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Survey Point
The page is a central point for graduate students at Baruch who need to gather survey data for projects (academic, club or other). Please help out your fellow students by answering some of their questionaires.
Send a link and brief description of your survey to one of the Graduate Baruchian editors so that it will show on this page and reach a wider audience. Be sure to include an expiration date.
MKT 9716 Consumer Behavior: Travel & Cruise Research. Expires May 1, 2012. More Info Piotr Stachera
Marketing Research: Assess New Yorker's recycling habits. Expires ?. More Info Delia Heius.
Business Competition: Digital Studying Project — Textbook Preference & Spending and Social Networking & Education. Expires January 31st, 2012. More info: June Gong.
New Project for Date scheduling. Mini-dates. Expires January 15th, 2012. More info: Herry Pierre-Louis
MKT 9702 Marketing Research Team Gap Expires December 6th, 2011
MKT 9702 Marketing Research Red Bull Survey Expires November 31, 2011
CIS 9775 Entertainment and Media Questionaire on the MBA experience in NYC. Expires November 31, 2011


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Definition of chemical reaction rate and factors that influence it.
Reviews the definition of chemical reaction rate and the factors that influence it.
Come up with questions about a topic and learn new vocabulary words to determine answers using an Ask, Answer, Learn table.
Discover how a scientist is trying to develop a catalyst to turn methane into methanol, a promising alternative to gasoline.
Provides information and videos on the various factors affecting reacting rates.

subset: commoncrawl


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Did you know that April is National Poetry Month? It's mainly an American thing, but I still love the idea of having a whole month dedicated to celebrating poetry.
I recently shared some works from a poet I follow on Instagram and had a great response, so thought I would share some of the 'classics' that I loved and studied at school and uni (keep in mind, I was still a bit 'teenage angsty' at that point!). I had, and still have, a huge affinity for female poets and these remain etched in my mind today. Enjoy!
I shut my eyes and all the world drops dead;
I lift my lids and all is born again.
(I think I made you up inside my head.)
The stars go waltzing out in blue and red,
And arbitrary blackness gallops in:
I shut my eyes and all the world drops dead.
I dreamed that you bewitched me into bed
And sung me moon-struck, kissed me quite insane.
(I think I made you up inside my head.)
God topples from the sky, hell's fires fade:
Exit seraphim and Satan's men:
I shut my eyes and all the world drops dead.
I fancied you'd return the way you said,
But I grow old and I forget your name.
(I think I made you up inside my head.)
I should have loved a thunderbird instead;
At least when spring comes they roar back again.
I shut my eyes and all the world drops dead.
(I think I made you up inside my head.)
Because I Could not Stop for Death – Emily Dickinson
Because I could not stop for Death–
He kindly stopped for me–
The Carriage held but just Ourselves–
And Immortality.
We slowly drove–He knew no haste
And I had put away
My labor and my leisure too,
For His Civility–
We passed the School, where Children strove
At Recess–in the Ring–
We passed the Fields of Gazing Grain–
We passed the Setting Sun–
Or rather–He passed us–
The Dews drew quivering and chill–
For only Gossamer, my Gown–
My Tippet–only Tulle–
We paused before a House that seemed
A Swelling of the Ground–
The Roof was scarcely visible–
The Cornice–in the Ground–
Since then–'tis Centuries–and yet
Feels shorter than the Day
I first surmised the Horses' Heads
Were toward Eternity–
Heart! We Will Forget Him! – Emily Dickinson
Heart! We will forget him!
You and I — tonight!
You may forget the warmth he gave –
I will forget the light!
When you have done, pray tell me
That I may straight begin!
Haste! lest while you're lagging
I remember him!
Strange Fruit – Seamus Heaney
Here is the girl's head like an exhumed gourd.
Oval-faced, prune-skinned, prune-stones for teeth.
They unswaddled the wet fern of her hair
And made an exhibition of its coil,
Let the air at her leathery beauty.
Pash of tallow, perishable treasure:
Her broken nose is dark as a turf clod,
Her eyeholes blank as pools in the old workings.
Diodorus Siculus confessed
His gradual ease with the likes of this:
Murdered, forgotten, nameless, terrible
Beheaded girl, outstaring axe
And beatification, outstaring
What had begun to feel like reverence.
A Birthday – Christina Rossetti
My heart is like a singing bird
Whose nest is in a water'd shoot;
My heart is like an apple-tree
Whose boughs are bent with thickset fruit;
My heart is like a rainbow shell
That paddles in a halcyon sea;
My heart is gladder than all these
Because my love is come to me.
Raise me a dais of silk and down;
Hang it with vair and purple dyes;
Carve it in doves and pomegranates,
And peacocks with a hundred eyes;
Work it in gold and silver grapes,
In leaves and silver fleurs-de-lys;
Because the birthday of my life
Is come, my love is come to me.
There are two more poems that I love love love, but they are quite long, so I have linked them instead – Daddy and Lady Lazarus, both by Sylvia Plath.
And to leave you on a less depressing note, my favourite line from any poem, ever:
It's the little things: Autumn lovin'
Happy Easter guys! I don't know about you, but I love the feeling you get at the start of a long weekend. That relaxing feeling of four days off stretched out before you, knowing you don't have to rush back to work on Monday morning. Knowing you have time, and space, and unknown opportunities just waiting to be discovered. It's truly transformational! We've had a fantastic start to the weekend catching up with friends and family, and it's only going to get better. Autumn has definitely arrived and the cool air is invigorating and revitalising. It's my favourite time of the year, for sure. In fact, last week I whipped out my scarf collection, broke out the cardigans and really embraced the change in weather.
So whether you're gearing up for a big night of celebrations tonight, taking the time to do nothing for once, or recovering from last night's shenanigans, enjoy the best of what the internet has to offer.
The little things I've loved lately:
Time with friends ~ Delicious and healthy meals ~ Feeling strong and confident ~ Cool weather and cuddly animals ~ Long weekends ~ Wandering down William St during lunch breaks ~ Popcorn ~ Cardigans ~ Pavlova ~ Matte lipstick ~ Slippers and scarves ~ The Mindy Project ~ Snapchat ~ Commitment ~ Working hard
The links I've loved:
- Oversharing undertaker goes viral
- Welcome to write club (writer's write)
- People aren't magic. This!!!
- Got tattoos? Ever been asked what you'll look like when you're old?
- This re-working of 'I Touch Myself' for breast cancer awareness is just stunning
- I loved seeing Pearl's everyday style and her 5 reasons to join a fashion challenge
Skull of the week:
I'd love to hear what you are grateful for lately – share with me in the comments, on Facebook or Twitter.
Photo 1 by Pavel Voinov
18 ways to make the world a better place
I've always believed that being a good person isn't about how much money or power you have. It doesn't take a grand gesture or a million dollar idea to improve the world; improvements are instead forged through the little things we do each and every day. Your actions will always impact someone else, creating a flow on effect that shapes the world around you. So be accountable and be kind – because it truly is the little things that make the world a better place.
Don't know where to start? Here are 18 quick, easy and inexpensive ways to be the change you want to see:
1. Smile more
To quote Newton Faulkner, "people should smile more". You don't have to wander around looking like a dim-witted idiot with a cheesy grin plastered on your face. But when you interact with someone, do it with a smile. Make it genuine and they will notice
2. Think about where you spend your money
Buy your lunch from a quiet little cafe instead of the bustling chain restaurant, pick up a loaf of bread from your local baker rather than a large supermarket, buy gifts from Etsy not department stores and browse local markets and swap meets for clothes. I guarantee the small business owner, artist, local producer or family company will appreciate your money more.
3. Acknowledge courtesy
Whenever someone lets you pull out into traffic or stops to let you cross the road, give them a wave (and a smile) to let them know it's appreciated – they'll be less likely to begrudge you and more likely to do it again for someone else.
4. Tidy up after yourself
Think of the person who will have to clean up after you (at a cafe, at the movies, at work, wherever) and do what you can to make their job easier. This can be as simple as gathering all your wrappers and putting them in one place, stacking your empty plates, refraining from putting napkins in a glass that still had liquid in it, or taking your dishes to the kitchen (rather than leaving them on your desk).
5. Put your phone down
In a meeting, at lunch with a friend or watching a performance? Put your phone on silent and preferably keep it in your handbag or somewhere else out of the way. Very few people are so important that they can't go without checking their phones for an hour.
6. Be generous with life's little essentials
Be the person who always has a spare tissue, band-aid or bobby pin ready to hand out to those in need. Giving someone these small things (hair ties, painkillers, tampons, chewing gum, safety pins) can avert a disastrous occurrence.
7. Praise freely
Don't withhold compliments. Actively seek opportunities to thank bus drivers, barristers, shop assistants, receptionists and assistants. When someone does a good job, tell them. Tell your co-workers, friends and family why you appreciate them. Tell a stranger if you admire something about them. It's doesn't have to be a big deal, just be genuine about it.
