Found this on the web a while back and figured its a good reference to share.

You’re probably come across the image above quite a number of times. It’s usually used when filling up a form to validate that you are a human being and not a spam bot. However did you know that it is also a service that helps to digitize books, newspapers and old time radio shows? Well, neither did I.

About 200 million CAPTCHAs are solved by humans around the world every day. In each case, roughly ten seconds of human time are being spent. Individually, that’s not a lot of time, but in aggregate these little puzzles consume more than 150,000 hours of work each day. That effort is spent into reading books.

Physically books which are being digitised are scanned and read using “Optical Character Recognition” (OCR). However OCR is not perfect and so the words which it can’t identify are being used in reCAPTCHA for a human to identify.

So how does it detect a bot if it can’t identify the word itself? Well it does so by presenting you with two words, the word it doesn’t know and a word which is knows. If the user solves the word for which the system knows, then the system assumes the answer is correct for the new word. Pretty neat ah?

Play a part in digitising the books

If you run a website that suffers from problems with spam, you can put reCAPTCHA on your site. For some applications (such as WordPress and Mediawiki), there are plugins that allow you to use reCAPTCHA without writing any code. There are also easy-to-use code for common web programming languages such as PHP.

Web Forms, we all have our share of filling up countless such forms. Some of our experience were pleasant, and some were just down right horrible. In this post, Joe Leech from cxpartners, bring together their experience in designing forms that are easy to use and get users through the process as quickly and easily as possible.

• Simple form field
• Optional fields
• Support text
• Help text
• Date fields
• Buttons
• Inline validation
• Postcode look-up
• Entering currency values
• Password strength
• Adding more than 1 email/phone
• Layout and examples
• Page level error handling
• Some no-nos
• Download cheat sheet as PDF

Simple form field

Centre align all form fields. Use a different style of text for the label versus support text. The further help field sits on the right hand side of the input. The label should follow sentence case; that is Upper case first word, then lower case second word(s).

Select boxes where possible should default to a value. If this is not possible default to italic text, slightly grey in colour saying ‘Please select…’

Place radio buttons underneath each other where possible. This allows for easy scanning:

Checkbox buttons take the same form. These can be listed in rows if needs be but only if there are more than five.

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Optional fields

Users do not always understand the mandatory field marker (*) and on long pages the explanation can be lost. Where possible mark optional fields.

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Support text

Support text should be used to give key information that is essential to complete the form field. Examples include password format and explanations for data collection.

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Help text

Help text should be used to offer advice on a complex question. Where possible is should offer example answers and the format of that answer.

Help text should be activated by click and be a layer/lightbox next to the form field. Also if needed include links to contact form and the telephone number.
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Date fields

For date of birth fields do not include a calendar look-up. Always use select boxes to minimise errors.

With standard date fields launch the calendar on focus on any of the form fields.

Adding select boxes for month and year aids look-up and a Select today link resets the calendar. Use a highlight colour to indicate Public Holidays if needed.

UK calendars begin on a Monday (many off-the-shelf JS calendars are American where calendars begin on a Sunday, the JQuery calendar offers it as a setting).
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Buttons

Where possible there should be 2 kinds of button on the page.

• Support buttons such as postcode look-up, refresh, back etc.
• Primary button. There should be only one of these and it should be larger and with a different design. Primary button should include chevrons.

Having only 1 primary button clearly indicates to the user the most important action on the page. If more than 1 primary button is needed consider splitting form over 2 pages.

Where possible add a description to the primary button to indicate what the next screen will contain.

The final payment button should include a tick and some explanation text to give confidence to the user to click.

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Inline validation

Where possible all form fields should validate following cursor focus leaving that field.

Where possible indicate why the form content is not correct. Do not use words such as error, problem or issue. Be positive.

Preselect the first option in the list.
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Postcode look-up

Postcodes have on average 15 properties associated with them. Each of these properties may be broken up into flats. Therefore a large possible list of properties may result. Note positioning of
button under the field – buttons to the right can easily be missed.

If the user cannot see their address offer a link. On click this will display the manual address entry fields.
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Entering currency values

Users enter currencies and monetary values into forms in a number of different ways. Where possible the system should accept the following options:

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Password strength

Where possible use plain text rather than images to aid accessibility:

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Adding more than 1 email/phone

Many users, especially those under 25, may not have a landline number or indeed consider this their main phone number. Allow users to select which phone it is they want to offer as a primary number.

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Layout and examples

Group related form fields together into smaller chunks. This makes the form feel easier to complete and less intimidating.

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Page level error handling

There may be situations where errors can only be managed at the form submit level. Offer a direct link to each error (to a maximum of three). Clicking on the ‘And 3 more’ link will show the full list of hyperlinked errors. Linking to errors in this way offers greater accessibility to users of screen readers.

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Some no-nos

• Do not place form fields side by side in columns. Users often do not see the form fields in the right column.
• Only use 1 field for telephone numbers (i.e. no area code box) as many users will try and put the full number in the area code box.
• Avoid long, complex, text based explanations at the top of forms – nobody ever reads them.

