Language: English

The difference between Facebook and Hi5, in 2014

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Let’s say you want to go through your friends list on Facebook (a very popular social network) and Hi5 (an ex-glory). Facebook shows you a list of your best friends, people with whom you interact the most. Hi5 shows you an alphabetical order and gives you the task of finding what’s relevant to you. What do you think Google shows you when you Google “fejk sdfjk vsdn dfkj“. Does it show you “we don’t have any relevant results”? No, it says: “Showing results for fjk fjk vsdn dfkj” (this is an altered version of my query), instead of saying: “No results found for fejk sdfjk vsdn dfkj”. So, instead of saying “we found nothing, how about you refine your search”, Google refines the search for you, takes a chance by changing what you have typed, and gives you the right result. You may say “but this is minor, it’s a small thing what Facebook / Google do”. At this single level, perhaps. But you think of all the thing Google tries to get right from the first time, without waiting for human intervention, if you think how much effort Facebook puts on trying to give you exactly what you expect of it right the first time, then the changes are not, by all means, minor. I dare saying that Facebook is much more successful than Hi5 (and others) and Google is much better (the user usage prove it) than Bing (and others) due to small things like these, on a higher level.

Small usability tip – page numbers in pagination displayed on the web site and on the URL should match

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I see this from time to time – a web site has a pagination are on the bottom of the page: , but when I click on page 2 (I start navigation from page 1, the homepage), the URL, instead of changing to something like: http://www.website.com/navigation?page=2 , changes into: http://www.website.com/navigation?page=1. I understand the IT reasons behind it (having a page 1 as an actual page 1 may lead to duplicate content, if not handled properly, and the first paginated result is, actually, page 2), but it’s illogical to click on page 3 and the URL to change on page 2. It happens more often than not. People expect symmetry.  

Duplicate content from a products feed list (e.g. – affiliate RSS products links) – how to handle it?

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  • Let’ say you have an e-commerce web site and you have a products feed from a distributor of your products. Is it OK to list the feed from the products provider, exactly as you are being provided with it?
  • Or let’s say you have a big web site and you distribute your products to other web sites (price comparing web sites, affiliate clients). Is it OK to just take the title & description & photo of your products and give it away freely to others?
  • Or let’ say you start an e-commerce web site with thousands of products. Is it OK to just copy & paste the product description from other web sites?

See the answers to these questions below.

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Just-launched blogs

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Hi, I launched some new blogs (which are, somehow, connected to what I write in here): olivianbreda.com – Internet marketing, general, English. betterish.com – how to do things better. audithink.com – SEO & Usability audits. I also write, in Romanian, on olivian.ro, cetd.ro, lumeaseoppc.ro, seogan.ro (contributor) and in Romanian and English on oliii.com. Find subscription options on olivian.weebly.com.

How to restore a Lenovo IdeaTab K3 Lynx 11.6-Inch 64 GB Tablet?

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You may try first automatic repair.  If not, try to boot: Press and hold the power button until the tablet turns off. Press and hold the following buttons (in sequence) to boot into the BIOS: Power button > Volume Up > Voume Down. When done correctly, it will show you the BIOS screen. But instead of booting from a “real” Windows bootable CD, you need either: A repair disk provided by Lenovo (you need to contact Customer Support for this, but I failed in getting a CD from them). A repair disk made previously in Windows 8, by following these steps (you should do this as a pre-emptive measure).

Memories (on paper)

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I was going through some memories in school, and I thought of the following – what’s the ratio between costs & benefits of doing: A group photo at the beginning / end of the school year / work year, given directly at the opening / end of that year. A photo with the participants at an event, be it low profile (a meeting in town with friends), or high profile (school banquet, Christmas party, New Year party, birthday, wedding, baptism). To me, the cost & effort is rather low, but the benefits are large. Also, it’s important that the memory is physical (on paper, in my hands). Sure, digital is fine, also, but physical is much better. There are options.

Why should you monitor your actions online?

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Rescue-Time-Android-App

I do this:

  • RescueTime monitors pretty much every action I take, and while the data is locked in there (you need a premium account to see your own data in full details), I am confident I can/will take it out sometime in the future.
  • Last FM records every song I listen to on my profile.
  • I have a keylogger which saves every keystroke.
  • I have a clipboard utility which automatically saves the clipboard into a log file.

Why is this helpful?

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How to revoke access to a delegated GMail address you own, after you reach the limit of 10 emails?

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Gmail has a nice feature: You can delegate access to your Gmail to another person so they can read, send, and delete messages on your behalf. For example, you can delegate e-mail rights to an admin in your organization, or you could delegate your personal email access to your spouse. The delegate can also access the other person’s contacts by clicking the Contacts link. Clicking the To,Cc, or Bcc links in the mail compose window will also bring up your contacts. You won’t be able to give anyone permission to change your account password or account settings, or chat on your behalf. You can specify up to 10 users. Google Apps for Business, Education, and Government customers can specify up to 25 users. (source & details) What happens when you get to 10 emails for which you have access? You can’t add other ones anymore. How to solve this?  Let’s say that emails 1@gmail.com, 2@gmail.com, 3@gmail.com … 10@gmail.com all give access to defaultemail@gmail.com. If you want to add 11@gmail.com, you can’t. The solution is to login as 1@gmail.com (or any other one in that list) and go to Settings => Accounts, and in there remove the granted access. In this way, you will be able to add 11@gmail.com, replacing the missing address. Unlike granting access, which takes a while to process, removing the granted access is instantly done.

Love Actually (2003)

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Love Actually (2003)

I just watched Love Actually (2003). Quite a nice movie. Good watch. Some thoughts: Love is universal. I saw the movie and thought of different episodes in my life. It’s a difficult thing, not turning things into some cliché. Most of the things we do in love are embarrassing, to a degree. Actually, I’d go one step further and say that most things we do are embarrassing. It is a realistic movie. At times, porn-realistic. I also liked this song from the movie: