Jeff Harbert's Blog

The single greatest strength of the internet is that it can be searched. Back in the day, long before Google, when Yahoo! was the biggest game in town and everyone was all hip about web portals, most people got around by merely clicking on links.  Searching capability was practically a secondary focus.  Then along came Google and a new internet paradigm. Search killed the old portals.

Search continues to be a huge focus, and it likely always will.  The ability to search and find what you want, no matter the subject, has obvious advantages.  However, I think it’s time to temporarily put search on the back burner so another aspect of search, long ignored, can be brought to maturity.

Filters.

When I perform a Google search, too often I get results for websites I find completely useless.  Shopping.com, nextag.com, thomasnet.com, and many others.  To me, they’re search result spam.  I’ve never found these sites to be helpful.  Some people might, but I don’t.  I’d like to be able to exclude them – easily! – from my search results.  eBay is another site I’d like to be able to exclude from my search results, but for a different reason; While I do shop on eBay once in a while, I do so quite intentionally.  When I want to look for something on eBay, I search on their site, not through a search engine like Google. Being able to exclude eBay from my search results would be helpful.

The same goes for subscriptions, whether it’s subscribing to an RSS feed, following someone on Twitter, or customizing the layout on Google News.  In each case, there are some things I have no desire to see.

Let’s take news first.  When I’m looking at news online, whether it’s my local newspaper’s website or Google News, there are certain subjects I find (I’ll be polite) completely uninteresting.  Tiger Woods. The Gosselins.  Twilight.  Why can’t I block these ‘news’ stories?

I use Twitter fairly heavily.  I also use the silly location-based game Foursquare.  That said, I don’t publish my Foursquare updates to Twitter.  Even if I know you personally, I really don’t want to see your Foursquare updates within Twitter.  Why can’t I block them?

RSS readers like Google Reader and Bloglines allow you to subscribe to RSS feeds and share items – but not block certain topics within those subscriptions. Why?

The internet wouldn’t work if not for search, but it’s long past time for filters to become as ubiquitous as search has become.

People are afraid of failure because the word itself comes with an image of burned down houses, living in a van by the river, not getting the girl (or guy), being alone, and getting fired.

Stop that.  The vast majority of the time, failures are immediately followed by renewed effort and success.  Don’t believe me?  Let’s go through a few examples.

You’re driving through a new part of town and take a wrong turn.  What do you do? You turn around and try again.

You’re making a pot roast for the first time and it comes out a lump of charcoal.  What do you do? Go out for pizza, and remember next time to check the roast more often.

You’re sitting down at a coffee shop and you spill your coffee.  What do you do? Get the mess cleaned up and get another coffee.

These are admittedly small things, but that’s just the point – we fail at lots of things every single day, yet all we have to do is try again.  And the chances are pretty good that you won’t fail a second time.

Let me share with you a recent experience.  Last weekend a pinhole leak developed in the 50+ year old plumbing in our basement.  The only plumbing work I’d ever done prior to this was replacing a broken water shutoff valve under a toilet.  I don’t like to hire people to do things I can do myself, so I did some quick research online about how to fix the problem and got down to business.

I ran up to Home Depot and got the parts I needed.  I also got assistance from a Home Depot employee, making sure I had a decent grasp of what needed to be done.  I got home, turned off the water, drained the plumbing, cut the pipes where they needed to be cut, assembled the parts I’d bought at Home Depot, hooked everything back up, and turned the water back on.

And… leaks.  I had a couple of good-sized leaks in the two threaded fittings I used that were even worse than the original pinhole leak.  I was a bit embarrassed by this – there were only two threaded fittings and I didn’t get either one right.  As someone who likes working with his hands, this was definitely a failure.

I again turned the water off, drained the plumbing, removed the parts I’d added, reworked the threaded joints (this time with more teflon tape than I’d used before), reassembled everything, etc, etc.

The second time, nothing leaked.

What was I afraid of before I started? I was afraid I wouldn’t be able to repair the leak and would end up having to call a plumber.  I was afraid of wasting water because of having to re-drain the house plumbing after every attempt.  I was afraid of buying the wrong parts and having to make multiple trips to Home Depot.  All very small things, really.  None of them were going to cost me the house or land me in the hospital.  If I had been afraid of the big possibility that comes to mind when you think of a water leak, flooding the basement, I might never have tried.  But I knew enough – that I had to turn off our well pump since the leak was before the main water shutoff valve – to know that this big thing wasn’t really a possibility at all.  All that was in front of me were small things.

Now, not only is the leak gone, but some old plumbing with questionable joints (where the pinhole leaked started, actually) has been removed entirely, a properly-sized shutoff valve installed, which lead to better water pressure (the previous one was actually undersized, causing a reduction in water flow), and a corner of the basement that was previously unusable is now usable because of the improvements I made while doing the repair – a totally unexpected benefit.

Embrace the possibility of failure.  Don’t be afraid of it.  Imagine the things you’ll accomplish.