8. Write it down
A complement can might someone's day but a written thank you or note of admiration could make their week. Revive the lost art of handwriting and jot a 'thinking of you' note to a friend, pen a quick love letter, send a card with a sweet message, or leave a post-it note with a compliment. No idea where to start? Alexandra Franzen's got you covered.
9. Put things back where you found them
At the shops, in your workplace, at your best friend's house –it'll make someone else's life that little bit easier when they don't have to go looking for what they need.
10. Make eye contact
With every conversation, every transaction and every interaction.
11. Acknowledge emails
Shoot off a quick response – stay away from "OK" and instead let someone know you have received their email, what action you intend to take, and when. They won't have to waste time calling you to double-check and you'll be able to get on with your other tasks much faster.
12. Pick your shit up
There is no excuse for littering, ever.
13. Be a gentleman
This goes for you too, ladies. Hold a door for someone who has their hands full, let elderly people on the bus first and hold the elevator door.
14. Wear deodorant
Seriously – you shouldn't be able to smell someone unless you're being intimate with them.
15. Use a grown up email address
Z instead of s, extra 'e's, random numbers, things that sounds dirty but aren't, and words that scream teeny-bopper are not your friend. Follow the standard first.last, minimise underscores, dashes, and any other confusing symbols and you'll look much classier when giving your address out. Bonus: there'll be less chance of a typo or mistake stopping you from receiving important emails.
16. Volunteer
Give freely whatever you can – be it time, money, goods, ideas, knowledge or inspiration.
17. Be kind to yourself
Change starts at home, so take a load off and treat yourself right. Invest in yourself, seek happiness, and watch the flow on effect it has in the rest of your life.
18. Always strive to be a better person
Don't be so quick to judge, don't let your short fuse get the best of you, give people time, always be kind. You won't always know the circumstances of other people, or why they're doing that thing that's pissing you off. Remember, most people aren't actively trying to annoy you. Everyone is just trying to do their best.
Not everyone thinks the way you think, knows the things you know, believes the things you believe nor acts the way you would act. Remember this and you will go a long way in getting along with people.
- Arthur Forman
It's the little things: TGIF
I think everything I want to say about this week can be conveyed with this: TGIF. I'll be honest, it hasn't been a great week. I've struggled a bit. (well, a lot). But the weekend is here, I'm going to get a good night's sleep and spend some time in nature, and just…be.
So lets kick our feet up, grab a glass of wine and enjoy this week's best of the webs.
The little things I've loved lately:
Friends who make sure vegetarian options are available for me ~ Sending this week's paper to print super early ~ The new-found confidence from being able to complete the 12wbt exercise program ~ Lunch with my sister ~ Cool weather and couch blankets ~ Avocados ~ Knowing I have people on my side ~ Bright lipsticks ~ Hot showers ~ Delicious coconut scented moisturiser ~ New episodes of The Mindy Project ~
The links I've loved:
- A manifesto for the quiet ones
- How to get out of bed
- I love this collection of works by really cool tattoo artists
- A great quickfire interview with Dita Von Teese
- This is so funny, but also has a great message: Stupid answers to common writing questions
Best book you can write.
Best version of yourself you can be.
Demonstrate these things.
Go and write.
- 4 tips to deal with the fact that the internet is always changing
- A friend of mine wrote about a really important topic, and it's very timely for me
- 10 female celebrities who have amazing views on body image
Skull of the week:
As always, I'd love to hear what you are grateful for lately – share with me in the comments, on Facebook or Twitter.
Lesson learned: focus on what you can do
Last week, I signed up to the Michelle Bridges 12 Week Body Transformation program. As I was browsing the forum and reading about the commitments people had made to themselves, I came across something that really struck a cord – the commitment to focus on what you can do, not what you can't do.
Three years ago, I injured my knee in a car crash. Ever since then, far too much of my life has been spent worrying about what I can't do. I can't run, I can't walk up hills, I can't squat, I can't lunge, I can't kneel, I can't jump, I can't sit cross legged, I can't walk that far, I can't walk that fast, I can't keep up, I can't do what everyone else is doing – I can't, I can't, I can't.
And while most of those things are still true I've finally realised that the "I can'ts" are not what I should be focusing on, because there are still so many things I can do. There are things I can work towards doing, things I can do to get stronger. And perhaps the most important thing I can do – change my mindset.
I can acknowledge a bad day is just a bad day, without spiraling into "what ifs" and "I'll nevers". I can choose not to focus on pain and focus on the things that make me happy.
It's not easy. Just days after I had this realisation, I found myself sitting on the couch with an ice pack on my knee, thinking "I'll never be able to get to a healthy weight if I can't even exercise properly." Well, the 12 week program has already proved that's not true, and given me a huge sense of achievement. I may be following the lowest and gentlest exercise program – but you know what, I can do it. And that's a great feeling.
It's an attitude I hope to carry into the rest of my life. I don't want to focus on the things I can't change – like other people's opinions or reactions, like legalities and lawyers and skewed systems, like bosses or friends who will never change. From now on, it's all about focussing on what I can do, what I can work on, what I can strive to improve.
Are you with me? Or is this a technique you already use in your life? Let me know in the comments, on Facebook or Twitter.
Interested in joining the 12wbt program? You can sign up here.
This is not a sponsored post but it does contain referral links.
Poetry to fall in love with
Today I wanted to share with you some of the works of Christopher Poindexter – a poet I found thanks to a quote card that came with an awesome handmade skull I received for Christmas.
I started following him on Instagram and soon feel in love with his work – its super accessible, emotive and beautiful.
I read a lot of poetry when I was younger – from online teenage angst poetry forums to classics such as Sylvia Plath, John Keats, Emily Dickinson, Christina Rossetti and William Blake – mostly while I was at uni. But it's been a while since I've read any modern poetry, and that's why I'm so glad to have discovered Mr Poindexter and his bite sized poetry, which appears conveniently in my Instagram feed but stays in my mind for days.
I hope you fall in love, too.
(All of these are available on hemp paper here for US$10 each)
It's the little things: wine time
I don't even know where to start on this fortnight guys…it's definitely been full of ups and downs. It feels like a world away now, but I spent a fantastic weekend visiting my sister who has moved down south, eating delicious cheese and fresh bread, browsing the fresh produce markets, sampling delicious wines, and of course lots of chatting, laughter and good times. I also had my first bath with a Lush bath bomb and it was bliss! (The bath in our rental is teeny tiny, so it was an absolute luxury!) Early in the week my husband and I celebrated our second wedding anniversary by having a bedroom picnic (our new favourite tradition!), drinking a bottle of Veuve Clicquot and watching the Veronica Mars Movie. It was perfect. I had a delicious coffee date with two great friends, got excited about checking out some houses for sale, got a great hair cut and colour, had a delicious pizza double date and watched some great TV.
And then…our cat got an eye infection, our stove top hot plate exploded, I worked until 9pm on print day, I missed my bus three times in a row in one day, I had a set back with my knee injury, I've been stressed, worried, frustrated, angry and upset with the legal case for my knee injury, I've been missing my family and I've been feeling guilty for not carving the time to follow my passions…
You've got to take the good with the bad though, right? As always, I'm thankful to be surrounded by supportive people – in fact, one of them inspired me to make a potentially life-changing promise to myself, which I'll share with you next week.
The little things I've loved lately:
Warm cups of Milo ~ Chocolate hot cross buns ~The new Jezabels album, The Brink ~ NYX makeup (now available in Australia at Target!) ~ Christopher Poindexter poetry ~ Fresh flowers ~ The smell of wet grass ~ Vanilla cupcakes ~ Bright lipstick ~ All the glitter ~ Staying in ~ Tiny rings ~ Re-reading books (it's so comforting) ~ Going out ~ Playing ball with my puppy ~ Hot showers ~ Cool autumn breezes ~ Slippers
The links I've loved:
- 17 cooking projects ain't nobody got time for (although if anyone wants to make me one of these cakes, I wouldn't complain)
- Great advice on how to win friends and influence buyers – on Instagram
- Dress to impress yourself
- 12 lessons learned from Sex and the City
- Everything I Need to Know, I learned From Michelle Tanner
- We should all aspire to be 'Daymakers'
- This post makes my heart sing (and really makes me wish I could run!)
Skull of the week:
As always, I'd love to hear what you are grateful for lately – share with me in the comments, on Facebook or Twitter.
Photos 1 & 2 by Angela Mee


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You are here: FatWallet Blog > View Blog Entry
Join us for FatWallet's Big Game Twitter Party - 1/30!
January 28, 2014 | Posted By: Ann McKenna | Categorized in: FatWallet
Did you know that the Super Bowl drives big TV sales? Nearly 32% of people we surveyed said they plan on buying a TV for the Big Game (see full infographic). We suppose new HDTVs pair well with football jerseys and chili cheese dips!
Since the big game is this Sunday, we thought it would be fun to discuss this topic further. Think about the TV in your home. Is it fairly new or gathering dust in your man cave? If you have time this week, bring your thoughts to FatWallet's Big Game Twitter Party. We'd love to see you there. Plus, we'll be dishing out some cool prizes at the end.
