Smart search

On some blog this week I read about repeated failures in UI design - mistakes that keep getting made in multiple OSes multiple times.

While I can't find that article again (bookmark Michael, bookmark!), the author mentioned that sorting of strings in a pull-down or a list-view was typically broken - multiple spaces, common words such as "The" and "A" shouldn't be considered when sorting etc. He held up iTunes which did a better job.

So I wrote some code last night to do it. Wasn't too hard - I'll make it public once I clean it up some. A good break from my day job which right now is reading and writing documents :-(

/tech/code | 02 Dec 2004 | #

Generosity

When I published my Christmas 2004 wish list I did so as a bit of a joke. I mean, who would just buy you something because I publicly mentioned it?

Well someone did. I'm now the owner of Secrets and Lies by Schneier. The person who bought it for me wanted to remain anonymous, but they forget about the billing address associated with the order :-) If Amazon had labelled it as a gift, I wouldn't have looked - but it sort of surprised me that an Amazon package turned up unexpectedly in the mail. I won't name the generous person here except to say thank you K for your generosity.

This is an interesting example of how small and interconnected the world has become. I'm sitting in Chicago (UTC-0600), my wish list on my blog sitting in Adelaide (UTC+1030) was read by a computer geek somewhere in the world, and via Amazon (NY state?) they purchased and shipped something to me. I find that really weird, but also really cool.

/tech/misc | 02 Dec 2004 | #