tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-53627125004730288522024-03-17T22:03:48.300-05:00JR says... (whether or not anyone is listening)Ideas, opinions, how-to's, and other discoveries related to virtually any product, but usually web products JRhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03007138367944227896noreply@blogger.comBlogger124125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5362712500473028852.post-10240763689699377472015-01-09T17:26:00.001-05:002015-01-09T17:34:03.941-05:00Better Blogger.com Settings for EducatorsAt the <a href="https://twitter.com/NJECC" target="_blank">@NJECC</a> conference this week, my friend <a href="https://twitter.com/mr_isaacs" target="_blank">@mr_isaacs</a> told me he was using Blogger.com as his blogging platform for <a href="http://edtechbridge.blogspot.com/" target="_blank">EdTechBridge</a>, but was unhappy that the "Next Blog >>" link at the top took his readers - many of whom are students - to a random blog which they may not find appropriate. In outlining a solution for him to turn this off, I realized there are probably other things that are worth suggesting for educators looking to use Blogger.com as a free and incredibly easy way to get their blog hosted (see *CAVEATS at bottom of post).<br />
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<b>Here are some suggestions for making Blogger a better platform for educator blogs...</b><br />
Make sure you first go to <a href="http://blogger.com/">Blogger.com</a> (sign in if you aren't yet) and click on the title of the blog you want to change. That should take you to the settings screen... Then continue below:<br />
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<h3>
1 - Turn OFF the "Next Blog >>" link in the header</h3>
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjZBTWF5UYWc9e5Ny499RPTa8SKh26rDmdJtM4VPPEmPEzWmi4YyP3bDUo_HGN9_PmTEpuTH3hfQADExniM2b-aRCdDIMQWflA9mExO2SRwAu5KrNai5tvQf0Q6VgLPTZAnI9G9jPvPwl0/s1600/blogger-layout-navbar.png" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjZBTWF5UYWc9e5Ny499RPTa8SKh26rDmdJtM4VPPEmPEzWmi4YyP3bDUo_HGN9_PmTEpuTH3hfQADExniM2b-aRCdDIMQWflA9mExO2SRwAu5KrNai5tvQf0Q6VgLPTZAnI9G9jPvPwl0/s1600/blogger-layout-navbar.png" height="198" width="320" /></a></div>
<ul>
<li>STEP 1: Click on "Layout" on the left navigation</li>
<li>STEP 2: There should be a "NavBar" box in the upper right of the layout - click the "edit" link in that box to change the Navigation Bar.</li>
<li>STEP 3: In the dialog that shows the different "NavBar" options (which are all really just different color schemes), select the last option, which is "OFF" - and click "Save" in that dialog.<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiGjI1RPA-PK9K1JbbnbQmGPQJtxZAAqSk3iUjKwaCoZTfqSvtrHCRROdGoXFwpKB9qoiwVdkjm-OyXBE82q-PE3iRZq8mTRzJc3RaFDIBNOe4uDD7hJIjcPbl5b39SbkxK5awQ7x3lQ2Y/s1600/Screen+Shot+2015-01-09+at+9.09.26+AM.png" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiGjI1RPA-PK9K1JbbnbQmGPQJtxZAAqSk3iUjKwaCoZTfqSvtrHCRROdGoXFwpKB9qoiwVdkjm-OyXBE82q-PE3iRZq8mTRzJc3RaFDIBNOe4uDD7hJIjcPbl5b39SbkxK5awQ7x3lQ2Y/s1600/Screen+Shot+2015-01-09+at+9.09.26+AM.png" height="320" width="289" /></a></div>
</li>
<li>STEP 4: Click the "Save Arrangement" button to save your changes, then Click the Preview button to check your changes - you should see no navigation bar at all.</li>
</ul>
<h3>
2 - Add a "Search Gadget" (since the prior step removes the search box too)</h3>
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<ul>
<li>STEP 1: Click on "Layout" on the left navigation</li>
<li>STEP 2: Click on the "Add A Gadget" link on the right side of the screen - assuming that's where you want the search box to appear (recommended)<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiHEm-tWe-19LkyhL-h_qN2ubN7q-zVUqS459VKHgNFmJu2VHh8AXJiNq7f5B0RfslaB36lvnXx3TQgUx1EILnb1i9NWTKczQcc_ifZcxKxu7PCRiTWSmhYbWIOIHAVs8PCPmhHHqNsQEU/s1600/Screen+Shot+2015-01-09+at+10.39.54+AM.png" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiHEm-tWe-19LkyhL-h_qN2ubN7q-zVUqS459VKHgNFmJu2VHh8AXJiNq7f5B0RfslaB36lvnXx3TQgUx1EILnb1i9NWTKczQcc_ifZcxKxu7PCRiTWSmhYbWIOIHAVs8PCPmhHHqNsQEU/s1600/Screen+Shot+2015-01-09+at+10.39.54+AM.png" height="320" width="303" /></a></div>
</li>
<li>STEP 3: In the dialog that shows, scroll down to find the "Search Box" gadget, and click the big blue "+" button - then click SAVE on the bottom of that dialog.<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjkl9qDP9QU6NmA9xOGpeSsfsPux89OuwkJlnelWiT0NciJyBwn0B4rwjKUmMU08JHC6HsiakMn9haBrFQZKup2zCKCkpDjH9YWwYtp1YAMKMei04pexOcA9NZp7snWjK43BgFnixyxuRU/s1600/Screen+Shot+2015-01-09+at+10.40.28+AM.png" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjkl9qDP9QU6NmA9xOGpeSsfsPux89OuwkJlnelWiT0NciJyBwn0B4rwjKUmMU08JHC6HsiakMn9haBrFQZKup2zCKCkpDjH9YWwYtp1YAMKMei04pexOcA9NZp7snWjK43BgFnixyxuRU/s1600/Screen+Shot+2015-01-09+at+10.40.28+AM.png" height="51" width="200" /></a></div>
</li>
<li>STEP 4: Click the "Save Arrangement" button to save your changes</li>
</ul>
<h3>
3 - Turn ON Comment Moderation (or Turn off commenting completely)</h3>
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhkgBBOsgT0nek2difK6fmNAwSTlQjpFZ0Z4bl_yziykn_KnTd9m4z4reBKesSoX7GhFUZeoZjYsIpfvta8Gr6WZgoGiQyktWdVi5NJKjwQWtoAfL2Myi-4GMUl0ZB0NrS-5vGY0C8wlM8/s1600/Screen+Shot+2015-01-09+at+9.59.33+AM.png" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhkgBBOsgT0nek2difK6fmNAwSTlQjpFZ0Z4bl_yziykn_KnTd9m4z4reBKesSoX7GhFUZeoZjYsIpfvta8Gr6WZgoGiQyktWdVi5NJKjwQWtoAfL2Myi-4GMUl0ZB0NrS-5vGY0C8wlM8/s1600/Screen+Shot+2015-01-09+at+9.59.33+AM.png" height="281" width="400" /></a></div>
<ul>
<li>STEP 1: Click on "Settings" on the left navigation (at the bottom)</li>
<li>STEP 2: Click on "Posts and Comments" in the submenu that appears under Settings</li>
<li>STEP 3: Under "Comment Moderation", click the "Always" option (the default is "never") and click the "Save Settings" button in the upper right. </li>
<li>NOTE: You can also turn off commenting completely for a specific post by using the "Post Settings" on the right side of the post editor when you are writing a post (or editing the post later).</li>
</ul>
<h3>
4 - Set Privacy options (Optional, and rare, for private blogs only)</h3>
<ul>
<li>NOTE: Only do this if you intend your blog to be private to a small, defined group of people who log in. Making your blog private makes it much harder for people to find and read - so only do this if that is your intention. </li>
<li>STEP 1: Click on "Settings" on the left navigation (at the bottom)</li>
<li>STEP 2: Click on "Basic" in the submenu that appears under Settings</li>
<li>STEP 3: Under the "Privacy" section, click "edit". In both options "Add your Blog to our listings" and "Let search engines find your blog", click the "NO" option. Then click "Save Changes".</li>
<li>STEP 4: Under "Publishing"/ "Blog Readers", click "edit" and select the option you prefer - refer to <a href="https://support.google.com/blogger/answer/42673?hl=en" target="_blank">this blogger help article</a> for more information on these options. Then click "Save Changes".</li>
</ul>
<b><span style="font-size: x-small;">*CAVEATS: </span></b><br />
<span style="font-size: x-small;">Blogger is not officially part of the Google Apps For Education (GAFE) suite - and the ideas in this post are not intended to make Blogger compliant with all your requirements as an educator. Blogger is a consumer product that your GAFE domain administrator can choose to make available to you as a user of your school/district GAFE domain. It is still up to you and your domain administrator to make sure any software you use meets the requirements of your use - especially as an educator who needs to abide by any terms of use set by your school or district.</span>JRhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03007138367944227896noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5362712500473028852.post-85522408362023069242014-09-05T14:48:00.001-05:002018-02-13T09:04:21.027-05:00Young YouTube creators learn more than you think<iframe allowfullscreen="" class="YOUTUBE-iframe-video" data-thumbnail-src="https://i.ytimg.com/vi/lgVGT2t6PzM/0.jpg" frameborder="0" height="266" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/lgVGT2t6PzM?feature=player_embedded" style="clear: right; float: right;" width="320"></iframe>Your kid starts a YouTube channel, or a blog, or some other creative outlet online. Should you support it or kill it? Will it take time and attention away from school work, and just increase their likely over-spent “screen time”? My 13- year-old son’s experience with his YouTube channel - <a href="https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC_DE3NbeO4E6Sur624hXAyg">Techspective</a> - has been an eye opener for me and I thought it would be worth sharing why I have become a strong supporter* (and subscriber) and share the long list of skills I see him learning in this endeavor.<br />
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Within the past year, my son, Jeremy, started showing a deep interest in making videos. He was mostly inspired by the other young talents he saw on YouTube (<a href="https://www.youtube.com/user/marquesbrownlee">one in particular</a>) and by a <a href="https://twitter.com/hmweinerman">friend of his</a>, who had started a business making videos for local sports and events.<br />
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Jeremy saved every penny he earned from babysitting, dog-walking and landscaping odd-jobs and bought his first DSLR camera. As his geek dad, I was interested in supporting his technical interests and approved of an experimental YouTube channel that he started with his friend. Their early videos were simple - and while not exactly professional, they showed a clear production quality and potential that was, frankly, surprising. They were constantly learning new technology and quickly expanded from simple videos to live video streams - where other people (mostly their friends) could join in real-time to discuss technology and ask live questions of the two self-proclaimed "mobile gadget reviewers". They were energized and it was fun to watch. After a few months, the two young video producers decided to go their own way "professionally" (his friend still produces on the <a href="https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCU2B0IlGXHn7IM775s-gGaw">Mobile Gadget</a> channel, while Jeremy produces on <a href="https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC_DE3NbeO4E6Sur624hXAyg">Techspective</a>). In the past few months I've watched the quality of their video production go from "not bad" to "wow!". Checking myself every once in a while to be sure I wasn’t overly biased, I’ve shared links with friends and others, only to confirm my view - their videos have become high quality, useful and fun to watch.<br />
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My main concern in all this was the time being spent on his hobby versus time on his school work, sports, outdoor activities and actual (non-virtual) social activities. Was he too focused on improving the quality and subscriber numbers of his YouTube videos at the expense of his school grades? While I knew he was getting a tremendous amount of personal satisfaction, was it worth risking lower grades at school? It was that internal dilemma that motivated me to consider more concretely all the skills my son was developing in pursuit of his creative and technical passion. <br />
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One night in particular inspired me to analyze this deeper. He had been typing away on his computer for what seemed like a couple of hours, until I finally asked, <br />
<br />
“What are you working on?” (with a little bit of “what the heck?” in my tone ;)<br />
“A script", he said (with a little bit of “what the heck?” right back at me ;) <br />
<br />
He was meticulously writing the words to his next video - painstakingly considering every sentence in his story until it sounded just right. In his mind he was simultaneously planning out his “B roll” video footage. He was composing a story, using advanced vocabulary and other language skills, orchestrating his story to a video backdrop, which he then filmed and edited. The quality of that finished video jumped several levels from his previous work. It struck me at that moment that this was a much more complex and multi-faceted assignment than much of what he had done in school.<br />
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Continuing that analysis, I came up with the following quick summary of the skills I’ve seen this young video producer develop and practice over the course of his early experiments:<br />
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<b>Product Management: </b><br />
This is a high-level way to describe how many of the underlying skills come together into something I would describe as “leadership”. Without explicitly thinking of it, he is identifying his market (who he was trying to reach), the product he aimed to provide, the identity and quality of his product, the methods of production and delivery - everything to go from idea to launch. It’s the “figure it out as I go” method of training mostly - but in the end, he got a feeling for what my job is as a PM - to define, launch and manage a product. In this he also starts learning a critical professional and life skill - the trade offs that must be made between time, quality and cost to get something done.<br />
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<b>Story Creation & Script Writing: </b><br />
Well-produced videos require a strong story, and once he started using scripts, the stories he was telling became more complete and interesting. He was even using skills he learned in early story-writing from school, whether he knew it or not. <br />
