and the threat was severe and frightening. We were trying to get our American guest speakers out of there alive as well as pack up all our stuff whilst trying to stay safe from bullets. You can’t fight armed madmen with art and poetry when they’re out of control and calling for blood. CAP did the right thing to cancel the show and I stand by their decision.

Aur haan, 17 crore Pakistani diloñ kee aek shanaakht naheen hae. Let us not delude ourselves and let’s embrace our myriad identities and celebrate our diversity.

When we were screening Darwin’s Dangerous Idea at T2F, my mother was hanging out at the Science Museum in London, paying tribute to Charles D on his 200th birthday.

She brought back a Darwin supplement published by the Times for me and I just LOVED this little sidebar:

Darwin the Tweet

Darwin clearly wasn’t thinking of future technologies when he coined the original title of his opus. Users of Twitter, who entertain each other by swapping messages of 140 characters or less, would recognize that you don’t give yourself much room for manoeuvre when your book title alone stretches to 111 characters: On the Origin of Species by means of Natural Selection, or the Preservation of Favoured Races in the Struggle for Life. By its sixth print run, Darwin had managed to pare it down to the snappier The Origin of Species. Given another 172 years, he could have probably distilled its contents down to one succinct tweet:

DarwinC: Great creatures adapt. Not so great ones die. Check out those finches beaks. Survival of the fittest innit.
10:31 AM Oct 27th, 1837 from TweetDeck

Akbar Ji believed no single religion could claim a monopoly on truth and came up with a way-ahead-of-its-time solution – ‘Din-e-Illahi’. Radical dude

I believe no single application can definitively help manage complexity and so, I use a cocktail of tools and techniques to organize my day. I call this approach ‘Whatever It Takes To Get Things Done’.

Like a fickle lover, I constantly switch allegiances to GTD apps. Over the years, I have used iCal, OmniOutliner, OmniFocus, Merlin, and xTime Project to manage teams, assess progress, and get stuff done.

As my needs changed, I switched to VoodooPad primarily because it’s lean, has a lite/free version and functions as an offline wiki – so, lots of hyperlinking love. I loved being able to hit Command-Option-K and seeing a line go straight through a task, indicating it was done. It was great for a while until I discovered TaskPaper. Despite my fickleness, I stayed true to TaskPaper for the longest time. But I’ve sort of dumped it now essentially because of the lack of an iPhone version.

I’ve been evaluating Cultured Code, as an indie Mac software company for over a year now. Their core product, Things, is a stellar app that conforms to Apple’s Human Interface Guidelines, is fun to use, and takes an innovative approach to GTD. Mumbo jumbo aside, it’s awesome and is proving to be instrumental in my “Save Sabeen from Sabeen” project.

I will post a detailed review soon, but for now, I can’t recommend Things enough. It syncs seamlessly with my iPhone and it’s been a long, long time since I had so much fun with an application.