An interesting step in the process of search engine evolution is upon us. Microsoft was the first major search engine to start taking direct input as a way to optimize their search results. SearchWiki is sort of the same idea but it’s only applicable on the personal level. This is a good step, but I think that more needs to be done; for example, I’d like to be able to easily filter out all “.info” domains from my searches, as sites on that top level domain are basically always spam.

Of course with so many spammers out there I don’t think that Google could have realistically been able to choose user input but it might have been able to be considered on some level. Something like PR but for users, in which users who browse more and who have been members of Google for a longer period of time would have more weight in their rankings, and of course users would be able to view rankings unaffected by user ratings (or choose groups with which to accept user rankings from).

Anyway – check it out:

It’s been sort of an ongoing debate for the past few years in my company regarding the use or disuse of “www”; the old (non technical) guard insists that it’s “standard” but I quite disagree. How could adding a deprecated subdomain in front of your domain possibly be a good idea? The answer is clearly not “yes, because it works” because that’s sort of like suggesting that someone fly west from New York to get to Paris “because it works and it’s the direction that people have flown in the past”.

http://no-www.org/ – go now and get “Class B” verified (or “Class C” if you’ve got the minerals)

This is not some bastardization of conventions (such as Americanised English), this is simply a shorter and more intuitive method of “getting there” faster and with more style. This is also not merely a matter of preference, because “www” is not special, it’s simply a subdomain, such as “blogs”, “eroticgalleries” or “mail”.

This is not 1995, this is the two thousand and eighth year of our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ.

Very simple function, but some newbie might have use for it; could also probably be integrated with Smarty if it’s not already. Probably should add some error throwing in here, but this works for my purposes.

Enjoy:

<?php

	// turns an array into a "real list"

function array_to_real_list( $array ) {

	$str = '';

	$last_part = array_pop($array);

	foreach ( $array as $part ) {
		$str .= trim($part) . ', ';
	}

	$str .= 'and ' . $last_part;

  return $str;

}

/*	Usage example: ----------------------------------------

	$array = array('lettuce', 'tomato', 'corn', 'ranch salad dressing');

echo array_to_real_list($array); // lettuce, tomato, corn, and ranch salad dressing

----------------------------------------------------------- */

I can, indeed, do anything!

Birthdays these days are becoming less and less fun. They remind me of all the things that I’ve been putting off – namely – getting a college education. I’m a reasonably smart young (but ageing) man, why not me?

So – birthday resolution – get registered for some online courses. Hopefully I can keep it.