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<b>Research: </b><br />
Every video produced has many hours of research behind it. While he might rattle off product specs or references to tech industry events in the matter of seconds in the finished video, there were likely hours of research into product details, industry news sites, blogs and more. It’s not easy work, as he has learned, to create a visual story which has not just his insights, but facts.<br />
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<b>Public Speaking: </b><br />
This is likely the most compelling part that many kids, and adults, can use - practicing speaking out loud, even to a virtual crowd on the other end of a video camera lens. I’ve overheard Jeremy speaking his scripts out loud and then recording many takes of his “performance” in front of the camera. I cannot emphasize enough how valuable this is - for a teenager to not only practice speaking “his/her lines” but also to see him/herself on video. It builds self-esteem and helps kids gain an appreciation for how they are perceived by others. He also learned that writing a script - even if not followed precisely - reduces the “ummmm”s in vocal storytelling.<br />
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<b>Communication: </b><br />
Put several of these skills together, and you get better communication skills. This is something that many kids opportunistically avoid until there are specifically forced to in school or other activities. The more they avoid it, the harder it is to do when they need to - so they avoid it again - and the “lack of communication” downward spiral continues. By pursuing a creative channel they enjoy, they are developing and practicing a much more sophisticated communication style. Video-making, blogging, even emailing, can be fantastic exercises for improving communication skills. <br />
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<b>Conciseness and Clarity of message: </b><br />
This is an area in which I saw clear improvement over time. For video in particular, I think it’s easy to watch yourself on screen and understand how your message can be improved. That improvement is often in message clarity and cutting out the unnecessary (not just “the umms”, but even unnecessary or redundant information and commentary).<br />
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<b>Filming: </b><br />
Taking video can be easy, but as you set your sights to higher quality, you start thinking “what will make this shot more interesting” and you become a director and producer. I’m a firm believer that even a phone cam can be adequate for great videos, especially for beginners. Learning all the other skills will take plenty of time anyway before worrying about high-end camera equipment.<br />
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<b>Video Editing: </b><br />
It doesn’t take long for a video hobbyist to discover that post-production editing is the bulk of the work. The combination of creative skills and technical software skills can turn a bunch of junky clips into a great video. Jeremy learned a few video editing apps, finally landing on Adobe Premiere (that choice itself also required research and decision making) and he honed his creative skills in a big way.<br />
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<b>Sound Production: </b><br />
An otherwise good video can be ruined quickly with bad sound. There’s a whole set of occupations in just this one aspect of production, and a YouTuber has to learn at least the basics.<br />
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<b>Visual Design: </b><br />
The YouTube channel, the logo, the supporting website, the twitter page, the G+ page, etc… it all requires some design work. Through experimentation and practice comes not only skills, but the confidence to try next time.<br />
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<b>Animation: </b><br />
Similar to editing and design, this is an area which combines highly technical software skills with creativity. It’s not a necessary component of video making, but if the opportunity arises (which it did in this case), it’s a fun, challenging skill to learn. (Apple’s Motion product was the tool of choice)<br />
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<b>Marketing: </b><br />
Getting views on your video and subscribers to your channel is not all abra-ca-beiber magic. It takes work. A successful indie YouTuber needs to support the channel with supporting social interactions which are thoughtful, well-timed and relevant. This is a marketable skill too - many businesses would pay you well to do this effectively for them.<br />
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<b>Collaboration: </b><br />
It’s rare for any effort to be fully “solo” - and I watched Jeremy collaborate with friends, teachers, business owners and others in ways that he never would have been exposed to without the goals of his YouTube channel to motivate him.<br />
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<b>Competition: </b><br />
Ultimately, a YouTube video artist is competing for attention. Ethical competition is something you learn in games and sports - but you can also learn it in the digital world.<br />
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<b>Dealing with inappropriate behavior: </b><br />
Some YouTube commenters have nothing constructive to say, and I can’t say anything good about them except that they help others learn the art of “reactive restraint”. Kids learn quickly how to engage, but mostly, not to engage. They learn this better than adults in my experience - and better to learn this skill early. These kids will send less of those escalating, reactive responses we see too often even in the most professional environments.<br />
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<b>Entrepreneurship: </b><br />
Put all the product design, creation, execution, marketing and communication bits together, and you have an entrepreneur. While it might not be a money-making operation, it is an operation. In Jeremy’s case, he has used his skills already for some paid video work for business owners in the local area.<br />
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So far, I'm a huge supporter* of Jeremy's video-making hobby - and proud to be one of <a href="https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC_DE3NbeO4E6Sur624hXAyg">Techspective’s</a> (and Mobile Gadget’s) first subscribers. Sure, I truly enjoy watching his videos, but more than that, I love watching his skills grow through self-directed learning and experimentation - not because someone told him to learn something, but because he’s motivated to achieve a goal that requires learning. He is pursuing a goal he is passionate about, which happens to be creative, complex, interesting and relevant. I could never suppress his natural desire to learn - that would be inexcusable - even if it does mean he might get a lower grade on his next history test.<br />
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<span style="font-size: x-small;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-style: italic; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">[*</span><span style="font-family: "arial"; font-style: italic; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">caveat: Kids shouldn't be doing anything online without first being given strong guidance on how to stay safe and out of trouble. </span><span style="font-family: "arial"; font-style: italic; line-height: 1.15; white-space: pre-wrap;">If you need information to keep yourself or kids you know safe, <a href="https://www.google.com/safetycenter/families/start/" target="_blank">start here</a>]</span></span></div>
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<br />JRhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03007138367944227896noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5362712500473028852.post-55688207132721041512014-07-20T11:58:00.000-05:002014-07-20T11:58:01.317-05:00Make a calender with (and on) a SpreadsheetWhen we were still running <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2Web_Technologies">2Web Technologies</a>, and showing potential customers how our product, XL2Web, could convert spreadsheets into Web Apps, I spent much of my free time creating fun and useful (and some not-so-useful) spreadsheets which worked really well as web apps. Spreadsheets for me actually became a development platform for creating web apps. I created a whole site of sample apps generated from spreadsheets (sadly, that site is no longer live) and I would use it to show off our little start-up's product to potential customers and anyone else who would listen. Over the past few years, I have intermittently taken one or more of those old spreadsheets and converted them into "our" product - Google Sheets... but I haven't had much of a catalyst to do that recently. Today, for some reason, I decided to convert a semi-useful one I re-discovered.<br />
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<a href="http://goo.gl/teicVn" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh79G69LV8YSnGhX3DVAgNUcItpvMdQPJG0Av5dytUpkWFXgbxFFEFAdFINdOSryegvEWQnWFba-H56URm5hh_X9OwkRw3z0bKuGOOP_APVcjvlhAmevOXRpeSvd-krt4_U8qxl7BoNLx0/s1600/Screen+Shot+2014-07-20+at+12.42.17+PM.png" height="145" width="200" /></a></div>
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The <a href="http://goo.gl/teicVn" target="_blank">Calendar Maker Spreadsheet</a> is super simple in what it achieves, and slightly less simple in how it does it. It's practically proof that I had a #spreadsheetaddiction when I created this, since there must be much easier ways to create calendars (...there are, right?) than to create spreadsheet formulas and format them to look semi-pretty.<br />
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<b>If you want a copy of this thing so you can actually use it - just click the "MAKE A COPY..." item in the "FILE" menu.</b> Then you just pick the month/year you want for either a full year or one-month calendar (two separate sheets in the spreadsheet), and you've got a calendar you can use... </div>
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With an increased personal focus on Apps for Education, I've found - practically daily - a bunch of inspiring uses of our broader products - Docs, Sheets, Slides, Drawings and more - in the educational context... sometimes directly in teaching students, and sometimes just helping teachers do things better, faster and smarter. I've also been re-inspired by incredibly smart educators who find ways to use technology to improve their teaching, to inspire other educators and to make learning more engaging for kids and adults. The work of one such educator indirectly inspired me to post to my blog again: <a href="https://twitter.com/alicekeeler" target="_blank">@alicekeeler</a> - who writes a prolific <a href="http://www.alicekeeler.com/teachertech/" target="_blank">blog called TeacherTech</a>, inspiring and guiding educators on ways to use technology effectively in teaching - and - she's also slightly (!) crazy about spreadsheets.<br />
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JRhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03007138367944227896noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5362712500473028852.post-35810736209097795412010-06-15T14:29:00.001-05:002010-06-15T20:31:58.681-05:00Building Buildings in Google Docs<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://docs.google.com:443/previewtemplate?id=1DpfEg13D7PY-RtpGXRqsi-wyWwzAtztC43oMZKEy32E&mode=public" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" height="300" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg0jUfKvcmkbCylmWx168PJbc4rJRUQddTmuPEJlajaN7OgV7uzXUcAn8h6cVVthmh24X92_LhtpCB3-UyPy-klllUdd3wp4DSMhj9Gl8zBlyLLYD888ub1tk7zUuz3YgbKqWhQJfPEdwU/s400/LandmarkBuildings-US.png" width="400" /></a></div><div style="text-align: left;">Everyone who knows me knows how excited I get about collaboration - and how especially excited I was when Google Docs' <a href="http://googledocs.blogspot.com/2010/04/introducing-google-docs-drawings.html">drawing tool was launched</a> as a collaborative editing surface. On a few occasions, I've initiated collaborative scribbling sessions with 3 or 30 people simultaneously, just for the creative kick we all get out of it (an especially active session was triggered by my <a href="http://blog.go2web20.net/">favorite web-tech blogger</a>, when her quick ping to her followers triggered a flood of creative participants).</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br />
