Nice Canned Surveys

I was looking for some Web User Satisfaction survey samples and ran across this site:

http://www.vovici.com/efm-innovation/reference/survey-templates.asp

Vovici is a survey/feedback/marketing vendor and shares a lot of nice survey templates free of charge. Good deal.

If the Pizza Is As Bad As the Web Site...

A Web site can make you look more professional or experienced than you are. However, sometimes it can make you look like an idiot even if you have a good product or service. This is especially important for small business who don't have big marketing budgets and rely on the Web for part of their lead generation.

The site below is a pizza place that I've never tried that's a few block from our house. I decided not to order from them simply because their Web Site sucks. It's a good thing they've littered their site with Google AdSense ads (and a LOT of other things) because I can't imagine a lot of people will buy their pizza based on the site itself.

http://www.jackstrawspizza.com/index.html

Top Ten Top Album Lists on the Web

Each January I go back through the various "Top Album" lists and start dumping music from Rhapsody onto my MP3 player (gotta love subscription music services!)

This year I Delicious-ed all my favorite Top Album lists to make it easier. Feel free to take advantage:

http://del.icio.us/napdynmite/2007+music

Collection of Disaster Preparedness Items

Emergency Items

• Mini-pry bar
• Respiratory Protection (particulate protection)
• Nuke Alert radiation detector
• Bicycle
• First Aid Kit
• Solar Powered Lantern/Power Source
• Grab and Go Bag
• Non-Incendive Flashlight (LED Flashlight)
• Multitool
• Portable Water Filtration Unit
• Water, one gallon of water per person per day for at least three days, for drinking and sanitation
• Food, at least a three-day supply of non-perishable food
• Store at least a three-day supply of non-perishable food.Select foods that require no refrigeration, preparation or cooking and little or no water.
  
  • Pack a manual can opener and eating utensils.
  • Avoid salty foods, as they will make you thirsty.
  • Choose foods your family will eat.
  • Ready-to-eat canned meats, fruits and vegetables
  • Protein or fruit bars
  • Dry cereal or granola
  • Peanut butter
  • Dried fruit
  • Nuts
  • Crackers
  • Canned juices
  • Non-perishable pasteurized milk
  • High energy foods
  • Vitamins
  • Food for infants
  • Comfort/stress foods
  
  
• Battery-powered or hand crank radio and a NOAA Weather Radio with tone alert and extra batteries for both
• Flashlight and extra batteries
• First aid kit
• Two pairs of Latex, or other sterile gloves (if you are allergic to Latex).
• Sterile dressings to stop bleeding.
• Cleansing agent/soap and antibiotic towelettes to disinfect.
• Antibiotic ointment to prevent infection.
• Burn ointment to prevent infection.
• Adhesive bandages in a variety of sizes.
• Eye wash solution to flush the eyes or as general decontaminant.
• Thermometer (Read more: Biological Threat)
• Prescription medications you take every day such as insulin, heart medicine and asthma inhalers. You should periodically rotate medicines to account for expiration dates.
• Prescribed medical supplies such as glucose and blood pressure monitoring equipment and supplies.
• Scissors
• Tweezers
• Tube of petroleum jelly or other lubricant
• Aspirin or nonaspirin pain reliever
• Anti-diarrhea medication
• Antacid (for upset stomach)
• Laxative
  
  
• Whistle to signal for help
• Dust mask, to help filter contaminated air and plastic sheeting and duct tape to shelter-in-place
• Moist towelettes, garbage bags and plastic ties for personal sanitation
• Wrench or pliers to turn off utilities
• Can opener for food (if kit contains canned food)
• Local maps
• Prescription medications and glass
• Infant formula and diapers
• Pet food and extra water for your pet
• Important family documents such as copies of insurance policies, identification and bank account records in a waterproof, portable container
• Cash or traveler's checks and change
• Emergency reference material such as a first aid book or information from www.ready.gov
• Sleeping bag or warm blanket for each person. Consider additional bedding if you live in a cold-weather climate.
• Complete change of clothing including a long sleeved shirt, long pants and sturdy shoes. Consider additional clothing if you live in a cold-weather climate.
• Household chlorine bleach and medicine dropper – When diluted nine parts water to one part bleach, bleach can be used as a disinfectant. Or in an emergency, you can use it to treat water by using 16 drops of regular household liquid bleach per gallon of water. Do not use scented, color safe or bleaches with added cleaners.
• Fire Extinguisher
• Matches in a waterproof container
• Feminine supplies and personal hygiene items
• Mess kits, paper cups, plates and plastic utensils, paper towels
• Paper and pencil
• Books, games, puzzles or other activities for children

Vote for Best Generator

Cubs or White Sox?

