Google Search: Bottom's Up

(first published Nov 11, 2008 in The Freewheeler blog)

I suggest Google put its Page of Results navigation (as seen here)

At both the TOP and the BOTTOM of each result page. Google tends to put such navigation only on the bottom. For example, I was in Google Calendar and chose to view calendar details/settings. Within the setting page, I couldn't find a way to exit -- and return to the calendar. The link "Return to Calendar" is at the bottom.

It would be convenient to have the option of jumping through results pages without having to scroll through each page. It would also give the results pages more consistency:

The text input field resides at both the top and the bottom. Actually, different versions of the search input appear in the top versus the bottom.

The top just has the simple search input field:

The bottom has search tips, filtering options and language tools:

Another issue, which I discussed in an earlier post, is the ambiguity of what the links "Web" "Images" "Maps" do. Are they links to other Google products/services (nouns), or search result filters (i.e. "show me results within Images."). If you experiment, you will find inconsistent results. For example, if I click "Gmail" it doesn't search my gmail for "gold" (search term), but if I click "Maps" it does. And how does the set of links above the Google logo differ from the set of links below the logo?

Google Calendar: Time Zone Snag - No Absolute Time

(first published Feb 14, 2009 in The Freewheeler blog)

Google Calendar is terrific. But a major problem I've found is a Time Zone is set not to the Event, but to the Google Calendar User. Thus, any event that user creates, is set to his user setting timezone.



So, if I live in Los Angeles but schedule an 8pm Monday London event, it will show up as a 3am Tuesday event to Londoners. As long as my user setting is PST, I have to do this: set the event for 1pm. In Google Calendar, a user can have more than one calendar. Each calendar can have its own setting for Time Zone.

Thus, I thought a bad but working solution would be to temporarily set a calendar to time zone London. But, that setting just dictates the Display of the time, not the absolute date time start. The absolute is still based on the user's time zone.



The issue is all the more confounding because the Calendar gives much weight to an Event's Location field. It wants specific information so that it can map it and offer directions or other services. Yet it's not interested in the time?

Here I create a 9am New York City event. But to Google, it's a 9 am PST start -- 12 pm in NYC and 5pm in London.


Here's how it's published, in London Time:

The solution is: Google should let viewers / subscribers to a calendar set a timezone for "Viewing"-- thus all events are translated into a time relative to that user's view. In that case, if I'm looking at a 5pm New York event as a Californian (PST) I see it as 2pm.

The absolute time should be defined by the manager per event. When entering the time there should simply be a field to enter the time zone, which Google could 'predict' once location is entered (that would also require an alteration in the Form inputs so that Location is entered before Time).

Suggested:

As it is, Google Calendar cannot be accurately deployed by a manager of an entity that crosses time zones (sports teams, performers) or has subscribers across multiple time zones.

Oh Google! Yours is such an awesome, awesome company, and yet snags like these make me think you might spend just a wee bit too much time drinking your own Kool-Aid and not actually engineering for humans.

Invalid Login: Don't Explain Why

Most web sites that require a login of username and password return an ambiguous error message when login is invalid.

The common message is: "Invalid username / OR password."

Well, which was it?

It's very easy for the program to give you more specific information. Here's what happens when you login:

The program searches the database for a record containing that username AND password. If no record is found, then login is invalid. Most programs just spit out that message "Invalid username OR password" because one of those 2 was the culprit. (Actually, both inputs could have been wrong)

To clarify the matter, the program only needs to do an additional call to the database, looking for a record of the username.

If it finds a record with that username, then it knows that the password was wrong.

If it does not find a record with that username, then both the name and password were wrong.

Then the system could return a specific response.

For examples of LAZY programming / ambiguous response, see Yahoo and Hotmail. (Hotmail screen is atop this post, here is Yahoo)


Google does a better job on this, by giving the message "Username and password do not match. (and then it displays what name you entered)"

But it's easy to offer 2 specific responses when login is invalid.
1. If both the name and password is wrong: "There is no record of a xxxxxxx"
2. If there is a user of that name: "The password you entered does not match..."

The only reason to withhold those details is as a privacy measure. Since most usernames are now equal to an email address, if any person in the world wanted to know if a given email address was a member of a given site, he could enter it and a random password, and then receive a yes or no.

In that light, the Google method is tops.

