Google Finance UX/UI Fail

Google recently upgraded its Finance App to offer a better experience to users. The new desktop interface offers a more expansive layout than the previous look and now includes AI support. However, it fails miserably when considered from a UI/UX perspective. Let's take a look at a few of the problems in each of the three panels in the new format.

The Left Panel

In this left panel, a summary of portfolios displays along with every single item in a watchlist and a section entitled "Equity Sectors."

This panel cannot be resized, minimized, or otherwise closed. Why? Screen real estate is a valuable commodity.

Also, why only Equity Sectors?  Where are the equally important asset classes: Fixed Income, Commodities, Real Estate, Foreign Exchange, and Cash Equivalents? This one piece adds unnecessary noise to the view. It can be collapsed, but only temporarily.

The Center Panel

The default display shows announcements, major indices, the US Market Summary, latest news, dates for upcoming earnings reports, most active stocks, and daily gainers and losers.

Selecting items from a watchlist displays more detailed information about a particular stock in this panel.  Choosing a watchlist expands the left panel, overriding this center panel.  That works nicely.

Portfolio selection does not work the same.  Choosing a portfolio displays the contents of the portfolio and certain details in this center panel.  These detail columns can be customized to add more data to the view as well.  It should probably work the same as watchlist selection though.

When viewing a portfolio with more than 10 market items, it is impossible to view the associated data without continually scrolling back and forth and up and down, while struggling to remember the position of a specific item in a grid with no reference points. A side-to-side scroll bar is available at the bottom, but it is an empty and useless gesture for large portfolios.

The Right Panel

Welcome to the new "Research" Panel, or more accurately described as the introduction and intrusion of AI into your portfolio. 

This panel cannot be resized, minimized, or otherwise pushed out of sight.

The default view is a welcome message encouraging you to ask questions, of which a few random examples are provided. One can also ask it to perform analysis on what is visible in the middle panel or query markets in general. 

In Chrome, with Gemini already available, it is redundant at best.

Tasks can be executed from this panel too. In fact, Google now forces the user to use this panel for any updates to their portfolios. There is no other choice. If the intent is to use this platform to track an investment portfolio, one is stuck using AI.

It is a helpless and useless AI too.  

Most tasks associated with a watchlist are more easily performed from buttons already on screen.

Managing a portfolio using this Research Panel AI offers a new level of frustration. 

One can no longer simply add information to a portfolio as they did before. Google now forces the user to request that AI complete the task, taking the simplest process and pushing it down the path of unnecessary complexity.  What once only took a few keystrokes has been transformed into an argument over trade dates, pricing, and true transaction amounts. 

Who has time for this?

If I have to enter everything into a box, just give me all the fields required and segregated to do that.   At least give me a means of manually editing what Research Panel AI incorrectly positioned so I do not have spend an excessing amount of time arguing with it.

Beyond simple trades that it failed to execute properly, testing uncovered things the Research Panel refused to recognize that standard Gemini identified easily. In one instance, prior to Google pushing the major enhancement enabling users to sort by Ticker, the Research Panel was requested to take the columns from a portfolio presented in the center panel and redisplay the list with only the columns for Ticker and Total Gain/Loss, sorted in Ticker alphabetical order. The Research Panel insisted that the data did not exist. Gemini quickly displayed the requested information without argument.

Additionally, in the conversion to this new build, developers failed to ensure that data migrated correctly.  A lot of users report that daily tracking of their portfolio is lost forever.  Google simply dropped the transaction dates of many portfolio items.  As a consolation, the Research Panel AI recommends that you simply add those back for each and every stock.  It obviously is completely clueless as to the time that could take for large portfolios that have been in place for an extended period, with multiple transactions.

Thanks, Google.  Again, who has time for this?

Final Thoughts

I wish I could say I that I do not understand why Google refuses to enable manually entry as an option.

The answer is all too clear though.

They have spent a lot of money on this, and you will use it, you will like it, and you will work for free helping to train it up.

AI should be an additive tool for deep research or complex queries.  It should not be a mandatory gatekeeper for simple 2-second data entry forms.

Additionally, I will remain forever confused by those who continue to insist that Google is some sort of UI/UX expert.  They are anything but that, and this is one of many glaring examples.

Google did do one thing extremely valuable in this rebuild.  They helped me realize the usefulness of my personal brokerage platform.  Those guys spent serious time and money understanding UX.  The worst thing I encounter there is a login with two-factor authentication every time.

Empty Your Outlook Inbox

Another helpful tech tip for keeping the old Outlook inbox slim and trim, for those that may not know.

Are you using your mailbox as a To-Do List and have 4,563,231 emails and growing?

Stop it now and end your day with an empty inbox, or at least nearly empty.

I do.

All you have to do is flag your email and then archive it out of your sight.