Come join us on Thursday, January 30th at 3:00-3:30 pm CST with the #FWchat hashtag on Twitter.
Hosts: @FatWallet
Prizes: (4) $25 Gift Cards (Best Buy)
Join the Party: Follow along on Twitter, or follow along with tchat.
RSVP: Submit your Twitter handle below in order to RSVP and be entered to win a gift card. For example, @fatwallet would go in the link title and twitter.com/fatwallet would go in the URL. Email addresses are never shown.
Eligibility: RSVP on the link above, and be actively participating during the Twitter party with the hash tag #FWChat on January 30th, 2014 from 3 - 3:30pm CST. Winners will be chosen from the RSVP list using Random.org. Winners will be notified with an @ mention, and must respond via DM within 60 minutes of being notified. If another winner must be chosen after the party is over, winner will be randomly selected from the RSVP list using random.org. There is a limit of one prize per household during the party.
NO PURCHASE NECESSARY. VOID WHERE TAXED, PROHIBITED OR RESTRICTED BY LAW. Subject to official rules and open to United States residents. See you at the party! Let us know if you have any questions.
Share this:
January 28, 2014 | Posted By: lonelyaccountant
sounds fun..
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text:
Okay, question time: Imagine you're a major national newspaper whose crosstown archrival has somehow obtained two million pages of explosive documents that outed your country's biggest political scandal of the decade. They've had a team of professional journalists on the job for a month, slamming out a string of blockbuster stories as they find them in their huge stack of secrets.
How do you catch up?
If you're the Guardian of London, you wait for the associated public-records dump, shovel it all on your Web site next to a simple feedback interface and enlist more than 20,000 volunteers to help you find the needles in the haystack.
Your cost for the operation? One full week from a software developer, a few days' help from others in his department, and £50 to rent temporary servers.
Journalism has been crowdsourced before, but it's the scale of the Guardian's project — 170,000 documents reviewed in the first 80 hours, thanks to a visitor participation rate of 56 percent — that's breathtaking. We wanted the details, so I rang up the developer, Simon Willison, for his tips about deadline-driven software, the future of public records requests, and how a well-placed mugshot can make a blacked-out PDF feel like a detective story.
He offered four big lessons:
— Your workers are unpaid, so make it fun. Willison started coding one week before the Thursday launch date, teamed with a designer on Tuesday, a system administrator on Wednesday and leaned on everyone in his 15-person department for ad-hoc help on Thursday. But the bulk of the labor would come from Guardian readers.
How to lure them?
By making it feel like a game, said Willison, 28. The Guardian's four-panel interface — "interesting," "not interesting," "interesting but known," and "investigate this!" made categorization easy. And the progress bar on the project's front page, immediately giving the community a goal to share.
But a video game needs more than an interface and a score. It needs a narrative — and this project offered that, too.
That was what Willison discovered when, on a whim, he added the Guardian's mugshots of each MP to their pages in the database. Participation shot up, he said.
"There's that wonderfully personal element, because everybody in the U.K. has an MP," Willison said. "You've got this big smiling face looking at you while you're digging through their expenses."
On Monday, to add a competitive edge, Willison posted lists of the top-performing volunteers. By that point, the project had drawn 36,000 unique visitors and 20,440 participants.
"Any time that you're trying to get people to give you stuff, to do stuff for you, the most important thing is that people know that what they're doing is having an effect," Willison said. "It's kind of a fundamental tenet of social software. … If you're not giving people the 'I rock' vibe, you're not getting people to stick around."
— Public attention is fickle, so launch immediately. Before Parliament released its records Thursday, Willison's team thought they might be able to postpone their launch to Friday if necessary. When they saw Thursday's newsbroadcasts, they realized they'd been wrong. The country's imagination was caught.
"It became quickly clear on Thursday that it was a huge story, and if we failed to get it out on Thursday, we'd lose a lot of momentum," Willison said.
The result: No time to load-test the program, perfect the interface, or even set up a system for Guardian reporters to view the vast amount of data that started pouring into their servers. (The first overview wasn't ready for publication until Monday.)
Some programmers would be uncomfortable in those circumstances. Welcome to journalism, folks.
"We kind of load-tested it with our real audience, which guarantees that it's going to work eventually," Willison said impishly. "It's a very realistic way of debugging the application."
— Speed is mandatory, so use a framework. Willison's project was built on Django, the custom Web framework "for perfectionists with deadlines" that he and Adrian Holovaty created for the Lawrence Journal-World. In the world of database programming, a framework is like an offset press: hard to build — Django 1.0 required three years of open-source development — but once it's set up, there's no faster way to churn out content. Hand-coding an application like the Guardian's would have been like publishing a daily newspaper with movable type.
Other frameworks and languages would have worked, too. "You absolutely could build this in Ruby on Rails or in PHP," Willison said, but "as far as I'm concerned, this is absolutely Django's sweet spot. This is absolutely what Django is designed to do…Once I had a designer and a client-side engineer working on the project, I could really just hand it over to them and I didn't have to worry about the front-end code any more."
— Participation will come in one big burst, so have servers ready. As well as the Guardian's first Django joint, this was its first project with EC2, the Amazon contract-hosting service beloved by startups for its low capital costs.
Willison's team knew they would get a huge burst of attention followed by a long, fading tail, so it wouldn't make sense to prepare the Guardian's own servers for the task. In any case, there wasn't time.
"The Guardian has lead time of several weeks to get new hardware bought and so forth," Willison said. "The project was only approved to go ahead less than a week before it launched."
With EC2, the Guardian could order server time as needed, rapidly scaling it up for the launch date and down again afterward. Thanks to EC2, Willison guessed the Guardian's full out-of-pocket cost for the whole project will be around £50.
As for the software, it was all open-source, freely available to the Guardian — and to anyone else who might want to imitate them. Willison hopes to organize his work in the next few weeks.
"There's a lot of stuff in there that's potentially reusable," Willison said.
Photo of Willison by Matt Patterson used under a Creative Commons license.
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MONROE, La. (KNOE 8 News) - For most of you, an important election is Saturday and it could send a new Fifth District Congressional Representative to Washington D.C.
This summer, former U.S. Representative Rodney Alexander stepped down, leaving one seat open. A number of candidates are hoping to win that seat, when election results come in tomorrow night.
Polls open at 6 a.m. and will close at 8 p.m.
Ouachita Parish Clerk of court, Louise Bond says she is unsure about voter turnout.
"I do encourage everyone to get out and vote. A lot of people talk about making changes and I believe that's great but you can't make a change unless you do get out and cast your vote," Bond said
For those of you voting, you'll need a photo ID when you get to the polls.


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News: 50 Cent Feels Betrayed Over Game & Young Buck, "He Turned Around & Told Me To Kiss His A**"
Friday, Apr 22, 2011 5:40PM
Rap star 50 Cent recently opened up about former G-Unit members Young Buck and Game plus why he ultimately wished the best for his ex-artists.
According to 50, he had plans to help them reach greater heights during their run in G-Unit.
"Let me explain something to you: If it was up to me there would be G-Unit South. Young Buck would be running that. I told him to run with that. When I did that, it was for him to present himself as a bigger artist to the Southern community. Game -- I wish nothing but the best for Game. As far as Black Wall Street is concerned, he did that prematurely. Then he turned around and told me to kiss his a**. If you can interpret that as me trying to keep them under my wing, that's just a f*cked-up interpretation." (VIBE)
Buck's legal woes hit the Internet in early March.
A notorious rapper from Nashville is in trouble again. Young Buck, whose real name is David Darnell Brown, is facing federal charges for being a convicted felon in possession of a firearm and ammunition. Channel 4 was the only station in federal court Monday afternoon when the rapper was brought in in handcuffs to appear before the judge. As the indictment spells out, these latest charges could mean ten years in prison. He's now facing federal charges. According to an indictment unsealed Monday, he's charged with being a convicted felon in possession of a .40-caliber pistol and ammunition. Federal authorities say all this happened on or about Aug. 3. (WSMV News)
Following the reports, the Unit's Lloyd Banks spoke on his fallen member.
Banks carefully commented on Buck's situation, electing to take the high road which Buck certainly did not when he was booted from G-Unit in 2008 by 50 Cent. "[It's] unfortunate. I don't wish indictment or anything worse than that on anybody, "said Banks. He added, "Yeah, I have nothing negative to say about the situation [and] hopefully he makes it out that." If Lloyd gets into any trouble, he should be comforted by the news that his "So Forgetful" co-star has his back. "I gotta worry about Banks, "said the rapper in his gruff baritone. "Ain't nobody gonna be throwing bail towards my way," he added but not before Ryan Leslie chimed in. "I got you, homie," said the "Addiction" star. (RapFix)
In mid-2010, Game said he was open to reunion talks with the Unit.