But anyway, here are 2 screens from a system I made:

YouTube Profile Upload Picture Does Not Work

(* Feb 5th: this issue appears to be resolved as of Feb 2 *)

YouTube gives mention on its users' homepage to new features, among them, the ability to upload a Photo to the profile page.

However, the system does not accept any images. Regardless of which file you input, you will receive the message: "File not provided for upload image operation."

Here are screen shots step by step:

Link to new feature:


Option of what to Upload

Input field to browse computer
Quick load... show preview (generic preview?), prompts to click "Update"The error message after clicking "Update"

Google Earth major diff from Google Maps Satellite

In Google Earth, the very fine desktop program from Google, your mouse's third button/wheel works this way re. view: zoom out = wheel forward; zoom in = wheel back.

In Google Local / Maps (I believe the service uses both names interchangeably), the mouse's third button/wheel works this way: zoom out = wheel backwards; zoom in = wheel forward.

I prefer the Map technique. It is natural.

A new version of Google Earth was recently released. They should have adjusted it so that the mouse wheel works the same as in Google Maps / Local.

Flickr and Blogger are on Speaking Terms, but not their Owners

It's becoming common for computer systems to be on speaking terms, but not the owners. You may have noticed various social networks offering to search your email addressbooks in order to make it easier to enter those email addresses into the social system. It's a popular example of open-access, remote logging. You enter your username and password, and authorize the System at Hand to pull information or publish information to an External System. We can assume it is secure because the Big Heavies--Yahoo, Hotmail,Google--are cool with it. But what are we to make of one system that doesn't know the present name and condition of an external app, yet syncs with that system without a glitch? Doesn't the ignorance of that system's management erode our trust in its ability to connect to the other. That was my experience when I set up a Flickr account and permitted it to publish to my Blogger account. Flickr refers to Blogger as Beta Blogger, a status that has been inaccurate since Google upgraded it to 'live' 8 months ago.

What's going on? The machines are doing their jobs, but where humans are needed, the humans are failing. The system's are speaking to eachother via XML. Yahoo Flickr is properly transmitting to Google's specs. It knows the tag names. It knows how to authenticate users. So, we know that these things were set up properly by the engineers. But some things are not contained in xml. This would be information of a higher order, of a singular or irregular fashion. It requires real eyes and ears to stay in tune with such info, and to make manual edits to HTML content. Apparently, such content is not regularly reviewed by the likes of Flickr. The dismissal of the beta status was big news at Blogger and impacted its millions of users, but the news fell between the cracks at Yahoo.

Perhaps the news occured between Content Updates at Flickr. It's unfortunate. Each system need not trumpet any marketing initiative of the other, but each does need to be informed of the basics. Perhaps such basic info should be included in the XML, as a tag that is agreed to by the Heavies and other players. That way, the 'Name of Service,' or 'Service Image' would update itself. Otherwise, these various networks are going to have to hire folks to more often update HTML landing pages.

Google Wises Up: Link to iGoogle

Google has updated its portal, there is now a new link "Back to iGoogle." As I noted in earlier post, the only way to get to iGoogle was by clicking on "Web" which also means 'web search results.'

In that earlier post, I describe how a simple search can produce errors and confusion. As well as Google has performed, it has probably lagged due to poor search user interface. If Google makes searching and navigation consistent, and does not generate errors, then it will enable an even larger share of searches. Meaning, more moolah.

Google Kind of Wants Us to Use iGoogle

Google won cheers this summer by adding a set of context links to its search page, but due to a major flaw--a single Link that does 2 different things, an omitted Link, lack of Navigation Labels, the user is often stranded and confused.

At issue is iGoogle, which can serve as a homepage to house short cuts, collections of links, and RSS feeds. I like iGoogle. I have added some content to it. I try to visit when I can... but how do I get there? Hmmm. Well, I just had a hunch, and typed in "igoogle.com," which worked!

Once you login to Google.com, you can use the link in the top right corner to go to "iGoogle."
Terrfic. I see my homepage. I also see a row of links on the left corner:
Web (unlinked, because I am there) | Images | Video | News | Maps | Gmail More (drop-down list of other services)

So, I have gathered that "Web" equals where I am.. And that's the error Google made: it denotes "Web" to mean 2 things: iGoogle, but this same link also means a type of Search (regular web search as opposed to those other types of Searches:images, video,maps). This is both unintuitive and leads to inconsistent results.

