Things They Should Invent: emergency information robocalls for power outages

My power didn't go out in the storm earlier this week, but, being a bit of a Twitter stormwatcher, I did occasionally look at Toronto Hydro's Twitter feed to watch the show.  However, as many people have noted, using the internet for primary method of communication during a power outage is problematic.  People's personal internet access is going to be out, so only those whose cellphones have internet (and haven't run out of battery yet) and those who aren't currently in the power outage area can access the information. This means that the information is going to be less available to more vulnerable people (elderly, poorer, etc.) who are also likely to be less resilient to difficulties of a power outage.

Here's a simple solution: if there's a power outage, Hydro automatically robocalls affected customers telling them the status, the size of the area affected, and the ETA for power restoration.  When the status has changed significantly (ETA has changed, or area affected is significantly smaller), they send out another robocall.

People could opt in or out of emergency robocalls, so those who do have smartphones without landlines wouldn't have to use up valuable battery life fielding phone calls that give them no new information.

Perhaps they could also have mass text messaging (for people who don't have data plans - or if data isn't working due to the outage) since that's less of a drain on the battery than a ringing phone.

In any case, methods of immediate and automatic information distribution that aren't dependent upon electricity do exist.  They should make use of these during power outages.

Things They Should Invent: car alarm that goes off if a child is left in a car seat

Recently in the news, there have been a number of cases of babies and toddlers dying after being forgotten in a car on a hot day.  This makes me think they should invent something to alert parents if they walk away from the car with the kid still in the baby seat.

Some of the media coverage (can't seem to google up the exact article) mentioned that there are some alerts that work with smartphones, but those depend on the parent having a smartphone and having the app installed and the smartphone being on and charged.  If your battery's dead, or you've turned off your phone for a meeting, or it's just at the bottom of your purse and you're in a noisy environment, you might fail to notice the alert.

I propose something simpler and more immediate:  if the car is turned off, there is weight in the carseat, there is no weight in the driver's seat, and all the doors are closed, the annoying horn-honking car alarm goes off.  (Proposed added bonus feature: rather than the usual horn honky car alarm sound it produces the sound of a baby crying.)

The advantage of this model is it draws attention to the car, even if it for some reason it fails to attract the parent's attention.  I know people generally disregard and curse out the source of car alarms, but someone walking past might take a peek in, and if the car is parked somewhere staffed, the staff might notice.  This increases the chances that someone will notice the baby's presence and intervene.

Ideas for how this could be engineered: cars could have a built in attacher thingy for baby seats (baby seats have to be physically attached to the car by more than just a seatbelt. The ones I've seen are attached by a bolt-like thing behind the back seat.)  The attacher thing recognizes when a car seat is attached (the same way the seatbelt detector detects when the seatbelt is fastened) and then there could be a weight detector in the seat of the car (maybe there could be a button to press to "zero" it to an empty baby seat).  The car would therefore know when there's a baby seat present and when the baby seat is occupied.

The other advantage of this model is it wouldn't require any proactiveness or diligence on the part of the parents.  If it doesn't occur to the parents to take precautions against accidentally leaving the baby in the car, the car will do so anyway, much like how some cars already warn you if your seatbelt isn't done up or if you've left the lights on.

Things They Should Invent: tell the neighbourhood what movie they were filming after they finish filming there

I'm pretty sure they're shooting a movie in my neighbourhood.  I've seen movie-ish pylons and trucks and trailers, and some lighting and camera equipment standing around with people milling about.  I think they might even have redecorated the smelly alley.  (Although there were also about half a dozen cop cars there, one of which said "Forensics", so it's possible it was in fact a crime scene.)

The internet won't tell me what they're filming, and there's no indication on site.  Which makes sense - if you're filming something with big stars in it, you want to keep it quiet so people don't flock to your location and swarm around seeking autographs.

But it would be nice to let us know after the fact.  And it could even be used to promote the movie!  What if they distributed a little note to residences and businesses in the area saying something along the lines of:

Dear Neighbours,

Thank you for your patience and understanding while we used your neighbourhood to film Awesome Movie, starring Big-Name Actor and New Up-And-Comer. Watch for us in theatres in summer 2014, when you'll be able to see your neighbourhood in the zombie apocalypse scene and the big dance number!