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Download cheat sheet as PDF

v1-Form-design-crib-sheet.pdf [252kb]
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Joe Leech

Joe has been working in UX for 7 years. Joe has worked with clients such as Marriott, eBay, Nokia, theTrainline, Microsoft, TUI Travel, Peugeot, Virgin and the Co-operative Bank helping them to be more strategic in their customer focus and make the digital stuff they do measurably better.

I’ve been getting a lot of request from people asking me to help unblock their hotmail account in the Ways To Unblock Your Hotmail Account article. So here is more information on the steps to take to unblock your hotmail account.

There is no other way to recover your account other than to contact Hormail.

You saw the following error message when logging into a Windows Live product:
“Your account has been temporarily blocked”

Why are you seeing this?

Hotmail use systems to help detect spammers on Windows Live Services. These systems place a variety of restrictions on accounts, one of them is blocking users from accessing the Windows Live Services. Occasionally, suspicious activity causes their technology to block legitimate accounts.

What do these messages mean?

When an account is sending a lot of e-mail, friend invitations, or posting lots of comments, there is a good chance that it is a spammer. In some cases, spammers actually create accounts to use, but sometimes they break in to real accounts. Hotmail block accounts so that the spammers can’t send out any more junk and so that real people can get their accounts back. Blocked accounts have very limited access to Hotmail and Windows Live. Hotmail’s goal is to help the real account owner get their account back.

What should you do?

Verify your account with a mobile number (only available in limited markets at this time): https://sms.live.com

If you are unable to verify using the SMS validation, please submit your request here (Select “Hotmail” from the product dropdown list, click “Continue” and select: Error: “Your account has been temporarily blocked”) and one of their moderators will help you.

Here are some steps that you can take to avoid getting this error:

• Do not give out your passwords to people. Hotmail, Windows Live, and Microsoft will never ask for your password in e-mail
• Make sure that you have an anti-virus program installed and run it regularly. Many spammers get a hold of passwords through viruses and spyware. Microsoft Security Essentials offers free anti-virus protection.
• If you use Windows, turning on Windows Update will help keep your computer up-to-date and make it less vulnerable to viruses.
• Windows 7 – Learn how to turn on automatic updating.
• Windows Vista – Learn how to turn on automatic updating.
• Windows XP – To learn how to turn on automatic updates, click the Start button, click Help and Support, type Windows update in the search box, and then, in the list of results, click Turn on automatic updates. Follow the instructions.
• Check to make sure that you only send messages to people who want to receive them.
• Reduce the number of messages that you send to large groups of people so that they are less likely to think your messages are unwanted mail.
• Limit the number of chain letters, e-mail jokes and other messages that you send to help people recognize your mail as wanted and to make it more likely that your message will be allowed past your recipients’ junk mail filters.
• Limit the number of friend invitations you send or send them only to people that know you.
• Check all the contacts in your address book to make sure that the accounts are still active.

Somebody stole your password to send spam. Hotmail temporarily block the accounts compromised to help you you and your contacts, and then let Hotmail help you to recover your account.

The fastest means to recover your account is to change your password. Then you will want certainly to ensure you that the person at the origin of this incident did not change the data of your account, which would enable him to take again at once the control of your account.

Here the steps which you should follow:

1. Can you always connect? If you can,change your password. For this follow Hotmail’s steps to modify your password.

http://windowslivehelp.com

2. Were asked to give your cell phone number after connected? At the time of connection, it is possible indeed that Hotmail ask for a telephone number in order to send you a message text containing to you a secret code. This is intended to prevent the spammers from using your account.

3. If you do not manage to connect on your account, try to redefine your password. http://windowslivehelp.com

During the process of validation, you will be asked key information on your account Windows Live that you only you will be able to provide us. This enables Hotmail to check that you are the rightful owner of the account. The criteria of requirement intended to protect you are very strict, consequently you must give them as much information as possible and details for each question. It is possible that you need to request from some your friends and contacts to ask for confirmation of subject of received emails or addresses email of contacts. The more information, the more Hotmail will be able to validate your account and thus to help you to recover the access on your account.

If for a different reason you still can’t connect to your account , see information on this subject on the page relating to connection problems of connection:

http://windowslivehelp.com

As a wordpress plugin developer for the Google Custom Search plugin, I get a lot of queries from users having problems with the plugin. The most common query I get is “I’ve installed your plugin last year, but recently it stopped working. Can you help me?”. I normally take a 3 step approach to diagnosing wordpress plugin problem, but before we get to that, let’s look at why a plugin might have stopped working.

There are there reasons why a wordpress plugin has stopped working:

1. It is incompatible with your current version of wordpress
   You might have upgraded your wordpress installation to a newer release. WordPress releases fix/updates and upgrades regularly and the new version might not be compatible with the plugin.
2. Conflict with other plugins
   This is usually the of  most plugin problems where the code in one of your other plugins conflicts with the code in the plugin in question. JQuery conflicts is common cause.
3. The new version of the plugin is Broken!
   While very uncommon, it can happen. The developer writing the plugin made some changes which has broken the plugin. This might be the case if you have recently updated the plugin. Normally for this situation, you can expect a new update to be available relatively soon with the fixes.
   

