Over time as more and more people start using web apps and services in the cloud, there needs to be a good way to search through all of that as and when needed and also make sense of it. Most of us refer to this domain as Personal Search, others as "the other half of web search".

Why has the adoption of this been so slow then? Why have the companies in this domain been so few and the products mostly just text based search with no in built contextual smartness or recommendation or any knowledge of what I want over time. Why do I still need to toe keywords than type natural phrases like "where does John live?"

The two big players (besides Google and Bing) are Greplin and CloudMagic. While Greplin has shown some really smart ideas on mobile, the overall feature set leaves a lot desired. Another smart approach is the one Ness has taken with tackling this indirectly via recommendations starting with restaurants.

I still think a lot needs to be done in this domain. Imagine Siri kind of intelligence with really contextual search and notifications. Here are a few use cases:

• When on my way to a meeting, quickly enable to find info around the other participants or their phone numbers
• Maybe if both parties have the app installed, allow sharing of location for a fixed time frame
• If I saw something in my twitter feed but broadly remember the contents of the actual article, why is it so hard to get to it?
• If I enter a restaurant and I have never been here, then recommend me what's good here (that I will like)
• If I pinned something and near a shop that has it, suggest I buy it
• When leaving for a meeting why can't I be reminded well in advance depending how long it would take, my preferred means of transport and existing conditions
• My battery is about to die, why can my phone not remind me of a public charging place around
• I tweeted something as a question, can my phone find the answer faster than my twitter network and tweet back at me or just give an in-app notification?
• Analyze my communication and email to auto add events and reminders (better to not do it than do it wrong)
• Somebody I have been lately chatting with on twitter a lot is around, why is it still so hard to notify people? (I seriously do not think there needs to be an app just for that)
• What about all the information stored by my phone's sensors (how fast am I driving vs the allowed speed limit)
• It is a friend’s birthday today, how about quickly finding about that gift she mentioned last year in Hawaii
• If I am searching for ”cab” at 10:00 in night, why not just show me my cab companies’ number quickly? Maybe even show an in-app menu to call Über
• Why is there still no platform to build apps using this personal data. What about a quick way to find text inside of documents and PDFs in Dropbox?

A lot of you would say that these are more features of a virtual personal assistant. I would say they have more to do with contextual search than an app that does what you ask of it. So instead of waiting for something like Siri to implement these, it could be a potential domain for personal search to explore.

Do you use any of the above apps? Why? Would you use something like this? What is the one feature that you would definitely need? Send in your thoughts on Twitter.

The total consideration for San Francisco-based Instagram is approximately $1 billion in a combination of cash and shares of Facebook. The transaction, which is subject to customary closing conditions, is expected to close later this quarter.

Believe it or not at this point Facebook has the best designers in the world. Not sure of the design team but definitely the best designers under one roof.

Also a billion seems to be a steep price to pay just to make sure Tim joins Facebook Design team.

One of the most powerful talks I have watched, ever. The part about living life by principle(s) is something that I have been doing sub-consciously for a while now. However, hearing this laid down so clearly is eye opening to say the least.

I had the opportunity to attend Letter Together, a lettering/type workshop organized by two amazing folks: one being Jessica (of the Hische fame) and the other being Erik (of Friends of Type). I knew this was going to be a good experience but it turned out to be way more awesome than I had imagined. Jessica is one of the most helpful person I know of in the industry. I know this first hand when I had gotten in touch with her over a personal lettering project. The fact that she answered all my stupid question without having known me or met me ever before was a gesture that I will always remember. And Erik is just the sweetest teacher you will ever meet. Together they took our group of 13 (2 letters each would make all alphabets) into a crash course on elementary type design.

We started off with amazing donuts and coffee that Jessica had brewed, quickly moving into sketching alphabets followed with a round of a really toned down critique. I say toned down but in no way was this ineffective. They kept dropping pearls of wisdom (I know a cliché but this was so true for them) as they talked about typography and lettering.

In the second half of the day we were all given 2 alphabets each that we had to draw on paper. We were later to draw them in Illustrator. Erik taught us a few tricks in Illustrator which really will make my life in Illustrator a hell lot easier. Both of them showed us their process and needless to say that was a revelation of the amount of hard work that they put into their work. By the end when we had got all our alphabets printed and critiqued we had well exceeded the original timings of the workshop. Despite that none of us really wanted to leave.

In hindsight this was one of the most amazing experience I have ever had learning from someone else. The act of really opening up your mind and your process, especially for something you are not great at, is very humbling. Add to that a pair of mentors who kept praising us to keep us motivated. The whole energy was so positive that it was refreshing. I really wish we have an advanced version and that I can attend it. For anyone who is interested in type design and lettering, if you get a chance please do attend it.

You can see more pictures from the day on Flickr.