It will still be searchable, and you can assign a due date to it, to remind you that it needs to be done.

What?

Yes.  Just flag them and get rid of them.

Here’s what you do …

In your inbox on each message, you should have the option to “Flag this message.”

It looks like a little flag and turns red when you click it.

Click that flag!

Now, click the little blue checkmark on the left toolbar.  

It says “To Do” when you hover over it.

In the left panel of the new screen, you will see “Flagged email.”

Click it!

When you get a lot of things in here, it will say “Earlier, Today, Tomorrow, A date range, Later, etc…”

Most importantly, you will say a section that says, “No Date.”

Expand it if you need to, using the little “ > “to the left of that title.

Hover over the Item Title and you will see a little “i” that is circled.

Click it!

A panel opens on the right the details of that item and usually shows only the subject of the email and a link to open it.

Here you can add a Due Date, a Reminder, Color Tags, Attachments and your own notes.

Follow this process and each time you flag an email, and you can just archive it out of sight or move it off to a folder.  Do NOT delete the email.  That will delete to To Do.  Archive is in your right-click menu and looks like a little file box.

Hope this helps make your inbox less frightening!  Good Luck!

Now, if only Google offered anything as reasonable integrated.

Google Scrapes the Barrel

Image borrowed from Quartz

Today, the notification below arrived, and immediately thought to myself, "Wow, Google.  You are really scraping the barrel."

---

We are reaching out to notify you of an upcoming update to our storage policies, along with new controls designed to give you more control over your Android backups.

The Policy Update: Effective in 45 days, all data included in your Android device backups will begin counting toward your Google Account storage limit. Photos and videos in Google Photos and MMS data already count toward your Google Account storage today. With this change all other backed-up data such as SMS messages, call history, device settings, and app settings will also count toward your Google Account storage. The storage used by your device backup may increase once this policy takes effect. If your Google Account exceeds its storage limit, your automatic backups will pause until you free up space or upgrade your plan.

New Controls for You: With this change, we are also introducing granular app backup toggles in your Android backup settings. If you are on Android 9 or higher, you can now select exactly which data types and individual apps you want to back up, ensuring you only use storage for what matters most to you.

Your current storage status:

Your estimated increase in Android device backup will be 0.05 GB after this change. 

---

Is all this really necessary? I guess they have to somehow recoup all those billions they are throwing at their AI somehow.

When they actually begin to charge a fair price for cloud storage, perhaps I will change my mind.. Local storage is cheaper and folks should turn away from this nonsense.

Google is just a like a drug dealer.  They give you services for free for years, then about-face and start charging you.  They were not always that way.  The internet was not always this way.

Copilot Notebook Enhancement Annoyance

Today, I discovered what a few others have begun to uncover. Microsoft has made yet another UI change to Copilot that has left users guessing.  Notebooks have mysteriously disappeared.  

When this feature first rolled out, I had no idea what to with it and turned to Copilot to explain it.

Recognizing the advantage of this feature, I rolled through a few projects using it and relying upon it as my place to compile all of my project notes.

They have yanked this feature apparently.  Though it still exists, just not where it is supposed to live, in the menu!

<rant> Do they not understand that nobody wants to play that game, hunting for what was previously right up front and is now nowhere to be found, except through discussion with their Artificial Imbecile. Google was slow to figure this out too.  Nobody wants to start using something only to have it yanked out from under them. It is not helpful.  It is not useful.  We will find something more reliable.  We will find a better way and without you.  That is all. </rant>

fabric vs snowflake

Why Ventra Health Chose Snowflake to Power Its Next Generation of Data and Analytics | by Kevin Crittendon | Snowflake Builders Blog: Data Engineers, App Developers, AI, & Data Science | Medium

Asked to take a look at the above article and offer some thoughts, here are few insights I have gathered from my own experience, other discussions and conferences.

This is an interesting case study highlighting Snowflake’s strength as a high-performance data warehouse, but I feel that the evaluation is limited to a lens that overlooks broader platform considerations.

For organizations heavily invested in the Microsoft stack and Power BI, Fabric represents a more strategic long-term platform due to its integrated architecture and reduced operational overhead.

Fabric is not intended to compete solely as a warehouse. It is designed to be an end-to-end data platform that minimizes data movement, reduces dependency on ETL pipelines, and eliminates duplication across systems.

The comparison largely measures how efficiently data is moved, where the value in Fabric lies in reducing or eliminating that movement altogether.

Findings also suggest a pipeline-heavy implementation (e.g., Data Factory-driven ETL), which reflects design choices rather than platform limitations. Fabric is optimized around OneLake and Direct Lake, enabling native access patterns that avoid replication and reduce latency.

The reported cost pressures align with a pipeline-centric architecture. In my opinion, Fabric offers a more predictable, capacity-based cost model when used as designed, with centralized storage, Direct Lake BI workloads, and minimal data movement.

