Working on a project this week I needed a module to allow users to sign up for orientation sessions and automatically close signups when the sessions are full. The signup module for Drupal does this but didn't have the ability to close signups after reaching the maximum number of participants. After a few false starts and simplifying the code I rolled a patch that adds eight lines of code and adds the functionality. The patch uses an unused column in the database so a database change isn't needed (I originally had added a new column but realized that the close_signup_limit column isn't used).

Thanks to this post it is much easier to enter contractions on the iPhone. The automatic correction features work well but don't guess that I mean to type "I'll" when it sees the perfectly spelled word "ill" which one hopes to rarely type on an iPhone. However, adding a third 'l' makes the phone suggest "I'll" as the correct spelling so instead of switching to the symbols just type "illl" and you'll get "I'll" offered as the correction.

My iPhone crashed. Or so it says. I never noticed the problem and couldn't tell you when it happened. But upon plugging it in to the computer tonight I saw the screen below.

While it appears true that there is not personal information in the log files there is a treasure trove of information that I'm equally certain that there will soon be folks figuring out how to mine and use that information. In the meantime it is another great example of a good user interface that makes it easy to provide feedback that will hopefully make iPhone 2.0 even better.

On a related note since Apple names its computer operating systems after big cats one wonders if the next version of the iPhone operating system will be Siamese or Manx. Personally I vote for Abyssinian.