I have been toying with the idea of creating a pre-fab dog house for about a month now and landed on this design. There are three concepts I am playing with here. The first has a platform on the bottom of the dog house. The second has the platform cut-out in the front for the insertion of an outdoor dog bed. The Third has the platform removed and is a more simple version. The exterior is made from IPE hardwood and painted cement board. The dog is Betty. Let me know your thoughts on which design is preferred. Thanks, Jason.

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So over past 50 years or so there haven’t been many innovations in aluminum cans, especially beer cans. The one improvement was changing the openers from the detachable one’s to keeping them attached to the can. One thing I have noticed over the past 5 or so years is that outside the home, sports tailgates and concerts have a lot of people enjoying good beer. But what has also happened is that you can’t tailgate with a can of beer any more. Most events now require people to pour their drinks into a cup. Typically this is in a Red or Blue Solo cup.

So this design concept is melding the Solo Cup that people are drinking form anyways with a beer can. All of the materials are the same, but the form factor has changed. The top of the can is recessed a little so that you can obscure the top if necessary. Right now this is Patent Pending. Personally, because I like Pabst, I think this would be a great promo for them to try.

Let me know your thoughts.

Wow! Just watching this guy makes me want to find my calling, quit the rat race and live. Too bad I will sit on my ass and not do it.

Below are his two lectures. The first is about Time Management and the second is his Last Lecture on how to live out your childhood dreams. Both of these are worth watching.

I have always been religious about backing up my data, but was tired of pulling out my portable drive and connecting it whenever I wanted to back something up. This isn’t the most elegant solution by any means, but it doesn’t add much weight to my system and I can always backup and have access to other files if I need them.

1. Get yourself a slim USB drive that doesn’t need any power. I use the Western Digital Passport. They are small and go up to 320GB.

2. Add some velcro to the back of the drive and then to the back of your laptop. Ideally skew it to the side of the computer that has the USB/Firewire ports so you can use the short cable that comes with the drive.

3. Velcro on and go.

This would also work with a USB powered USB hub.

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By Jason Valalik
Digg It Here

I have been primarily a PC user in my professional career, however in college and as a youth I was an Apple only guy so I am familiar with both platforms. Given that the new Mac Books allow you to use Windows and Mac it was a no brainer for me to move to a Mac. The release of Office 2007 for Windows is a marked improvement over past versions, not just some simple UI changes. I am very impressed with the abilities of the new version of Powerpoint and Excel and the ease-of-use behind the applications.
Both Keynote and Powerpoint have their plusses and ideally you could just smash them together and have the best of both worlds like Van Haggar once said. Read the rest of this entry »

Ok, so I know there have been some posts on how to give a good hand shake, but I don’t think I have read any that talk about the fundamentals. I have broke it down in 4 steps below that pretty much should mitigate any of the major issues when trying to give a good handshake and making a lasting first impression.

1. Open your hand as if you were going in for any normal hand shake
2. Don’t close your hand until both of you have hit each others “web” between the thumb and forefinger, that’s the secret sauce (that’s what the photo is trying to focus on)
3. Once you hit that area close your hand and give a firm squeeze for about a 1.5 seconds
4. Release

That’s it. Now go out and practice.

It still amazes me that I can go online after watching a commercial and observe fortune 500 companies have dead links and poor user experiences. As you will see from the video I go to the Gofbot.com site from their commercial and then click on the link in the middle of the page to only have it say page not found. C’mon Mcdonalds, this is embarrassing.

I recently received a letter from my home owner insurance company around the renewal of my home insurance. I felt this would be a good time to explore other carriers before I just forked over the ~$500 for my yearly rate. To start the exploration I went with my current auto carrier Esurance. I prefer to start online and ideally complete it online if I can. So I started the quote process, but couldn’t get past the second screen. As you will see in the first video below I ended up in this endless loop. The screen showed a quick error and stated that it was marked in red. That message appeared and disappeared much quicker than in the video but because of the screen capture it was a little slower. Anyways after that error appears for a brief instance it disappears upon complete refresh and I have no idea what I need to fix on the page to continue my quote. At that point I called the number at the upper left of the screen. When I selected option “4″ to get a quote all it did was loop me back to the start menu. At that point I gave up on trying to purchase my insurance through Esurance. I wonder how many other people abandoned one or both of these processes because of these customer experience issues and how much money Esurance has lost because of these usability issues.

The first video is of the website interaction and the second is the phone loop I ran into after the website didn’t work.

Paying with your cell phone has been around in Europe and Japan for awhile, but we still are waiting for that technology to make it to the states. Here is a little hack that allows you to enjoy that functionality now. This will require a Visa Pay Wave card or some other RF enabled card. Weather you have a Visa now or not call your company and tell them you need an extra card with the Pay Wave or whatever “catchy” phrase is given to the technology. I think Chase calls it “Blink”. Visa actually has a mini card which makes this a little easier. Once you get the mini card trim it down so just the functional part of the card exists. I actually am unsure where this chip is exactly and the pictures are just examples.. Take that piece of the card and tape it to the inside of your battery door on your cell/smart phone. Now whenever you go to an establishment that allows Pay Wave / Blink just hold your phone over the Pay Wave / Blink portion of the debit card reader and off you go. Results may vary depending on the thickness of your battery door cover.