Snowflake does simplify data warehousing and very efficiently, but introduces another level of complexity, and another point of failure.

Fabric simplifies the entire analytics ecosystem, using native integration with Power BI, Entra ID, and Microsoft 365, eliminating the need for additional tools, connectors, and duplicated semantic layers.

Fabric represents a different category altogether: a unified data and analytics platform designed to consolidate data engineering, warehousing, business intelligence, and governance into a single, integrated solution.

SharePoint List Deprecation in favor of Rules

Microsoft continues to align with the Google way of doing business, abandoning processes that are user-friendly in favor of a more awkward way of doing things.  It is simply continuing technical stupidity.

Microsoft strives to deliver utmost value to our customers through modern, optimized, secure solutions in this newly evolved world focused on digital transformation. As part of this evolution of Microsoft 365 solutions, we will be retiring SharePoint Alerts and believe Microsoft 365 customers will be better served by modern notification solutions based upon the Power Automate platform or SharePoint Rules. - SharePoint Alerts retirement - Microsoft Support

Microsoft, you believe wrongly.  Alerts were simple and straightforward.  We now have to setup 3 rules to accomplish what one alert did perfectly.  Additionally, the Rule does not include information that the Alert included, which causes users to have to click-through to get to that information.  To get that information, you have to create an Automation.  I can get through it, but it is not exactly a simple process for nearly all of my user community.  This is not helpful.  Thanks for piling on more work for me, Microsoft.

I suppose that I should be thankful they are not ditching SharePoint completely.

Simple File Restore in SharePoint or Teams or OneDrive

Ever saved over the top of a file and need to get back to that previous version?

You could "undo," if you still have the file open, but if you made a bunch of changes, you might never get back to that original file state.

Fortunately, it is really simple in SharePoint, Teams, and OneDrive.

Access the folder in whichever of those places has the file.

1. Right-Click on the file you want to restore.
2. Select "Version History."
3. On the version you want to restoreClick the " . . . "
4. Choose "Restore"
5. Done! That Fast. That Simple.

Google Photos tries to Cheat Users

Google is playing tricks with their app, very likely in an effort to force users to buy more storage. 

When Google reversed their decision to offer unlimited storage back in June of 2021 ,many users left the platform.  They migrated to destinations they were already using, or to other platforms that simply continued to offer unlimited storage.

Google did offer users the ability to save storage space, using a setting within the app called "Storage Saver," which compressed photos and videos slightly.  Many kept using Google Photos leveraging this option and it worked great.

An update to the app on May 25, 2025 changed that setting.  This was confirmed with several users.  Of course, everyone had a slightly different date.  That was the date that everything began to backup at "Original Quality," using more storage than it should have been.

This sure feels like "as designed."  Folks are finding different solutions and backing away from the "The Cloud."  What better way to force people to make a choice than to tamper with their settings?

If you have fallen victim to this scam, you will need to adjust the settings within the App on your device.

Be aware that you will need to do this for every app on every device that you backup photos from.  If you use Desktop on your computer, you will need to do it there (and in every browser you use to backup).

Copilot, the Artificial Idiot

I remain unconvinced of the usefulness of AI at this time.  It is the equivalent of attempting to hike with a car.  While it may work, it is a bit of overkill.

Multiple model collapse situations reinforced this belief. Building a little app in Power Platform, I asked Copilot to import all rows from my spreadsheet.  It imported 20 and not the 78 requested.  I asked that it import the remainder of the rows, so it made stuff up, 5 at a time.  Then, when asked to list the rows for me to review, Copilot insisted that it had, when it had not.  

This is not the first time either.  

I should not have to argue with the Artificial Idiot.

"We're in the midst of the AI Slop, where the internet feeds itself."  

Teams Storyline

image borrowed form Thurrott.com

A few weeks ago, Microsoft introduced a cool new feature to Teams called "Storyline."  

It looks as though it could be quite a little game changer for keeping up with colleagues, customers, and friends, as well as enabling them to keep up with what is going on in your world.

Microsoft explains it as "a feature that enhances team communication by allowing users to share updates, experiences, and milestones in a social media-like format within Teams and Viva Engage."

This feature has always been over on Engage and is now integrated with Teams!

So how did I get there?!?!

1. Go to Teams
2. Go to Chat
3. Choose yourself, as if you might chat with yourself!

At the top, you will see ...

• Your Name (You)
• Chat
• Yes, you can actually talk to yourself here, if you are so inclined
• ... or just make notes to yourself for later.
• Shared
• Send a file or link to yourself in Chat and it will show up here.
• Viewing someone else, these are files and links you shared with them.
• Storyline
• This is what I am talking about ... click it!

That's neat.  So how do I follow people?