It would assuage curiosity, create goodwill, and probably lead a certain percentage of people who receive the note to go see the movie even if they wouldn't have otherwise. 

Things They Should Invent: multiple customizable email alerts

I have visual and audible email alerts for both my personal and my work email.  In general I'd rather have the alerts than not, but what I'd really like is to get alerts only for emails that are important.

For example, in my personal email, I'd like to get alerted about personal communications from family and friends, ebay auctions that I've won or been outbid on, and anything from my banks, my apartment building, or my condo that require immediate action.  I don't need to get alerted about "Here's our newsletter!" or "Sign this petition!" or "This is to confirm that you made the paypal purchase that you made literally 2 seconds ago."  I'll look at those things later, but I don't need to interrupt what I'm doing to look at them.

Similarly, in my work email, I'd like to get alerted about new assignments, emails from clients, and specific personal communication from my team.  I don't need to be alerted about "Here's the employee newsletter!" or "This is just to let you know that I will be away Friday." Again, I'll look at them later, but they don't require my immediate attention.

Gmail has a function where they automatically mark certain email threads as more important, and it works reasonably well if you put in the effort to train it (I did briefly and was happy with the rate at which it was learning, but then I got lazy and stopped using it.)  So why not pair this up with Gmail Notifier so it notifies you only when you get an email that meets "important" criteria?  Or perhaps give you a different kind of beep for the more important emails?

Outlook allows you to create all kinds of finicky rules, so why not allow you to create rules defining what kind of alert the program gives you?  You could tell it to give you the "important" alert if you get an email from certain senders or in reply to an email that you yourself have sent.  If you can convince your colleagues to use good subject lines, you could get one kind of alert for "FYI" emails and another for "For Action" emails.

Properly implemented, this would allow people to have all the benefits of email alerts with none of the disadvantages.  So why don't we have it already?

Things They Should Invent: needs-based telecommunications technology funding for seniors

As I've mentioned before, I'm watching my grandmothers age and deteriorate and become more dependent on their children and caregivers.  And, as I watch this happen, I'm thinking about how I'm going to handle the same situation without anyone to take care of me.  And one thing that strikes me is that I could handle it better in some respects because I'm comfortable with technology.  If I couldn't manage grocery shopping for myself, I could order from grocery gateway.  If I couldn't remember to take my meds, I could set up a series of alerts.  My grandmothers aren't up on using today's technology, so they're dependent on their children to do these things.

However, it's not just interest and technological aptitude that keeps them from using technology, it's also cost.  My grandmothers retired in the 1980s, calculating their expenses based on expenses that existed in the 1980s.  They couldn't have anticipated the eventual need for $40 a month for internet or a data plan, plus the major capital investment of a new computer or device every few years.  Even if they'd be interested, they probably couldn't afford it.

If retirement still exists when I'm a senior, the same thing will probably happen to me.  If I retire when I'm in my 60s, I couldn't possibly budget for the evolution and cost of technology over the next 30 to 40 years.  (And if retirement doesn't still exist when I'm a senior, I'll have to hoard money even more because I have to assume 20 years of incompetence based on my family history of Alzheimer's, so I won't be able to afford to keep up to date.)

So I propose that all senior citizens should get a needs-based financial supplement of some sort (a discount or a rebate or free services or something) to keep them in up-to-date telecommunications technology, by which I mean both devices and data/internet plans. I don't have specific dollar amounts in mind at the moment, but the funding should be enough that it's an absolute no-brainer to keep up to date.

I also think the program should start at age 65, even though 65-year-olds are perfectly capable of keeping themselves up to date if they have any interest in doing so.  The reason for this is that elders seem to lose their ability to learn new things as they deteriorate and lose their faculties.  They need to form habits and keep current before they start losing their faculties, so they can coast along on their existing knowledge once they lose the ability to learn.   For example, my one grandmother lost the ability to learn about 10 years ago.  If she had computer skills that were current to 2003, she wouldn't be able to  use an iphone, but she could still order her groceries online. 

I'm sure it would be an expensive program, but it would help keep people living in their own homes and independently for longer.  By any standard, tech is cheaper than housing.