</div><div style="text-align: left;">When I saw the quality of content a few others had created when we <a href="http://googledocs.blogspot.com/2010/06/share-your-drawings-with-google-docs.html">added drawings</a> to the Google Docs Template Gallery, I was inspired to try some myself. So, for a few moments (ahem) per day over the past week, I ventured on a more soloist approach in an attempt to create some useful and realistic-ish drawings of some great city landmark buildings. I initially set out to draw, in rough form, just the Empire State Building. Hmph... that was easy enough - so I just kept going. Transamerica was a bit more challenging, and the Space Needle required some artistic license. My favorite building (second of course to <a href="http://jrsays.com/2007/09/tough-memories-of-september-11th-2001.html">my real favorites</a>), the Chrysler Building, almost made me <span class="Apple-style-span" style="text-decoration: line-through;">cry</span> give up - but I persisted and even got that into a form which (when squinting) is acceptable...</div><div style="text-align: left;">So <a href="https://docs.google.com:443/templates?q=landmark+buildings&sort=hottest&view=public">the template drawing is in the gallery</a> (full preview <a href="https://docs.google.com:443/previewtemplate?id=1DpfEg13D7PY-RtpGXRqsi-wyWwzAtztC43oMZKEy32E&mode=public">here</a>) - enjoy it, use it, laugh at it, or make fun of my rare obsessive behavior which resulted in these drawings. Maybe next time I'll invite a few dozen of my closest artistic friends to collaboratively create every other landmark building in a tenth of the time ;)</div>JRhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03007138367944227896noreply@blogger.com4tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5362712500473028852.post-14838082531734700012010-06-08T22:07:00.001-05:002014-12-02T10:10:09.457-05:00Google Sites - Hiding Site Activity Links<span class="Apple-style-span" style="border-collapse: collapse; font-family: arial, sans-serif; font-size: 13px;"></span><br />
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Whenever anyone asks me how they can easily create a web site - guess what I say...</div>
<div>
"Get lost freak!" (no, not really, but give me an excuse to use a quote from a <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5gbt9BLrOIQ">kids movie</a>, and I take it)... anyway, I say <a href="http://sites.google.com/">Google Sites</a>! It really is an easy way to get content up on the web quickly - so while I may be biased, I think Sites is the most accessible tool with the right balance of features and simplicity for the average web user.</div>
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There's one thing still about our current version of Sites that I've encountered enough times that I felt I should just post about it and point people here the next 5 times I'm asked:</div>
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<div style="text-align: center;">
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: medium;">"How do I get rid of that<i><b> Recent Site Activity</b></i> link at the bottom of every page?!"</span></div>
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjH1zNARpftQzPpuFfXAAdUpxgHRCNBDFgmKAtCJaJVZel-NFvFxi9X3c2TNwsea5W2V8xCamUNSQbcp_0GhJzeepO_QJuoki5qxSS6FovR8r750rhbJA3d5b1LlAkivRQxfBSVxUDuSNs/s1600/Picture+16.png" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjH1zNARpftQzPpuFfXAAdUpxgHRCNBDFgmKAtCJaJVZel-NFvFxi9X3c2TNwsea5W2V8xCamUNSQbcp_0GhJzeepO_QJuoki5qxSS6FovR8r750rhbJA3d5b1LlAkivRQxfBSVxUDuSNs/s640/Picture+16.png" height="40" width="640" /></a></div>
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It's not the intention of most Site authors to give people a link to all the "recent activity" on a site - they just want viewers to see the current version in most cases.</div>
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Well, it's not the most obvious thing to find... Here's how to change that:</div>
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<ol>
<li>Sign in to Google Sites and open your site</li>
<li>Click the Gear/Flower ("More Actions") button on the upper right corner and select "Manage Site" option in the menu.</li>
<li>On the left side under Site Settings, click the "General" Option.</li>
<li>The 8th option down (or so) is called "Access Settings" - which has 2 selectors, labelled:</li>
<ul>
<li><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 12px;">Users who can access site activity: and</span></li>
<li><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 12px;">Users who can access revision history: </span></li>
</ul>
<li><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 12px;">Set BOTH of those options to "COLLABORATORS ONLY"</span></li>
<li><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: 12px;">Click SAVE CHANGES (at the top or bottom of the page)</span></span></li>
</ol>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: 12px;">Hope that's helpful... ping me here if not (and I promise not to use a silly line from a kids movie to dissuade you).</span></span></div>
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JRhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03007138367944227896noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5362712500473028852.post-63278698695255560252010-05-12T22:37:00.000-05:002010-05-12T22:37:27.662-05:00How to TURN ON the NEW Google Docs editorsYou may have heard that Google actually <a href="http://docs.google.com/">offers a product</a> which lets you create, edit, share and collaborate on spreadsheets, documents, presentations and drawings using only your browser (nothing to download, etc... ) - yeah, yeah, I thought so.<br />
You may have heard that there was a <a href="http://googledocs.blogspot.com/2010/04/rebuilt-more-real-time-google-documents.html">recent update</a> to the product which made the editing experience more realtime, more collaborative and just generally faster and better - yeah, I thought so.<br />
You may have heard that if you are a current user of Google Docs, you need to TURN ON these new editors explicitly - no? You didn't hear that part? Well - it's only temporary... but you do need to do that!<br />
<br />
Enough people (more than 1) have asked me this question, that I thought I should just post a quick <i>How To,</i> so I can point people here once... even though this post will be useless soon, when the new editors are standard for everyone...<br />
<br />
So, the story is different for spreadsheet and document editing...<br />
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<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjlthmlMC1HrZiFHYqa8G7_dh1JARV7vXcoJnrqRHyjCMtUXONjRmNPDQHOGRRikkX20fDZL5-3LckOc1qXmN6FNWwLpvt4oFEhNtAiZqXZb71L6g-YZ7QkSNc402xnaZwXenNftJNu218/s1600/Picture+65.png" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjlthmlMC1HrZiFHYqa8G7_dh1JARV7vXcoJnrqRHyjCMtUXONjRmNPDQHOGRRikkX20fDZL5-3LckOc1qXmN6FNWwLpvt4oFEhNtAiZqXZb71L6g-YZ7QkSNc402xnaZwXenNftJNu218/s320/Picture+65.png" /></a></div><b><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: x-large;">For Spreadsheets</span></b> - very simple... When you are editing any spreadsheet, just look for the <span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #cc0000;"><b>"New Version" link</b></span> in the upper right side of your browser screen. Once you click that, ALL your spreadsheets will open using the new version of the spreadsheet editor (except for a small number of those which use a couple of lagging features which are not yet supported). If you decide you need to switch back, do the reverse, and use the "Old Version" link in the upper right.<br />
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<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg29i4CovebwzyFOjjnZeYwAjkJsHx_XbAXvv01_cCojxpJBxoGLBzxPnrRSewQPdhHM6Zq_htWhF1W1zG52jOcibXVcskRmPy3sn83D9AcuYZ0_ZaS_shYP2dH0UmLydCJ0pZ8lWTiv58/s1600/Picture+69.png" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" height="144" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg29i4CovebwzyFOjjnZeYwAjkJsHx_XbAXvv01_cCojxpJBxoGLBzxPnrRSewQPdhHM6Zq_htWhF1W1zG52jOcibXVcskRmPy3sn83D9AcuYZ0_ZaS_shYP2dH0UmLydCJ0pZ8lWTiv58/s320/Picture+69.png" width="320" /></a></div><b><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: x-large;">For Documents</span></b> - less simple, but easy still.... Click the "Settings" link in the upper right side of your screen. Then, click the "Document Settings" sub-menu. In the dialog which shows up, click the "Editing" tab - and then check the box which says <span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: inherit;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #444444;">"</span></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="-webkit-border-horizontal-spacing: 8px; -webkit-border-vertical-spacing: 8px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: inherit;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #444444;">Create new text documents using the latest version of the document editor. O<span class="Apple-style-span" style="-webkit-border-horizontal-spacing: 0px; -webkit-border-vertical-spacing: 0px; color: black; font-family: Times, sans-serif;">nly New Documents will use the new editor... old documents are currently forced to use the old editor. Just for now...</span></span></span></span><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Times, sans-serif;"><br />
</span><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Times, sans-serif;">One more thing to know - if you are on a Google Apps Domain (meaning at school or work or in an organization which uses Apps), you'll only see that new document editor option if your domain administrator wants you to ;) - so ask them if you don't see it.</span>JRhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03007138367944227896noreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5362712500473028852.post-52215481190074039482010-04-15T11:32:00.001-05:002010-04-15T11:50:36.215-05:00Amazing feats in collaboration (in nature, not technology)The <a href="http://www.google.com/events/atmosphere2010/">Atmosphere</a> conference at Google's Mountain View, CA campus this past Monday was exciting and fun and attended by hundreds of interesting CIOs/CEOs and interesting people - there was even a great set of <a href="http://googleblog.blogspot.com/2010/04/next-generation-of-google-docs.html">announcements</a> from our own <a href="http://googledocs.blogspot.com/2010/04/new-google-docs.html">Google Docs team</a>, which was of course a highlight for me. But, whether or not you believe in cloud computing or have any interest in the technology side, if you have any interest in collaboration, you must watch this video from the conference. This presentation by Janine Benyus, the President of the Biomimicry Institute, was, for me, the most educational, intriguing and awe-inspiring presentation of the whole day (yes, even more than seeing several people edit the same doc or drawing at the same time ;).<br />
<object width="560" height="340"><param name="movie" value="http://www.youtube.com/v/IzS7CRaCEtU&hl=en_US&fs=1&"></param><param name="allowFullScreen" value="true"></param><param name="allowscriptaccess" value="always"></param><embed src="http://www.youtube.com/v/IzS7CRaCEtU&hl=en_US&fs=1&" type="application/x-shockwave-flash" allowscriptaccess="always" allowfullscreen="true" width="560" height="340"></embed></object><br />
It turns out, that as much as we think we're innovating in the area of collaboration, we're actually just catching up and still, perhaps, way behind the collaborative systems present in nature.JRhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03007138367944227896noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5362712500473028852.post-85143847318544909972009-10-14T21:10:00.004-05:002009-10-14T22:09:24.077-05:00Is Twitter today's CB Radio? so what...<a href="http://twitter.com/jrochelle" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiQDJwHdFJtRKHN2bqmQqPEiRvHHbNu5JWIsbmKspvPvrKIQfMoxgg40E7vDzpv7lqvPDq0riA8dr75gAVBLNq0FKuz9mfxNGLX0Y5QdgU9fJlRCBSCWNW5O3qwAMkMFRpVIio6ksU3wSw/s200/Picture+8.png" /></a>If you were born after 1975-ish (younger than 35-ish), chances are you won't get this post - but if you were a kid (or a trucker) during the 1960's and 1970's, you might relate. It struck me that the CB radio was basically Twitter - just on a different channel (quite literally) - using audio airwaves rather than the character-based internet. "<a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Citizens'_band_radio">Citizen Band" (CB) Radios</a> were primarily used by truckers to keep in touch with each other and with a base station - maybe a dispatcher. The CB was their practical tool to communicate. Then, kids and geek hobbyists got a hold of them. I got one as a kid - probably in 1973 - when my dad finally gave in to my persistent begging. My dad certainly made me pay for it - but he risked his life on the ladder to install the antenna... I clearly remember him dropping the antenna once as he almost fell off the ladder. But, even bent, the antenna hooked me up to a world of tweets... voices of other people and truckers with whom I purposelessly interacted (that sound too familiar?).<br />
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Then, on a long car ride to Florida, the value of the CB became clear. We took the CB in the car and formed several temporal voice relationships with some truckers on the same route - down i95. On more than one occasion, we were warned of trouble, radar traps, accidents - and the previously useless banter became useful - almost necessary in hindsight. <br />
<br />
Some other characteristics of the CB which seem analogous:<br />
<br />
<ul><li>We had "handles" - names that represented who we wanted to be... sometimes fun, sometimes close to our real personas. The only one I remember was my uncle's: StoneMan. You figure it out.</li>
<li>We had our own language, which I think follows police radio language... like 10:4 ("ok") or 10:20 ("location") or "smokey" (policeman). wow... tricky.</li>
<li>We had Channels - similar in my mind to #hashtags - but much less traceable.</li>
<li>Short Tweets... after all, you could only hold that little button on the side of the mic for so long...</li>
<li>CB's were trendy! (tweet tweet!) There was even a <a href="http://www.songfacts.com/detail.php?id=3034">hit song by CW McCall called "Convoy"</a></li>
</ul><br />