If you are using the latest version of Teams, you kind of already are.  All you have to do is click their name from chat, like you did in the previous steps, and go to their Storyline.

If you want to be updated when someone adds something to their Storyline, simply click the "Follow Storyline" button, when you are viewing their Storyline.

Note:  That will activate notifications for their Storyline.   To adjust the how and when ...

1. Go to your Storyline
2. Choose Following
3. Choose an Individual
4. Look for the little bell next to "Following" and Click It!

. . .

Read all about it this new feature here, from Microsoft.

One Drive Simplified (sort of)

OneDrive WHAT? 

OneDrive is where all of your documents are stored. 

You thought they were on your computer, didn’t you? 

Well, they are there too, but are backed up continuously, so that you never lose them.  

It also enables you to do a lot of cool things, such as ... 

• Share your documents with others, without attaching a new copy every time 
• Collaborate with others on your documents without sending them back and forth a hundred times 
• Collaborate in REAL TIME!  You can actually see when others add things or check back and see what they added. 
• Restore your own documents 
• Roll your documents back to another version. 
• Access your documents from anywhere, any time, on any device. 

To do these things, you must have OneDrive turned on though. 

Check and see if it is on and working. 

Go to the lower right corner of your screen and see if you have a little blue cloud.  

Click on it, and it will show you a list of the most recent things that it backed up.   

Here is a screenshot of what mine looks like right now. 

• If you do not see the little blue cloud, click that little up arrow to the left to see if it is in there. 
• If you do not have a little blue cloud, contact Technology and get one for yourself. 

If your backup window is empty, you may not have changed anything recently, or it may not be configured correctly.  You may need to reach out to Technology. 

OR ... if you have a little more confidence than the average bear,  

1. Click the little gear 
2. Click Settings 
3. Click Manage Backup 
4. Flip the switches 

Warning!!!!! Whatever is set to off, will NOT be backed up and you could lose the files in those folders forever. 

Warning!!!!! Files stored in the Downloads folder are never backed up!  Ever. Never.  Unless you move them to the Documents folder. 

If you are already backing up everything, good for you!   

There are some icons that appear over that little blue cloud every so often that tell you what is going on in there, otherwise known as your “Synch Status.” 

What do those little cloud icons mean? 

Chasing Arrows = Currently Synching 

Yellow Triangle = We have a problem, Houston!  Click to find out what it is. 

Blue with Pause = Synching is paused 

Gray Cloud = You are not logged in or setup is incomplete (you may not be backing everything up that you should). 

Gray with red minus sign = Account Blocked 

Blue with red X = Some files or folders cannot be synched.  Click to find out which ones and fix them.  PS ... certain folder names cannot be used (like “Forms). 

How does this look on my computer? 

Start by accessing File Explorer or your documents folder.   

You should have a folder with a little blue cloud with your name on it.This is where all of your backed up documents are.  Your Desktop, Documents, and Pictures are all here. 

If you do not see a little blue cloud with your name, you need to get in touch with Technology. 

If you expand any of those, you will see a “Status” for each file or folder. 

What do those little status icons mean? 

Blue Cloud = File is currently only online, but you can still open it, if you are “connected” 

Green Check Mark Circled = You opened the file and it is on your computer, but also backed up 

File Name with little blue marks next to it = This is a new file 

Blue cloud with a head next to it = The file or folder is shared 

LOCK = The file or folder has setting that do not permit it to be backed up 

Green circle with white check mark = You have chosen to always keep this file on your computer, but it is backed up 

So ... how do you get to your all of your files, anywhere, any time? 

That part is easy. 

Go to Microsoft 365 and login. 

Look for the OneDrive icon on the left 

I think you can figure it out from there.   

The column on the left will get you everything you need. 

The waffle icon on the left will also get you to ALL your favorite applications to hate like Word, Excel, PowerPoint, Power BI.   

Happy OneDriving! 

Teams for Two

Recently, a few folks have asked about creating a Microsoft Teams for themselves and one other individual.  They say that they need a Team to share documents and conversations back and forth, exclusively between one another.

There is nothing to do here. 

Quite literally, it is already done! 

Microsoft read your mind.

Using the Chat feature within Microsoft Teams makes this happen.

The moment you begin a chat with another individual, you are creating a Team in which only you and that individual are included.

Obviously, the conversation is only accessible to you and the other individual.

In addition, documents you share in that chat are only accessible to you and the other individual.

Access any of the documents and links you have shared through that chat at any time by clicking the “Shared” link that appears next to “Chat” at the top of the chat with that person.

Upload and collaborate on documents with that individual here too!

Nearly anything that you can do within a Team created for multiple individuals can be done in Chat too, even adding Apps to your chat (just click the “+” next to “Shared” at the top.