Things They Should Invent: check supermarket stock and prices online

My mother's Loblaws has Macintosh apples, but mine doesn't.  This means, should my current source of Macs dry up, I may be able to find them at another Loblaws, but it isn't a certainty.  Since I'm now on tokens, I don't much fancy the idea of running around the city in search of the kind of apples I like. 

Why can't I do a search on supermarkets' websites to see which locations have Macintosh apples in stock?  Unlike practically every other retailer, supermarkets' websites don't even have the items the chain sells and the prices, to say nothing of individual store stock.

A computerized database of stock must exist because they've used scanning check-outs for decades, so surely they have scanny check-in of inventory as well at this point.  Why not just put it online where we can find it?

Things They Should Invent: private bath facilities in long-term care homes with controlled access to water

Apparently many long-term care homes have private washrooms with a toilet and sink in the residents' rooms, but bathing facilities are in a separate room down the hall. The reason for this is allegedly that many residents are unable to bathe themselves safely, and, if they had bathing facilities in their own rooms, residents who can't bathe themselves safely but have cognitive impairments might attempt to bathe themselves anyway and end up hurting themselves.

However, I think not having your own bathroom is a bit less dignified and needlessly lowers your quality of life.  You have to walk down the hall in a bathrobe carrying your toiletries in a bucket rather than just walking into your own private bathroom.  I know, we all did this in university, but in adult life we become accustomed to a greater level of privacy and dignity, and I don't think it's right to take this away from our elders.

Proposed solution: every room in a long-term care room has a full private bathroom, complete with bathing facilities.  However, the bathing facilities require a key to turn on the water.  It could be an actual key, or one of those magnetic beep cards like we have on office security passes, or some other sort of tangible object.  Staff members whose job involves bathing residents would have a key to the bath water.  Residents who are competent to bathe themselves safely would have a key to the bath water.  Residents who are not competent to bathe themselves safely would not.

This way, all residents would get to enjoy the privacy and dignity of a private bathroom, while still controlling access to the slippery, fall-inducing environment of bathing facilities to those who can handle it or situations where there is proper supervision.

Things They Should Invent: dictionary of connotations

I recently had a disagreement over a word.  I thought that it was neutral, linguistically unmarked, and derived directly from the verb in question (analogous to how a cook is a person who cooks, or a grave-digger is a person who digs graves).  But my interlocutor  thought it was negative, and wanted us to use a less negative word, but couldn't actually suggest one.  I wasn't able to suggest one either, because I didn't feel that the original word was negative (or positive), and it's very difficult to come up with a synonym that has a different degree of a characteristic that's absent in the original word.  It would be like if someone asked you to provide them with a cake recipe that's less extroverted, or a career path that's not quite as purple.

In any case, the problem was that we were at an impasse over whether this word had this connotation, and there was nothing either of us could to to prove our position to the other.

Proposed solution: a dictionary of connotations.  You look up a word, it tells you all the positive and negative connotations.  In this situation, we could have looked up the word to see definitively if it has the connotations in question, much like how you'd look up a word in the OED or the Petit Robert if you're disagreeing on the meaning.

It would also be useful in preventing inadvertent racism.  Most of the racist things I've uttered in my life have been because I didn't know they were racist, because I don't spend much time around people who are being racist so I don't know all the slurs and stereotypes.  (The remaining times I've been racist have been when I learned some non-neutral words for concepts without having learned the neutral words, so I didn't have the vocabulary to express what I wanted to neutrally.)  It would be enormously helpful to have a reference where we can check these things without having to google for racism.

Things Google Should Uninvent: "results for similar searches"

I've noticed a new thing on Google search results lately, called "Results for Similar Searches".  If it doesn't think my search query has a lot of results, it comes up with other similar combinations of keywords that would get more results, and puts them on the bottom half of the first results page.

The problem is, this feature has never once been helpful to me.  For example, I was searching for an individual. I won't use the real name here, but my search was analogous to jon smythe toronto.  So Google, under "Results for Similar Searches", kept giving me results for things that were analogous to john smith toronto or john toronto or even john smith.  Which is not what I needed.  I spelled the individual's name correctly.  I put "Toronto" to limit results.  I chose my search terms quite deliberately.  Cluttering up my first page of results with similar terms that produce unrelated results just pisses me off.