This loose analogy between <a href="http://twitter.com/">Twitter</a> and the CB radio is not very enlightening, unless you want to believe that Twitter will face the same fate. So what was that fate? I'm guessing that hobbyists found more interesting and extendable platforms (not to mention the Internets ;) and truckers still use the CB in it's original form. If it were searchable, linkable, with more traceable social structures and usage patterns and without any locational limitations, maybe CB radios would have kept growing.... or maybe they did keep growing, right out of that stupid box in my room as a kid and into a chat room, then into that phone in my pocket and then into Twitter. <br />
<br />
Maybe someone reading this post will take a hint and help those truckers still using CBs by launching a product that has the familiar, voice-based interface of the CB, but with the added the practical advances of Twitter! Traceable, linkable, <a href="http://bit.ly/">bit.ly-able</a>, followable CB Radios! ...<br />
Hmmm. Maybe not.<br />
10:4 good buddy.JRhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03007138367944227896noreply@blogger.com10tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5362712500473028852.post-69507468596899152322009-09-21T13:04:00.007-05:002009-09-21T16:15:21.095-05:00Amazon and Rice - an unexpectedly good recipe<a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiCQXVeUCtLMKndneMp-1gysrbyU3JnCmqjP8yH7BJ0vEDVt0axfmKiW0YPgAAnr6J63wF73tFOWydiCqxYdJpJLZbsMPD9EDwEnGBkqQ1venMf74YJrIORYB_F8yIIvMYHx3jbH4hPPEk/s1600-h/Picture+37.png"><img style="float:right; margin:0 0 10px 10px;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 203px; height: 101px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiCQXVeUCtLMKndneMp-1gysrbyU3JnCmqjP8yH7BJ0vEDVt0axfmKiW0YPgAAnr6J63wF73tFOWydiCqxYdJpJLZbsMPD9EDwEnGBkqQ1venMf74YJrIORYB_F8yIIvMYHx3jbH4hPPEk/s320/Picture+37.png" border="0" alt=""id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5384031814814203954" /></a>I know Amazon is not just for books, but even I was surprised at this recent purchase made by my "use the web for practical things", non-geek, wife. I came home to find two seemingly unrelated things... First, there were six boxes of <a href="http://www.chefpaul.com/site.php?pageID=378&iteminfo=1&productID=39">our favorite Rice</a> on the counter - previously though to be extinct in this hemisphere due to the fact that our local grocer stopped stocking it. Nice surprise, but where did they come from? Second, there was a medium-sized Amazon box on the floor (you know, in that spot where husband might eventually remove it, but often takes much longer than necessary to do so). "What'd you get?" I innocently asked. "The Rice". The Rice? The Rice came from Amazon.com? whoa.<br /><br />I know this doesn't constitute a "whoa" if this was a toy or a camera or even a pair of shoes... but Rice? <br /><br />Logistics and partnerships have quickly made Amazon purchasing one of the most powerful forces in the product distribution space. Any product - even Rice - has a place in Amazon's warehouses and, optionally, on their website. It's been going on for a while - but now that it impacts my grocery list - I'm way impressed. Who cares if my grocer stops carrying stuff? I bet I can just scan all my groceries at home already and... well... you know...<br />By the way - you MUST <a href="http://www.amazon.com/RiceSelect-Chefs-Originals-Louisiana-6-Ounce/dp/B000EGZ9B0/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&s=grocery&qid=1253556150&sr=1-1">try this rice</a>.JRhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03007138367944227896noreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5362712500473028852.post-75107202888021852212009-08-14T08:54:00.003-05:002009-08-14T09:58:11.681-05:00You see photo, I see templateI've always been excited about the <a href="http://docs.google.com/templates">templates gallery</a> we have on Docs - but over the past few days, I could probably be more aptly described as *crazy* about templates - presentation templates in particular. It's the "submit your own" thing that pulled me in and got me thinking that practically everything around me "would make a great template". And I really like the way the embedded template summary/thumbnail looks in a blog post or on a site - like this:<br /><iframe width="620" height="170" frameborder="0" scrolling="no" marginheight="0" marginwidth="0" src="http://docs.google.com/embeddedtemplate?id=0AY3I92JhlIiPYWo1a3RmdmtoNnhfMzVnNmJmamdmNQ"></iframe><br />It started with the billboard...<br /><iframe width="620" height="170" frameborder="0" scrolling="no" marginheight="0" marginwidth="0" src="http://docs.google.com/embeddedtemplate?id=0AY3I92JhlIiPYWo1a3RmdmtoNnhfMjNmZGRmd3pkOA"></iframe><br />That was just a cool way to show simple messages, and it seemed like something others could make use of. I suddenly started seeing other things around me which could also be good backdrops for simple message slide shows - like the <a href="http://docs.google.com/previewtemplate?id=0AY3I92JhlIiPYWo1a3RmdmtoNnhfMzhjZDVuYjlmeg&mode=public">side of a barn</a>, <a href="http://docs.google.com/previewtemplate?id=0AY3I92JhlIiPYWo1a3RmdmtoNnhfNTRoYjk3czNnaA&mode=public">a laptop screen</a>, or even <a href="http://docs.google.com/previewtemplate?id=0AY3I92JhlIiPYWo1a3RmdmtoNnhfMzI2ajV2NHZjeg&mode=public">a mobile phone</a>! I even went through my own photos and started pulling other things out to make into templates - flowers, shells, frogs - <a href="http://docs.google.com/templates?view=public&authorId=12720632176310866036">anything</a> with some topical relevance.<br /><br />Here's instructions on how to make your own (using one of my templates, of course):<br /><iframe src="http://docs.google.com/present/embed?id=aj5ktfvkh6x_64fzdwnpf4&interval=5&size=m" frameborder="0" width="555" height="451"></iframe><br />I'll try to improve that presentation with screenshots and more detail if people ask... but really - the hardest part is finding and editing the right photos... some might say that I failed at that ;)JRhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03007138367944227896noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5362712500473028852.post-31293786336286521872009-06-12T16:04:00.005-05:002009-06-12T22:26:12.974-05:00Twitter search results are more useful in a spreadsheet<a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="http://sites.google.com/site/spreadsheets/Home/twitsheets/tweet-distribution"><img style="float:right; margin:0 0 10px 10px;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 320px; height: 141px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhMEVVHKyqBosokz52A03mNEY8sjHQfIUNBZ3bUgrzMa9DwE4ZVVBDf-H3qfOH4dxingHJQqhoxl_ipH9y4xqPhj2j7yFtsFt2ewE4xrhIRcVKbA2HnZaYXQXqr11TGPuKHWjsemeyKv-I/s320/Picture+60.png" border="0" alt=""id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5346557895815542466" /></a>I know I've overstayed my welcome in this utterly boring space of <a href="http://apiwiki.twitter.com/Twitter-API-Documentation">Twitter API</a> data in a spreadsheet - but I just have to share one more... This time, it's something that might actually be useful (omg, did I just admit that <a href="http://jrsays.com/2009/05/tweeterscore-tweeter-report-card.html">all the other stuff</a> was useless? uh huh).<br /><br />Let's say, for example, you are a product manager (hey - i know one of those) and you want to know who is tweeting about your product... You do a twitter search! Cool! It's really easy to see recent <a href="http://twitter.com/#search?q=google+docs">tweets about your product</a>. You can page through the results, and, in some tools even see a quick info box on the specific Tweeters listed (like location, number of followers, etc). But - let's say you want to calculate the total "reach" or, as <a href="http://twitter.com/psychemedia">@psychemedia</a> called it in a recent tweet, "amplification" of the tweets which match your search?<br /><br />"There's an app...err... <a href="http://sites.google.com/site/spreadsheets/Home/twitsheets/tweet-distribution">a spreadsheet</a> for that" !<br /><br />Here's what <a href="http://sites.google.com/site/spreadsheets/Home/twitsheets/tweet-distribution">this spreadsheet</a> does:<br /><br />- Pulls the most recent (up to) 400 tweets which match your search terms (there's limits in the twitter search API how far in time that will go back) into the spreadsheet.<br /><br />- It includes: the tweet text, author, date/time<br /><br />- For the most recent 50 tweets, it pulls the number of followers for the person who tweeted somethhing that matched your search terms... and it adds those up and give you a "Distribution for the most recent 50 tweets". In other words - the number of people following the people who tweeted about the thing you searched for.<br /><br />- For the most recent 50 tweets, it filters those which are ReTweets (RT) and sums the followers for the authors of those tweets - giving you a distribution of RTs of that concept or tweeter (this is meant mostly for searching for a tweeter's screen name to see the distribution of RTs of that persons tweets).<br /><br />This is not rocket science (I realize) - but it forms a basis to allow you to:<br />> get a sense for the amplification of a specific term or product name or tweeter<br />> focus on the tweets in a search result set which were authored by highly-followed tweeters (if you are a PR/marketing/customer-service person in particular)<br />> do further stuff with this data that I haven't thought of or had time to do...<br /><br />Like the <a href="http://sites.google.com/site/spreadsheets/Home/twitsheets">other twitsheets</a> I've done - this is just meant to be a starting point for people with a purpose... so if you come up with something useful from this, let me know!JRhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03007138367944227896noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5362712500473028852.post-62860889109928381662009-06-06T10:11:00.009-05:002009-09-21T16:55:51.856-05:00Twitter says: Coldplay follows the unpopular, Oprah doesn't<iframe width='410' height='300' style="float:right;" frameborder='0' src='http://spreadsheets.google.com/pub?key=rmdwJ3mj4EIYInRzN9NUNdA&single=true&gid=3&range=a2%3Ae13&output=html&widget=true'></iframe><a href="http://www.twitter.com/coldplay">Coldplay</a> follows 2,624 tweeters on twitter - who, on average, are only followed by 10 people each. <a href="http://www.twitter.com/oprah">Oprah</a> on the other hand only follows 14 people, who, on average, are followed by 709,350 people (as of this post on 9 June, 2009). I know - I spent the past 14 weeks counting! Nah... actually - there's a cool way to do this in - yes, you guessed it - <a href="http://sites.google.com/site/spreadsheets/Home/twitsheets/compare-10-tweeters">a spreadsheet</a>.<br /><br />In tweaking the <a href="http://jrsays.com/2009/05/tweeterscore-tweeter-report-card.html">TweeterScore</a> and other TwitSheets I've discovered that using <a href="http://www.w3schools.com/XPath/xpath_intro.asp">xpath</a>, you can quickly summarize data from an <a href="http://docs.google.com/support/bin/answer.py?hl=en&answer=75507">XML feed into a spreadsheet</a>... that is, you don't have to do the adding and looping yourself. <br />In one command, you can summarize data across all the entries in any XML feed.<br />For example... the <a href="http://apiwiki.twitter.com/Twitter-REST-API-Method%3A-statuses%C2%A0friends">twitter XML data for "friends statuses"</a> (the recent tweets of all the people you follow) can be grabbed with a URL like this:<br />http://twitter.com/statuses/friends/whatsername.xml - and you can do that for any tweeter, to see the statuses of (and other stuff about) all the people they follow...<br /><br />The actual XML data - in brief form - includes something like this (shortened massively):<br /><users><br /> <user><br /> <id>1010101</id><br /> <name>Whatsher Name</name><br /> <screen_name>Whatsername</screen_name><br /> ...<br /> <followers_count>1031</followers_count><br /> ...<br /> <status><br /> <created_at>Tue Apr 07 22:52:51 +0000 2009</created_at><br /> <id>1234567890</id><br /> <text>brb - going to get ice cream now</text><br /> <source><a href="http://www.tweetdeck.com/">TweetDeck</a><br /> </source><br /> ...<br /> </status><br /> </user><br /></users><br /><br />So - for the given tweeter (that you gave as the tweeter-screen-name.xml file name) it gives information for every other tweeter that person follows. A cool way to get the raw data for every person they follow. But the best part is the ability to summarize across all the entries... and XPath lets you do that.<br /><br />Example: Let's say I wanted to know not just all the names of the people that Oprah follows (no idea why i picked her) - but I wanted to know the average number of people who follow the people she follows. That would tell me whether Oprah is following her fans (unpopular) or other celebs (popular, with lots of followers themselves).<br />I can do that in a spreadsheet in one command (almost).<br /><br />I use the <a href="http://docs.google.com/support/bin/answer.py?hl=en&answer=75507">ImportXML() command</a> with an XPath command string of <span style="font-style:italic;">"sum(/users/user/followers_count)"</span> to get the total number of followers of all the people being followed by this tweeter... so for Oprah, the spreadsheet formula looks like this:<br /><span style="font-style:italic;">=importXML("http://twitter.com/statuses/friends/oprah.xml","sum(/users/user/followers_count)")</span><br />Divide that by the number of people she follows, and you have the average...<br />I'll leave it to you to check out this <a href="http://sites.google.com/site/spreadsheets/Home/twitsheets/compare-10-tweeters">sample spreadsheet</a> which does a whole bunch of this xml manipulation to compare 10 tweeters.JRhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03007138367944227896noreply@blogger.com6tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5362712500473028852.post-67314867370919208572009-05-27T02:51:00.009-05:002010-08-18T10:08:53.626-05:00Show-n-Tell gadget in honor of GoogleIO<script src="https://spreadsheets.google.com/gpub?url=https%3A%2F%2Fvrr7l9p32850b5urrgkaqp3plv745o2a-ss-opensocial.googleusercontent.com%2Fgadgets%2Fifr%3Fup__table_query_url%3Dhttp%253A%252F%252Fspreadsheets.google.com%252Ftq%253Frange%253DA4%25253AA17%2526headers%253D-1%2526key%253D0Ao3I92JhlIiPcno3LU1RMzJsYjRET3lFT3hjQ1hjX0E%2526gid%253D0%2526pub%253D1%26up__table_query_refresh_interval%3D0%26up_textcolor%3Dblue%26up_bkcolor%3Dwhite%26url%3Dhttp%253A%252F%252Fhosting.gmodules.com%252Fig%252Fgadgets%252Ffile%252F114448529270295376137%252F97g-show-n-tell.xml%253Fnocache%26container%3Dspreadsheets&height=454&width=514"></script><br />
