My friend and colleague of over 20 years, Nick Burka, has written a great article about the Usability for Promotion Codes and Access Codes over on the silverorange blog.

You might not care about promotion codes, but you’ve probably had to type in some kind of code for 2-factor authentication or the rare non-scammy coupon code. Nick’s article covers what can make these codes easy (or difficult) to remember, type, and say over the phone.

It’s too bad the creators of our Canadian postal code system couldn’t have read this before they put all of those Gs and Js in the Quebec postal codes (an English G and French J sound almost identical).

I’m particularly proud of this article as it draws on external expertise – something we’ve been trying to do more of at silverorange. This article in particular draws on things we learned for a literacy and essential skills consultant, and from the non-profit Computers for Success Canada.

I thought I supported science, but now I’m not so sure anymore. See the Washington Post on research that using two spaces after a sentence “makes reading slightly easier”. Thankfully, Lifehacker follows-up to reassure us that, No, You Still Shouldn’t Put Two Spaces After a Period.

See my previous writing on the topic.

The ideas are free, not the games.

How about a sports (football, hockey, basketball, etc.) simulator that simulates what it’s like to play a game rather than simulating what it’s like to watch one on TV.

Or, if we’re going to simulate what feels like to watch sports on TV, let’s get hyper-real. Greasy potato-chip fingers, bathroom breaks during ads, find the remote!

Heard on CBC this morning that one of many names floated for a possible Halifax CFL expansion team is the Halifax Explosion.

Brilliant? Inappropriate? I think both?

Speaking of the victims of residential schools in Newfoundland & Labrador, The Prime Minister of Canada said:

“Many were sorely neglected and not properly fed, clothed, or housed. Others suffered physical, psychological, and sexual abuse. All were deprived of the love and care of their families, of their parents, and of their communities. These are the hard truths that are part of Canada’s history.“

Lest it be seen as a partisan issue, the previous Prime Minister, Stephen Harper, said in 2008:

“Two primary objectives of the residential school system were to remove and isolate children from the influence of their homes, families, traditions and cultures, and to assimilate them into the dominant culture. These objectives were based on the assumption Aboriginal cultures and spiritual beliefs were inferior and unequal. Indeed, some sought, as it was infamously said, “to kill the Indian in the child.” Today, we recognize that this policy of assimilation was wrong, has caused great harm, and has no place in our country.”

It may just be words, but it is important that these issues are acknowledged by the highest office in our country.

The greatest feature of the Web may be that it ignores double spaces after a period.

In the extraordinary documentary, The Vietnam War by Ken Burns & Lynn Novick, an ‘Army Advisor’ named James Willbanks says:

“If you can’t count what’s important, you make what you can count important.”

This is true in more than war.

Tech Youtube-guy extraordinaire, MKBDH, pulls off a subtle but clever way to show how video playback works on the new iPhone X screen (relevant portion is around 5:50).

I know I may be suffering from Early Onset Grumpiness, because I agree with this rant about how laptops aren’t as good as they were in the good old days (two years ago).

Perhaps due to my history with Mozilla and Firefox, I’ve been a happy Firefox user since version 0.6 (14 years ago!?). In recent years, the Chrome browser from Google has become the most commonly used browser, especially among web developers.

I’m delighted to see that Mozilla has made great strides in improving Firefox and is winning people over again. The latest version of Firefox, released today, is worth a try. There are also some great nerdy details on how Firefox has improved.

Even if Firefox doesn’t regain the market-share it once had, these efforts push the other browser vendors to improve and generally improve the Web as a platform.

Thanks and congrats to all of the designers, engineers, and other humans who continue to improve Firefox. The update icon looks slick too.