I was doing something the other day (I forget what it was) that involved filters for reducing line noise and amplifiers for boosting signal. Or roughly that, because I forget the situation exactly. But it suddenly struck me that people can either be amplifiers or filters, and which one you are at a given moment [...]

We needed to grab a special report in time for tax season. Fortunately, with a bit of SQL it’s easy t grab pretty much anything you want from Ubercart

After a much-mentioned article by Jakob Nielsen, “mega menus” became all the rage, but there are some serious issues to consider before diving in. The can create serious usability issues and negatively impact your site information architecture and, ultimately how you are found, ranked and categorized by the search engines.

Mega menus have been heralded as a usability enhancement, but they can also result in serious usability challenges. It’s not a simple yes or no. It’s quite easy to end up with navigation that is difficult, occasionally impossible, for the user to actually navigate.

Search engines have made a lot of progress in terms of figuring out what your page is about, but large numbers of navigation links muddy the signal you send to the search engines, both about your page and about the rest of your site. There are lots of possible solutions, but the real solution is getting the information architecture right.

I’ve been thinking a lot lately about the reset button. Most computer problems can be solved by rebooting. Our heater was malfunctioning and until the repairman could get there, I could keep it going by hitting the reset button. I started thinking about forest fires. We used to think fire was bad, but now that [...]

I was excited by the features the Garmin 210 offered, but the reality was a HUGE disappointment. Between terrible signal acquisition and a heartrate monitor that broke almost immediately, I cannot recommend this.

You’ve all seen the bumper sticker: “If it ain’t grown, it’s mined.” I realized some years ago that this is a powerful metaphor for many things in life and I started to divide people into farmers and miners. I came to this realization when I watched how our neighbor, who owns 23 vacation rentals, maintained [...]

You want to buy a new car, take a new job, volunteer at the food bank — how can you ensure that you’re making the right decision?

George Hartzog, the greatest leader of National Park Service understood that creativity can be crushed in the name of “standards.” He killed the employee handbooks and set his people free.