Find out <a href="http://sites.google.com/site/spreadsheets/spreadsheet-categories/fun-stuff/show-n-tell-spreadsheet-gadget">more about this gadget</a>... or, If you see nothing above this message, or you just don't get this whole post... please excuse me and move on to your next critical task for today. ;)JRhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03007138367944227896noreply@blogger.com5tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5362712500473028852.post-1071233796109784642009-05-19T23:06:00.016-05:002010-11-19T14:19:55.280-05:00TweeterScore: a Tweeter report card<a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjVielvRqBnL3bG9OQOAXgSKRcRwS6lROPQ992Usr7oU4iZEJx83d4UkudPC4uO5urjjj-USmmng5Jiqr15Qgm1XJldj6sRlBLsrizVb71trH2Ovd8Z98PjOnjqxuefFMuoFQXhX_8_6oc/s1600-h/Picture+40.png"><img style="float:right; margin:0 10px 10px 0;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 320px; height: 197px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjVielvRqBnL3bG9OQOAXgSKRcRwS6lROPQ992Usr7oU4iZEJx83d4UkudPC4uO5urjjj-USmmng5Jiqr15Qgm1XJldj6sRlBLsrizVb71trH2Ovd8Z98PjOnjqxuefFMuoFQXhX_8_6oc/s320/Picture+40.png" border="0" alt=""id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5337916541891283730" /></a>I made some enhancements to that original Tweetquency spreadsheet I <a href="http://jrsays.com/2009/05/chart-your-twitter-tweetquency.html">posted</a>, and turned it into something a bit more useful (an overstatement, for sure). While it's fun to look at the profiles of tweeters on Twitter, to see how many people they follow or follow them, it might be more interesting to understand their tweeting habits. How often do they tweet? How often do they reply or include a link? I created this "Tweeter report card" to help do this easily for any Twitter screen name. <br />
<br />
We can't use the typical subjects seen in school report cards (thank goodness), so I had to make up some of our own. Here's what you'll see on the <a href="http://sites.google.com/site/spreadsheets/spreadsheet-categories/twitsheets/tweeterscore">TweeterScore</a> report card which spans the past n tweets (which you can set between 5 and 500): <br />
<ul><li><span style="font-weight:bold;">Tweetquency</span>, viewed as a chart (this version, btw, lets you change the charting buckets, in case you want more detail for those tweeters who are too concentrated in the long or short end of the duration curve (sorry - sounds like wall st.).<br />
<li><span style="font-weight:bold;">Follow factor</span> - which is a simple measure of the "cost of getting a follower". It's just a ratio the number of followers one has for each person they follow. A super high number here usually represents a celebrity of sorts. <div style="float:right; width: 290px;"><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhGRD6LnqzuTHb6uYQyS5QFWZr_KeFFbXQTM8nNoc8rpn01G1gDqqAxY33XFgOJ2vNN-TPI97tLNDgLzK-VDTDVPpI8bugYtp2rGwXe61hb4Y53oQ1FTIyWUoNlXoJlqJRad3tkZZqj6nE/s1600-h/Picture+35.png"><img style="margin:0 0 10px 10px;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 288px; height: 123px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhGRD6LnqzuTHb6uYQyS5QFWZr_KeFFbXQTM8nNoc8rpn01G1gDqqAxY33XFgOJ2vNN-TPI97tLNDgLzK-VDTDVPpI8bugYtp2rGwXe61hb4Y53oQ1FTIyWUoNlXoJlqJRad3tkZZqj6nE/s320/Picture+35.png" border="0" alt=""id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5337910163479921714" /></a><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgw6qg3y-pX0z3A6EFpB9_XWM3jIC-xyf_lRnokVlDiVqHDll7VnPyrQFAOrc_COHjeW4wU8G2cOZGvXXTbBVX6PXa3uODPShQdtTGtRUq-XOYt7C2WLc1JQrc1xHPGBGWBM9WD5_9f6Ko/s1600-h/Picture+33.png"><img style="margin:0 0 10px 10px;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 288px; height: 123px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgw6qg3y-pX0z3A6EFpB9_XWM3jIC-xyf_lRnokVlDiVqHDll7VnPyrQFAOrc_COHjeW4wU8G2cOZGvXXTbBVX6PXa3uODPShQdtTGtRUq-XOYt7C2WLc1JQrc1xHPGBGWBM9WD5_9f6Ko/s320/Picture+33.png" border="0" alt=""id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5337759119989034482" /></a><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjJtDsgeRo5Mu9oYLEjjMATd6ELCyVNW7uIRym-oiTVhDZqqF5pxK4fymbXOBZGvjy6UNlH97yjMIE9_HuXdbtEeS-IfZnchdR1XbO3ZR7AzjhJzGt7cg20R4b4CZOhuJDtDiNPGHxby_w/s1600-h/Picture+36.png"><img style="margin:0 0 10px 10px;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 288px; height: 123px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjJtDsgeRo5Mu9oYLEjjMATd6ELCyVNW7uIRym-oiTVhDZqqF5pxK4fymbXOBZGvjy6UNlH97yjMIE9_HuXdbtEeS-IfZnchdR1XbO3ZR7AzjhJzGt7cg20R4b4CZOhuJDtDiNPGHxby_w/s320/Picture+36.png" border="0" alt=""id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5337910172356166962" /></a><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiAOB4sAWqEcunPI9m6zYYg8mu9Ik6kjFKKnrDNAH6ITcD4zBGtIEPoFeH8etADkvXooZ2iVZafpuB8nU_azcmFkAP0bZWRzlc_r7KUvf0uQpSq064jQF2jQIpky_U9CxBwCW4J9NnTDNM/s1600-h/Picture+34.png"><img style="margin:0 0 10px 10px;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 288px; height: 123px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiAOB4sAWqEcunPI9m6zYYg8mu9Ik6kjFKKnrDNAH6ITcD4zBGtIEPoFeH8etADkvXooZ2iVZafpuB8nU_azcmFkAP0bZWRzlc_r7KUvf0uQpSq064jQF2jQIpky_U9CxBwCW4J9NnTDNM/s320/Picture+34.png" border="0" alt=""id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5337759129035577042" /></a></div><br />
<li><span style="font-weight:bold;">Quietness</span> - which rates high for the less tweety of us in the crowd (included, quite simply, to make me feel better about my tweetlessness), an inverse measure of the next one...<br />
<li><span style="font-weight:bold;">Chattiness</span> - which is the average number of tweets per day. These inversely represent the same data which is in the tweetquency chart, but on average. The most chatty will have numbers above 20 or more (hi Tara!)<br />
<li><span style="font-weight:bold;">Link-i-ness</span> rates the percentage of recent tweets which contained a link<br />
<li><span style="font-weight:bold;">@Reply-ness</span> shows the percentage of recent tweets which contained at least one @reply.</ul>
Beyond pure fun, the usefulness of these measures might arise when, for example, a small business wants to know the habits of another tweeter whom they feel is doing things "right" on twitter. See some examples included here - such as <a href="http://twitter.com/cnnbrk">CNN Breaking News</a> - which hardly ever includes a link, has huge followfactor (they don't need to follow others to get people to follow them) and they only tweet on average about once per day (rounded, but still surprised me). Then look at <a href="http://twitter.com/orli">Orli Yakuel</a>, who is constantly pointing people to <a href="http://www.go2web20.net/">great products</a> and sites, including links in 62% of her recent tweets. <a href="http://twitter.com/mattcutts">Matt Cutts</a> and <a href="http://twitter.com/missrogue">Tara Hunt</a> (missrogue) just have huge followings, but one doesn't follow many people and the other does - so their followfactors are quite different.
I have some ideas for how the trends seen across types of tweeters would make an interesting thesis either in business or social research... for example, <a href="http://www.techcrunch.com">Techcrunch</a> (not shown here) had a Linkiness score of 100% over the 250 tweets I collected. Sounds like a Blogging business trend we might have predicted. I also bet the general shape of a tweeter's Tweetquency chart can be indicative of...(yawn)... ok - I'm boring myself now... on to the next project ;)
I'll write more about how this was all done in a future post - and then describe a more useful way to use these mechanics.... but for now, if you want to score a few tweeters you know - <a href="http://sites.google.com/site/spreadsheets/spreadsheet-categories/twitsheets/tweeterscore">Get your own copy of TweeterScore</a>... and find me on the first day of <a href="http://parnassusgroup.com/twitterconference/">140tc</a> or at <a href="http://code.google.com/events/io/">GoogleIO</a> next week if you have questions about all this sheet ;)JRhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03007138367944227896noreply@blogger.com4tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5362712500473028852.post-73522739552607683342009-05-17T16:32:00.003-05:002009-05-17T16:58:55.995-05:00Finding the most popular tweeter tools<iframe style="float:right;" width='400' height='300' frameborder='0' src='http://spreadsheets.google.com/pub?key=r_2g5qWyNUKJgWkvAykG4RQ&output=html&gid=0&single=true&range=A1:E126'></iframe>I've become a little <a href="http://jrsays.com/2009/05/chart-your-twitter-tweetquency.html">more interested in Twitter</a> lately - and finally started looking for something to use for tweeting and searching beyond what's on twitter.com. Of course, I began by starting a list (yes, a spreadsheet) of the tweeter tools available - but that list too quickly grew to well beyond 100 choices. So, while interesting, it was too daunting to analyze or try each tool in detail.<br /><br />Then I realized that I could see what tools people use for tweeting pretty easily - so, if I trust that popularity might be some indication of value, I could at least find a narrow set of popular tools for tweeting (won't help me with search, but hey...)<br /><br />So - on three separate days this past week, I took a sample of 1,000 tweets - that's 3,000 in total - and counted which tools were used. Not necessarily a statistically significant methodology, but not bad. See my results in the <a href="http://spreadsheets.google.com/pub?key=r_2g5qWyNUKJgWkvAykG4RQ">spreadsheet</a> embedded here. I left most of the collection and math to another post - but figured other people might want the results sans all the formula rigor anyway. The "Follower Score" takes into consideration the number of followers of each tweeter - so that a tool used by a heavily followed Tweeter will rank higher. For now the chart just uses the pure Tweet Count to tell me that I should use <a href="http://www.tweetdeck.com">TweetDeck</a>, <a href="http://www.twitterfeed.com">TwitterFeed</a> or <a href="http://www.twitterfon.com">TwitterFon</a>, if I just want to follow the pack.<br /><img src="http://spreadsheets.google.com/pub?key=r_2g5qWyNUKJgWkvAykG4RQ&oid=2&output=image" /><br /><br />I'm starting to collect a few interesting spreadsheets related to twitter these days... more to come on this...JRhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03007138367944227896noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5362712500473028852.post-43521202443277190022009-05-08T22:26:00.006-05:002009-09-02T08:37:14.731-05:00Stock Screen Revisit - howz that doin' anyway?<a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="http://sites.google.com/site/spreadsheets/Home/financial-sheets/stock-screen-tracker"><img style="float:right; margin:0 0 10px 10px;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 320px; height: 203px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgjmq8bCbx_W9b9DYQ_6a3GqTZZrRy4LLO3A_846yFGBOuiF9LUSB1V4OU-ShlhS5mn8MHOtpW9ipBu_a05yKZIAbtQfrOFKkpuFbWTfPi5I81ngKReQhOZtEjULn4KPKLYJkb-7lyM4po/s320/Picture+7.png" border="0" alt=""id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5333664738586403042" /></a>I <a href="http://jrsays.com/2009/02/stock-screening-and-watching-for-now.html">posted</a> back in February about a <a href="http://www.google.com/finance/stockscreener#c0=MarketCap&min0=7765&max0=354450000000&c1=PE&min1=0.17&max1=10.21&c2=DividendYield&min2=0&max2=499&c3=Price52WeekPercChange&min3=-99.91&max3=-53.62&c4=TotalDebtToAssetsYear&min4=0&max4=0&c5=NetIncomeGrowthRate5Years&min5=0&max5=377&c6=QuoteLast&min6=0&max6=77001®ion=us§or=AllSectors&sort=&sortOrder=">stock screen I ran</a> using Google Finance - to pick stocks which seemed to have gotten beat up in the market while still having no debt and consistent income growth. (if you look at that link now - it will show the current stocks which meet the criteria I set, not the same stocks as on Jan 27th when I originally ran it). <br /><br />I realized today that I hadn't revisited that to see how that list of stocks has performed against the market...<br />Well - here's the deal.<br /><br />On Jan 27th, 2009, the <span style="font-weight:bold;">Dow<span style="font-weight:bold;"></span></span> was at 8174. The S&P 500 was at 846.<br />On May 8th, 2009, the Dow closed at 8575. The S&P was at 929.<br />That's a total increase of: 4.9% for the Dow and 9.8% for the S&P 500.<br /><br />On Jan 27th, 2009, my list of stocks was valued at: $21,929.<br />On My 8th, 2009, that list of stocks was valued at: $27,351.<br />That's a total increase of: 24.7%.