As another example, in an attempt to clarify Reddit's April Fool's joke, I googled reddit what do all the hats mean.  The "Results for Similar Searches" contained what do all caps mean and what does many hats mean (the latter in the context of wearing several hats in one's job, i.e. fulfilling many roles.)  Neither of these were remotely relevant.  I was looking for a chart that would give me a meaning of each of the little hat flare icons that you could put on people's Reddit usernames.  But even if you didn't know what I was looking for, it should be clear that the presence of the word "reddit" in my search was important.  Even if I had meant one of those two similar searches and had misspoken "caps" into "hats" or "many" into "all the", I wouldn't have typed "reddit" unless I meant it for a reason.

I've complained in the past about how Google's attempts to "help" me interfere with  my attempts to use it as a corpus for linguistic research, but this is worse because they're interfering with searches for actual information. Usually Google's predictions are helpful (I don't even worry about typoes when I'm searching, and I actually use their autocorrect system when I'm doing medical translations and can't read handwritten medication names - I just type what I think I'm reading, and Google tells me what I really need), but this one is useless and disruptive, taking up valuable space on my first page of results that could otherwise go to actual results of my actual search.

I hope Google will eliminate this alleged feature, or at least fix its predictions so they're as useful as its usual autocorrect.

Things They Should Invent: use the names of companies as synonyms for their bad employment practices

The pinnacle of branding is when your brand is used as a generic, like kleenex or xerox or google.

So let's leverage this and start using the names of companies as the generic for their most famous bad employment practice.

Got screwed out of your pension?  You got nortelled.  Got your telework status suddenly revoked?  You got yahooed.

Things Google Should Invent: unclick that link

Google tracks click-throughs.  You can see this when you right-click on a link in search results.  Rather than the link of the target page, it gives you http://www.google.ca/url?[insert alphanumeric sequence here]. 

The problem with this is when you click on a link that looks promising, but it turns out not to be what you're looking for.  Google still counts that as a click-through, even though it's an unhelpful result.

I'd like to have the option of, when I go back to the search results to find something more useful, clicking a little checkbox next to the unhelpful link that says "This isn't what I was looking for with this search," so Google can learn from this.

They did once have a thing where you can ban certain websites from your personal search results, but that's way more drastic than what I'm thinking of.  For example, perhaps a search for "Jon Doe" "University of Toronto" turns up the Facebook page of a Jon Doe who lives in Toronto, but it isn't the Jon Doe who's a prof at U of T. That doesn't mean I never want to see search results from Facebook again.  That doesn't even mean I never want to see this particular Jon Doe again.  It just means that this is not the Jon Doe I'm looking for with those keywords. 

It's also possible that Google might be able to track when we return to the search results and select another result.  The problem is that doesn't tell them if the first thing we clicked on was unsatisfactory, or if we're just looking for further information. (If I'm researching/hiring/stalking Jon Doe, I'm not going to stop at one search result.)  Allowing us to inform Google when individual results aren't what we were looking for will clarify this ambiguity.

Things Foodland Ontario Should Invent: "If you like...then you might like..."

My very favourite apples are Cortlands, which aren't available all year, and my second-favourite are McIntosh, which are available nearly all year. I make do with Paula Reds and Ida Reds during the summer gap, but I don't like those ones nearly that much.  I actively dislike Red Delicious and similar varieties. I find Granny Smith too tart and Honeycrisp too crisp.

Currently, the Loblaws I usually go doesn't have either Cortlands or Macs. Metro had Cortlands up until this week (although they were the kind in the bag rather than the kind in the bin), and now they still have Macs. (This is an interesting reversal - usually Loblaws more reliably has produce I like better.) 

However, I've noticed in both supermarkets a sudden influx of apple varieties I don't recognize.  There may well be apples I like among these new varieties, but I have no way of knowing which ones, and I don't much fancy the idea of buying and eating a bunch of apples I don't like just in case one of them meets needs already met by existing varieties.

I think Foodland Ontario could help me with this.

Foodland Ontario's mandate is to encourage people to buy local produce.  Surely helping us discover new things we like falls within this mandate!  Foodland Ontario is also basically the "official" source of information about produce varieties.  If there's such thing as tasting notes for apple varieties, they'd be the ones who have them.

