« February 2011 | Main | April 2011 »
I saw this cartoon in Newsweek, but the effort is really from Newsday's Pulitzer Prize winning cartoonist Walt Handelsman! Too funny!
Full disclosure. I own both an iPad 1 and an Android Smartphone (HTC Incredible). Like all Geeks and Nerds, I need more!
On Monday, I took my last cross-country ski of the season. Today, when the sun came out late this afternoon I took my first bike ride up the north shore of Lake Superior. Enjoy some photos I took of Winter's Last Ice ... frozen Lake Superior. Click upon any image to view at full size!
Do you know if your web site is optimal? How much testing did you perform? Can you be sure? After all, if you are the web developer, didn't some of your own biases enter into the design?
I assume the answer to the last question has to be "yes". No matter how hard we try, it is hard to be 100% objective. Thus, why not let your web visitors be your testers? Welcome to the field of mutlivariate testing. Although the term sounds difficult, the concept is simple:
The process is easy to set up using Google's free web site optimizer tool. Here is all you have to do:
All you do is provide Google the three urls, and the tool in return gives you some Javascript which you paste in the top of each web page's html. You then activate the experiment and wait (i.e. Google will randomly serve up your original page, and it's options ... and record the analytics).
You will find to screenshots given below from my experiment. I've blacked out some items because I don't want to bias my results (i.e. if you read this post). When my test has run I will post the results on this blog.
If you wish to participate, just click upon my name (Rich Hoeg) in the banner at the top of the page. Once redirected, click through to at least one additional page.
Finally, here are some videos which explain the concept in more detail.
Want to view either of these images at full size? Just click upon either image!
Having grown up in the land of Bob Dylan (northern Minnesota), I hope the singer would agree that his album title is an appropriate name for this post. Before the interstate highway system broke up highway 61, it streched from Minnesota to the Louisiana bayous. Next week, a busload of geeks will travel part of this route on their way to South by Southwest (SXSW). Most of these individuals will have never met each other before, and as the miles roll by ... in a bus equipped with more laptops and web access points than a highway patrolman has ever seen, by the time they reach Austin fatigued from lack of sleep, the goal will be to create and code some of the ideas that lead to new software startups.
Minnesota will not be alone in sending a StartUpBus to SXSW. Buses will be leaving from both Coasts and points in between, all converging on Austin, Texas. Thus, Highway 61 will be revisited with innovation.
I work for a large corporation, and we often wonder how to encourage and promote innovation. Coming up with the right recipe to foster innovation is extremely difficult, but these folks have done it. Use Twitter, bookmarks, and RSS feeds to follow StartUpBus. You may learn something!
When I was a young boy in 1964, my family flew out to the New York World's Fair. For our airplane trip to the Big Apple from Duluth, our entire family dressed up. Each of us three boys wore sport coats and ties. We were expected by my parents to be on our Sunday school best behavior.
Earlier today, I flew the same trip from Minnesota to the New York City area. The experience was a cattle rush. There were very few smiles on the faces of my co-passengers, or the airline staff. What have we lost?
Enjoy this video from Encyclopedia Britannica titled "Airport" (circa 1948). This experience is much more akin to my own. In fact, on another trip back from visiting my grand parents, I remember my Mom dragging her little son (i.e. me) by the arm as we ran between two planes on the Minneapolis airport concourse! Passengers running outside between planes?! It would never happen today.
In fact, here is a photo of me all dressed up for my first plane trip (taken in 1958 at the Duluth airport)