Here's is a typical sequence of events:
1. I've gotten to iGoogle.
2. I click 'Images'.
3. It leads to Image Search.
4. I choose not to Search. I click "Web" to return to iGoogle (the only link to iGoogle).
5. I click Books from the "More" drop-down list.
6. From the menu of Book categories, I choose "Linguistics."
7. This auto-populates the Search Input field with 'subject:"Linguistics"'
8. I want to return to iGoogle, so I click "Web."
9. This brings up an Empty Search Results page, as if I had meant to do a web search for "Subject:Linguistics." (this will always bring up an empty search because, as the page notes: subject:" Linguistics " was dropped from your search because it is not supported for this type of search.)

** See Bottom of this Post, to see Screen Shots of the Above Sequence **

That is not a good experience, and it is due to poor design.

The heart of the problem is failure to resolve a common issue wrested with by web site designers: should links be Verbs or Nouns or Adjectives? It is important to be consistent at least within a given group of links? Usually, a designer thinks through the logical ramifications, and chooses One and Sticks to it. Google, although guilty of omitting a heading for its disparate groups of links, does offer consistent logic/English in its Left top corner grouping IF VIEWED IN ONE CONTEXT.

But, amazingly, Google gives the word "Web" two meanings: a Place (iGoogle) and a type of Search, and it uses the very same Link to enforce both meanings. A dedicated link to "iGoogle" would go a long way to address this (the company has bought up half of the Carolinas to house its new data centers--but it doesn't have 40 pixels of space for an iGoogle link? )

If you look further at that Left Corner group of Links, just within the context of Search Type, it is not actually sensible. What is Google implying by these words?
Does "Web" imply "web pages?" Or is it not the 'parent' of the other search types?
The word used for each link within a group should be able to fit into One commonly structured sentence, which need not be displayed, but can be inferred from the group heading. At Google Left Corner, what would that sentence be?
"Search the Web for Web ".. no. What if we use them each as adjectives for the word 'search?'
"Web search".... "Images search" .... Wait! Pluralize image? Is that consistent? Is that hip? (Aren't only older citizens charged with inappropriate pluralizing of words?) Maybe the unstated sentence formula is: "Search All (of the world's known) X for ____". That would make sense, because "Video" does not need to take the "s" to become plural. But again, that word "Web" doesn't fit.

This brings up the need for a Group Label. It is important for designers to Label things not only because it helps the user, but it then helps the designer by keeping him mindful of what he is doing/putting together.

The Internet is still new, and different organizations and users have different ideas and views. This is accepted by all, and thus, we expect and even embrace different arrangements, viewpoints--so long as the viewpoint is Clear and consistent.

Google has built up heaps of goodwill. Most people defer to it, and will give it a break. If it wants to organize a set of Links, or Methods to view content, in a given way, then users will follow the way.. The problem is, the Way is not Understood.

There is a limit to how much can be Implied, rather than expressed, in web site navigation. There is a lot of information and communication made available by Google: it enables self-expression and labeling/tagging, and it itself develops and rolls out a lot of content. Further more, Google provides a lot of FAQs, and How-tos throughout its services, such as this Blogger. For some reason, they let things slide on the single most visited page that contains the single most important function.

Google's stated mission is to organize the world's information. But in the rush to do so, it hasn't properly organized itself.

1. from iGoogle, went to Image Search

2. Used the Left Corner "Web" link to return to iGoogle. No other link visible.

3. Used the "More" list to go to "Book Search"

4. Clicked a category from the Left, which auto-filled the search input field.

6. Clicked "Web" to return to iGoogle. But, in this case, since the Form was auto-filled, and since Google took it to be a Search Request, it brought up a No Search Results page. (and always will, because of the syntax of Book search is not recognized by Web Search).

If you can call your profile 'Al', I want to Label you a 'Fraud'

I've been writing a lot recently about 'Labels' aka 'Tags.' In the previous post, I noted that Google's Gmail does not allow you to Label your Contacts. That is unfortunate, but not uncommon--most other big services disallow the labeling of friends and colleagues. The new darling "LinkedIn" gives you an Alphabetical list of Contacts, and allows you Filter based on Industries/Professions that each Contact has assigned himself to. But no labels. Similarly, Myspace, owing either to a unimaginative project team or an old Christian disinclination to tag people, offers no method to sort your Friends. Indeed, the term Friends is generic and often inappropriate. (I use the term "profile" synonmous with 'friend' because just as you have your own personal profile, the other inhabitants of Myspace have Profiles. It's a good term to mean an online representation/page pertaining to a person or persons who are you or not you.)