But wait, there’s more … You can even have a Team with yourself!  What?  Sure!  Just click your name at the top of the chat and make notes, upload files, or just test out how things work in the chat space.

Crazy, huh?

Joining Spreadsheets in Excel

Power Query, which Power BI relies upon for data load and transformation first appeared in Excel.  It enables one to automate changes to data sets through filters and other modifications each and every time data is loaded to a spreadsheet dependent upon a Power Query.

It also enables a user to join two separate spreadsheets as if they were working with tables in a database.

The following walks through the joining two tables in Excel, using Power Query.

The process for Merge and Append are essentially the same.  These steps relate to Merge.

Merge = Combines two or more files based on one or more matching columns so that their shared data appears on one row.  In this example, starting with 1085 rows, and another with 1082 rows, we will end up with 1085 rows.

Append = Simply combines (add rows from one to another) two or more files and matches columns where they have the exact same name.  In this example, starting with 1085 rows, and another with 1082 rows, we would end up with 2167 rows

1) In Excel

a) Open a Blank Workbook

b) Choose the Data menu

 i) Choose Get Data

(1) > from File

(2) > from Excel Workbook

(a) Select a file from the window that opens

(b) In the subsequent window, click the appropriate tab from that Excel file

 (c) Choose Transform Data 

(i) Power Query Editor window opens

  2) In Power Query Editor, in the New Query section 

a) Choose New Source 

i) > File

ii) > Excel Workbook

(1) Select a file from the window that opens

(a) In the subsequent window, click the appropriate tab from that Excel file, and click OK

(b) Two reports now appear in the Queries pane (left)

b) In the Combine section, 

i) Choose the drop down next to “Merge Queries”

ii) Choose Merge Queries as New

(1) A new Merge window opens, with one of the Excel files already chosen

(2) Choose the other Excel file from the drop-down in the middle

(3) Begin choosing which data columns to match on

(a) Click the column name from the top sample, then click the matching column name in the bottom sample.  Both are highlighted when selected.

(i)  Choose columns that contain the exact same information.  Both tables should contain matches, though not all will match.  In this example, the match is between “IDF Form ID” and “Individual Data form ID,” because they will contain the same data.

1. If matching more than one column, CTR+Click the second column

(4) Choose the Join Kind at the bottom.

(a) If unsure, choose “Full Outer” to keep all data from both Excel sheets

(5) Click OK

(a) The Merge window disappears, and a new table appears in the Queries in the left panel.  This is file containing the merged files.

 

(6) Click Close & Load

(a) The window returns to the initial Excel Workbook and loads the merged files.

3) In the Excel Workbook, the right panel will highlight which file is currently being viewed

That is all there is to it!  Happy Joining!

Security in Teams and SharePoint

IT in our organization is still very much the Wild Wild West, and most users have no idea how to manage things are typically handled by IT in larger organizations.  In an effort to help keep the peace, and educate folks a bit, I occasionally post a few thoughts towards best practices to help folks along.  

This is one such thing.  Lately, I have noticed folks just handing out site/team ownership without any thought towards what they are doing.  People that should not have access to certain things, suddenly have sweeping access.  

This is by no means all-encompassing.  It is only meant as a basic outline to help most users in a default SharePoint Online / Teams environment.

================

It is super easy to make another user an “Owner” of your Team or SharePoint so they have the access they need to do whatever they need to do at the time. It is also a little dangerous.

Did you know that in doing so, you give that person the right to do whatever they want inside of your Team / SharePoint?

This includes …
· Delete your Team or SharePoint
· Add any users they want to your Teams/SharePoint, even as an Owner.
· Access any document.
· Share any document (even externally).
· Change any document.
· Delete any document.
· View HIPAA protected information.
· Share HIPAA protected information.

The same security controls are not in place for Teams / SharePoint as those for the File Server (also known as the G drive or H drive or whatever letter is assigned to your drive).

Access Security is the sole responsibility of the Owners of the Teams / SharePoint.

Fortunately, Access Security is extremely easy to maintain.

• Do not make anyone an “Owner,” unless you really want them to have that authority.
• Do not make anyone a “Member” that is outside of your working Teams.
• Add a “Visitor,” if someone needs access to everything in your Teams / SharePoint.
• Share a document and/or folder, if that is all a person really needs access to.

How do I do this?

1. In SharePoint,
1. Click the gear in the top right of the page
2. Choose “Site Permissions”
3. Click “Add members”
1. "Add members to group” will add a site Member
2. “Share Site Only” will add a site Visitor
2. In Teams,
1. Only a Member may be added here.
2. Click the ellipses ( . . . ) next to the Teams name
1. Choose “Add Member”
3. “Guests” can be added, but that is a whole other story.

Through these same menus in SharePoint, you can remove an “Owner” or “Member” that should no longer be there. In Teams, choose “Manage Team” from the ellipses menu next to the Teams name.