<br /><br />oh. ok. So now what? I'll just hop into my time machine - go back to Jan 27th and actually invest? nah. I'm so tired of that time machine. I think it's time to try that same screen a few times... basically it says that stocks that were beat down, which still have some fundamental value and no debt, MIGHT perform better than the market as a whole... Or, at least it did in this one instance... by a healthy margin.<br />(and, again, I'm not giving any financial advice here, and if historic results were any indication of future results, you might get lucky once or twice, but in the long run you'd lose your shirt most likely).<br />[Update: here's a link if you want <a href="http://sites.google.com/site/spreadsheets/spreadsheet-categories/financial-sheets/stock-screen-tracker">more info on the spreadsheet</a> itself]<br /><br /><a href="http://jrsays.com/2007/05/important-stuff.html">My Dad</a> would have loved this... he would have played with it for hours and then he'd go check in on his friends at <a href="http://siliconinvestor.com">Silicon Investor</a> to see what they thought... and then he'd make some pretty great trades. I only mention that because I'm thinking about him all day today, this 2nd anniversary of the day he left us to toil away in the markets (and this life) without his incredible love and guidance. Damn.JRhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03007138367944227896noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5362712500473028852.post-30670736396477160412009-05-02T09:57:00.005-05:002009-05-03T21:37:47.145-05:00Chart your Twitter Tweetquency<a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="http://spreadsheets.google.com/pub?key=rBfBsYiLven4bCdtTGk4hxg"><img style="float:right; margin:0 0 10px 10px;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 320px; height: 286px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgWQWRa9zQlA9qkGrnlFqxStHt2gzJNiFXkquHLsQ5HVFXRRqQMJqYqN4Xd2-3GXqWFcojdn-llIvLSnZM6PzsCpuJhy5ZYIoqdEDg3hQUVnX-D3UZi8X8HRy3cUpUIg1ajmQ8rmpQwDs0/s320/Picture+6.png" border="0" alt=""id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5331247289945222450" /></a>I follow a few people on <a href="http://twitter.com">Twitter</a> who pretty much make me feel like I'm with them every step of their day... and I follow some who tweet so infrequently, that I feel lucky if I catch what they say between all the other blabber. That made me think that it might be interesting to see a chart of how frequently we tweet - our Tweetquency. As many of you know, I just can't help myself sometimes - I have to do everything on a spreadsheet. <br /><br />Click the image to see a <a href="http://spreadsheets.google.com/pub?key=rBfBsYiLven4bCdtTGk4hxg">view-only version</a> of this spreadsheet.<br />You can also <a href="http://spreadsheets.google.com/ccc?key=rBfBsYiLven4bCdtTGk4hxg&newcopy=true">click here to get your own copy</a> of this spreadsheet which you can edit and play with.<br /><br />I expect to be playing lots more with this, but here's how this simple version was done... I created a spreadsheet with two sheets. In one sheet (the second one in the file), I used the <a href="http://apiwiki.twitter.com/Twitter-API-Documentation">Twitter API</a> to pull in what's called a user timeline - the same thing you see when you click on a user's screen name in Twitter. This is done using the <a href="http://docs.google.com/support/bin/answer.py?hl=en&answer=75507">=ImportFeed() function</a> in Google Docs. The actual formula looks like this:<br/><br /><span style="font-style:italic;">=importfeed("http://twitter.com/statuses/user_timeline.atom?screen_name=" & B1, "items", true)</span><br />- where cell B1 holds the user screen name I want to grab. <br />[note - I also tried to have a count - to pull in a certain number of tweets, but that doesn't seem to work - so this spreadsheet actually is totally dependent on puling in 20 tweets at a time right now - and does the formula 5 times to get 100 tweets to play with. Look at that second sheet and scroll down a bit to look for the repetitive formulas and you'll see this hack.]<br /><br />Then I have a second sheet (which is actually the main/first sheet you see) which is basically the user interface - it allows you to enter a screen name and shows you the chart once the data in that other sheet is collected.<br /><br />It's fun to enter a name of someone you follow, just to show you something visually that you already know - that they either blab all the time, or hardly ever ;)<br /><br />For now, this only looks at the prior 99 tweets... but I'll likely be posting some updates and new versions of this TwitSheet... so let me know if you have other ideas or watch this space...JRhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03007138367944227896noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5362712500473028852.post-17299841694417511652009-03-12T21:59:00.004-05:002009-03-12T23:48:17.874-05:00The ultimate "How Come?"In 1995, <a href="http://jrsays.com/2007/05/important-stuff.html">my father</a> started writing weekly on a site he called <a href="http://webscope.com/howcome">"How Come?</a>". It's what I like to think of as (optimistically) one of the first blogs. Even back then, I remember thinking how cool he was for that. <br /><br />It struck me recently, that if he were still writing <a href="http://webscope.com/howcome/">"How Come?"</a>, he'd have certainly written about slithering <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bernard_Madoff">Bernie Madoff</a>. In fact, he'd have a whole series on that... and for different reasons than the simple, raw disgust the whole story raises. No, it would be for a much more personal reason than that. <a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgPGTnN-OLHiusdylmYUY4Ge7p6DU6LCH5TcSXdPDR-NxkngoTJ-yOYjQqMlkbDqsAOR-a6omgrcrmZTgoUlsNsNExXTCNROaEglGgVRePz9txn-PHz2_B98hAnQND5OZ4_-WA_SkABx6M/s1600-h/madoff.jpg"><img style="float:right; margin:0 0 10px 10px;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 320px; height: 240px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgPGTnN-OLHiusdylmYUY4Ge7p6DU6LCH5TcSXdPDR-NxkngoTJ-yOYjQqMlkbDqsAOR-a6omgrcrmZTgoUlsNsNExXTCNROaEglGgVRePz9txn-PHz2_B98hAnQND5OZ4_-WA_SkABx6M/s320/madoff.jpg" border="0" alt=""id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5312522456827408706" /></a>It would be driven by the kind of shivery feeling you only see in movies when the main character looks a murderer in the eye. It would be motivated by the same sort of nausea you get when you see tapes of September 11th. It would be about how he had such proximity to this seemingly normal <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Far_Rockaway_High_School">Far Rockaway High School</a> kid, and member of his swim team, who turned out to be so evil that it's practically impossible to accept. It would have sickened my dad deeply to know that he probably treated someone so evil with the natural respect and friendliness he treated everyone he knew. And it would have sickened him even more perhaps to re-read the words written in his high-school yearbook by someone who would prove to be so inconceivably unethical and bad. It gives some measure of relief to know that this criminal never became anything more than a High School acquaintance in the following 51 years... but so unfortunate that others who knew him back then probably became his victims.<br /><br />On this day, when loathsome Madoff is <a href="http://dealbook.blogs.nytimes.com/2009/03/12/madoff-pleads-guilty-to-all-charges/">imprisoned for the rest of his life</a> - and the life of anyone who ever knew him - if my dad were here to write his blog post, he would have certainly quoted one if his favorite albums:<br /><br /><span style="font-style:italic;">"In all my years of judging, I have never heard before of someone more deserving the full penalty of the law" - Pink Floyd, The Wall.</span><br /><br />...and he, of course, would have ended the whole story of this horrible deception with:<br /><br />"How come?"JRhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03007138367944227896noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5362712500473028852.post-74709102408799998042009-03-09T16:49:00.003-05:002009-03-09T17:07:39.032-05:00Maybe simple product names aren't all they're cracked up to beGiven the confidence I have in my spam filter, I read my emails in order (or reverse order) using the nifty "open bracket" shortcut in Gmail ("[" = archive and go to previous)... so when a cold-call email comes in, it means I somehow have a connection to the sending company or sender - so I read it. <br />Today I got one that I had to stare at and read about 4 times before I realized I didn't care about it - which was exactly the opposite of the goal the sender presumably had.<br /><br />Subject: "Role of Managers in enabling Architecture Center of Excellence(COE) for Business Differentiator"<br /><br />Huh?<br />This was the title of a training webinar (I figured out after looking a few times)... Was it the goal of the organizers to create such a complex name that I would feel inadequate about not understanding it and attend the webinar just to be sure I wasn't missing something important? Am I missing a new marketing trend here which says that super-nasty names get twice the attention as simple ones? <br /><br />uh... yeah - I guess they are right... I never would have blogged about a training class named "Managing Architecture Projects"... (but I might have attended)JRhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03007138367944227896noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5362712500473028852.post-59811646196747234642009-02-21T22:11:00.007-05:002009-06-10T08:41:09.297-05:00Stock screening and watching for nowI figure there are some stock market bargains out there - somewhere - if you can find companies who's stock price is beat down but who have solid fundamental business measures... and, of course, if you'd otherwise be in Vegas, but can't afford to get there given the economy... So I tried something fun that seemed worth sharing...<br /><br />I used the <a href="http://www.google.com/finance/stockscreener">Google Finance stock screener</a> to look for companies with:<br />- stock down more than 50% in the past year.<br />- Price/Earnings ratio between 0 and 10 (well priced (?), but still positive).<br />- Positive 5-year Net Income growth rate - still growing earnings.<br />- No Debt (debt to assets ratio of zero)<br /><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="http://finance.google.com/finance/stockscreener#c0=MarketCap&min0=7221&max0=401440000000&c1=PE&min1=0.17&max1=10.21&c2=DividendYield&min2=0&max2=499&c3=Price52WeekPercChange&min3=-99.91&max3=-53.62&c4=TotalDebtToAssetsYear&min4=0&max4=0&c5=NetIncomeGrowthRate5Years&min5=0&max5=377&c6=QuoteLast&min6=0&max6=86112®ion=us§or=AllSectors&sort=&sortOrder=<br />"><img style="float:right; margin:0 0 10px 10px;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 320px; height: 182px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjIWVBblq6P2NP3zrE87oiKEk6JfhH1SX9deA-riHj7Ef1WSCnvyq-RSeaNJ5DenRPWnhkD8_9umKGDn9VHtV45ehicpNcJmv9h-6L22D5C8gOBWTGiciKRb033CrS-MpXWdfT-7rSA0sM/s320/20090127-CaptureIt-Picture.png" border="0" alt=""id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5305464636229059266" /></a><br />It's a really fun thing to do - since you can slide each of the screeners and see the number of companies change in real-time - and you can add criteria from a pretty large pre-selected list of data points.<br /><a href="http://www.google.com/finance/stockscreener#c0=MarketCap&min0=7765&max0=354450000000&c1=PE&min1=0.17&max1=10.21&c2=DividendYield&min2=0&max2=499&c3=Price52WeekPercChange&min3=-99.91&max3=-53.62&c4=TotalDebtToAssetsYear&min4=0&max4=0&c5=NetIncomeGrowthRate5Years&min5=0&max5=377&c6=QuoteLast&min6=0&max6=77001®ion=us§or=AllSectors&sort=&sortOrder=">Here's the exact stock screen I used</a>.<br /><br />On Jan 27, that screen produced 28 companies...including some old favorites like Ann Taylor, Build-a-bear and Garmin, amongst the others.<br /><br />I copied and pasted the data into a <a href="http://sites.google.com/site/spreadsheets/Home/financial-sheets/stock-screen-tracker">Google spreadsheet</a> (you knew that, didn't you) - and added a few columns to see what would have happened if I bought a bit of each...<br />For this first test, I didn't bother trying to weight the different stocks according to anything, not even to even out the amount invested - I just went simple and theoretically bought 100 shares of each... theoretically investing around $21k... and then I added a column to pull the current stock price of each of those 28 companies.<br /><iframe style="float:right;" width='350' height='300' frameborder='0' src='http://spreadsheets.google.com/pub?key=pO3Ze62OAU2Fau5mTjmcQTQ&output=html&gid=0&single=true&range=a1:p33'></iframe><br /><a style="font-size: 9pt;" href="http://sites.google.com/site/spreadsheets/Home/financial-sheets/stock-screen-tracker">(see the whole spreadsheet here)</a><br />Results so far? Well - since Jan 27 through Feb 20, I'd have lost around $1,400 - or 6.5% of my investment... In that same period, the Dow lost 9.9% - so, as Bill Murray says, "uh, I got that goin' for me".<br /><br />I just like the process - not sure I'll actually act on any of these self-found "tips" - but I like that I can easily find stocks which fit <a href="http://finance.google.com/finance/stockscreener#c0=MarketCap&min0=7221&max0=401440000000&c1=PE&min1=0.17&max1=10.21&c2=DividendYield&min2=0&max2=499&c3=Price52WeekPercChange&min3=-99.91&max3=-53.62&c4=TotalDebtToAssetsYear&min4=0&max4=0&c5=NetIncomeGrowthRate5Years&min5=0&max5=377&c6=QuoteLast&min6=0&max6=86112®ion=us§or=AllSectors&sort=&sortOrder=">my own dreamed up criteria</a> and then watch them easily in a <a href="http://sites.google.com/site/spreadsheets/Home/financial-sheets/stock-screen-tracker">spreadsheet</a>...