Usability question: Is it better for a form to auto-detect the credit card type from its number, or have the user select it as an error check?
(Consensus on Twitter and Facebook was to have the user select it.)
Category: Tech
Browse-o-Smart
After a week of playing with Chrome as my main browser, I’m back to Firefox. Chrome’s fast, but sometimes too much like Breathe-o-Smart.
Me: Why won’t you show me the full (relatively long) URL of this link?
Chrome: You won’t want to look at the full URL with Chrome!
Me: But what if I do?
Chrome: Trust me, you won’t. You’ll never need a URL again.
Me: But what if I need to look at it just this once?
Chrome: Well, I suppose you could actually follow the link. Or copy it and paste it into a text editor. If you really must have the URL. Not that you’d want to, of course.
Me: Why should I have to do that just to look at a URL? *headdesk*
Twitter is…
Twitter is never having to say TL;DR
Manic Monday
First, some linkblogging…
- The Spam Primer has been “completely revamped.”
- Mars Express Orbiter catches video of moons Phobos and Deimos.
And then the “fun” started.
- Me: I’m going to focus on project X today!
Computer needed for project X: I’m going to lock up today!
Me: Argh! - Someone thought it would be a good idea to cover “Wonderful Christmastime?” 😯 (For the record: Shazam says it was Hilary Duff.)
- OK, after 3½ hours stuck at 74%, I think I can assume chkdsk is stalled. *grumble*
- Ate some blackberries I’d forgotten about from a week ago. Good news: I only threw out 1! Bad news: I should’ve thrown out 2. Blech!
- Chkdsk round 3 is at 55% on Stage 5 of 5. Going to call it a night & hope my PC runs tomorrow. (According to Facebook, this posted at 5:55pm!)
Computer update: Disk check finished overnight, seems OK. Ran a backup just in case, but got some work done on that project!
First Look Through Google Goggles
I tried out Google’s new Goggles app. Basically it lets you use the camera on an Android phone to do an image-based search. The examples include landmarks, book covers, artwork, logos, contact info, and places.
So I played with it for a bit at home tonight. It’s good at picking out book covers and logos, if you’ve got good lighting and a clear image. 50-50 at landmarks, at least when taking pictures of my monitor. In a couple of cases, it actually picked out the exact photo as a match. It’s not so good at objects, even obvious ones like a Coke can. I’ll have to try it out in the real world next.
Cylon Spammers
I’m seeing a lot of word salad spam comments this weekend. It’s entertaining to read them in the vocal style of a Cylon hybrid.
Wednesday Bits and Bytes
I’m trying to remember when the BOFH attitude prevalent on antispam mailing lists didn’t bother me. It’s weird how suddenly reporting spam turns into a bad thing because someone (else) might make money with that knowledge.