Overview: Site governance, permission, and sharing for site owners - Microsoft Support

• Owner
• Full Control
• Manage Site Permissions, Settings, Appearance, as well as Add, Edit, and Delete any documents or Site contents.
• Member
• Contributor
• Edit site content, as well as add, edit, and delete documents.
• Visitor
• Read Only Viewer
• Can see most content but cannot edit or delete.

Email Subaddressing

Some mail services support a tag included in the local-part, such that the address is an alias to a prefix of the local-part.

Usually, the characters following a plus and less often the characters following a minus, so fred+bah@domain and fred+foo@domain might end up in the same inbox as fred+@domain or even as fred@domain.

As an example, the address joeuser+tag@example.com denotes the same delivery address as joeuser@example.com.

RFC 5233 refers to this convention as subaddressing, but it is also known as plus addressing, tagged addressing or mail extensions.

This can be useful for tagging emails for sorting, and for spam control.

Addresses of this form, using various separators between the base name and the tag, are supported by several email services, including ...

• Andrew Project (plus)
• Runbox (plus)
• Gmail (plus)
• Rackspace (plus)
• Yahoo! Mail Plus (hyphen)
• Apple's iCloud (plus)
• Outlook.com (plus),
• Proton Mail (plus),
• Fastmail (plus and Subdomain Addressing),
• postale.io (plus),
• Pobox (plus),
• MeMail (plus),
• MMDF (equals)
• Qmail and Courier Mail Server (hyphen)
• Postfix and Exim allow configuring an arbitrary separator from the legal character set.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Email_address#Subaddressing

Power Automate Desktop Date Conversion

Put together a little Date Conversion template for Power Automate Desktop that I need to save out.  Copy/paste the quote block areas and you are on your way.

Date Conversions

DateTime.GetCurrentDateTime.Local DateTimeFormat: DateTime.DateTimeFormat.DateAndTime CurrentDateTime=> CurrentDateTime

Text.ConvertDateTimeToText.FromCustomDateTime DateTime: CurrentDateTime CustomFormat: $'''MM/dd/yyyy''' Result=> CDT_Formatted

DateTime.Add DateTime: CurrentDateTime TimeToAdd: -1 TimeUnit: DateTime.TimeUnit.Days ResultedDate=> CDTminus1

Text.ConvertDateTimeToText.FromCustomDateTime DateTime: CDTminus1 CustomFormat: $'''MM/dd/yyyy''' Result=> CDTminus1_Formatted

Text.ConvertDateTimeToText.FromCustomDateTime DateTime: CurrentDateTime CustomFormat: $'''MM/01/yyyy''' Result=> FirstDayCurrentMonth

Text.ConvertDateTimeToText.FromCustomDateTime DateTime: CurrentDateTime CustomFormat: $'''01/01/yyyy''' Result=> FirstDayCurrentYear

Text.ConvertDateTimeToText.FromCustomDateTime DateTime: CurrentDateTime CustomFormat: $'''12/31/yyyy''' Result=> LastDayCurrentYear

Text.ConvertDateTimeToText.FromCustomDateTime DateTime: CurrentDateTime CustomFormat: $'''MM''' Result=> ThisMonth_MM

Text.ConvertDateTimeToText.FromCustomDateTime DateTime: CurrentDateTime CustomFormat: $'''yyyy''' Result=> ThisYear_yyyy

# End Day Last Month = First Day This Month - 1 day

DateTime.Add DateTime: FirstDayCurrentMonth TimeToAdd: -1 TimeUnit: DateTime.TimeUnit.Days ResultedDate=> EndDayLastMonth

# First Day Last Month = First Day This Month - 1 month

DateTime.Add DateTime: FirstDayCurrentMonth TimeToAdd: -1 TimeUnit: DateTime.TimeUnit.Months ResultedDate=> FirstDayLastMonth

Microsoft lets Everyone edit Everything

When sharing from Microsoft OneDrive, the image above is what it continually defaults to.

There is only one problem, "People in your organization with the link can edit."

Who thought this was a good idea?

The things that I share within my organization are typically shared with very specific people.

I do not want to share these things with the entire organization!

This needs changed.  It is hidden.  It is not obvious.  It creates the potential for disaster with personally identifiable information.

Why should I have to continually click that link to change it to "People I Specify?"

Google Photos No Longer Free

We launched Google Photos more than five years ago and since then, it's become more than just an app to manage your photos. It's become a place you go when you feel nostalgic and want to reminisce. Today, Google Photos is the home for more than 4 trillion photos and videos, including yours, and a remarkable 28 billion new photos and videos are uploaded every week. In order to welcome even more of your memories and build Google Photos for the future, we are announcing a change to our storage policy.