"It's a new day and it's really time to get money you know what I'm saying -- So all I'm saying is why not get out here wing it like Voltron and sh*t," Game said in an interview. "Bring it back full circle and make some motherf*ckin' money...I wasn't opposed to it...He got an ego. I got an ego. Ain't nobody apologizing. Ain't nobody saying that they was wrong, but you ain't gotta do that to make amends. You just gotta get together, do the sh*t, and you can do it for the sake of money. We don't gotta break no peanut butter and jelly sandwiches in half and do the sh*t. Come to an agreement as men, get the sh*t done like men." (Hip Hop DX)
Game's run with G-Unit ended in 2005 while Young Buck was removed by 50 Cent in 2008 both due to internal problems.
Check out a recent 50 Cent interview below:


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I'll get this out of the way early. Yes, Houston Texans quarterback Matt Schaub threw a pick-six interception. Yes, it's his NFL record fourth straight game with a pick-six. No, this isn't a thread to call for another quarterback or who to draft or what have you. This is an open game thread to talk about the actual game. Let's leave the future talk for other threads.
As for the actual game, well, it hasn't been pretty. A Schaub pick-six, a missed Randy Bullock field goal, and a defense that cannot get off the field on third down and you have a 21-0 San Francisco 49ers lead at halftime on NBC's Sunday Night Football. There's really nothing positive to note about Houston's play. It's been pretty abysmal.
If you're into watching the second half, this is your second half thread for all your bleach chugging and comments. Who knows? Maybe the Texans decided that the second half would be their half this week since they can only play 30 minutes at a time.


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Getting Feedback
This year's HOW Interactive Design Conference was in two cities — Washington, D.C. in September, and San Francisco in October. I presented a session on getting website feedback at both events. Below is a transcript of my presentation — pretty close to what I actually said, though I'm not saying there aren't a few edits here and there to make me look good ;-)
Thank you, very much. Good morning! I hope you all are well rested, caffeinated, and otherwise ready to put your minds to work today. There's going to be a lot of great stuff coming your way. Actually, I'm really glad to be going first so I can join you all in soaking it in!
This morning, I want to share with you what I've learned about feedback — specifically, the ways we think about and then gather feedback about our websites.
The best place to start, I think, is by looking at some pictures. …And they all breathed a sigh of relief! Seriously, though, we do need to ease our minds in to this sort of thing first thing in the morning. So, I've brought some images with me that I'd like to flip through. If you can identify these images as I reveal them, feel free to say so out loud for everyone to hear.
Here we go:
What do these things have in common?
They are all forms of feedback! The interesting thing about feedback is that its a signal that only makes sense once you know what it's responding to.
For example, the scantron, which we all remember from high school, is a matrix of answers to test questions. The ballot records your response to the question, "who are you voting for?" And the scale, it displays the answer to your question, "how much do I weigh right now?"
What about this form of feedback?
This is a blood test analysis, similar, actually, to one I received just a couple of days after my last physical. It took me a few minutes of staring at mine to realize that I had no idea what to make of it. The problem with this form of feedback is that it doesn't answer the simple question I imagine anyone without medical training would have upon reviewing it: "Am I healthy or not?" I quickly went from being impressed with the service of having received this report by mail, to frustration with not being able to extract any meaning from it.
If I can't make sense of a report, what good is it?
Let me show you one more form of feedback, one you might be more familiar with.
This is a KPI report. In fact, a KPI report that one of my firm's clients purchased a couple of years ago.
For those who don't know, KPI stands for key performance indicators. This is how web feedback is typically recorded: a huge matrix of answers but no questions to provide context. Impressive as it may appear, if you're interested in making any sense of what's going on with your website, the KPI is probably not going to be much help. This sort of report demonstrates that we've fallen victim to a pretty common fallacy: that the volume of data validates the measurement itself. Now, this particular KPI report goes on for 90 pages…
...so there must be something interesting and important in there, right? Riiiight. Probably not. But even if there was, most people will probably just tune out a few pages in. The conclusion that "measurement is being done" is good enough for them.
The good news is that we can swap in some new words for KPI that are much more straightforward about what it does. How about: Keeping People Ignorant!
Now, repeat-after-me is an old standby for teachers to get sleepy students engaged, so let's all say that together:
KPI reports are: KEEPING PEOPLE IGNORANT.
They do say that oral regurgitation is one of the best ways of imprinting something on your brain. I've always felt that writing things down is even better, so I hope some of you did that too.
The failures of the keeping people ignorant report make a good example of broken feedback, which tends to have three core characteristics. It's:
- outsourced
- irregular
- overly quantitative
Outsourcing this sort of thing isn't objectively bad — there are plenty of good analytics consultants out there who are worth their fees — but it's not generally in your best interests.
A report like the one we just looked at is the product of metric regurgitation, not questioning. Think about it: They don't have the questions that you have. If they aren't asking the right questions, they won't be able to supply the right answers. They can give you 90 pages of data and wish you good luck.
If you're not gathering your own feedback, then you're probably paying someone else to do it. And if you're paying someone else to do it, it's probably not getting done very often. And if it's not getting done very often, it's probably not getting done until you're desperate for answers. And here's the thing: Data gathered in crisis is guaranteed to be misinterpreted.
As we've already seen, broken feedback also tends to be overly quantitative. It's all answers, and no questions.
How do we ever expect that to work?
That's a good question, isn't it?
Now that we know what kind of feedback isn't working, what I'd like to do with the time we have left is go a little bit further with establishing a baseline for good feedback — that's the theoretical side of all of this — and then build upon that foundation a repeatable method for gathering feedback — that's the HOW.
The Foundations of Useful Feedback
Feedback that is useful also has three characteristics. It's:
- done by you
- on a regular basis
- qualitative
In other words, it prefers meaning to numbers.
But what exactly do I mean by that? How do we make sure that our feedback gathering prefers meaning? Well, for one thing, we make sure it answers the specific questions we should be asking about our websites. There are five questions that anyone involved in web design, development or marketing should be asking all the time:
- Who is coming to my website?
- Where are they coming from?
- What content are they consuming?
- How are they engaging with that content?
- What can I do to improve their experience?
Outside of these questions, I'm not sure what else you would really need to know.
These five questions have something very important in common. Can you guess what?
The answers to these questions are not numbers! We use numbers to answer them. Numbers aren't always good enough; they're a means to an end. Which means that we can conclude two exciting things about feedback…
- There are no independently meaningful metrics. It's not just about page views or downloads, and it's never, ever about hits. Nobody says hits anymore, right? It's about the connections between metrics that provide answers to our five questions.
- Anything can be a source of data.
Which brings us, naturally, to robots and people.
As far as robots are concerned the ones I'm going to talk about work for Google — of course they do! — and one of the things they do is make possible a wonderful feedback tool called Google Analytics.
If you were hoping for something more sci-fi, we can talk about robopocalypses and such at tonight's cocktail hour, I promise.
After we look at what the analytics bots have to offer us, I'd like to introduce you to a few methods for gathering incredibly useful feedback from living, breathing human beings.
That's my brother Martin, by the way. He's pretty excited to be here, representing all people in general.
So, if you're ready, let's start with Google Analytics.
Google Analytics in Three Steps
Now as a warning, our next few steps might get a little mathy, so this would be a great time to get out your graphing calculators… …I'm kidding. Although if you did bring a graphing calculator, like I said: nerdy chats later.
Google Analytics is a big, powerful tool. There's far more that you could (and should) do with it than just the bit I'm able to share with you today. Really, I'm only going to skim the surface. But my goal is to reduce any intimidation or other barriers to entry that you might have by simplifying Google Analytics down to three steps — a drastically pared down routine that is focused specifically on pursuing answers to our core questions on a regular basis.
Of course, I hope that in doing this, you'll find cause to go deeper with it on your own time.
So, our three steps will go like this:
- We'll start with looking at visitors — this will help us to get a general sense for who our website's users are.
- Then, we'll explore our traffic sources — this step will help us to answer our second question, "where are our visitors coming from?"
- And finally, we'll look at the reports Google Analytics has on our content, which should help us answer our third and fourth questions, "what content are our users consuming, and how are they engaging with it?"
Here we go:
I'm going to be using one of my client's analytics account as an example this morning. They are a mid-sized credit union based in the midwest.
The first thing we see when we log in to Analytics is our Visitors Overview. By default, Google is showing us the last month's worth of activity, and displaying it in a line graph across the top. As you can see, this website tends to get a pretty good amount of weekday traffic — typically somewhere between 25 and 30 thousand visitors.
Beneath the line graph, Google displays the basic "health" stats of the website. I think it would be helpful to take a few moments just to explain what each of these means, even though I imagine that will be review for at least some of you.
Now, "unique visits" are differentiated from "visits" because Google is trying to show you what your traffic looks like once you've taken into account individuals that make repeat trips to view your website. So if your Mom hits up your blog every day this month, she'll log 31 visits, but only one unique visit. In our site's case, the numbers aren't very close, which means that the majority of its traffic is coming from people who have been here before.
A Pageview is our next unit of measure. It represents exactly what it says: a view of a single page. So, one visit might have many pageviews, assuming the user is engaged with the website's content. Here, we can see that the pageviews are around twice the number of unique visits, and as the next stat points out, averages to just about 2 pages per visit.