Here's how it goes in Myspace:

1. A Request for a Friendship (should be Relationship) comes into your inbox. Sometimes it is noted that the requesting profile is in your 'Extended Network' - meaning you have a common profile, but it does not say who or what that is.
2. You Add or Deny.
3. If Add, the profile is in Your Group of Friends ("External Profiles" ).
4. That's it.

In the Myspace world, there is no distinction between Profiles you don't know but charitably accepted versus Profiles you are almost certain represent your girlfriend. The only method to quickly view the page of often visited pals, is to put them into your Top 8/16/or 24 friends, and then jump to them from your public profile. Bogus!

When logged in, you should be able to sort your Profiles into any number of different groupings, based on attributes each profile assigned to himself as well as those you've assigned to the profile. Sign-ups to Myspace have to assign themselves to a Single master group/genre such as Comedian, Band (funny, eh that they insist on that name rather than musician). That is bogus and suprisingly narrow-minded in this day of multi-tasking. Geez. Myspace offers no suggestions to users who want to do Multiple artistic pursuits...

The big problem is, Myspace demands that users identify (label!) themselves as one and only one Type of User. And then it does not allow members to even sort their Profiles by that User Type!

The FIX:
1. let users label their personal profile(s), and to also label their external profiles.
2. Allow users to Sort their List of Profiles based on the Tags.
3. Allow users to make Lists/Groups, a feature presently available in YouTube.

In such a scenario, I could login, view a list of Best Friends, Bands I Like, view All Musicians I Know, sort by Number of Stars I've given music, show my friends by hair color, age.... It'd be very convenient.

Indeed. Returning to the subject of labeling contacts in general, throughout the many services, I'll say that Google has the best potential for devising an ideal set up of Contacts, if it can merge several of its technologies (there's no word yet whether Google/Gmail Account holders will be able to merge youtube accounts into their Google account).

Here's what I want:
1. A List of Profiles, which contain Contact Information and link to Public Profile Pages.

2. The ability to Sort those contacts based on Labels and Lists that I have created and based on the user's own tags, groups.

3. To see, at a glance, what new Output the contacts have created, or Events they have planned (that I'm not uninvited to...)

4. With a click, see the Conversations we've had, and to Start a new conversation.

Google can make it happen for these reasons:
1. It deploys Labeling through much of its services.
2. It's YouTube allows you to assign contacts to Lists you create.
3. It understands that Each Party in a Relationship can represent him/herself as well as the other. This concept is evident in Gmail's "Add Photo" feature of Contact Editing. You can upload your own photo of that contact, as well as view the Photo that the contact uploaded of herself.
4. In Gmail you can show mail based on labels, or search using a pronoun as keyword.

I hope Google pulls it all together soon. If you've seen their site recently, you've noticed that it has given a 'name' to its personal homepage: "iGoogle." That is a key step. With a name comes definition, which can expand and change... I believe you'll be seeing more streamlining of Google's user profile-based properties (youTube, picassa) so that you can assign one or more of them into your iGoogle. When that happens, you'll see the stock go back up.

Gmail Filters: Disallows Multiple Values per Criteria and Labeling of Contacts :(

Oh, Google: you keep sprinkling killer apps with AJAX and Comet to make the interface really 'fast' , and yet by overlooking how the tools are employed by us humans, you waste so much of our time! Take for instance, Gmail Filters (cited in the previous post for its usefullness). As you may know or can guess, Filters are like MS Outlook Rules-- your instructions to the program to Do things to Incoming Messages. First, you define Criteria by placing a value in any of the following inputs: From, To, Subject, Has the words, Doesn't Have (the words).


Then you Choose an Action to be run on the targeted messages:

The weakness lies within the Defining of Criteria. For starters, the input fields do not use the auto-fill / display of likely matches service which Google deploys in many of its other apps. This oversight is especially unsensible in the 'From' field, because Gmail Contacts are already stored. When I typed in my brother Kevin's address, I had to type it in its entirety, which might have caused a wrong address. A prompt, or list of addresses matching a nickname or first few characters (which Yahoo Mail provides) would be helpful.