So they should take the information they have about all the different apple varieties, and use it to make a grid, or a flowchart, or a nifty little interactive website where I can input the fact that I like Cortlands and Macs and dislike Red Delicious, and it would tell me what other varieties I'm likely to enjoy. The more varieties you can give your opinion on, the better results it could get - so if you do find yourself going through the produce section doing trial and error, it can help you pick better next time.

Things They Should Invent: track your delivery truck online

I spent Friday waiting at home for Staples to come and pick up the chair I'm returning.  (They never did, and they won't be able to find out what happened until Monday.  I'll be posting a full review of my experience once it's over.)  I was told that the truck would come sometime between 9:00 and 5:00, and they couldn't give me a narrower window.

Because of this, I had to spend the whole day ready for the truck to come.  I couldn't use the phone because I had to keep it free for when they buzzed me.  I took the phone into the bathroom when I had my shower and rushed through my shower as quickly as possible so as not to get caught in the shower when they arrived.  I wanted to run down to the corner store to pick up more milk, but I couldn't in case I ended up not being home when the truck came.

GPS technology exists, and tracking GPS location via internet exists, so why don't they use this to  make a website where we can log on with our tracking number and they'll tell us where the truck we're waiting for is?  If it's out in Scarborough, I probably have time to have a shower or run to the store.  If it's 2 blocks away, I might want to wait.

Apart from privacy issues, I do see how this might cause some customer relations problems.  People might be sitting there watching their truck get closer and closer and then make an angry phone call to customer service if it make a turn that takes it in a direction away from them, even if it's following its route normally. So I also have some alternatives in mind:

- Tell customers the minimum estimated time for the truck to reach them.  For example, if the truck would reach you in 10 minutes if it dropped everything and drove straight to you, the website would tell you that.  This would be phrased in a way to make it clear that it may be way more than 10 minutes, and it would come with a big loud disclaimer to that effect.

- If the truck has a regular route, tell customers how far into the route they are and how far into the route the truck is.  For example, "You are 75% of the way through the truck's normal route.  The truck is currently 20% of the way through its route."

- Show customers the truck's normal route on the map.  So if it goes all the way down the south side of the street and then comes back up the north side of the street later, the map would show that.  Might reduce angry calls from customers who just saw the truck on the other side of the street and then it drove away.

- Give a time estimate, based on the scheduled route and the truck's current location, and include a loud disclaimer to the effect that this is about as reliable as the estimated download time on your computer.

In any case, some information either already exists or would exist if they'd put GPS on the trucks.  Giving us whatever information is available would make the prospect of an eight-hour delivery window far less tedious, because even if we couldn't tell when delivery is imminent, we could at least tell when it isn't imminent.

Things the Library Should Invent: subscribe to author or series

A while back, I read and enjoyed Daughter of Smoke and Bone.  I then googled it and learned that a sequel was in the works, but the title and release date of the sequel hadn't been announced yet.  Then I forgot about all it.

 

Fortunately, the sequel (entitled Days of Blood and Starlight - I haven't read it yet so no spoilers please) turned up on some of the Best Books of 2012 lists, so I was reminded of its existence and added it to my holds list.  However, if it hadn't been mentioned in an article I read, I would never have thought to look it up again and would miss the opportunity to spend more time with the characters.

 

The same thing keeps happening with the Dexter series.  I forget to look for new books and discover two have been written since I last checked, or I check for new books and find that there aren't any.  I'd also be interested in reading whatever Malcolm Gladwell happens to write next, but he hasn't published in 3 years. I also think I'm going to keep reading the Inspector Gamache series once I catch up, but I don't know whether it's on a predictable publication schedule. 

 

I don't want to subscribe to all the authors' newsletters, because in many cases I’m not actively involved in the fandom so I don't want all the promotional material about book signings and paperback release dates and media appearances.  I just want to be informed when there's a new book to add to my holds list.

 

I think the library would be able to help me with this.

 

I'd like to be able to select an author or series out of the library catalogue, and have it automatically add any new title from that author or series to my holds list.  Users who subscribed first get placed on the holds list first, and users would have the choice whether to add the title in active or inactive mode.  That way I don't need to keep googling every author I'm interested in, then keep searching for upcoming titles until they show up in the library catalogue, and perhaps the library would have better data on interest in upcoming titles.

