After years of using red carpet metaphors, we finally made it to the red carpet. Well sort of. Monsoon partnered with Motion Picture Television Fund and Variety Magazine to create the official touch-trivia application for the Oscars. We are totally psyched about launching this at the Oscars this weekend!

The application lets you spin a virtual orb and answer Oscar worthy trivia questions. HP will be giving away trivia participants some amazing prizes including TV’s, laptops, cameras and free Oscar morning kits.

And while the blue Pandorians may end up mourning their loss to The Hurt Locker, we’ll be celebrating…..because at the end of the day, it’s not really about who took the Oscar home, it’s about which consulting firm made it to the red carpet!

Special thanks to Kevin and John for helping with the install and sharing this video!

At Monsoon, we may never be able to rap like the pantless knights but, we still like to think of ourselves as hardcore apple fanboys. We own 3 generations of every Apple product, camp overnight for new product launches and celebrate popcorn-hour each time Steve Jobs gives his keynote.

With every piece of digital loveliness made by Apple, being a part of this brand and culture fits right into our techno-chic lifestyle and gives us endless gratification. But the ultimate high for us is to see our work on Apple products. We’ve been developing applications for the iPhone for quite some time but we recently had the opportunity to work on an app with another one of our favorite partners, South By Southwest. SXSW brings together some of the world’s most creative artists, speakers and entrepreneurs and my business partner Sandeep has previously had the opportunity to captivate audiences with interactive panels on Outsourcing.

There is no other conference that fosters creative growth and networking opportunities the way South by does. Which is why we’re so excited to announce SXSW® Play, the official media discovery app for the SXSW 2010 Music, Film, and Interactive conferences. The app features a wealth of rich media from musicians, films, and interactive panels that will be featured at the festival in Austin, TX from March 12-21. With this app at your fingertips, you’ll never be bored in line again!

Features of the application:

You can download the free application from the Appstore and find out if you’re an Apple fanboy here.

Monsoon partnered with the NBA and HP to create a touch app that allows you to customize an avatar and create your NBA alter ego. As huge basketball fans (tragically, Warriors fans), we are really excited to announce this application. Let’s face it: this is the closest a group of Indian guys will ever get to the NBA!

The app can be seen during jam session week at HP’s digital playground from Thursday through Sunday (Feb 11- Feb 14) at the new Dallas Cowboys Stadium in Texas.

Here’s a sneak preview and we’ll share more pictures and videos next week.

Until recently, I often wondered if the cluttered, loud websites that dominated Indian cyberspace were indicative of a cultural difference in design aesthetics.

Although I knew that the average Indian consumer doesn’t want every pixel on their screen to be blinking or covered with Bollywood gossip, I thought that maybe they had more of a tolerance for it.   In making Indian websites louder and busier, perhaps Indian designers were reacting (or overreacting) to what their audience wanted?

This was exciting to me, because it meant that a competing design sensibility could emerge from talented agencies in Mumbai and Bangalore.   Indian web design could emerge as a wholly distinct movement and compete with the current standard of minimalism synonymous with Web 2.0.

Alas, I was wrong.  With the clean, sensible redesign of the Hindu, it seems that Indian brands are moving towards the Western standard.  There will be no Indian web design movement for now.

On the bright side, reading Indian news no longer makes me want to hide under my desk in fear of clashing colors and flashing banners.

Monsoon Company built a software application for the HP Touchsmart called Notes.  The software has been really successful for HP, and we’ve always been proud of the work we did on it.  But, after seeing this, we’re blown away.  A Palo Alto school is using our software to help autistic children communicate for the first time.  Unreal!

Siddharth Rao, co-founder of prolific Indian design firm Web Chutney, hands out a biting (and well-deserved) review of Indian publishers and their user interfaces, in a blog entry titled “Indian Publishers have the shittiest interfaces for sure“. Gotta love an Indian blog that dishes it out cleanly:

For all the silly money thats going into the online business in india, most people dont get some basics right in spite (of) truck loads of cash - Designing User friendly interfaces and navigation is one such thing.

Although he is talking specifically about Indian publishers, he also hits on an issue that is more pertinent to outsourcing: the dearth of good designers. Why is it so hard to find a talented, experienced, Indian web designer? Siddharth thinks it has to do with how easy it is to claim that you are one.

Any guy with 3500 Rs takes up a course in Galgotia Computer learning and claims to be a web designer. And anyone with a English Hons from Uthkal University becomes a content editor or even worse information architect.

Yup. This is why it’s hard to find good people. It is why the world doesn’t trust Indian design. And, it’s why Rediff looks like Yahoo leaning over the toilet after one too many Kingfishers.

Tangent: Although Siddharth’s writing is often wordy, he concisely shares my sentiments when it comes to ‘Information Architecture’:

User Interface design mission statements should be simple - give users the shit they need and give it fast.

Exactly. Skip the year you need to get a Masters in Information Architecture and just internalize the above sentence. While you’re at it, stop calling yourself an Information Architectect. People who design buildings deserve to own the word Architect. No matter how late you stayed up tweaking that website, your job is just easier. Besides, you make more money than your architect friends do - at least let them have their word.

Worldmapper.org warps world maps based on factors such as birth rates, GDP, and population. It amazes me how much more significant it feels to see a visual representation of something rather than to read facts and figures (which is why Al Gore climbing a ladder to show the rise of global warming in an Inconvenient Truth was an excellent touch).

Check out how fat India looks based on its population in 2050.

Kinda scary or exciting, depending on your feelings around volume and glasses of water (not to mention the presence of heavy metals in the water, the temperature of the water, the availability of that water, and perhaps the politics around access to that water - makes me want a coconut.)

Wanna see the US get fat? Check out their maps based on carbon emissions or GDP.

One of the few areas where Indian IT often fails to provide a competitive advantage is design. Subjective and highly specific, design is difficult to price and dilutes quickly when scaled.

Also, general Indian aesthetics often lead to earthy tones and cluttered interfaces (though this is changing - witness the simplifying of the Times of India website and of course, the many talented Indian designers beginning to gain international recognition).

Another disadvantage for India is that the evolution of cutting edge design is an urban phenomenon, that centers on a fast-paced group of NY/SF/London (etc.) design houses. The eager desi photoshop-jockey usually can’t compete with the capuccino-sipping, black-cashmere-sweater-wearing, buzzword-making, fashion-show-attending glamour-exuding New York designer.

Unless of course, the desi photoshop jockey meditates regularly and gets his/her nourishment by staring at the sun. Smita Narang taps the ancient Hindu “science of direction” to create websites that take the user “to the destination of peace, prosperity and happiness”.

Wired thought it would be entertaining to ask Smita for her thoughts on the geek iBible, slashdot. I think it might be entertaining to ask other designers for their thoughts on Smita’s website…sorry, Smita, but I’m not really feeling the vastu. And, I worry about the dubious effects these types of claims have on the Indian design industry. Perhaps ancient science does have a lot to offer to web design - I just hope that this isn’t Atkins for the web, desi style. Get more thoughts from Patrix or see Slashdot comments around WebVastu.