Top 5 Random Generators at Generatorland.com

Top 5 Random Generators at Generatorland.com

1. The Willy Name Generator
   
   We didn't realize how much people want a name for their penis or the penis of a friend, but we're glad they do. The Willy Name Generator is the ahead of the pack by a large margin.


2. The Froo Froo Menu Generator
   
   People have come out in droves to build their own fancy restaurant menus full of ridiculous dishes. We're just hoping no one actually tries to cook any of them.


3. The Horoscope Generator
   
   The least "random" of our random generators seems to be a hit. Unlike most of our other stuff, the Horoscope Generator relies more on the wit of our contributors than the random yoking together of language.


4. The Death Metal Band Namer
   
   A suggestion from one of our users that seems to have hit a high, shrieking note with everyone. Rock on.


5. The TV Show Pitch Generator
   
   Our first success story continues to churn out bizarre TV show ideas by the thousands.

More Good Article Tools

I continue to love article tools. We've evolved beyond simple "Email this Article" and "Printer Friendly Version" to article tools that change the way we read, share, and manage articles. I ran across this nice little Article Tool bar on the Chicago Tribune's site. It's not visible in my image, but the "Share" link actually includes Digg, Del.icio.us, Furl, MyYahoo, and other bookmark sharing tools (the little animation just stopped on Digg when I screen captured it). When you click on it the link expands to show all the bookmark sites. Very nice.

"Single Page View" hides the side columns while the "Print" view strips the page down to one of the more bare bones printer views I've seen. I'm a little disappointed with the "Reprints" link though. I expected to take me to a form for ordering reprints of that specific article, but instead it took me to a generic form and FAQ about reprints. Something to work on there I guess.

Defense Against Butt Dialing

This morning I "butt dialed" my parents' house 20 times on my walk into work. I imagine they were crazy with rage by the time I realized it. I got to thinking why don't mobile phones have a built in "Butt Dial Defense System?" (BDDS). Sure, I could have turned off the phone or locked the screen before I threw it in my pocket, but that requires some action on my part.

Why can't a phone be programmed to recognize when it's dialing a number accidentally. If the same number is dialed more than 3 times in the span of a minute and there is no direct voice input on the caller's end how about the screen locks with a message saying "Accidental Call Suspected" or something to that effect?

Also, I wonder how much cell phone companies make each year on butt dialed calls. Someone should do a study.

Wondering if I Should Continue Blogging

I suspect most bloggers come to a point where they try to decide if they should keep up their blog or move on. Life gets in the way, jobs get in the way, hobbies change. Blogging isn't the hardest work in the world, probably not even close. But it is almost always something people do in addition to doing bigger things. That's certainly true in my case. I work full time in a Web Team for a large association and my fiancee and I just bought our first house, which is one of the more stressful and time consuming things I've ever done.

I love writing a blog and reading other blogs and I also love working on generatorland.com, which continues to roll on unabated. However, at some point I realized that I needed to sleep and that we all need a little break from the Internet once in a while to smell the roses, or, in my case now, to fight common yard pests.

So I haven't posted in a while and I guess that's OK. I'm sure most of my readers have wandered off to other blogs or sites and there's a good chance there are few around to read this post, which is cool too. As much as I'd like to connect with great, random people around the blogosphere, this blog has always been as much a place for me to deposit my thoughts and discoveries as it has been a place to interact with an audience.

So with all that in mind I'm wondering if I should continue blogging. I have some thoughts on how I might better organize my Web/free time to ensure I can make regular posts, but then I'm not sure if I necessarily should. If you have an opinion I'd certainly be interested in hearing it, but ultimately I guess I'll just have to decide if I still need a blog as an outlet. Maybe a blog about owning your first home...

MySpace erases 29,000 sex offenders

This is good news, but I'm curious how they determined who the sex offenders were since phony names are so common on the Web. Were there really 29,000 sex offenders dumb enough to use their real names?

MySpace erases 29,000 sex offenders | The Register

My Host is Pissing Me Off

Most of the time I'm pretty happy with the host for generatorland.com, which is 1&1. I'd heard some horror stories about them, but I gave them a try. Up until now things were fine. Today I got home from work and tried to launch my FTP to work on the site and it couldn't connect. I went out to make sure the site was OK and it was down. OK, little panic. Refresh. Refresh. OK, site's down.