 

If this is all too complicated, maybe the library could just send out automated email alerts when a new title from an author or series you subscribe to has been added to the catalogue, and users could add it to their holds list themselves.

Things They Should Invent (or not): reverse gift registry

The way a gift registry normally works is you make a list of all the things you want and people buy them for you.

The problem with that is you still have to shop.  For me, shopping is the worst part.  I hate having to go out and look at stuff and figure out which thing best meets my needs.  The fact that other people are paying for it is very nearly negligible compared with the tedium of having to do the actual shopping.

If I had a gift registry, I'd want the opposite. I'd want to make a list of everything I need or want - simply describing it in words without having to provide any information on style or model or where to buy it - and as their present to me people would go out and shop for it.  They wouldn't even have to buy it, I'd be happy to use my own money.  It's the shopping that's the hard work.

Problem 1: There's nothing to stop people from just picking out any old thing without regard whether it meets my needs. For example, I want an desk chair that is ergonomically perfect for my body.  When I mention this to people, they tell me the name of a store that sells desk chairs and suggest I go there and sit in some chairs.  But that doesn't help me at all. I already know the way to get a desk chair is to go to stores and sit on chairs, and for me that's the difficult and annoying part.  They're basically restating the problem as though it's a solution.  And there's nothing to stop people from doing that with the reverse registry - not actually doing proper shopping, just naming a product that exists and declaring the job done.

Problem 2: I'm never going to be on the receiving end of a gift registry, so with this invention I'm just making my job harder.

Things They Should Invent: bundle buggies and wheeled luggage that follow directly behind you

Picture a person walking down the street pulling a bundle buggy or a wheeled suitcase behind them.

The buggy/suitcase isn't directly behind them, it's off to the side, on the side of the hand they're using to pull it.  (Look at the people pictured here.)

This is inconvenient in crowded pedestrian areas, because your buggy takes at least half a "lane", if not a whole lane, so it's harder for people to pass you.  It's also harder for you to pass others, because you take up more than a lane of space so you need more passing room.  I've also noticed that, in a crowded grocery store with narrow aisles (**cough cough METRO cough**), something about the way it corners causes bottlenecks when the user is turning in or out of an aisle.

Solution: design buggies and luggage so that they follow directly behind the user's when the user is walking. Off the top of my head, the best idea I have is that the handle should be shaped like a J, L or sideways Z (but with right angles rather than acute angles).  So the part of the handle you grip is at the side of the suitcase rather than in the centre (thus enabling the suitcase to follow directly behind you), but there's some kind of framework/architecture to cause the force to be exerted from the centre of the suitcase or from the whole front of the suitcase evenly, so that it will roll straight.

This would make users of wheeled luggage and bundle buggies less annoying to their fellow pedestrians and make life easier for everyone.

Things the Library Should Invent

1. Automatically set your holds list to "inactive" after you have a certain number of books in transit 

I add every single book that I think will be of passing interest to my library holds list, so I usually have somewhere between 40 and 50 books on the list. However, I don't want them all to come in at once, because I won't have time to read them all. So, once I have enough books checked out, I set all the remaining books on the list to "inactive". This means I keep my place in the hold queue for each book, but the library won't send it to me until I set it to "active" again. (If I should reach the front of any book's queue, the library will send it to the next person in the queue until I reactivate it.)

When I start running low on reading material, I reactivate my list. However, I still don't want all the books on the list to be waiting on the hold shelf for me, I only want a few at a time. This means that when my list is back in active mode, I have to monitor it throughout the day. Recently I reactivated my holds list with the intention of getting about 5 more items. However, I neglected to check it for about three hours, and when I finally did check it there were 10 items in transit for me, which is entirely too many since we can only keep them for 3 weeks and I do have a full-time job.

I would love for the library to provide the option of having your holds list automatically deactivate once you have a certain number of items in transit and on the hold shelf. This wouldn't be mandatory, of course, but I'd love to be able to tell the computer "Send me 5 more books - whatever comes in first - and then don't send me anything more until further notice."