Starting June 1, 2021, all new photos and videos backed up in High quality will count toward the free 15 GB of storage that comes with your Google Account or any additional storage you may have purchased, the same way other Google services like Google Drive and Gmail already do. All photos and videos you back up in High quality before June 1, 2021 are exempt from this change and will not count toward your Google Account storage. This includes all of your existing content uploaded in High quality.

We don't take this decision lightly and we acknowledge that this is a big shift, so wanted to let you know well in advance and give you resources to help you navigate this change.

Do I need to do anything right away? No, you can continue to use Google Photos to back up your photos and videos. After June 1, 2021 we will reach out and send you reminders when you are nearing your storage limit. Most users will have years before they need to take action. When will I reach my free 15 GB of storage? We created a personalized estimate that shows how much time you have until you reach your quota. This estimate takes into account how frequently you back up photos, videos and other content to your Google Account. What can I do to manage my storage? On June 1, 2021, we will be launching a new storage management tool which will help you easily find and delete dark, blurry, and otherwise unwanted content. You can also purchase more storage with Google One where available.

We are grateful that you choose Google Photos to safely store your memories. This change enables us to keep up with the growing demand for photo storage and remain focused on building Google Photos for the future. To learn more about this change, check out our Help Center article or Blog Post. Thank you, Your Google Photos Team

 

Medium needs a better Feed

Photograph courtesy of elPadawan, Flickr

Since joining Medium almost a year ago, I have really enjoyed this platform. There are so many great writers here, creating some fantastic original content, that it is a little hard to keep up with all of it at times. I do manage, somewhat.

I continue to find it a bit difficult to follow the sources that I enjoy the most , which leads me to writing this recommendation. Perhaps, someone can identify what I am doing wrong, or the good folks at Medium will recognize the potential for a new feature, or adjust an algorithm somewhere.

Often cluttered with nonsense that I could really care less about, my stream is the primary concern. I follow about 22 different tags; one or two that are relatively specific, like GIS. However, most of the tags are general, such as History, Design, Culture, Photography, etc.

One example is stories by the publication “War is Boring.” I do not mean to pick on them. I have read a couple of really good articles from them, but I do not follow that publication. I do not follow the writer that recently published a story in that publication. I do not follow any of the tags identified in the article, yet there are three stories from this publication in my stream now.

Meanwhile, recent stories that I really care about, from folks that I follow, publications that I follow, and tags that I follow are getting very little stream time. Once, I tried countering this effect by accessing the tags directly, but there is another problem.

Some of the stories under tags are months old and extremely stale. For example, the first story under the tag for Missouri displays an article from February 28 that is wholly irrelevant now. The bill failed to make it out of committee back in April. What use is that story to anyone?

Visiting each individual or publication is not an option either. If I have to resort to that, I might as well just surf around the internet as I did before. Indeed, that is what started trending in my world, and I got to thinking; Medium really should have a better means of keeping folks on the site, reading the things they follow on Medium, and even things they care about that are not on Medium.

A few weeks ago, I re-discovered the RSS feed again. I was amazed. There have made great strides in the development of the RSS Reader since I last bothered with it, which was about the time Google discontinued that effort. In my most humble opinion, this is exactly what Medium should be enabling on the site to attract and retain readers.

Using Feedly, which has undergone a fantastic facelift, I can pull in stories from all over the web, and not just Medium. I can categorize my content, see what is new today, mark articles read, bookmark them for later reading, and even get suggestions for related content that I am not following, off to the side. It even provides a wide array of social media integration and sharing tools, as well as the beginnings of its own little social media platform. The platform that I migrated my publication from, Blogger did a few of these things too, though not quite as efficiently. WordPress also offers a similar format, but their interface is just awkward and confusing at best.

One thing I do not care for on Feedly, is that it requires a bit more clicking around, which I am not usually inclined to do. If I want to “Recommend” an article on Medium, or any other source really, I have to select to “Visit Website” from the bottom of the article display. Ironically, this sort of thing is probably skewing the stats on Medium too. If I go to the Medium site to “Recommend” an article, I definitely do not read it all over again.

. . .

I truly feel there is an opportunity for Medium to step up and meet the needs of current users, attract new users, and as all web sites are most interested in doing, keep those users on site all the time. Medium is by far the best platform for publishing that I have had the opportunity to use. It simplifies everything, why not simplify the stream, and make it more user centric.

I would like to see Medium implement a customizable stream, wherein users could choose to see only the content to which they subscribe; additionally, enable an option to pull in content from sources outside of Medium.

The tabs at the top already offer users the opportunity to explore other Medium publisher topics. Along with the side bar that currently displays a few articles from those subjects, maintaining those would be sufficient to encourage folks to look around a little.

Tags display need modified to display the Latest, or at minimum, as mentioned previously, make it a user-defined option. The content on many tags is stale and irrelevant.

