Google Reader wishlist

I really enjoy the new version of Google Reader. The initial version was awful, but they've completely revamped it to behave like most other RSS feed readers.

The one problem I have with Google Reader is categorizing my feeds. As far as I can tell, the only way to put a feed into one of your folders is to go to "Manage subscriptions", find the feed you want to change in the list, and use the "Change folders..." combo box.

What I'd really love to see is drag-and-drop feed categorization. Bloglines currently supports this; you can reorder and move feeds by clicking and dragging them.

Another good place to set a feed's category would be in the "Feed settings..." combo box that is displayed while viewing the feed. Currently, the only option you get is "Unsubscribe". An option in this combo box to set a folder for the feed would be great!

Are you sure you want to read this post?

You've been working on your TPS Report for hours, but you've finally finished. All too eagerly, you go to close Microsoft Word. A dialog pops up with a question:

Phew! That was close. Good thing you were warned, otherwise you would have just closed Word and lost all the changes since the last time you saved. You click "Yes", and your work is saved.

One can see, from this example, how useful confirmation messages can be. Before performing an action that could potentially ruin your day, most applications are kind enough to say, "Hey buddy, are you sure you want to do that?". This is a Good Thing.

Some applications, however, take this to a level that is beyond helpful and approaching madness. It's almost as if some programmers love dialog boxes so much that they make sure to insert one whenever they can. I once used an application that, when I added a new row to a table I was editing, it asked me, "Are you sure you want to add a new row?". Phew! That was close. Good thing I was warned, otherwise I might have to then remove the newly-added row (undoubtedly with another confirmation message) to undo that particularly disastrous change.

Exaggerated examples aside, you don't really need to get confirmation from your user if the action he is about to perform has no ill or destructive effects. If I add a new row to a table, what's the big deal? Just add it. If I realize that I mistakenly added an extra row, I can just delete the extra row. No harm done. On the same note, removing an empty table row that I just added probably won't destroy anything I've done.

Advice to students (and people who help them)

All too often, I see a message on a message board or Usenet group asking for help, and upon reading the entire message find that it's a student, and his/her question is a homework assignment, verbatim, like this one on comp.lang.java.programmer. As a recent student myself (I've only been out of college about 3 years now), this is an issue I feel strongly about.

While the community of newsgroups and forum sites are certainly the best resource for newcomers looking for help, asking for a complete solution to get your homework done is only going to hurt you in the long run. Programming assignments such as these aren't intended only to get you to solve that particular problem, but to also learn and adopt the skills required to craft a solution. Getting someone on Usenet to code the whole thing for you only fulfills one of those requirements, and in my opinion it's the less important one.

My advice to students in this situation? Of course you should ask for help. But before copying and pasting your assignment into a message, think about what part(s) of the problem you are specifically having trouble with, and make that the topic of your question. Not only will you avoid being flamed, you will also be more likely to get helpful replies.

As the title of this post indicates, I also have advice for people who reply to these posts, offering help. Please don't give the full solution. Like I've said above, this will only hurt the student in the long run. You should be as helpful as you can (remember when you had newbie questions?) but don't give the whole answer away.

More information on this important topic:

• http://mindprod.com/jgloss/homework.html - A great article written by Roedy Green
  

Time and Date module is back!

My Time and Date module, which apparently had become a very popular module for the Google personalized homepage, has been resurrected! Adam Sah and Ryo Takahashi from Google were able to recover the module from their caches.

Its entry in the content directory has not yet been updated, but it can be directly added to a Google homepage. When adding content to your homepage, click "Add by URL" and enter the URL http://jattardi.googlepages.com/timedate.xml.