The major problem with the Criteria Inputs is they don't allow multiple values. I wanted to create one Family filter. In the 'From' field, I should be able to "kevin OR rowland OR clyde." Why are web services Inputs void of Boolean definitions? Remember those advanced Searches we learned in college to query library databases? They would be very helpful nowadays, too!
Say I have multiple siblings each with the same last name, and also, an unrelated friend with same last name. This would do the trick:

[From: contains] 'hanley BUT NOT cindy';

And in the case where I have four sisters who are married, and have different last names, I would like to do this:

[From: contains] 'clyde' OR 'christine' OR 'kathleen'

Instead, I have to create a NEW FILTER FOR EACH sibling!! Hey, I do want to make multiple filters, but to hanle a myriad of business and personal relationships. One filter should handle the fam.

An indirect, alternative method to accomplish that wish, would be to first: Tag each of your Contacts (assign a label/keyword). Then, when creating a filter, use a Label as a Criteria.
Example:
[From: labled]: 'fam'

However, this method is impossible as well--Gmail does not allow you to Label Contacts, nor does it allow Labels to be a Filter Criteria! But Gmail does offer to Assign Labels as a Filter's Action.
If [From: kevin]: Then : label 'fam'

Gmail Filters are a helpful tool for deleting or forwarding targed communications. But human users want to organize / sort messages based on Types of Contacts. The easiest way to offer that, would be to allow users to Label each contact. Gmail adds a layer of complication by not allowing the labeling of contacts, and then demanding a unique Filter for each Contact.

Email Filters are Helpful Tools

One of the sillier things I've done in the music scene is ask my old guitar instructor to remove one of my addresses from his mailing list (he was that type of entertainer guilty of importing into a blaster every address from which he received a message). My request was unnecessary, and (directed as it was to an egomaniac) insulting. Also, challenging. I was asking him to do something, period. If he was interested in granting the wish, then he would have had to learn how to remove an email address from his blaster. Although that is probably easy, the thought of learning can induce a headache.

All I needed to do was set up a filter or ‘rule’ in my Email Program to siphon off any incoming messages from the blaster—which is what I did two weeks of invites later.



Note the faulty logic which led to my request:
I do not want Ben’s band invites in my gmail inbox. I am going to take action—by asking him to stop. (Because I have no control over what arives in my inbox, I must depend on the senders. )He is sending the invites to both yahoo and gmail accounts. I will ask him to only send it to yahoo account. (Yeah, and contact each and every spammer in your Bulk folder and ask them to stop too).

Here is how I should have thought through the matter:
I do not want to see Ben’s band invites in my Gmail inbox. I must preserve the Gmail inbox as a spam-free family and friend zone. How can I prevent the trespassing? What tool(s) may I access to control my Gmail experience?

The answer: Filters. Filters is the fourth tab in the Settings Panel, which gmail users may access through a link from the top right Header. Remember users: gmail, yahoo mail, hotmail are each Email PROGRAMS. There is more to them than just what Displays upon log in: Inbox and Left Navigation. Programs Do things, and give you a level of control in how things are done. Look into it… Filtering is how these programs keep away spam, or direct it to a Bulk folder (Yahoo). You can do it too!

Another lesson: when dealing with man-machine hybrids such as a distant friend/colleague using an Email Blaster, it is best to mediate issues through a machine of your own. Although I could not (and probably should not have tried to) directly contact Ben, I could adjust my machine to overpower his machine. Not only did my filter nullify his blaster’s action, but it required no work on Ben’s part. Therefore, he has that much more time to book awesome shows in venues such as that rockin’ place in Dover, N.H.

Shall I Label that Tag?

Technology writers love to compare standards competitions to the famed Beta / VHS duel. Recently this nostalgiaparison was gucked onto the Blue Ray – Super Duper DVD battle. It could also be applied to the burgeoning divergence between the Widget and Gadget delivery systems. Will Google buy its way out of its unusual position of being the less accepted technology? Will staid platforms like Myspace learn that Javascript modules are the Least of their worries (far less damaging to user experience than the megabytes of ads)?

There is another high-exposure conflict in the tech world. In a limited view, it is a name game: Labels versus Tags. Both words are taken to mean “keywords”: any number of adjectives, nouns, verbs (y’know; the ‘Big Three’ of words) that are descriptive of an object, or symbolize analogous and related objects. At least, that is MY take on the purpose of a Tag aka Label. Although producers and consumers are increasingly encouraged to tag and label objects, most venues do not provide instructions. Indeed, for a prompt, usually a short example is all we get. This is what Google’s Blogger (yes, the very tool I’m using now) gives as a prompt:

“Labels for this post: (e.g. scooters, vacation, fall)”



Not much, eh? On the other extreme is Amazon.com, which gives a thorough education in Tagology. At the bottom of each product detail page is a heading “Tag this product” accompanied by the intuitive ‘What’s this?’ link, opening a pop-up page that includes an introductory paragraph followed by answers to “So how can I use tags?” and other questions. Since Amazon is heavily invested in tagging, it should place tags (and the ‘add a tag’ feature) atop the page, next to the image and product title.