3 Steps to Diagnosing WordPress Plugin Problems

Step 1: Determine if there is a plugin conflict

1. Disable all plugins except for the one which is broken and check that the plugin now works (if it doesn’t proceed to the Step 2).
2. Next activate the plugins one at a time until the plugin in question stops working.
3. The last plugin which was activated is having a conflict with the plugin which you are diagnosing.

Disable all plugins except the one which you are investigating

Step 2: Determine if the current WordPress theme has a conflict

WordPress themes can contain code which conflicts with the plugin. The easiest way to determine this is to:

1. Switch wordpress theme to the default “Twenty Eleven” Theme. Check if the plugin in question now works. If it does, then the theme which you have is in conflict with the plugin.

Step 3: Determine Error Using Firefox Error Console

If the first two steps did not diagnose the problem, then you need to use Firefox‘s Error Console to see what the plugin error is.

1. Open the Error Console in a Firefox browser using the shortcut key Cltr-Shift-J.
2. Then visit your website in Firefox, you should see the error messages in the Error Console

From there you might be able to identify what the error is which is causing the plugin to not work.

What to Do Once the Problem has been Determined

Once you have found the problem, what can you do to fix it?

If it is a conflict with another plugin or theme, then you might want to contact the developer of that plugin or theme to get them to put a fix in. If you did Step 3 and have the error message from Firefox Error Console, sending the error messages to the developers will help them with providing a fix. What I find is that you get a faster response from the developer when you include the error message.

If you’re familiar with a little PHP or javascript coding, you might even be able to go into the code and fix the problem.

The other alternative, is now that you have identified the culprit, you can choose to not use that plugin or theme and find an alternative. Often times, there are multiple plugins providing similar functionality. You just need to search for them at http://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/.

Facebook had it’s F8 conference last week and it had announced quite a few changes, most notably Timelines.

Below is a screenshot of how timelines work.

 Here are instructions on how to setup timeline for your facebook page.

Some another noteworthy features are:

• Subscribe button which allows anyone to subscribe to people’s post in facebook, even if they are not friends. (this need to enable here)
• Linking of facebook page to twitter. Where you status updates on facebook pages get automatically published to twitter.
• Symbiotic sharing: where you’ll now be able to listen along, and watch stuff with your friends in real time! All without having to leave Facebook.

Ever wondered how you can create a slide show (a rotating series of pictures) as your desktop background.
You can use your own pictures or pictures that Windows provides as part of a theme.

Watch this video to learn how to create a desktop background slide show (1:48)

Here are two ways which you can promote a YouTube channel on your website.

Embedding YouTube Channel on website

Want to embed a YouTube channel in another web-page or blog? In order to embed your channel, all you need to do is copy then paste the following code in another web-page.

<script src="http://www.gmodules.com/ig/ifr?url=http://www.google.com/ig/modules/youtube.xml&up_channel=YourChannelName&synd=open&w=320&h=390&title=&border=%23ffffff%7C3px%2C1px+solid+%23999999&output=js"></script>

Make sure to replace the YourChannelName with your actual channel name.

For example: if your channel name were CaliChick94066 your channel embed code would be:

<script src="http://www.gmodules.com/ig/ifr?url=http://www.google.com/ig/modules/youtube.xml&up_channel=CaliChick94066&synd=open&w=320&h=390&title=&border=%23ffffff%7C3px%2C1px+solid+%23999999&output=js"></script>

Here’s an example of how it looks like

Adding a Subscribe button on your website

 <iframe src="http://www.youtube.com/subscribe_widget?p=YourChannelName"
       style="overflow: hidden; height: 105px; width: 300px; border: 0;"
       scrolling="no" frameBorder="0">
    </iframe>

Here’s an example of how it looks

One of the questions I got asked today is what the difference is between the SQL commands DELETE and TRUNCATE.

They both are used to empty out a table, which is different from DROP (which deletes the table)

DELETE

DELETE FROM <table_name>
DELETE FROM <table_name> <where_clause>

Delete is used to remove rows from a table, it can remove all rows or you can specify a where clause to delete only certain rows. A COMMIT needs to be done after a delete and all delete triggers in the table will be fired.

DELETE FROM table1 WHERE column1=’value1′;
10 rows delete.

COMMIT;
commit complete.

TRUNCATE

TRUNCATE TABLE <table_name>

Truncate is used to delete all rows from a table. It does not fire any triggers and there is no rollback. A truncate is therefore much faster than a delete

TRUNCATE TABLE table1;
table truncated.

In Postgres and MySQL database, there is a neat functionality which returns results from a specific range of rows.

This is very useful if  you have a database with a large number of rows and have an interface which displays only x numbers of rows in a view with the functionality to view the ‘second’, ‘third’ page of results and so forth. Rather than having to write code to parse through the entire result set and determine which to display, you can have postgres or SQL do that work for you.

This is done using LIMIT and OFFSET.

The examples below demonstrate how they works.

Get the top 10 rows of the results.

SELECT * FROM TABLE_NAME LIMIT 10;

Get rows 20 to 30 of the results.

SELECT * FROM TABLE_NAME LIMIT 10 OFFSET 20;