I think the average visit duration is also pretty self-explanatory: It means the average time a user spends browsing the site in one session — meaning from when they first arrive to when they leave. If they come back the next day, they start a new session. So, if your Mom is hanging out on your blog for two minutes every single day, she's not skewing your average.
Next is bounce rate. We'll come back to this one when we look at our content reports.
Finally, the percentage of new visits refers back to that unique visits metric. I mentioned that because the unique visits number and the visits number were close, we could conclude that the majority of this website's visitors weren't seeing it for the first time. That's what this number measures exactly — that almost 80% of this website's visitors are returning visitors.
In reviewing these numbers, we've learned a bit about the impact visitors have on this website, but we haven't actually learned much yet about how this site is being used. So, after I've given these basic health stats a once-over and glanced at the main traffic graph to make sure there are no significant drops or spikes in traffic that I can't explain, I'm ready to move on to Step Two and look at the sources of all these visits.
In Step Two, I'm going to open up the Traffic Sources Overview report.
Again, Google is showing the same traffic line graph at the top, but beneath it, the data has changed to reflect some general categories of sources.
From the pie chart displayed here, I can see that the majority of this site's traffic is comprised of direct traffic — visitors that manually enter in this site's URL to their browsers' address bars.
The next largest source of traffic comes from search engines. To get a bit more insight into this source, I can look just below the pie chart at a list of the top keywords driving traffic to this site from search engines.
What's interesting here is that every keyword in the top ten is a "branded" term, which means that it includes the name of the company or its website, which, of course, means that the searcher already knows about them. Since we already know that most of the site's users are returning visitors, this is not a big surprise.
But it's worth pointing out that this site could be doing much better at bringing in visitors that are not already familiar with it. That's exactly what your focus should be when it comes to SEO: creating content that describes your expertise for those who are using Google to search for it, but don't yet know about you specifically. Being #1 on Google for your own name is not nearly as useful to your business as being #1 on Google for a phrase that describes what your business does!
Remember our question about what we can do to improve our users' experience? This is one of those things: While it's a good thing to have returning users — and for a bank, this is to be expected from all its account holders returning to log in to their accounts — it's also good to attract new visitors. SEO is about connecting people with information they need. If your website contains information about a service that people are searching for, your job is to try to match their search intent with information that you have. That is done by framing site content for search, and not relying upon name recognition to connect you with new prospects.
I didn't want you to miss that point, but as far as our routine is concerned, I don't want to get too hung up on keywords right now. Instead, I'd like to dig a bit further into sources, so I'm going to click into a new report, which is a list of All Traffic Sources.
Like the previous screens, this one also displays the visits graph at the top. So, more eye candy. But the main attraction is below that, in the list of all the unique referrers of traffic to the site.
What's useful here is that instead of just aggregating all the different search engine traffic into one, generic category, we now get to see each one listed individually.
For example, we can see that Google organic search — organic means traffic generated by search queries, not by paid search like Google AdWords — refers more traffic to the site than Google paid search, which is #6 on the list.
Once I've started to get a little more familiar with this list of sources, what I really want to know is how to evaluate them. Which ones generate traffic that is more valuable?
One way to figure that out is to find out which sources generate conversions. A conversion is any touchpoint on your site where a user gives you information. It could be a general contact form, or a sign-up form that subscribes them to a newsletter or blog, an event registration form, an asset download, or even a purchase. Any of those are touch points that can and should be measured.
Google Analytics lets you track events like that, which they call "goals." Once you have set up the specific goals you want to track (here's how to do that), they will appear in your analytics reports. Then you can use them to create filters for any of the reports contained in Google Analytics. These filters are called "Advanced Segments."
So, to answer my original question about which sources generate the most conversions, I'm going to apply an advanced segment to this report by expanding the "Advanced Segments" menu at the top of the page, choosing "Visits with Conversions" and hitting "Apply."
This refreshes the report, and instead of displaying the total visits per source, it displays the number of conversions that resulted from a source's traffic.
What's interesting here is that Google paid search fares no better on this filtered list. I'd be questioning now how much I'm spending on AdWords if my organic performs so much better in terms of generating traffic that converts.
This underscores an important principle that you should etch on your brain: that traffic is not valuable on its own. It's the action of that traffic — the conversion — that is valuable. Understanding our sources in the same way is critical.
OK, now we're on to Step 3.
I'm going to start with the "All Pages" report, displays a list of the website's pages in order of the amount of views each one received.
If I choose a particular page from the list — "Checking Accounts," for example…
…we get a new screen that shows stats particularly for this page: the number of views this page has received, how many of them were unique, and the average time a visitor spends on this page (a little over 1 minute). All good stuff to know.
But the metric that tends to stand out the most is the bounce rate. For this page, it's around 50%.
So, what is bounce rate? The bounce rate measures the number of visitors that come to a website and then leave without viewing any other pages than the one they landed on. That's why a website can have a site wide bounce rate, as well as individual rates for each page — because a website's homepage is not always it's "front door" for visitors. Often, they enter a site from a sub-page that has been referred by a link from someplace else.
So, does this mean that 50% of the 31 thousand visitors to this page over the last month left without looking at anything else? If so, that would be a lot of people. Well, it would be. But remember, bounce rate doesn't apply to all pageviews. Pageviews include all views of this page, whether it was the first thing a visitor to this website saw, or the fifth.
Bounce rate applies only to entrances, which in this case were only a small portion of this page's overall views. So, it's 50% of the 1700 or so visitors that entered this website on this page that bounced, not 50% of the 31 thousand visitors that viewed this page at some point in their sessions. That's a huge difference in number, and a major difference in the impression bounce rate should make. I can't tell you how many times I've seen people overreact to the bounce rate because they've done the wrong math in their head.
Now all of that said, bounce rate isn't something we should ignore. It is a measure of a user's interest, and therefore something to take seriously.
But let's consider the actual page we're talking about for a moment.
On this page, there is a bit of text, a chart describing the three different checking accounts the credit union offers, and links to more information about them. There's also a call to action here on the right.
Now, let's say I just moved to Kansas City. Once I'm settled in, I Google "checking accounts in Kansas City," find a link to this page, follow it, read through this page and say, "OK, I'm ready to sign up!" Then, I click the link up here in the call to action to get started. That's about as successful a scenario as you could imagine for this page, right? But here's something I happen to know about that link — it goes to another website! But, if it goes to another website, then anyone who enters this website on this page and clicks this link will register a bounce. Interesting! All of the sudden, what's successful here looks like failure in Google Analytics!
In other words, while our analytics report creates an impression of failure, the full story isn't necessarily so bad.
And that brings me to the most important lesson I could teach about analytics: We need to avoid analytics myopia! Don't get so wrapped up in stats that you can't properly assess the situation.
So that's Google Analytics. Yes, it's powered by robots, but I think there's one other reason that makes it fair to think of Google Analytics as a robot -- it's predictable; how it works doesn't change. You can have a standardized method for working with it that is reliable.
People, on the other hand, do change.
We've got all kinds of information rattling around in our brains (especially right now after all that analytics stuff) that influences how we understand and experience things.
So, getting feedback from people is much harder. But, that feedback is always going to be more interesting and important to you. After all, you're creating for people, not robots.
This, by the way, is exactly the face we make…
…when we're looking at one of these! It's sort of a brain-sucked-out-of-the-back-of-the-head look. Not cute.
OK, so our next and last stop is usability testing.
Simple Usability Testing
Now, a bit of a caveat is in order. I'm using the word "simple" intentionally. Most people think of usability testing as something that requires facilities, equipment, people, expertise, and time that they just don't have. So, in the absence of all of that, they conclude that they can't do any usability testing. For a long time, they might have been right about that. But these days, while you can hire usability testing experts that may fit right into that expensive, high-tech picture, you can also do a lot of it yourself. That, of course, means simplification. But my experience has been that simplifying the process doesn't reduce the amount of actionable insight you can derive from it. I'd rather prescribe a simple usability testing procedure that I know you can (and will) put to use, than adhere to such a long list of technical requirements that nobody has any hope of meeting.
There are just a few things you'll need to do your own usability testing:
- A Quiet Space: Not a soundproof chamber in a lab somewhere, just some place quiet where you and the volunteers you're going to recruit can focus for a few minutes without distraction or interruption.
- A Computer: Nothing fancy. The one you have will probably work, as long as it has...
- A Webcam: Most laptops have these built-in these days.
- Screen-Capture Software: You'll also need to run some kind of screen-recording software. This will allow you to gather the information collected by your webcam, the computer's microphone, and the screen into one consolidated interface.
- A Volunteer: This is the interesting part. Most people assume that a volunteer for usability testing needs to correspond perfectly with a website's target audience. So, in some cases, that persona might be very specific. They might need to have quite a lot of background information and understand industry jargon that most other people wouldn't. While that person might make a perfect subject for persona verification testing or even a focus group addressing issues of messaging, and of course could be a usability testing volunteer as well, they're not necessary. Really, the only qualification needed for a usability testing volunteer is basic digital literacy. Can they use a computer, surf the web, and talk about it? Since what we're doing here is testing whether there are any barriers to proper use of the website, this is really all we need from our volunteers.
