Ladies and gentlemen, start your bicycles

Paris is about to get what could be the world’s largest Yellow Bike Program(ish): On July 15, the day after Bastille Day, Parisians will wake up to discover thousands of low-cost rental bikes at hundreds of high-tech bicycle stations scattered throughout the city, an ambitious program to cut traffic, reduce pollution, improve parking and enhance …

US border crossings worse than middle east

In the Seattle Times, Floyd McKay laments the unfriendly US border: In a reputable international survey, 39 percent said the U.S. was the world’s worst in terms of being traveler-friendly, including document processing and “having immigration officials who are respectful toward foreign visitors.” The Middle East and South Asia were “next worst,” at 16 percent. …

Understanding user needs…in Africa

Jakob Nielsen, look out. Parker Mitchell has a few things to say about the importance of understanding user needs: In particular, we will propose that the efforts of people in this room ensure that technology development efforts better incorporate the functional, economic and social/culture realities of prospective users. In my case the “users” are rural …

Craigslist suggestion: pause and resume listings

Here’s a feature suggestion: I’d like the ability to pause and resume a post on Craigslist. Here’s the scenario: I post an ad in free stuff I get 10 responses immediately I want to stop getting responses until I can deal with the ones I’ve already received If I delete the ad, I can’t repost …

JavaScript date validation

I was searching the web for JavaScript date validation code. All I found were lots of really bad ideas. Some were quite complicated. John Gang was on the right track. I didn’t see Chris Hogben’s article initially, but he used the right algorithm. Still, nobody offered the complete solution. Given a date string YYYY-MM-DD, is …