When adding a tag at Amazon, the prompt itself is helpful. It reads: (“Separate multiple tags using commas”). There are 2 things important about that message:
1. It explicitly states how to separate multiple tags, compared to the Blogger prompt, which merely implies via an example.
2. The reality it conveys: commas as separator. Comma Separation of values works great for tags and labels (but not for all records of data—text that includes commas causes Quirks when separating with same. That’s why I’m a pipe delimiter).

Some tagging and label venues do not use the comma separator, but demand a Space between each tag. Ridiculous, isn’t it? The venue gives no explanation for this decision, nor any guidance for what to do with compound words. It is especially harmful, because tags are also used as a Search tool. And when searching, a consumer prefers to use plain English. Is the consumer expected to seek out “fishingRods?” I don’t know what these venues are thinking. Among them is the popular bookmark service “del.icio.us” If Delicious gets swallowed by Google Bookmarks, it will learn that “inferioirTechnology” can outdo a “headStart.”

Help Me, Blogger (Yeah)

When logged in users browse BlogSpot (which displays published view of users’ blogs), the site’s Header links to the user’s Dashboard, and to Sign Out. That is helpful. So, if you are reading someone else’s blog, you can jump right to your control panel aka ‘dashboard’ which lists and links to edit each of your blogs and profile. Here’s a screenshot:


But if you are viewing a BlogSpot page that you own (or to which you contribute), the Header links to “New Post,” “Customize,” and Sign Out. A link to Dashboard would be desirable here. Also, instead of, or next to, “New Post” there should be a link to “Edit Posts.” It is this link, which exists elsewhere in your dashboard, that displays the titles and previews and the # of comments of each of your posts, and has a button to ‘add new.’ A more suitable term is: ‘Manage Posts’ which conveys that you can edit/view existing posts as well as make an addition (The term 'Mangage: Links' exists on Dashboard).


Even if you contribute to just one blog, it would be convenient for the Header of the your blogspot page to link to ‘Manage Posts.’ And if you contribute to more than one blog, the link to ‘Dashboard’ would be of great help

YouTube: Invalid Parameters

When users login to YouTube, at the top of the screen, displayed prominently, is a message: "Invalid Parameters." What does it mean? I have been greeted in this manner for at least one month. How remarkable that the YouTube traffic continues to grow, despite an explicit insult on Page One. The user has reason to exit the site--and the 'Net--to determine what it is about him or herself that is Wrong. Readers: fret no more; it is the Google YouTube login script which has the problem. So, why is it, after at least 3 weeks, that the BUG still exists? The user believes one of the following is true:

1. The engineers are not aware of the problem.
2. The engineers are aware of the problem, but are unable to fix it.
3. The engineers are aware of the problem, but do not wish to fix it.

None of those possibilities boosts one's confidence or regard for the Google team. Indeed, #3 directly contradicts Google's "don't be evil" creed (whereas #1 implies that the makers don't use the system themselves or have a "Quality Analysis" staff; #2, incompetence).

Perhaps somebody there isn't too busy counting money, and can fix the issue.



The biggest problem with the message is that it is displayed regardless of what the user did. We might as well also discuss the error message in general. That is, if and when the message is displayed as a result of an invalid parameter entered by a user.

Problem #1: syntax. Sure, we are all aware of the word parameter, but we seldom use it. It's coder-speak. Fine and dandy for the internal methods of the coders, but the function should spit out 'Plain English.' If "parameters" was part of the local (YouTube) lexicon, it would be permissable here of course, but I don't see the word showing up**...

Problem#2: lacks specifics. If a user does something wrong, she should be informed WHAT it was she did wrong, and, if not self-evident, CORRECTIVE MEASURES should be identified and displayed.

** A YouTube search for "Invalid Parameters" displayed a short video from a young user who stepped up and asked the community "What's up?" As she mentions, there is no word about it in Help. Check it out (note: she pronounces 'parameters' like 'para-meters' but she means the same thing:)

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qjUZ3SI9htw