- A Moderator: That's you! You're there to provide the environment, the technology, and the process, but most importantly, you're there to observe. Besides the information that the screen-capture software is designed to collect, you'll be able to observe lots of other stuff and ask questions of your volunteer to draw out more information when you need it.
- A Test Plan: What we're not doing here is taking a volunteer, sitting them down in front of a website, and asking them to click around a bit while we watch. Instead, we're crafting specific test plans that address the core purpose and goals of a website with directly worded procedures for the volunteer to follow. There are two specific plans I'd like to review with you that I'm sure you can begin to put to use on your own sites right away.
This test plan is crafted around the core goals of a website. If the purpose of your website is to generate leads by converting passive visitors into subscribers or customers, then the means by which you do that — the conversion points, which we measured in Google Analytics — are what we'll test here. For example, if one of your website's goals is to get visitors to subscribe to your newsletter, one task might be to find the latest newsletter, let you know what it's about, and then sign up to receive it by email. When it comes to wording these tasks, by the way, we want to be straightforward, not clever. We're not trying to trick our volunteers or even make it a challenge for them to complete these tasks. What we want is to make the task itself very plain so that if the website presents any difficulties for the user, they are made clear by the test experience.
The first step of this test is to have your volunteer spend a couple of minutes orienting themselves on the homepage. You want to ask them to take some time to read and scroll through it, feeling free to talk out loud about what they're thinking as they do, but not to click any links that would take them away from the homepage. After a few minutes, you want to ask them a very simple question: What is this website about? You'll be amazed by the answers! The point here is that we're too close to our websites to accurately assess whether our messaging is clear. In fact, we're rarely as clear as we could be, so we need this kind of feedback to adjust our messaging.
Next, you want to take the volunteer through 2-3 goal-focused tasks. Again, these should correspond with the specific conversion points that exist on the site — content subscriptions, event registrations, purchases, and the like. Try to keep these brief — and the whole experience to under ten minutes — as the longer it goes, the more fatigued your volunteer will get.
Any kind of usability testing will have some inherent biases — there's no way of avoiding that. What's more important than avoiding biases is understanding them so that we can properly assess the results of the testing given the effects of bias. For example, one fundamental bias is called the Hawethorne Effect, which is simply the effect that awareness of being observed has on a volunteer's actions. Usability testing is meant to approximate the experience of using a website, but because we've invited someone in to help us do that, they already know that what they're doing is synthetic. So while they might do their best to embody the role of a typical user, the problem is just that: they'll do their best! Everything you ask them to do will probably be done better and with more patience and effort than we could ever expect of a typical user. Another bias is what is called "task-selection bias," which is just that if you asked them about it, it must be important! Again, what you'll observe is that the volunteer will try very hard to complete a task — much harder than anyone normally would.
These biases don't make usability testing worthless, of course. They just make it a bit handicapped and before we congratulate ourselves when a volunteer sails through each task, we need to remember that these results are skewed. We need to pay close attention to the details of the volunteer's experience being mindful of these biases so we can assess whether any specifics would make things more or less difficult for an un-observed user out there on the internet somewhere.
As moderators, we need to make sure our questioning doesn't exacerbate the biases, too. We don't want to ask questions like, "Didn't you see that "submit" button down there on the right?" Instead, we want to ask general questions that draw out more from our volunteers, like, "Could you say more about that?" or "What are you thinking right now?" or "It looks like you're having some difficulty. Could you tell me what's going on right now?"
OK, I'd like to show you an example of what this kind of testing looks like. In this video clip, we'll see one task from a series of tests I ran on my firm's website last year. I've asked my volunteer to find our upcoming webinar and register for it.
A couple of points to make about this clip: First, you could tell there was some confusion about the registration process. What we do is ask our users for their name and email address, then we pass them over to GoToWebinar to finish the registration. It's not ideal, but it's what we've had to do to use that tool. In this session, the volunteer got a bit nervous when clicking "submit" on our form, so she quickly clicked it twice. That triggered a bug we'd never known about. See, we'd tested our own form, of course, but no one had done exactly what this volunteer did, so we never knew that clicking the "submit" button twice would send you off to the wrong form. As it turns out, it sent her off to our general contact form. So that was great! This is exactly the sort of thing that this kind of testing is designed to uncover!
The other thing, though, is I sort of broke my own rule. As soon as that confusion took over, I got a bit more directive with the volunteer. I was already on to what was happening, and was glad that she'd uncovered the bug. But I also didn't want her to struggle too much with this task since I had others I wanted to move on to. Since I'd already gotten more useful information out of this task, I saw no point in making her struggle so much with it that she might be too fatigued to handle the others. This is what we're there to look for, anyway. We need to be flexible with how we administer these tests, and roll with the punches as they come.
The second test plan I want to share with you is called "Ten-Second Testing." I came up with this idea after reading a research report by Jakob Nielsen that concluded that the average web user decides whether they will stay on a page or go within ten seconds of opening it. Just ten seconds! I was blown away by this! I thought, man, what a tiny window of opportunity for us to give the right first impression. But then I realized that we humans can take in a ton of information, make judgements on it, and even act on it in far less time than ten seconds. If we couldn't do that, we wouldn't be able to walk across a room or drive a car! Then I realized that this would make a perfect format for usability testing.
The procedure is dirt simple. You pick a page you want to test — ideally a content page or landing page of some kind — and give your volunteer ten seconds to view it. Again, we're going to ask them not to click any links during that time. After ten seconds, we hide the page. Then, we want to ask a very simple question: What was this page about? Just like the homepage orientation, you'll be amazed at the answers. Some won't remember much, and so we'll want to ask some follow up questions, like, "What do you remember about the page?" or "Did anything stand out to you, like colors, or text, or images?" For those that do remember specific information, you can ask follow up questions, like, "Based upon what you remember about this page, would you continue reading it?" or "Would you consider this a trustworthy source of information?" or "If you had to find this page again, what would you search for to find it?"
I've got an example of this type of testing to show you as well. In this clip, I've actually joined together two ten-second tests with the same volunteer back-to-back.
OK, so what's interesting here is that in the first test, my volunteer remembered nothing about the page he viewed. Remember, when I asked him what the page was about, he said, "I have absolutely no idea!" and then went on to describe the page's structure. This made sense to me, because the page was fairly traditionally laid out — it had a header, main nav across the top, a left column, center content column, and then a right column — and most of the text was pretty small and close together. So in scanning it, it's not surprising that it would kind of spot or block together.
But in the second test, he remembered far more information, didn't he? In fact, once I'd gotten down to my last question about finding the page using a search engine, he recalled the page's title almost verbatim. Now, in my estimation, a lot of this was made easier for him because of the design. That second site was designed by someone with a lot of experience in publishing — someone who understands how to design a page that is easier to scan and read. The text was much larger. It has more space. It's designed to make the informational hierarchy very clear. So it's not surprising that this page would do better in a ten-second test.
Of course, biases are at play here, too. In the first test, the ten seconds surely caught the volunteer off guard. You could tell that he was a bit bewildered when he admitted that he had "no idea" what the page was about. So, in the second test, you can bet he tried harder. He knew what questions I'd ask, so he probably adjusted his own observation.
So one thing I've learned is that you probably can't get more than one good ten-second test out of the same volunteer. Each additional test is just too weighted by that Hawethorne effect.
But, when I ran these tests, I used a pool of pages — about 5 or 6 different pages — and a pool of volunteers. Some saw the more minimal page first, others second, and some not at all. But no matter when I showed that page — whether first or second — it always outperformed the others. Why? Well I think it's reasonable to conclude that it's design just makes it easier to read.
That's really the lesson with this test: That design can mean the difference between a conversion or a bounce. This test will help you identify whether your design decisions help a user get the right first impression of a page, or whether they hinder it. I encourage you to start running these tests as soon as possible!
We need to wrap up.
Getting feedback isn't a checklist item. It's not even a job, really, or a "hat" you wear some of the time. To make an impact, feedback needs to be a cultural shift for everyone on a team. It's a posture, a way of working, not a task.
So, this whole system — from breaking down measurement into basic questions, then pursuing answers to them through simplified analytics and testing procedures, and then taking action on the basis of what we learn — is simple for a reason: To make it possible for you to embrace a culture of feedback right now. Rather than getting bogged down with data for data's sake, we need to be simplifying our approach to measurement so that we can do it on our own, do it more regularly, and derive real meaning from it.
Thank you very much for your time and attention. I'll be back here this afternoon for the panel, so bring lots of questions, and of course feel free to grab me in between sessions.
Also, I'd be foolish to not mention that I do have a new book out that you can purchase here at the conference. It's called The Strategic Web Designer, and it's all about taking a thinking-before-doing approach to the web. If you're interested in learning about planning, the web design and development process, content strategy, measurement, usability, SEO, mobile, and the future of the web, check it out.
Thanks again, and enjoy the rest of the day!