2. List series name and number at the beginning of the book title field 

When I read a series, I add the whole thing to my holds list at once and set them all to inactive. Then, when I'm reactivating my holds queue, I only activate the next book in each series. This way I can read the books in order without having to wait for a long line for each.

The problem is that the title field of the library catalogue listings doesn't include the series number, or sometimes even the series name. So when I'm reactivating, I need to remember which series are in my list, google up the reading order for each, and scroll through my list of book titles to find the next book in each series.

 I'd like the library catalogue to list the series name and number at the beginning of each title, so it's visually obvious which titles belong to which series and what order they go in. You sort by title, and all the series are laid out for you.

 For example, I'm currently reading the Inspector Gamache series. The next book in line is listed in the library catalogue as "The cruellest month". This isn't informative - I don't know where it is in the series, and, when I'm scrolling through my whole holds list, I don't even know that it's part of the Inspector Gamache series as opposed to being a standalone novel. If, instead, they listed it in the title field as "Inspector Gamache #3: The cruellest month", it would be readily apparent what this book and whether or not I want to reactivate it at any given time.

I wonder if it might also be possible to combine these two ideas and tell the computer "Activate the next book in each series, plus all non-series books. Send me the first five that come in, and then deactivate everything." They'd need to put additional fields in their database for "Is this book part of a series?" "Series name" and "Series number", but that does seem like the sort of thing a database can handle.

Things They Should Invent: baby improv

My Favourite Little Person, who turned 1 in November, loves to talk.  She holds forth at length about the issues of the day, uttering surprisingly long and complex sequences of phonemes, complete with modulation, intonation, and gesticulation, that have everything in common with fluent human speech except for the fact that I don't understand a word of it. However, it is great fun to have a conversation with her anyway, asking her questions, seeing how she responds, ascribing intention and motivation to her vocalizations.

It occurs to me that this would be a good improv game.

You put a babbly baby on stage with the improv players, and cast the baby in a key role in the scene.  For example, if the scene is set on a ship, the baby is the captain.  Then the other players have to play out the scene in response to whatever the baby happens to say or do.

It would have enormous entertainment value, although I suspect most parents aren't willing to volunteer their babies as props in improv shows.

Things eBay Should Invent: sort by price+shipping per unit

Normally, I sort eBay search results by price+shipping, lowest to highest.  However, sometimes there are some sellers who are selling only one of the item, whereas others are selling it in a pack of two or four.  The pack of four might be a better price per item, but it isn't going to show up on the first page of my search results.

I'd like eBay to provide the option of sorting search results by price+shipping per unit.  So if widgets cost $2 each (including shipping), but a lot of four widgets costs $7, the $7 lot of four will appear above the $2 single widgets.

Things Google Should Invent: show the number of results with verbatim search

Way back in university, one of my translation profs mentioned a concept called a "Google vote".  If you're trying to figure out which of several constructions is more commonly used, a quick and dirty method is to do a Google search for each and see which one has the most hits.  It isn't always 100% reliable (Sometimes there are regionalisms, and sometimes a sequence of words doesn't mean what you intend it to mean. For example, when I was researching this post and googling for "prom baby",  most of the hits were "Prom, baby!")


Since then, Google has become more flexible in response to search terms, using conjugations and declensions and synonyms in an attempt to help lead users to what they're looking for.  All of which is useful if you're searching for information, but less useful if you're using Google as a linguistic corpus.

Fortunately, Google has also introduced the Verbatim search function.  Do your search normally, then, on the results page, click on "Search Tools".  Then, under "All results", select "Verbatim".  This makes Google search for exactly what you typed, without trying to help you.

For example, the inspiration of this post is that I was trying to figure out if the present indicative of the verb that gives us "dissing" and "dissed" is "dis" or "diss".  Normally, Google results would show them interchangeably on the assumption that they're both intended to mean the same thing.  So, to do a Google vote, I used the Verbatim functions so I would only get results for "dis" or "diss", not for both.

The problem is that Google doesn't show the number of results on the Verbatim search results page like it does on other search pages, which renders my Google vote useless.  This is particularly irritating because the vast majority of the times I use the Verbatim function, the hit count is part of the information I'm seeking.

Dear Google: please put the hit count on all results pages, just in case someone needs it.  You know the number of hits, so why not just serve it up?