Tag Archives: books

The Miracle of Google

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How did we live without it?

We have the power to find virtually anything on the Internet. And that power is called Google Search.

Moments ago, I found a question in my FAQ system (horray!) from a reader of one of my long out-of-print books (darn!). He asked a question about an error message he’d seen (that I’d never encountered) while he was attempting to build additional administrative pages for a FileMaker Pro CDML-published database.

The book he’d bought is called Database Publishing with FileMaker Pro on the Web and it dates back to April 1998. It’s long out of print. If I recall correctly — I’m not at my office so I can’t consult my copy of the book — the book covered FileMaker Pro 3, which was the first version of FileMaker to support Web publishing. FileMaker Pro is now in version 8.5 and no longer supports CDML for Web publishing. CDML was the language and technology that FileMaker, Inc. bought from the Lasso folks to make FileMaker Pro Web publishing work.

So it should come as no surprise that I was unable to answer his question. And unable to replicate it, of course.

But Google has all the answers and it proved it again yesterday. I did a Google search for CDML Error 102 and Google came up with a list of Web pages that discussed the problem. I suggested this as a way for the person with the question to find his answer. (It would be silly for me to repeat what was on those pages when he could just as easily find the same pages himself.)

Google is like this. Have a question? Google it. If you enter the right search phrase, Google will come up with a Web site that answers the question. I think I can report a 90% results rate. And considering some of the questions I come up with sometimes, that’s pretty darn good.

The trick, of course, is to come up with the right search phrase. Googling a single word won’t usually get the results you seek. You need to come up a string of words that succinctly describes what you are searching for. In the example above, if I’d entered FileMaker Error, a much more general search phrase, I seriously doubt whether I’d see any results about the specific CDML error code the reader was getting. If a search phrase doesn’t get desired results, rethink it and try another phrase. In my example, I got the results I was seeking right away, so a second try wasn’t necessary.

With the amount of junk out there on the Web — including, some people might say, sites like this one — we’re very fortunate to have search technology like Google’s available to us. It helps cut through the chaff to get to the important stuff we want (or need) to read.

The Art of Fiction

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A Guide for Writers and Readers.

The Art of Fiction: A Guide for Writers and ReadersI’m a pretty big fan of Ayn Rand, having read The Fountainhead and Atlas Shrugged at least two times each. (I’m due for another round.) So when I found The Art of Fiction, a book edited by Tore Boeckmann from audiotapes of Rand’s 1958 lectures to about 20 friends and acquaintances, I grabbed it. I’m now making my way through it, page by page.

The book covers Rand’s ideas about writing and reading fiction. I’ve just finished the first two chapters, and so far, it’s mostly from the writer’s point of view. And I have to admit that it’s taught me a whole different way of thinking about writing fiction.

In Chapter 1: Writing and the Subconscious, she discusses how writers draw upon information stored in their subconscious for descriptions and mood-setting words. A writer who can write well without struggling for the words knows what he’s trying to say and has mastered his subconscious.

In Chapter 2: Literature as an Art Form, she pretty much bashes writers who break the rules and attempt to write “nonobjectively,” resulting in text that’s impossible (or nearly so) to understand. She cites Gertrude Stein and James Joyce as examples. She asserts that a writer should choose every word carefully to convey the writer’s exact meaning. She also approaches the topic of “show, don’t tell” by discussing concretes (descriptions) and abstractions (the message the author is trying to communicate).

The next chapter is on Theme, which I’ve always struggled with. It’ll be interesting to see how she tackles the topic.

When I’m finished reading, I may update this entry or compose a new one with my final verdict. It’s not a quick read — Ayn Rand never is. But I am enjoying it. And learning.

Searching for Myself

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I’m finding myself in the most unexpected places.

I’ve been having a tiny bit of trouble with this Web site lately — it appears that folks are accessing the printable version of these pages more often than the blog version. That got me thinking that Google, which accounts for about 60% of my total hits, was listing the printable version of this site’s pages in its search results.

So to test this theory, I Googled myself.

I didn’t find confirmation of the problem, but I did find this page on the Bookpool Web site: Bookpool: Maria Langer. It lists my Top 10 favorite computer books. I vaguely remember writing something about my top 10 books a while back. It must have been a long while back because none of the books on the list are very recent.

I also discovered electronic versions of my Quicken books online: Maria Langer eBooks. Hope I’m getting royalties for those.

And I’m even in Wikipedia, but just as a stub. I removed an outdated link there.

I guess AllExperts on About.com has no qualms about stealing info from Wikipedia, because the same exact entry is on their page for me.

And there’s a really old picture and bunch of info about me on Ilene Hoffman’s site. (Anyone know if Ilene is still around?)

And, of course, there are a bunch of links to shop for me. Take that any way you like. One even promises “Instant access to Maria Langer and more.” I wouldn’t bother clicking that link if I were you. Trust me: it won’t work.

Strange, the places I turn up.

Of course, this isn’t helping me solve the problem I turned to Google to solve. Back to work!

Wordplay

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A book about crossword puzzles?