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What a difference a day makes. Before the specifics of the felony charge of taking money from chiropractors in exchange for helping them with legislation were revealed in court, former state House Speaker Jim Black still had some defenders among his colleagues. Sure, they said, he may have played the campaign finance game too well. OK, the guy helped out his contributors, but that's no big deal.
And, said some, Black didn't put money in his own pocket.
Uh, oh.
These folks found out after Black's court appearance that the former speaker was a crook, pure and simple. The story just got sleazier -- Black took cash from chiropractors, some of it handed along in bathrooms at restaurants, and tried to get three pieces of legislation passed that would have been of benefit to the profession in North Carolina.
One law, essentially protecting chiropractors from higher insurance co-payments required by insurance companies, did pass. The others didn't. Black didn't report the money as campaign contributions. According to prosecutors, he just put it in his pocket. He sold his influence, in effect his office. It's just about the worst thing an elected public official can do.
Black resigned his House seat and faces prison time -- he could get up to 10 years, in addition to a fine, and certainly deserves a prison term given the nature of his crime.
Still, he has a chance at some redemption. He is supposed to cooperate with investigators, and this affords North Carolinians an opportunity to see just how special interests and lobbyists and legislators interact. If anyone knows the game, it is Jim Black, who raised campaign money from special interest groups, including the video poker industry and his fellow optometrists, and protected their interests in the General Assembly. He used some of their contributions to give to his fellow legislators, who kept him in power.
It doesn't matter that Black's plea is not related to campaign money, in terms of the impact this has had on his former colleagues, particularly the Democrats who kept him in power for four terms as speaker. This casts shadows over the legislature, which is why lawmakers need to learn lessons and act to restore the public's faith in them.
Those who nurtured favor with Black, including Governor Easley (who relied on Black to push the lottery through to passage) and other lawmakers he boosted to power, surely know he has brought embarrassment upon them as well as upon himself. Worst of all, Black's downfall gives legs to a cynical view that state government is just crooked, period. That chips at the very foundation, the credibility, of the lawmaking process and people's faith in democracy.
That's why investigations must press on, no matter where they lead. It's why new Speaker Joe Hackney, who successfully pushed ethics reforms last session, now must strive to eliminate all -- all -- of the special interest influence gained through lobbyists' contributions to legislators' political action committees, or through sponsorship, for example, of "educational" programs for lawmakers which might just happen to be at resorts. It's why the state's ethics commission needs expanded power and independence.
Ladies and gentlemen of the General Assembly, you'd better get with it. Ask Jim Black. The party's over.


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Received a letter from Rob Mullens. It is to Duck fans everywhere. Even to the Ducky fans who have migrated south for the winter, to Costa Rica... or maybe those considering a rebound relationship at sunny UCLA?
NCAA Rules and Regulations for Representatives of Athletics Interests - (link to the PDF)
It's really nothing anybody needs to know, which makes it strange that he would spend time writing it.... Although, Mullens is masterful with some interesting, all-encompassing language - for example, the guide includes "fans" of Oregon Athletics into their definition of a "Representative of Athletics Interests" (page 6). Further, the document claims that "Once identified as a representative of athletics interest, an individual or business retains the status forever."
Mullens explains that we now have a badge of Honor & Respect from one of the highest University officials.... Nobody can drain us of our green blood. Ha.... No, no he doesn't Dinkus.


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« New Music: DJ Khaled f/ Nas, Scarface, & DJ Premier – 'Hip Hop'
Rita Ora Covers One Direction's 'What Makes You Beautiful' »
Sneak Peek: Rihanna Surprises Oprah During Intimate Interview
Oprah visited Rihanna in her native Barbados earlier this month and came away with a whole new opinion of the pop star. She was expecting a hard-edged badass, but what she saw was a thoughtful, emotional, vulnerable woman, who also happens to be a good driver. They drove to her old house where she grew up and mingled with some of the neighbors. The down-to-earth singer took time to say hi to everyone and give them hugs.
"I'm super-duper afraid of the pedestal that comes with fame," said Rihanna, adding, "It's amazing how lonely you can feel."
Their intimate conversation will air August 19 at 9 p.m. on "Oprah's Next Chapter."
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Stuck in Hogan instead of at home? If you can't get a flight back for your mom's apple pie, not to worry: Spec's got you squared away with your best options this Turkey Day.
Candle Cafe West
2427 Broadway (between 89th and 90th streets)
It may be called Turkey Day, but there are still plenty of options for vegetarians. This Upper West Side vegan spot is offering a prix fixe dinner for $65 a person from 2 to 9 p.m. With choices ranging from sage-pecan encrusted seitan with sweet potato gratin and green beans to saffron pappardelle with trumpet mushrooms, cranberries, broccoli, and tomatoes, diners won't even miss the turkey. Bonus: Since the restaurant is fairly close to campus, a walk back to Columbia to work off the feast is definitely an option.
Il Buco Alimentari e Vineria
53 Great Jones St.
Not only did this Greenwich Village restaurant earn three stars from the New York Times for its phenomenal Italian cooking, it also plans on giving back to New York this Thanksgiving by donating all of the profits from its family-style dinner to benefit Hurricane Sandy Victims. From 1-6 p.m., diners can do good and fill their stomachs with the restaurant's Italian fare for $85 a person.
Maison Premiere
298 Bedford Ave., Brooklyn
It may be known for its absinthe and oysters, but Williamsburg bar Maison Premiere has been paying serious attention to its cooking lately, and this Thanksgiving is no exception. For the relatively affordable $45 per person, the bar will offer a prix fixe turkey dinner. More budget-minded diners—or those who simply prefer non-Thanksgiving food—can order from the regular menu.
Katz's Delicatessen
205 E. Houston St.
The legendary Lower East Side Jewish delicatessen is hosting its first-ever Thanksgiving dinner this year in a rare break from tradition. For $60, Columbians can dig into a Jewish twist on the traditional meal—diners can even substitute the turkey for beef brisket. Whether the meal can compare to the deli's pastrami remains to be seen, but fans shouldn't miss it.


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Cassie Problem #3
The inability to stick with a bias because each of them is unique in their own way, like Jaejoong's 4-D attitude, Junsu's quirky dolphin sounds, Changmin's snarky attitude, Yoochun's troll faces, and Yunho's random cuteness. It's almost impossible because once you make a choice another member comes along and steals your heart, this happens quite consistently. So you just accept them all as your bias.


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Home » News » Education
Students playing the market
From left, Chase Martell and Brendon Jalbert of Fidelity Investments speak with students on Wednesday at Mastricola Upper Elementary School in Merrimack as part of the Union Leader's Smart Market program. (Kimberly Houghton/Union Leader)
MERRIMACK -- Handing over $100,0000 to a group of sixth-graders might seem a bit risky, but for those youngsters holding the cash, it has been a valuable lesson in economics and luck.
Students at James Mastricola Upper Elementary School, along with 20 other schools throughout the state, have been trying to make their imaginary cash pool grow with simulated investments.
The project, which enables students to buy imaginary stocks and monitor their investments throughout a 10-week period before cashing in on their returns, is part of the Smart Market program presented by the New Hampshire Union Leader and sponsored by Fidelity Investments.
"Stocks can be tricky," said Ryan Carey, a sixth-grader at the local school.
Carey researched stocks and picked Nike as a team choice, which had been going up initially but is now on the decline.
It is never too early to start learning about the stock market and making wise investments, said teacher Dennis Pymm, who uses The Gateway enrichment program. His students, he said, were eager to participate in the Smart Market competition to see which schools in New Hampshire can create the biggest profit.
On Wednesday, representatives from Fidelity Investments in Merrimack visited the school to discuss how recent events may have hit certain stocks.
Several stocks plummeted after Hurricane Sandy ravaged the East Coast recently, while others are doing well because of the Christmas season, said Brendon Jalbert, a manager at Fidelity Investments.
"Big global events like hurricanes can significantly impact the market," Jalbert told the students.
During the month of December, when people are buying gifts and toys for Christmas, stocks like Mattel can generate strong profits, said Chase Martell, another Fidelity Investments manager. Some of the stocks that were popular among the sixth-grade class included Coke, Home Depot, Exxon Mobil, Generac, MasterCard and Amazon. In the real world, stocks that are busy now include Apple, Google, Walmart and McDonalds, Martell said.
Another student, Alli O'Hara, said she was having fun researching the different companies, explaining she chose to invest in Johnson & Johnson.
"I made about $400 in the beginning, but I have lost some of my returns since then," said O'Hara. "I think there is definitely some luck involved."
Each week, students received a print copy of the New Hampshire Union Leader to review current events and monitor the stock market, according to Shannon Sullivan, community relations manager for the newspaper.
The Smart Market program is part of the paper's Newspapers in Education Initiative; about 50 teams from an estimated 20 schools are participating.
Winners from the program will be be notified on Dec. 21 and are invited to tour Fidelity Investments and celebrate with an awards ceremony and pizza party on Jan. 15.
"Financial education and financial literacy, which are really two different things, are important to teach and pass on to the next generation and our customers," said Joe Murray, senior director of public affairs for Fidelity Investments. "Saving for the long haul is always a goal that we try to pass on."