<br /><br />If you want your own copy of that spreadsheet, <a href="http://sites.google.com/site/spreadsheets/Home/financial-sheets/stock-screen-tracker">go to this page</a> where the spreadsheet itself is fully described.<br /><br /><span style="font-size: 9pt; color: #444444;">(and, of course, I'm not giving any financial advice here, and if historic results were any indication of future results, you shouldn't listen to me anyway)</span>JRhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03007138367944227896noreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5362712500473028852.post-6514044726267384762009-02-16T21:31:00.011-05:002009-02-16T23:26:59.469-05:00My Tracks on the G1 is oh so sweet<a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="http://maps.google.com/maps/ms?ie=UTF8&hl=en&msa=0&msid=105865378109496417610.000462fbd4e96130d6832&ll=40.664096,-74.593278&spn=0.004183,0.006319&t=h&z=17"><img style="float:right; margin:0 0 10px 10px;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 218px; height: 236px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjU-NrRCKDJnO8hGJfQuudf-yhacTxuyY9KYh_2o514Fi-C_-dMuwzNBkVRYVVZu79nN9hnXky-4FVewwqADoINy7ECflM49CnIPyY7HTUXyVLIFUK67e-UVOG_6HKlZUrElDhDhF_we64/s320/my-tracks-2.png" border="0" alt=""id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5303609506712345218" /></a>If you're in tech, you've always sought the killer app, and while I know it's a plural (after all, I've got several killer apps near and dear), there's one that hit me right between the eyes this weekend - and I'm telling everyone. It's on my G1/Android phone. It's called <a href="http://googleblog.blogspot.com/2009/02/happy-trails-with-my-tracks-for-android.html">"My Tracks"</a>. It was developed at Google - but that has nothing to do with my feelings expressed here. Seriously - it could have been developed by Bernie Madoff (oh - more on that soon) and I still might have to love it.<br /><br />The main reason for my instant adoration of this product is based on my prior experience in custom mapping... Almost exactly <span style="font-weight:bold;">a year ago</span>, I painstakingly clicked off about <a href="http://maps.google.com/maps/ms?ie=UTF8&hl=en&msa=0&msid=105865378109496417610.00044327acf569b35b6c8&t=h&z=12">4 different hikes</a> using the original My Maps feature of Google Maps - trying to re-create the exact path taken through some wooded hikes. At the time I was raving about how cool it was that I could create those maps and share those hikes - but, I realize now why I rarely went back to do more. It was just too much effort (oh - poor me... 5 minutes of clicking a mouse is too much effort... really - I need a dose of pre-tech life). It all comes down to convenience. The number one rule of successful products - convenience.<br /><br />I mentioned the maps to my brother in law, who told me I could borrow his awesome Garmin everything-GPS device to track my next hike, "I haven't taken the time to figure it out yet - so you can try it and then show me", he says... so I tried it. Got some interesting... uh... "results"... Some elevation info...that's about it... and carrying this awkward, 1970's cell phone looking thing... I never figured out how to actually get the data out of it. <br /><br /><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="http://maps.google.com/maps/ms?ie=UTF8&hl=en&msa=0&msid=105865378109496417610.000462fbd4e96130d6832&ll=40.664096,-74.593278&spn=0.004183,0.006319&t=h&z=17"><img style="float:left; margin:0px 10px 10px 10px;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 193px; height: 320px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgCxuPJOU5LHvi8SICicM1vuOIeCTZMKw7l7ii6vLN8yWpAr1dECRs-rQ9xT9hfbR0QCXcB-1rFZgNb70D3UGZIwQ4Up6oXLpILa4TPTfoHYR5DUj5o3lrYEcVB1VmXA9IYjbf_59fIbIg/s320/my-tracks-1.png" border="0" alt=""id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5303609418143850994" /></a>This time - I take my two boys bike riding on a cold day at a nearby park. I take my phone (which I'm carrying anyway, duh), and click <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IBmjJrgUGdE&eurl=http://startupmeme.com/google-brings-my-tracks-to-android-keep-record-of-your-trail/">My Tracks</a> - Menu - Start Recording. Done. Put it in my pocket and never looked at it again until 60 minutes later when we got back to the car. Stop Recording. More - Send to Google - Send to My Maps. Done.<br /><br />I get home and bring up My Maps. OMG. In an area which was otherwise blank, I now see <a href="http://maps.google.com/maps/ms?ie=UTF8&hl=en&msa=0&msid=105865378109496417610.000462fbd4e96130d6832&t=h&z=17">my tracks around the park's different bike trails</a>... I even see one anomaly - a single track across the grass when I was trying to play a trick on my kids to get ahead of them. Busted! Then I click on the push pin in the area of the parking lot, where our ride ended... OMG (again) - Time moving, average speed, average speed when moving, elevation traveled, min elevation, max elevation, etc. Wow. "Craig!" I yell to my Bro'in-law - who's with us with his kids that day, also a gadget freak and the owner of that, uh, great GPS device I mentioned earlier. "<a href="http://maps.google.com/maps/ms?ie=UTF8&hl=en&msa=0&msid=105865378109496417610.000462fbd4e96130d6832&t=h&z=17">Check this out</a>"... "wow". I know he went home and put that ol' GPS device up on ebay.<br /><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="http://maps.google.com/maps/ms?ie=UTF8&hl=en&msa=0&msid=105865378109496417610.000462fbd4e96130d6832&ll=40.664096,-74.593278&spn=0.004183,0.006319&t=h&z=17"><img style="float:right; margin:0 0 10px 10px;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 216px; height: 277px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiqnTJ9rs4Juw2g9fRbqKJFcxmVGJoNqcm8YpsJKzIX_5zzptkC2HPBaIO9g5O5vo3NUt_cSj5Bo1DF8jyjTosZ1pwlC4HXgAbuYR8d99Wo_xasRUffynOLzRM4ok9mx7VC3IQIH8kC1iI/s320/my-tracks-3.png" border="0" alt=""id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5303609576648021506" /></a><br />Anyway - you'll see some of the pics I've included of that first experiment including the detailed riding around in circles I did in the park... which, unintended, is a great show of the detailed capture used in this killer app. I'm suddenly motivated to hike, to bike, to walk anywhere... I'll never leave my G1 home again (anyone wanna buy a first gen iPhone with <a href="http://www.appleiphoneapps.com/2008/10/driving-with-a-squish-jelly-car-demo-video/">Jelly Car</a> pre-installed?)JRhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03007138367944227896noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5362712500473028852.post-26045598625056964572009-02-11T07:00:00.001-05:002009-02-11T12:30:52.760-05:00Plastic Rating System - unhealthy opinions vs. facts<a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgH53MrjCcGEivyxyibpk29V0zhFCniZz4RFzW7gOcvmBMav-_hRfhd9R9AtlLMosbUgvoKmOdpqrnOpEy5v1BKuM_mQm9ew7MrN74tEt0a0LAdFQBvppR1Dj-QIdy9-50nXmHCfYJpPOY/s1600-h/plastic_types.jpg"><img style="float:right; margin:0 0 10px 10px;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 119px; height: 293px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgH53MrjCcGEivyxyibpk29V0zhFCniZz4RFzW7gOcvmBMav-_hRfhd9R9AtlLMosbUgvoKmOdpqrnOpEy5v1BKuM_mQm9ew7MrN74tEt0a0LAdFQBvppR1Dj-QIdy9-50nXmHCfYJpPOY/s400/plastic_types.jpg" border="0" alt=""id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5301311194411410882" /></a><br />There was something bugging me when I got back from the <a href="http://jrsays.com/2009/02/small-business-summit-in-nyc.html">recent conference</a> I attended... but it wasn't until I refilled the re-usable water bottle from my office that I remembered what it was. Those two gentlemen sitting near me during a break were talking loud enough for me to hear and become interested: "Hey Charlie, I'm ok - my bike bottle is a 2 and my other bottle is a 1 - so thanks for the info". Once it was clear that they were discussing the safety of plastic drinking bottles, I had to ask them to inform me. They told me that the codes on the bottom of every plastic bottle indicate different plastics which correlate to the safety of the bottle.. "1's are the safest and 7's are the most dangerous, generally", they said. "Wow - thanks guys - I'll take a look when I get home!". <br /><br />So a few days later, with my new "green" water bottle in hand, I remember this discussion and flipped over my bottle - huh? "SEVEN!?", I said out loud. Time for some research, since it's hard to believe I would be given a water bottle which is good for the environment but bad for me. Well - it turns out I wish I had gotten the contact info for those two gentlemen - no, not to yell at them - but to tell them the facts. <a href="http://www.plasticsindustry.org/AboutPlastics/content.cfm?ItemNumber=823&navItemNumber=1125">The codes</a> are there as information for recycling - to identify the resins which make up the bottle. They're not intended to indicate safety. <br /><br />The codes do provide, in a few cases, enough information to know you should avoid a certain bottle - for example, Code 3 is PVC (PolyVinyl Chloride) and Code 6 is PS (Polystyrene) - those seem to be universally accepted as the "avoid at all costs for food and drinking" type. Code 7, it turns out, is the "Other" type, which is a catch all to mean "either really dangerous (Polycarbonate) or really safe or something in between, depending on what it's made of". Ah, really helpful. And while Code 1 (PET/PETE - Polyethylene Terephthalate) is the most common for recyclable drink bottles in the US, just don't re-use it, heat it or scratch it. It seems the other codes - 2, 4 and 5 - just haven't had any conclusive research as of yet. Does that make them safer than those we know can harm you? <br /><br />Regarding the relative "safety" of one type of platic versus another - particularly when using the recycling codes as virtually your only consistent guide - the <a href="http://www.lft-group.com/journal/2008/12/2/be-plastic-aware-dangers.html">LfT-Group (Live for Tomorrow)</a> sum it up best: <blockquote>"You may wish to seriously consider your – and especially your children's – use of plastics numbered 1, 3, 6 and 7 (polycarbonate), all of which have been shown to leach dangerous chemicals. This does not necessarily mean the others are completely safe, just that they have been studied less to date. So if you have to use plastic, it is safest to stick to numbers 2, 4, 5 and 7 (other than polycarbonate) whenever possible."</blockquote><br />In my quick search for information (not the same as "research"), I found a few more links worth sharing with those of you who cared enough to read to here:<br /><br /><a href="http://www.lifewithoutplastic.com/factsonplastic.htm">Health facts by each recycle rating</a><br /><a href="http://www.savemobile.org">Lots of health information by each recycle rating </a><br /><a href="http://www.savemobile.org/blog/plastic_types_jan07.pdf">Complete information by each recycle rating (pdf)</a><br /><a href="http://www.ebottles.com/resins.asp">Plastic bottle quick FAQ by type</a><br /><a href="http://www.ebottles.com/articles/bottlesafety.asp">Plastic bottle safety FAQ</a><br /><a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Plastic_bottles">General information on plastic rating system (wikipedia)</a><br /><a href="http://www.care2.com/greenliving/kitchen-plastic-easy-greening.html">Good article on plastic containers</a><br /><a href="http://www.lft-group.com/journal/2008/12/2/be-plastic-aware-dangers.html">Be plastic-aware - dangers of each type</a> <br /><a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/International_Universal_Recycling_Codes">International Universal Recycling Codes</a><br />Official <a href="http://www.epd.gov.hk/epd/english/environmentinhk/waste/guide_ref/guide_plascod3.html">Recycle coding system</a> from Hong Kong Environmental Protection Dept.<br /><br />(NOTE: The folowing are internet sites of the American Chemistry Council® (ACC), which represents the leading companies engaged in the business of chemistry, including significant business groups such as the Plastics Division and the Chlorine Chemistry Division.) <br />American Chemistry Council's (ACC) <a href="http://www.factsonplastics.com">Facts on Plastics</a> site.<br />ACC <a href="http://www.plasticsmythbuster.org">Rumors and Myths about Plastics</a><br /><a href="http://www.americanchemistry.com/s_plastics/sec_content.asp?CID=1593&DID=7094">ACC 2006 United States National Post-Consumer Plastics Bottle Recycling Report</a> <br /><a href="http://www.americanchemistry.com/s_plastics/bin.asp?CID=1102&DID=4645&DOC=FILE.PDF">ACC Official Resin Codes Chart (PDF)</a>JRhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03007138367944227896noreply@blogger.com5tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5362712500473028852.post-39976263464208199302009-02-09T13:45:00.003-05:002009-02-09T13:58:45.847-05:00Embed a form in your blog post to collect data fastIn a <a href="http://jrsays.com/2009/02/small-business-web-tip-collect-data.html">recent post</a> regarding using forms to collect data easily, a couple of people thought I should have used <a href="http://jrsays.com/2009/02/small-business-web-tip-collect-data.html">my own advice</a> for one of the collection methods - that is, to embed the actual form in a web page - in my blog post in this case. Great idea...