I think these little changes could also provide writers on Medium a lot more exposure, balance the playing field a bit more, and keep it from continuing down the path of appearing at times to be a rather gated community; unless, of course, that is the intent, then never mind and carry on.

Wikiplacemarks UI

It all started with a reply to a post on Social Media, “you know … I really love the concept behind your site, but I absolutely hate that Tweet box. It is forever in the way. I got rid of it on my sites, after deciding that if folks really wanted to see that sort of thing, they would be over on Twitter.”

Obviously, the problem was an embedded Twitter feed that was consuming half of the screen on said web site. I will never understand why folks think this (or another social media feed) is a good thing. The idea has always been, and continues to be, to drive traffic to a web site and hold it there; not drive it away.

The site owner thanked me for the feedback, removed the previously mentioned annoying Tweet box, and then opened that door. “If you have any other suggestions let us know.”

Actually, I had a laundry list, and indicated as much.

The site owner told me to go and send my thoughts along, and they are republished below. The primary concept being to provide a list of relatively minor changes to make the site a little more user friendly, without requiring a complete overhaul.

It really is a great concept site, and I hope it catches on. I had actually been thinking of doing something similar, until I stumbled on Atlas Obscura, and subsequently, this site.

To start, be aware that your site is not mobile friendly at all; at least, on Android. I am not quite sure what you need to do to fix that, but it almost appears as if you are trying to force the issue; it is either that, the framing around the map is causing problems.

Here is the laundry list…

The Blue Welcome Banner: Coming from an external link to the site, to a specific place mark, you probably should not show the blue banner across the middle. It would be better to suck your visitor in, and not require yet another click. More than likely, they know where they are. Place this information in the FAQ, and/or only display it if they are hitting the page directly.

Top Navigation Bar: You really need your brand name up here. Otherwise, it is generally good, but not so good for mobile devices, which are going to be most of your market. If you can do a simple slide-out “hamburger menu,” that would probably be better, especially for mobile; or, somehow incorporate it into the Turn Layers on/off menu.

The “Volunteers” link is already in the FAQ. Drop it.

Social Media Buttons should probably be at the bottom. Folks will look for them there. They just are not that important, if you are already posting these items to those networks.

Android Apps link/sublinks: Not sure what I am looking at here, but it appears completely irrelevant to the site topic, and should probably be eliminated.

The Placemarks menu and links are unnecessary. You are already browsing. Edit should on the information page for the place mark, and you already have a button to add a place mark.

The Map menu and links are unnecessary. The site is a Map. Move the Free Map Maker link to the FAQ and relabel it to “Embed on Your Site.”

The Login/Register link needs reworked. Ideally, when a user first hits your site, they should be able to login there, without having to click login and be taken to another page. I understand sometimes there is no way around that though, so it would be best to simply provide a “Sign In” button, which takes them to the sign-in page you already have; basically, drop the extra “register” piece that you have up there, and direct all sign-ins/ups/registrations to that page. I do like that you are using Google here instead of Fakebook; however, you probably should modify the right text block on that page o say “WikiPlaceMarks” instead of “MajorForms” for brand consistency.

The FAQ link should probably show in that hamburger menu discussed previously.

The Language selection link, I am a little torn on. Google provides automatic identification of the need for translation on most web pages; but then, not everyone uses Google.

Get rid of all of those little cards surrounding the Donate button. Credit cards are really the only method of payment on the internet; as well, relocate it the button to the bottom of the page.

The Map aka Your Content: To reduce load time start in “Map” view and not Satellite view. You will find it loads a lot faster and looks a lot cleaner; also, if you can leverage the “Light Political” view that Google has, that would be even better. The quantity of place marks are causing it dog a little bit too; some APIs allow for clustering or limiting the number that appear on the map at any one time. You might look into that.

Also, place your Turn All Layers On/Off as a checkbox at the top of all of the layers in that same table. It just makes more sense there.

The Bottom Navigation Bar: This should probably be at the top, with your logo and the other points mentioned.

On the link to the Placemark of the Day, the down arrow to the left of it appears to do nothing in Chrome; nor does the link; either way, it might be better located in the hamburger menu, or somehow set it to automatically display for all users hitting the site directly.

In short summary…

Top Navigation Bar:

LOGO / PLACEMARK OF THE DAY / SEARCH / LANGUAGE / LOGIN / FAQ

Unless you can implement a slide-out MENU (aka hamburger), then stuff all of this under that (except your logo).

Bottom Navigation Bar:

SOCIAL MEDIA (ICONS ONLY) / < AD SPACE > / DONATE BUTTON

Have some thoughts about my presumptions? I have been doing UX/UI for quite a few years, and have found constructive criticism the best learning tool ever! Leave a comment on what you think might work better.

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originally written and published for The UX Blog