- - - - - - - -
Kimberly Houghton may be reached at firstname.lastname@example.com.
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Lebanon College announces cancelation of fall classesREADER COMMENTS: 0
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Market Basket: On the brink again
Pope's call-out Where's the Muslim outrage?
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Target: Obamacare
Hanover St. building has a buyer
Judge slams spice search
ISIS beheads NH journalist
Editorial: Garcia gains Lambert lies


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LFCS Steering Committee:Anil Nerode, Ithaca, NY (General Chair);
Stephen Cook, Toronto;
Dirk van Dalen, Utrecht;
Yuri Matiyasevich, St. Petersburg;
J. Alan Robinson, Syracuse, NY;
Gerald Sacks, Cambridge, MA;
Dana Scott, Pittsburgh, PA.
LFCS Purpose:
The LFCS series provides an outlet for the fast-growing body of work in
the logical foundations of computer science, e.g., areas of fundamental
theoretical logic related to computer science. The LFCS series began
with Logic at Botik, Pereslavl-Zalessky, 1989 and was co-organized by Albert R. Meyer (MIT) and Michael Taitslin (Tver), after which
organization passed to Anil Nerode.
LFCS Topics:Topics of interest include, but are not limited to:
- constructive mathematics and type theory;
- logic, automata and automatic structures;
- computability and randomness;
- logical foundations of programming;
- logical aspects of computational complexity;
- logic programming and constraints;
- automated deduction and interactive theorem proving;
- logical methods in protocol and program verification;
- logical methods in program specification and extraction;
- domain theory logic;
- logical foundations of database theory;
- equational logic and term rewriting;
- lambda and combinatory calculi;
- categorical logic and topological semantics;
- linear logic;
- epistemic and temporal logics;
- intelligent and multiple agent system logics;
- logics of proof and justification;
- nonmonotonic reasoning;
- logic in game theory and social software;
- logic of hybrid systems;
- distributed system logics;
- mathematical fuzzy logic;
- system design logics;
- other logics in computer science.
LFCS 2013 Program Committee:
- Sergei Artemov (New York) - PC Chair
- Steve Awodey (CMU)
- Alexandru Baltag (Oxford)
- Andreas Blass (Ann Arbor)
- Samuel Buss (San Diego)
- Walter Dean (Warwick)
- Rod Downey (Wellington, NZ)
- Rosalie Iemhoff (Utrecht)
- Bakhadyr Khoussainov (Auckland, NZ)
- Roman Kuznets (Bern)
- Robert Lubarsky (Florida Atlantic University)
- Victor Marek (Lexington, KY)
- Franco Montagna (Siena)
- Antonio Montalban (Chicago)
- Anil Nerode (Cornell) - General LFCS Chair
- Lawrence Moss (Bloomington, IN)
- Mati Pentus (Moscow)
- Ruy de Queiroz (Recife, Brazil)
- Jeffrey Remmel (San Diego)
- Bryan Renne (Amsterdam)
- Philip Scott (Ottawa)
- Alex Simpson (Edinburgh)
- Sonja Smets (Groningen)
- Michael Rathjen (Leeds)
- Alasdair Urquhart (Toronto)
- Michael Zakharyaschev (London)
LFCS 2013 Organizing Committee:Jeff Remmel (Chair), Samuel Buss, Victor Marek.
Submission details:
Proceedings will be published in the Springer series Lecture Notes in Computer Science (LNCS). There will be a post-conference volume of selected works published in the Annals of Pure and Applied Logic (APAL).Submissions should be made electronically via http://www.easychair.org/conferences/?conf=lfcs2013. Submitted papers must be in pdf/12pt format and of no more than 15 pages, present work not previously published, and must not be submitted concurrently to another conference with refereed proceedings.
LFCS has established the best student paper award and named it after John Barkley Rosser Sr. (1907-1989), a prominent American logician with fundamental contributions in both Mathematics and Computer Science.
Important Dates:
- Submissions deadline: September 16, 2012, 23:59 SST (Samoa Standard Time, UTC-11 hours)
- Notification: October 10, 2012
- Final papers for proceedings: October 20, 2012
- Discounted hotel rate deadline: December 6, 2012
- Symposium dates: January 6 - 8, 2013
Sponsors and Affiliates:National Science Foundation, Springer LNCS series, University of California, San Diego
Local Arrangements:
The venue of LFCS 2013 will be the spectacular Catamaran Resort Hotel. To get a special conference rate please visit the Hotel Information page.
All participants must register in advance online. Please see the Registration page for details.
Further Information:
About LFCS 2013: http://lfcs.info/lfcs13/


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Thread: Pick your playoff teams
10-27-2010, 01:11 AM #1Coordinator
- Join Date
- May 2010
- Posts
- 892
Pick your playoff teams
As we are approaching the halfway point of the season, I figure it is about time to ask who you think will be the playoff teams for this season. So give me your division winners and wildcards, and let the fur fly! Here are my picks:
North: Steelers
East: Jets
South: Texans
West: Chiefs
Wildcards: Dolphins, Patriots
North: Vikings (yes, I still think we can)
East: Giants
South: Falcons
West: Seahawks
Wildcards: Eagles, Redskins
I have all four wildcard teams from the East divisions. The AFCE is definitely the best division in that conference, and the NFCE just looks too competitive, although the Bucs might sneak in there from the South. Our own NFCN will send only one team due to the infighting and weak O-lines all around. Packers and Bears end up tied, one game behind us, but lose out because of conference tiebreakers.
Neither Super Bowl team makes it back into the playoffs. Colts fall just short, due to injuries. Saints fade back into mediocrity.
The Chiefs win the AFC West pretty much by default as everyone else falls apart. Raiders finish second, which tells you just how crazy things are out there. Likewise with the 'Hawks, as the NFCW is just horrid this year. 49ers make a run late but fall short.
The AFC South is the hardest pick for me, as three of the four teams are decent and difficult to predict. I could easily see either the Colts or Titans come out on top, but I feel that this is the year for the Texans.
So what do you guys and gals think?
My Meeple is purple. What color is yours?
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A tip from designer DONATELLA VERSACE, as seen in her recent, and as always hysterical, VERSACE fashion show in Milan: Country & Western-style appliqué details to embellish an otherwise sober suit. Nice!
A tip from designer DONATELLA VERSACE, as seen in her recent, and as always hysterical, VERSACE fashion show in Milan: Country & Western-style appliqué details to embellish an otherwise sober suit. Nice!
Rejoice!! As only the bravest of cowboys can pull off these gorgeous sherif-badge, cactus, and horseshoe appliqués for the house of Versace. It is clear that Donatella wants to explore with the expression of individuality, ruggedness, and often risqué that is often a characteristic of the Versace man.
(Photograph by Gert Jonkers.)
What a return! The unmistakable form of Mr. BORIS BECKER, as photographed by his compatriot JUERGEN TELLER, graces the cover of this 19th edition of Fantastic Man – the issue for Spring & Summer 2014. Part of the accompanying interview takes place at tennis legend BORIS' London home, in the familiar district of WIMBLEDON. Where else, after all, would a six-time GRAND SLAM singles champion choose to live and work? Elsewhere in the issue, a quartet of ELITE MENSWEAR designers – Mr. TOM FORD, Mr. STEFANO PILATI, Mr. ALESSANDRO SARTORI and Mr. BRENDAN MULLANE – are interviewed and photographed as part of unprecedented investigation into the LOFTIEST and most lucrative echelons of the fashion business. The magnificent archive and working practices of the mononymous SNOWDON are discussed at home with the society portraitist. Plus, what is the humble DRY CLEANER actually doing with the garments you hold most dear, why do airline cabin crew particularly adore the celebrated newshound Mr. RICHARD QUEST, and how does one get involved in the fabulous vintological craze that is HYPERDECANTATION? These questions and more are answered in the brilliant new Fantastic Man. Order now
Periodically, FANTASTIC MAN hosts a marvellous dinner, proper cocktail or a full-out rumbling party. Please find below a small selection of past events.
An Opening at the ICA, London 2013 Dinner at Selfridges, London 2013 Spring in September, Melbourne 2012 An Intimate Cocktail, New York 2011 Disco Dance Party, New York 2011 The Super Show, Berlin 2010 The Super Show, London 2010 Absolut Fantastic, London 2009 No Labels, Stockholm 2009 Fantastic Man Fragnance Launch, Paris 2009 Fantastic Man No. 8 Dinner, London 2008 The Gentleman's Jeans Launch, Paris 2008 Fantastic Man No. 2, NYC 2005 Fantastic Man No. 2, Paris 2005
Available for immediate download is the FANTASTIC MAN APP. Rather than churning out a pdf-echo of the magazine's appearance, FANTASTIC MAN has designed an app that, once installed, will deliver the DAILY RECOMMENDATION every weekday on that most wonderously advanced of devices, APPLE's iPad. The FANTASTIC MAN APP is, of course, entirely free of charge and is available on APPLE's iTunes store. Enjoy!
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