Upon joining the hyper-local social network "Nextdoor" - users are asked to verify their postal address. One option they offer is to have them send you a card in the post. So, I signed up, entered my address, and waited. A few days later, this popped through my letterbox. A few random thoughts... ✅ This is a nifty way to lightly verify someone's address! A service could ask for scans of utility bills, or driving licences, but this is a lot simpler. ✅ Bulk mailing seems to cost around 25p…
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I've written before about Solipsist design - those services which have been designed to work only for a very specific type of family. I was taking a look at Google's "Family" proposition - which allows users to share their purchases with other family members. What I found didn't impress me. Terence Eden is on Mastodon@edentFile under "Falsehoods Programmers Believe About Families." pic.x.com/3vgiq0ursf❤️ 574💬 38🔁 008:01 - Mon 27 March 2017 Let's take a look at some of the more baroque requir…
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This is a (silly) attempt to fix some of the shortcomings of JSON. Hence it is named after the goddess of music. It uses C0 Control Characters Here is an example: ␜ ␁ This is a KYLI document ␂ ␝ GroupName ␞ data ␟ value ␛ Comments are supported too! They can be multilined easily. ␙ I've used Unicode Control Pictures so you can see what's happening. In reality, ␜ is  - which on your display looks like . Why KYLI is 100x better than crummy J…
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This is a blog post about user interfaces. I was wandering along the beach one day, when I noticed some clever chap had drawn some arrows in the sand. Can you guess where they led? The more astute of you will have realised that these are not human drawn arrows. They are, of course, footprints left by birds. A bird's foot is a "backwards" arrow. The apex points to the bird's rear. It is conceivable that had birds evolved greater intelligence and developed a writing system then their → …
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Twitter has recently improved the accessibility of its site. When uploading an image, a user can add alt text - a short description of the image for people with visual impairments. Here's an example: Terence Eden is on Mastodon@edentThis is a test to see if alt-text in images is searchable on Twitter.alpaca omnithorp pic.x.com/jhgcsaxpkd❤️ 1💬 0🔁 010:37 - Sun 19 February 2017 If you take a look at the HTML source, you can see that I've added a unique string as the alt text. That should make …
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Is email dead? I don't think so - but I know lots of people who either don't have an email account or deliberately don't check it. And why should they? Is email a requirement for modern life? All the major chat apps - WhatsApp, Line, Signal, Wire, Skype - only require a mobile phone number. Hey presto I can communicate with anyone around the world. No email required. But, suppose I wish to engage in a more public social network - can I do that without an email address? Absolutely! The…
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Amazon now let you secure your account with Two-Factor-Authentication (2FA). This means you can log on with a one-time password which changes every minute. For some reason, Amazon call it Two-Step-Verification (2SV) - but it is exactly the same as all the other 2FA solutions. The Process There's no direct link to 2FA settings. So the process is slightly convoluted. Assuming you are signed in to your Amazon account, you need to Go to https://www.amazon.co.uk/your-account Click on "Login & …
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This morning I received an email which made my heart sink. In order to co-ordinate things better, we'd like to invite you to our exclusive Slack Channel! A variety of rude words danced around my brain. I think this makes the, what, 9th? 10th? Slack that I'm part of. Don't get me wrong, I like Slack as a service - but it only really works if you have One Slack Team To Rule Them All. I've just got a new tablet - so I need to sign in to Slack TEN TIMES! How is that an acceptable user…
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A warning to programmers - try to understand how people will use your error codes. This morning, I was confronted with a rather bemusing error message on my WordPress blog: Ok, so this should "never happen" and yet somehow it has. I wonder what on earth the error code means? I selected the error code and Googled it! I just copied and pasted the error message into Google and got back a set of meaningless results. Why? Most search engines treat the minus sign as an "excludes" operator. …
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We've all been faced with this screen, right? You haven't logged in to a website for a while, so it prompts you to change your password. sigh Annoying but probably necessary. The problem was, every time I tried to change my password, it told me that my old password was invalid. The one that I'd just used to log in. I use the incredible LastPass Password Manager - so I knew I wasn't typing it incorrectly. It took a few tries, but I finally figured out what was going wrong. When I'd set…
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After much kerfuffle, the world has finally got used to the new Google logo. Well, almost. My eye is continually caught by the poor contrast of the yellow "O" against its background. Take a look... This is Google's default logo on its regular grey background. The contrast ratio between the yellow and grey is 1.50. That fails to meet current accessibility guidelines. This is just awful - I find it quite hard to read, especially for long passages. The text seems to shimmer about the…
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Another in my occasional series on the usability of toilets! It's hard wandering around seeing the mistakes which are made by designers. Perhaps it's poor keming on fonts, or a hotel room light switch which makes no sense, or - in my case - bogs. Lots of toilets incorporate a "dual flush." Press one button to unleash a deluge sufficient to sink all but the hardiest of bowel-movements, press a different button to release a trickle designed to gently dilute the user's micturations. I've often …
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