Instructions After the Jump
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By - Jason Valalik
I don’t get invited to very many fancy dinners, but when I do there must be at least 3 glasses on the table 6 dishes, 12 pieces of silverware and a partridge in a pear tree. This makes it extremely difficult and sometimes embarrassing when trying to figure out which drink or bread plate is yours. A little trick I learned to help with this it to make two “ok” signs one with your right and one with your left hand under the table. As you will see the one on the left looks like a b and the one on the right a d. This translates nicely to b-bread on the left d-drink on the right. Works great until someone asks you what you are doing with your hands. Give it a try.

By - Jason Valalik
Being a data junkie I am always trying to manipulate numbers to visually tell a story. Weather its web analytics, usability testing or process improvement it has always been pretty difficult to get Excel to do pretty basic conditional formatting. With the recent release of Office 2007 that has become a lot easier and from what I have experimented with so far seems to be a good step forward. Above is a lo-quality 10 minute video pulled from the Microsoft site which demonstrates the new features around conditional formatting. Video copyright Microsoft 2007

By - Jason Valalik
Ok, so up here in the Pacific Northwest was Sasquatch Festival at the Gorge. Although I didn’t go my guess is that there was plenty of beer consumed and most likely some poor planning resulting in trouble opening bottles of beer/pop. Being a victim of poor planning there have been many a tailgates I have attended which we didn’t have a bottle opener. There were plenty of cars around and if there is a car around there is a bottle opener around. Enjoy

By - Jason Valalik
With the advent of AJAX and real time calls to the server there have been some really slick user interfaces developed that enhance the customer experience. Not all of these are real time calls, but they do support a better user experience giving the user either feedback or system features when they need it. This is a usability principle called progressive disclosure. There is a lot of talk about Web 2.0, but I have seen very few real examples beside drag-and-drop. This should provide readers with some true life Web 2.0 application functionality that demonstrates what pundits are talking about. Videos of these applications after the jump. Read the rest of this entry »

By - Jason Valalik
Now that some of the hype has died down I want to make a quick observation around the iPhone. Being a usability practitioner I tend to analyze things a little differently then the average Joe. We know that one of the most common places that mobile phones are used is probably in the car. Some states are banning this to some degree, but not completely so that environment will probably continue to be the place phones are used the most. The nice thing about current phones is that they have raised keys which allows our thumbs the ability to traverse the keyboard while not necessarily staring at the screen. We kind of half look at the road and half type in a number, message, etc. But if we needed to we could probably type in a number without looking at the keyboard. Now Apple has removed all landmarks and moved to a complete touch-screen user interface. This is going to require that the user looks at the screen 90% of the time because the landmark, raised keys, are now gone. This was one of the major usability issues with the first HTC smartphones. However with the upcoming release of Vox and other models they seemed to have alleviated that issue of needing to use the touchscreen for phone number entry. Not having the actual phone in hand I can’t say for sure if this is true.

I am just speaking from my experience with Smartphones in general. I think it would be an interesting usability test to compare users focus or how much they have to look at the screen with the iPhone compared to phones with keys.
My 2 cents.

By - Jason Valalik
It seems like everyday there is a new “Web 2.0″ site out there. So with all of these sites going up you may wonder how they generate their logos. There is a simple Java application that allows you to create your own Web 2.0 logo. This is definitely a tool that anyone can use with nice results. Enjoy! >> Site <<

Click on Najnowsza wersja - Utwórz Logo

By - Jason Valalik
Flash Earth gives users the ability to check out aerials of a few companies that make global map software (Google, Microsoft Virtual Earth (aerial), Microsoft Virtual Earth (labels),Yahoo Maps, Ask.com(physical), Ask.com (labels), Open Layers, NASA Terra (Daily)

It’s nice not to have to load the programs on your system, but still get the view you need
Site

Ok, so some of my friends don’t like Evite and there are some things I don’t like as well,but have been forced to use it because I haven’t found anything better. Along comes mypunchbowl.com. This integrates with Flickr and Google Maps for a seamless integration. I am always up for giving a new site a try so during my next event I will give it a go. Would be curious to hear others thoughts on this.

mypunchbowl.com

If you don’t have a calendar on hand, here’s an easy way to figure out which months have 31 days and which have 30:

Count the months on your knuckles and the grooves between your knuckles. Leave out your thumb knuckle. Every month that lands on a knuckle is 31 days, every month that lands on a groove between knuckles is 30 days (or 28 for February). Thanks to my client Rebecca @ w-rehab for this little hint which came from Tipnut

We all know that the older we get our brain neurons lose their plasticity. This is especially true when we are in jobs that are unchallenging and don’t involve any problem solving. There are all kinds of ways that can help you maintain your edge. Things like the Nintendo DS’s Brain Age, showering with your eyes closed, crossword puzzles, and writing with your opposite hand. One other way I found that gets me thinking in a new perspective is trying to type on my computer upside down. I found this out once when I was at home and trying to type my password in when I flipped my laptop lid up and wanted to login real quick. Our brain is used to having the keys in a certain order right side up so when we look at things upside down itforces our brain to remap the key layout. Just another way to exercise that nogen. Let me clarify what I mean. I don’t mean that you type an email upside down, but enter your login to your email account, or fill out an online form. This isn’t something that you would spend your whole day or even an hour doing, but occasionally throughout the day.

In the market for a new Media Center, but aren’t sure yet about Blu Ray or HD DVD. We’ll instead of waiting for the LG dual player you can alway purchase the Max/Lux system from Vidabox. The VidaBox™ MAX™ is the ultimate home theater media center computer featuring a stunning, full color, 7” LCD touch screen providing easy and complete control of the media center interface without having to turn on the TV or grabbing a remote. These start at around $4399.

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