inthewind

Thanks, the problem really being that she has no idea how to file manage on her windows PC or add/remove software, and her attempt at installing the software failed.

It's weird reading the Android engineers rebuttals. It's something that really irritates me, and frankly it has put me off of owning a smartphone at all (not having a microSD slot).

I also noticed a few limititations for the first time with my partners Nook HD that does have an SD slot. I bought a 32gb MicroSD card for it to store video and music. When trying to download from the web browser files went to local storage. I also had issues with downloading in general, some of which would be incomplete or disappear. While downloading I expected to be able to move to another app, and have the download background. It was a pretty shonky experience. I tried to find some kind of setting for it and ultimately realised that Android wasn't that brilliantly suited to handle external memory.

I'm never that sure if a device is going to take ownership of something like a micro SD card when I attach it. The whole portable format thing is a pain too. Not being able to use ExFat easily on my Linux laptop is a pain. I'm surprised one of the free file systems haven't been chosen as the default for for usb sticks, memory cards etc. Probably a result of manufacturers looking to have Windows compatibility.

I'm not quite sure myself which way I think opening media should go, should I select an app first and then open something, or should I use a 'finder' to get to a file and then choose what to do with it? I guess the latter at least affords for the 'finder' to suggest what to do with it, if not have a sensible default. Should my 'finder' know if a piece of software can handle the file upfront? Should software register what it can handle to a central authority? Sometimes you might not know wihch is the best software to open something with.

From a users perspective, I'd at least hope that if the device had 8GB on it, and if I had a card plugged in with 32GB, when I went to download a 1GB file it may put that on the 32GB card. Maybe there should be named storage pools that you could select when downloading. Or a sensible default.

Perhaps when you plug in media you should get the option of integrating it to the devices storage, or having it as temporary or portable storage.

The whole file management thing doesn't feel like it's solved on the desktop, but neither does it feel particulary good on Android. I think I like to know where my files are.

I do get that this is an epic problem. My Aunt was hopeless with file management on her laptop, but is happy with her iPad, other than suggesting that she has no idea how to get the photos off of it, and hasn't succeeding in doing so yet.

I have no idea. But animal feed in the UK used to be poorly regulated until the BSE scandal. Where it transpired that cattle offal was being fed back to cattle. I couldn't quite get why a ruminent herbivore was being fed meat in the first place. But it seems they were being fed loads of crap. I remember reading that even cement dust was being used to give them more weight. There was a recent TV program that was trying to push for waste foods like canteen waste to be fed to pigs - but the regulation was so tight it wasn't possible. Clean regulated insect feeds could help there (maybe..)

If you designated the input type as email, at least the browser could then take over the responsibility, not necessarily of the validation, but possibly of the suggestion that you might have mistyped or have an invalid email address. Surely that's preferable to every site writing their own code. Browsers should be web helpers!

Surely you mean [email protected]?

Reading the article, the main use for the TLD check is to see if you have a typo, and if so suggest a correction - rather than automatically correcting the typo for you. Which I agree could be useful for the big email providers. (e.g you type gmial and it suggests a correction of gmail).

Yeah or you could always use this as animal feed.

In the UK they have seen a resurgence (rabbit) in the supermarket last few months.

Isn't it healthier/better to eat herbivores?

From my experience you can pretty much teach your pallette to like foods. I didn't like green tea, olives or whisky the first time I tried them. Now I love them.

Perhaps users are aware of relative domain names and addressing. You even see this on a service like gmail's login. A user with the address [email protected] doesn't have to enter '@gmail.com' when logging in - just 'example'. But actually either will do. Further it's not totally clear for a user what to enter here. Is a username/id is the same thing as an email address or not.

My aunt swears blind that an email address without the name in double quotes and the domainy bit is not a correct email address. She types the lot out.

Perhaps I do operate it. Can be very useful on say a dev box.

And this could be abused. I sign up to a popular service with someone else's email address. I could be a nuisance and block them from signing up as themselves, even it if it is temporary.

Also sometimes you don't even need the TLD:

user@myhostname, is a valid email address, and yet it's rejected by a lot of libraries.