Have you ever seen someone who, instead of putting a web address into their browser address bar as you’d expect, chooses to put the address into Google and do a search on it, then click the first link?? People who do this bizarre series of actions to view a website I now call “Google Surfers”.
A chap phoned me at work the other day to ask where all his websites had gone… I didn’t really get what he meant so I got his screen up and asked him to show me and he proceeded to type “www.” into the Google search box which, with Google Suggest being turned on immediately starting suggesting results such as www.facebook.com www.bbc.co.uk etc. and the chap said he’d never even been on Facebook before! It turned out what he was after was his auto-complete history because that’s how he browses the net.
And it’s wrong in so many ways. Why not press the “I’m Feeling Lucky” button which would accomplish the same as clicking Search then clicking the first result? Why not actually type a web address into the address bar in the first place!? Why not bookmark frequently visited pages so you don’t even have to type anything in at all?!? What if the first result on the URL searched for isn’t the site they’re after by some random occurrence on Google which could happen? The mind boggles.
What’s gone wrong in the way people are taught to use the Internet which makes them think that’s the way everyone does it?
iPhone not so great after all?
http://pleasefixtheiphone.com/
Found this website just now.. It’s a list of the iPhone users’ top gripes with their beloved device. As I quickly scanned down the list, I saw many things which my Nokia can do quite happily, yet which frustrate iPhone users on a daily basis.
#1 Copy and paste. The N95 can do copy/paste, no problem. It takes a bit of getting used to, but it can do it.
#2 Tilt to view emails in landscape. Once again, the N95 screen will go landscape in any application, even Email. An old firmware upgrade to the N95 8gb has enabled screen auto-rotation.
#3 Ability to view Flash content. That has again been added in a firmware upgrade of the N95 8gb’s firmware.
#4 Unwanted application icons can’t be hidden. I can just bury icons of applications I don’t use in a folder on the menu so they’re not in the way all the time.
#5 Can’t use the iPhone 3G Internet connection to browse on a Macbook. But the N95 lets me access the Internet on my Asus.
I could go on and on… Guess the iPhone isn’t so great after all.
Published on
August 11, 2008 in
Blog and Rants.
Today I…
woke up,
went back to sleep,
woke up again,
got up,
had a shower,
made lunch,
walked to work,
worked,
walked home,
watched a bit of tv and…
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MJ Ray wrote about a couple of things which puzzled him a while back…
Here are a couple of things that puzzle me.
1. Templates
Why is the ~/Templates/ directory empty on a default Ubuntu install? If there is a sensible reason, by all means comment and tell me. But if you right-click on the Desktop or somewhere in Nautilus you’re able to create a folder, or a document but since the Templates directory is empty, you can only create an empty file. What use is that?
sionide@zombie:~$ ls /home/sionide/Templates/
OpenOffice Calc.ods OpenOffice Math.odf Text Document.txt
OpenOffice Draw.odg OpenOffice Writer.odt
OpenOffice Impress.odp Shell Script.sh
As you can see, my Templates directory is full of files, they’re just filenames really – it’s the extension which counts and means that the “Create document” menu is filled with those file types as options of files I can create.. Seems silly to ship with a feature kind of half missing.
2. Bluetooth
I’ve already discussed this, so Bluetooth is supported out of the box but not properly. A pretty normal use case isn’t catered for meaning that from what I can tell, you have to install a few other things before it’ll let you send or receive files from another bluetooth device. It’s another half-a-feature..
–
Perhaps these are ideas I should submit to the Ubuntu Brainstorm 
Time for the first of many rants on sionide.net, inspired after finding this rather interesting little gem on Facebook…
http://www.facebook.com/mobile/?phonebook
and I wish more people knew about it! I don’t know how many times I’ve been invited to those ridiculous groups where some bumbling fool has lost or had their mobile stolen or dropped it down the toilet and so requires everyone’s phone numbers. If you ever want to have a drunken laugh prank calling people at 4am, go on Facebook search for “phone numbers” and narrow the search to Groups only. Displaying 1 – 10 out of over 500 group results for: phone numbers Yes, people actually post their supposedly private phone numbers on publicly available web pages?! Dial 141 followed by a random phone number and tell whoever picks up they’re an idiot for posting their number on Facebook.
Years ago, you’d need to purchase an odd looking gadget to backup the contents of your sim card. These days, phones are smart, they can connect to the Internet and back themselves up! But I appreciate not everyone is going to bother with backing up.
So if everyone used the built-in mobile phonebook feature of Facebook, put their mobile numbers on their profile and restricted that information to Friends Only (assuming, of course, people don’t actually friend randoms) then the world social network would be a much better place.
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