I used to be a crossword puzzle lover. It wasn’t because I loved words as much as because I had an assignment at my job that gave me lots of free time in the middle of the day. Every day, I’d do the crossword puzzles in Newsday (Long Island’s paper), the Daily News, and the New York Times. When you do three newspaper puzzles a day, five days a week, you start getting good at it. And it starts getting boring. So before that assignment was done — it only lasted about three months — actually started making crossword puzzles. That’s when you know you’ve got it bad.

(A side note here. Around the same time, I used to play Scrabble with a friend of mine’s mother and her friend. They were incredible Scrabble players and I learned a lot from them. I also made a list of and practically memorized all of the acceptable 2- and 3-letter words in the The Official Scrabble Player’s Dictionary. This is the key to winning at Scrabble, as I learned (to their surprise one day). That and having a decent vocabulary, of course.)

Anyway, that assignment ended and I didn’t have time to do crossword puzzles every day. I’d occasionally do them when trapped on an airliner flying across the country, but that was about it.

Time passed. I started listening to Podcasts, including NPR’s Sunday Puzzle, with the New York Times puzzle master, Will Shortz. Will, of course, began plugging an independent film called Wordplay that had just been made about the American Crossword Puzzle Championship. It sounded interesting. Not interesting enough to trek down to an independent theather in Phoenix, mind you, but certainly interesting enough to add to my Netflix queue.

Wordplay: The Official Companion BookWill also started giving away copies of the companion book, Wordplay, as prizes for the Sunday Puzzle winners. The other day, while in a Barnes & Noble bookstore in Flagstaff, I saw the book on the shelf and, on a whim, bought it.

It was a quick read. I learned a lot of things.

First of all, there are a lot of people that are seriously into crossword puzzles. In my crossword puzzle heydays, I was just starting to approach the fringe of how these people live. I’m kind of glad that assignment ended; I don’t think I’d want my life to revolve around crossword puzzles, as the lives of some of these folks do.

Second, did you know that the New York Times crossword puzzle is easiest on Monday, progressing to a higher level of difficulty as the days of the week pass? Saturday’s is the toughest and Sunday’s, although largest, is only about as tough as one from a Wednesday or Thursday.

How does the toughness get established? Not by the fill — that’s the letters and black boxes in the grid. By the clues. Straightforward, “dictionary definition” clues are easiest. Clues that rely on puns or wordplay are the toughest. That’s Will Shortz’s job — he doesn’t create the puzzles, but he edits them for difficulty.

Good puzzles have themes that are carried out throughout the puzzle. The more theme words or phrases throughout the puzzle, the better that puzzle is. And if theme words and phrases are puns or wordplays on the theme, all the better.

I also learned that crossword puzzles are often created by computer (a sad state of affairs) but that some expert puzzle makers can create a good crossword in a few hours. One puzzle maker actually created an entire puzzle in less than an hour during the competition, based on a theme provided by the audience.

The book includes about 50 puzzles. Some are the contestants’ favorites — you know a person is serious when he can tell you his favorite puzzle by name or date — and others are puzzles used in the competition. I left the book at my place at Howard Mesa so I could fiddle with the puzzles in the evening before I go to bed.

If you like crossword puzzles and are interested in the creation and completion processes, I highly recommend the book.

Now I can’t wait for the movie to come out on DVD so I can watch it.

Prioritizing Web Usability

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“Don’t defend your interface. Fix it.”

Designing Web Usability : The Practice of SimplicityBack in 2000, I read Jakob Nielsen’s Designing Web Usability: The Practice of Simplicity. This excellent book reinforced several theories of Web design that I had already suspected: simpler was better, Flash animations and splash pages were idiotic, and sites should be built to convey information in a way that was easy for visitors to find and understand.

Nielsen’s book was a summary of thousands of hours of usability testing with people and Web sites all over the world. It wasn’t just the opinions of an outside observer. He could make statements because he had proof that his statements were valid.

I liked his book so much that I mentioned in — and I believe I even quoted from it — in my own book, Putting Your Small Business on the Web for Peachpit Press.

Prioritizing Web UsabilityPrioritizing Web Usability by Jakob Nielsen and Hoa Loranger revises and and expands the information in Designing Web Usability. Using new test results and taking into consideration new technologies and user experience levels, Nielsen and Loranger revisit many of the problem exposed in the first book, summarizing how important they are today. The goal of the book is to help Web designers create sites that are effective, easy to navigate, and informative. These are the sites that people want to visit and spend time on, the sites that communicate information and sell products or services.

Nielsen and Loranger are not shy about voicing their opinions. The book has hundreds of full color illustrations of Web pages, each with a detailed caption that points out page problems. For example, a caption for Burger King site page begins, “This is an example of the misuse of visual metaphors…” And, for a page on the Montblanc site, “Montblanc makes nice pens, but it’s impossible to find out anything about them on the company’s Web site…”

While I feel that some of their criticisms are a bit nit-picky, illustrating and commenting on what they see as problems gives the reader plenty to think about. You might not agree with what they have to say about a site’s problem, but you’ll remember it when you design the pages on your sites.

As for me, I learned a few tricks I can apply to my sites. But I’m more relieved that my sites don’t have most of the problems their book points out.

Do you design Web sites? Get and read this book!

[composed on top of a mesa in the middle of nowhere with ecto]