Will Smith: „The keys to life: running and reading”

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Some things to add: Reading is nothing without reflection. If you only get stuff in, you don’t go through the necessary processes to do change. Some people advise others, for this, to stop and think (1) and put into practice what you read (2). I advise another thing – teach others. Give presentations with what you learn. Even better, write. Keep a blog. Make it public, if it makes you any better. More on this – Writing Is Thinking · An A List Apart Article. Will Smith says if you are hurt when you run, you should keep running, and this is why running is good. I’m thinking more in health terms – do sports, do any sports, keep doing that sport. At times, even if it mildly hurts, but don’t overdo it, and always ask for an external, proper, opinion on this.

„A religious person does something wrong”. Ooo, that’s complicated to analyze. This is quite simple, actually.

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A. On a very simple level, you can judge things like this:

  • You have ethics, moral code, religion. You do good.
  • You live without them, you do good or you do less good. You have options.

B. On a little more complicated level:

  • You have ethics, moral code, religion. You try to do good. You fail & do something wrong.
  • You live without them, you do good or you do less good. You have options.

Most people stop at this. „Uuu, look at that person! That person has a moral compass, abides by the rules, has a moral code, follows a religion. If that person does something wrong, the system is wrong”. Actually, I think that it’s quite natural for the religious person to do wrong. It’s a very simple step.

C. I think there’s a third level to all these, in which nothing is what it seems, anymore. I’ll detail this in this article.

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Seeing all the countries in the world

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„Graham David Hughes (born 1979) is a British adventurer, filmmaker, television presenter and Guinness World Records holder. Graham successfully visited all United Nations member states without flying.” (source) See the video below: Not a big fan: He spent only a small amount of time in most of the countries. If your objective is just to check a country for a few hours, then to checklist it, OK, he got that. But, generally, people travel with more reasons than check listing – „Oh, I’ll visit them all”. Yes, I admire his perseverance and efforts, and I envy his success. But with all this „let’s get it over with, there are hundreds of countries to visit, hurry!”-philosophy, I’m not a big fan.

Each Windows installed has its own specificities

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Sometimes, I install Windows-es. They’re all sort of them – XP, 7, 8, different service packs for each of them, x64 and x86. Windows 7 with SP1 on x64 is a different thing than Windows 7 on x86 with no SP. Some programs work, some don’t. The thing is, you can’t predict things easily. You install Last FM and don’t know if it will work, and if it will work correctly. Again, the thing is lots of programs are not installed right away with Windows. So, you install Windows, you install the other software and, surprise!, after a month of usage you discover you need some other programs. And these don’t work. I don’t have a clear solution to this. I just wanted to clarify some things.

Productivity tip: start small

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In marriage, you first go through engagement. Even engagement starts after meeting someone. All these meetings generally start with the first date. The first date starts from doing something which gets a positive emotion. You see, in all these steps: The first emotion – the first date – the following dates – the engagement – perhaps moving in together – marriage – children. People first take a taste. A sample. They see how it’s like. I think this is mostly a productivity reason – prior to making the big step, you take a small step and see how it’s like. Prior to making the perfect situation, you make a not-so-perfect and try to perfect it. In day-to-day processes this could mean, instead of hiring someone with a 3 years contract, you have a trial of three months. Instead of signing a big contract, sign a small one first. Instead of doing it all at once, do it in small steps. You want to build a PC from scratch? How about, prior to buying all the pieces and then seeing what it’s like, you first watch an YouTube video with this? You want to build a house? How about you first get an idea of what construction is by helping a friend doing home improvement, to get a taste of the process? Some things can’t be tested. You can’t test how it’s like to fly a plane. You can have an idea, but for the process itself you just need to do it. You can’t „partially” …

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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.