It's late, but 1&1 has a 24-hour support number. I call it and about 15 minutes later I'm on the line with someone I assume is in India. I give them my customer ID and tell them my site's down. They tell me that due to technical problems the server my site is on is currently down. OK, I ask, how long has it been down? They don't know. When will it be back up? They don't know. The server administrator hasn't told them anything. They ask me to call back tomorrow if it's still down. I ask if they'll alert me when the site is back up. No, they won't, just call back tomorrow if it's still down and maybe if they get enough calls the server administrator will know this is really a problem(!).

Now it's not like I'm raking in the big bucks with the site, but it's getting good traffic and building a loyal audience. The last traffic I can see from Google Analytics is from 4pm today, which was about 7 hours ago. That means anyone referred to my site in the last seven hours now thinks the site is gone. They may not come back. 1&1 is losing my audience every minute that goes by. This should be important to them and they should be proactive with me in handling the situation. They aren't. I had to call them to tell them their server was down and now they want me to call them again to tell them if it's still down tomorrow. What?

Meanwhile our users suffer, I suffer, and no one is happy. Come on 1&1, get your heads out of your asses.

Runaway wrecking ball causes chaos, accident - CNN.com

And how was YOUR day?

Runaway wrecking ball causes chaos, accident - CNN.com

On The Go: Googlify your cell phone - Lifehacker

Google's been doing some great things for mobile devices. I was particularly blown away last night when I downloaded Google Maps for Palm. Over a wi-fi network it's really impressive. Google Blogoscoped has more (via Lifehacker).

On The Go: Googlify your cell phone - Lifehacker

CSS Rounded Corners Tool

I ran across a nice little tool for building rounded CSS corners. If you don't know how (and I didn't) it's also easy to see how the results are achieved. Check out "Spiffy Corners". You just tweak a few settings, click a "roundness" level (3px, 5px, 9px) and the code spits out below.

Generatin' Fools

We've added three new homegrown generators since last we mentioned it:

The Sick Clown Name Generator
If you've decided to slap on the makeup, pop on the nose, and unleash your inner clown on an unsuspecting world, we're here to help you get off on the right (giant) foot with a good, sick clown name.

The Horoscope Generator
Your future may be written in the stars, but more likely it's just a bunch of random crap. To that end, we present The Horoscope Generator which creates a personalized horoscope just for you. Probably.

The TV Show Title Mashup
What happens when you randomly mash up TV Show Titles? You get things like "Hardy Strokes" and "The Wind in the Mother." Help us find more ridiculous TV Show Title Mashups.

So far, with little fanfare, the Horoscope Generator is taking off like wildfire, especially throughout Europe. We welcome our European friends with open arms and offer Philly cheesesteaks.

Invention Illustrations

I ran across these sites via the afore-mentioned halfbakery.com and thought they were worth sharing. All three are collected invention illustrations by some talented halfbakery users:

http://bz.pair.com/
http://www.geocities.com/farmerjohnnie/index.html
http://www.graphesthesia.com/hob/gallery/hb/index.html

We're looking to add illustrations to our Super Hero Generator at Generator Land as well (although frankly we're a little concerned about what a hero called "The Electric Placenta" might look like).

The Half Bakery: Sharing Your Half-Baked Ideas Publicly

I wanted to build a site like this a while back, but, similar to many of the ideas on "The Half Bakery," my idea remained unfulfilled. The idea for the site is simple: people post half-baked ideas and the rest of the community members vote on it. Non-members can browse around as much as they want, members can post, comment, etc.

Some of the ideas are truly stupid, but if you search by "best" you'll see some really good ideas. The site is entirely text-based and very easy on the eyes. The navigation is a bit odd, but not confusing. My only complaint is the registration process, which requires you to send an email to request membership. I'll write more when I hear back from them.

Under the Nav Bar: Focusing on the Web Team

I got a nice note from Lucy Spence in reaction to a post I made about Web teams a while back. She's started up a blog called "Under the Nav Bar" that will focus on aspects of a Web team. How it should work, who should do what, what skills the team should have, how the team fits in the organization, etc.

I offer my humble support for Lucy's endeavor, I think it will be a great resource.

Generator Land Enhancements

We've added a new feature to Generatorland that lets you submit a particularly amusing result to the Generator Land Hall of Fame. For quality control purposes, we are currently monitoring the submissions and approving/axing where appropriate. Based on what's come in so far, this was probably a wise decision, however, we expect to be switching to a user rating system at some point.

In the meantime, check out what got through the Mike & Joe filter here: http://www.generatorland.com/hall_of_fame.php.