<br /><br />So - below is an embedded version of my <a href="http://spreadsheets.google.com/viewform?key=pO3Ze62OAU2Hfi0PpbDIEHA&hl=en">Blogging Survey</a>. Took me literally 30 seconds to get the embed code from the "Form" menu of the spreadsheet. This is just a sample survey, but feel free to answer this survey and I'll post results soon if I get enough respondents.<br /><br /><iframe src="http://spreadsheets.google.com/embeddedform?key=pO3Ze62OAU2Hfi0PpbDIEHA" width="310" height="1089" frameborder="0" marginheight="0" marginwidth="0">Loading...</iframe>JRhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03007138367944227896noreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5362712500473028852.post-5130735823766564292009-02-09T13:14:00.005-05:002009-02-09T13:38:12.745-05:00The value of Collaboration learned from political campaignsI would never have expected to see anything related to the political process as a model for business collaboration - but I guess this is part of "change". Just a couple of (old-ish by now) links to anecdotal evidence of how powerful web-based collaboration can be. In these examples, it was Google Docs (spreadsheets) used as a tool in the 2008 US presidential campaign process...<br /><br />From <a href="http://www.huffingtonpost.com/eric-kuhn/the-2008-google-docs-camp_b_162958.html">Huffington Post</a>:<br /><span style="font-style:italic;">"While the presidential contenders had enlisted technologies such as Facebook, YouTube, Twitter and LinkedIn, which all received a great deal of attention, it was Google Docs which had the most amount of influence, in spite of receiving the least amount of attention.<br />... The Obama campaign was aware that this had become a major player in the grassroots space, sparking a revolution in the way people self-organize and conduct grassroots efforts and political campaigns. Since a campaign is constantly on a quest for money and voters, Obama's grassroots organization valued agility over hierarchy; online collaboration became a necessity."</span><br /><br />From <a href="http://www.dailykos.com/storyonly/2008/6/30/215919/625/673/544433">DailyKos</a>:<br /><span style="font-style:italic;">"All of us have access to the data, and Google has quick and easy ways to share that data (while retaining the privacy of our volunteers) with the Oakland Campaign headquarters.<br />... With the advent of Google Docs, what was once a fact of life in community organizing, the lost, corrupted and out-of-date sign-in sheet, has become a much more powerful tool."</span>JRhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03007138367944227896noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5362712500473028852.post-26158293312470600002009-02-04T19:14:00.017-05:002009-02-05T21:55:31.346-05:00Small Business Web Tip: Collect data quickly using a web formAt the <a href="http://www.smallbiztechsummit.com/">Small Business Technology Summit</a> this week, I was asked "what's the one action these small businesses can do today to have an impact on their business" (I put that in quotes - but I'm sure I've tweaked the question a bit to match my answer ;).<br />I answered, "Create a form - a survey - for free, which you can email to your customers to immediately find out what they think of your product or service". A bunch of people asked me for more information - so I figured it would be useful to post a quick "Web Tip" here... If you don't feel like reading, there are also <a href="http://www.youtube.com/results?search_type=&search_query=google+docs+forms&aq=f">plenty of public videos on this topic</a> done by others.<br /><br />If you want to first get a sense of what one of these Forms would look like, you can answer my <a href="http://spreadsheets.google.com/viewform?key=pO3Ze62OAU2Hfi0PpbDIEHA">example survey about blogging</a>. If you do, try to really answer it, and maybe we'll get some useful results I can share. <a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEihODOOdFx9OFMth66P3ln1WVygphupLXbK-CU2hyphenhyphenx6cxfs6x1_hlv_5H7b6BpQLB3px4XzsFgWhoxKtS9du0CHEugnWzsJGvhWiUxab7cw3yKleuH4IG0VuqO24AfkOEQzQD8pZ7iQnaQ/s1600-h/screen-new-form.png"><img style="float:right; margin:0 0 10px 10px;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 154px; height: 198px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEihODOOdFx9OFMth66P3ln1WVygphupLXbK-CU2hyphenhyphenx6cxfs6x1_hlv_5H7b6BpQLB3px4XzsFgWhoxKtS9du0CHEugnWzsJGvhWiUxab7cw3yKleuH4IG0VuqO24AfkOEQzQD8pZ7iQnaQ/s400/screen-new-form.png" border="0" alt=""id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5299164792572033746" /></a><br />The below might seem like a bunch of steps, but this can literally take 10 minutes - it's the thinking about which questions to ask and what multiple choice questions to offer, which is the hard and important part.<br /><br /><span style="font-weight:bold;">How to collect data for free using Google Docs Forms:</span><br /><br /><span style="font-weight:bold;">Step 1:</span> <br />Go to Google Docs - http://docs.google.com<br />Sign-in or get an account. You need a google account, but that doesn't mean a Gmail account necessarily (see my <a href="http://youtube.com/watch?v=gJpkRbNto7E">old video</a> on that topic).<br /><br />You should see your list of Docs - if you've used the service before - or an empty list (which, actually then, isn't a list at all if there's nothing in it... it's just a frame)<br /><br /><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgY5J2ijxm2856rmTHOaJkHfQpZdpaxLQlelPkKM3zhnmwNGHlG7EO8HDIh_XMJJhmsRW_-LwSS_DnIClzyRehgKOvsoNwT-D7EhHE6NMYkJIHT3_cguupfuJRLs7fXNaKGNyZsusW2-9w/s1600-h/screen-new-form-q1.png"><img style="float:right; margin:0 0 10px 10px;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 250px; height: 248px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgY5J2ijxm2856rmTHOaJkHfQpZdpaxLQlelPkKM3zhnmwNGHlG7EO8HDIh_XMJJhmsRW_-LwSS_DnIClzyRehgKOvsoNwT-D7EhHE6NMYkJIHT3_cguupfuJRLs7fXNaKGNyZsusW2-9w/s400/screen-new-form-q1.png" border="0" alt=""id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5299166452410266450" /></a><br /><span style="font-weight:bold;">Step 2:</span><br />Click the "New" dropdown button on the upper left - and choose "Form".<br /><br />You'll be taken to a new window which is the "Form Editor". It starts you off with an automatic first question called "Name" - just to remind you that you may want to ask (optionally) for the respondants name - and leaves you in edit mode on question #2.<br />When editing the form - you edit one question at a time (click the pencil button on the right) and click "done" as you finish setting up each question. <br /><br />At this point you can go back and edit the first question (example - add some help text to tell people that "Name is optional, but helps me know who you are").<br /><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjmXBUU2kWBDxAB871Tj995-oBJxbR9LazKoQG4g7WjdJLu9jkMxfz2Pgi6B9OKc5pfqylbjx_SdXtTzJhaeoluRb0etEhVPiN29IuuaHJZhkaO1hcah46tm3j_CmCAyayPaNCStFGk6VE/s1600-h/screen-new-form-q2.png"><img style="float:right; margin:0 0 10px 10px;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 184px; height: 140px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjmXBUU2kWBDxAB871Tj995-oBJxbR9LazKoQG4g7WjdJLu9jkMxfz2Pgi6B9OKc5pfqylbjx_SdXtTzJhaeoluRb0etEhVPiN29IuuaHJZhkaO1hcah46tm3j_CmCAyayPaNCStFGk6VE/s400/screen-new-form-q2.png" border="0" alt=""id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5299166965660292850" /></a><br />The default field type is "Text" - but you *should* use multiple choice or scale questions where possible - as those give great quantitative summaries - and if you want people to type a more descriptive answer, change the question type to "paragraph text".<br /><br /><span style="font-weight:bold;">Step 3:</span><br />Finish entering all your questions and click the "Save" button at the top. Keep the form rather short if possible - nobody likes to answer a long survey - and you won't want your second survey to be ignored if you decide to do another one in a few weeks/months.<br /><br /><span style="font-weight:bold;">Step 4:</span><br />Make your own confirmation message. After someone responds to your form, they get a generic "Thanks!" message - but you can edit that to create your own message. <a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhmUZogye4_aHa8qUl0pTID1vOF9KmENuDWEViJ8TK1afboFgGFYc63XzZNDrU02boDByqd8YGdqQ0W4jaxFz8BOKzzU_UWoheVdutjeoIeSjvXxxkrWy5hVhdAWNLqWDh5kvgYEq-kTwI/s1600-h/screen-new-form-q3.png"><img style="float:right; margin:0 0 10px 10px;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 400px; height: 80px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhmUZogye4_aHa8qUl0pTID1vOF9KmENuDWEViJ8TK1afboFgGFYc63XzZNDrU02boDByqd8YGdqQ0W4jaxFz8BOKzzU_UWoheVdutjeoIeSjvXxxkrWy5hVhdAWNLqWDh5kvgYEq-kTwI/s400/screen-new-form-q3.png" border="0" alt=""id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5299167932797407890" /></a>You can include valid URLs to have a link on that page. At the top of the form editor, there is a "More Actions" button. Click that and select the option "Edit Confirmation".<br /><br /><span style="font-weight:bold;">Step 5:</span><br />Send the form! You have a few ways to get the form into the hands of your potential respondents:<br />1 - Send the form using email... If you select the "email this form" option, you can enter the email addresses of respondents and they will get the form EMBEDDED in their email message if they use Gmail or Yahoo mail (those are the only popular mail systems which allow that) - or - they will get a link to a separate web page which contains your form.<br />2 - Embed the form on your blog or website. The other option in the "more actions" button is "embed" - that gives you the HTML code you can embed in your blog post, blog template or website so people can answer the form directly from there.<br />3 - Get the URL of the form and IM/mail it directly to your potential respondents. The URL can be copied from the bottom of the form editor screen, where it says "You can view the published form here:". <br /><br /><span style="font-weight:bold;">Step 6: </span><br />Go see your form. Click on that link at the bottom of the Form Editor to make sure your form looks as you intended. That's how others will see it. [NOTE: You can test the form, but there is currently an issue where the form response count will not be reset, even if you remove your test response]<br /><br /><span style="font-weight:bold;">Step 7:</span><br />See your responses! The form you created actually created a spreadsheet in the background. After saving your form - close that form editor window and go back to your Google Docs list. Find your form/spreadsheet on the docs list and click it to open it. You'll see a spreadsheet with the questions you asked as the column headers (with one additional column as the first, which is the timestamp of each reply). If you already sent the form out, the spreadsheet may already contain responses which have been received. If you hang out there for a while, you may even see responses appear in real time (that's fun).<br /><span style="font-weight:bold;"><br /><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgagCjSTJXvc-a9UKAR4kQQKp7EdNp2QfG7D5_mowAC2k75ansu6P0JhVcVQpHTV0saUikwpjk1WY5BmmfFxrzJ5YyNg4MNYWJAqHk7tlyAM1Tvw0J_eIwIHD8_ZIm1WDnCA6sKsy5QUmE/s1600-h/screen-new-form-q4.png"><img style="float:right; margin:0 0 10px 10px;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 324px; height: 173px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgagCjSTJXvc-a9UKAR4kQQKp7EdNp2QfG7D5_mowAC2k75ansu6P0JhVcVQpHTV0saUikwpjk1WY5BmmfFxrzJ5YyNg4MNYWJAqHk7tlyAM1Tvw0J_eIwIHD8_ZIm1WDnCA6sKsy5QUmE/s400/screen-new-form-q4.png" border="0" alt=""id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5299414661541847266" /></a><br />Step 8:</span><br />See your reponse summary. From the spreadsheet, click on the "Form" menu at the top and click on "Show Summary". That takes you to a page which summarizes, in chart format where feasible, the responses to each question. <br /><br /><span style="font-weight:bold;">Step 9:</span><br />Set up notifications so that you know when people respond to your form.<br />Click the "Share" button (on the upper right of the spreadsheet window) and select "Set notification rules". In that dialog, select the options "[when] A user submits a form", and choose either "Email - dialy digest" or "Email - right away", depending on how many responses you expect to get and how much you want to spam yourself.<br /><br /><span style="font-weight:bold;">Some Tips: </span><br /><br />> *Do not* try to re-arrange the questions on the spreadsheet itself. There are issues where the form and the spreadsheet get out of sync if you do that. Re-arranging should be done from the form editor only - where questions can be dragged and dropped into the order you want them.<br /><br />> There is not yet a way to restrict people to filling out the form only once.<br /><br />> *Do not* "PUBLISH" the resulting spreadsheet or set it to "Anyone can view" unless that's really what you need. Those settings are NOT necessary to make the form broadly available, and it might let people see the results of the survey which you may not have intended.<br /><br />> If you are HTML-ready, you can take the Form page and tweak the HTML to give it style or additional logic - just *never* change the POST URL or the NAME ATTRIBUTES on the HTML form object in that page. You'll also need your own place to host the updated HTML page. This isn't something you'll be able to get much support on from the Google Docs help center - so only do this if you are feeling lucky ;)<br /><br />Have fun!JRhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03007138367944227896noreply@blogger.com2