Calcbot - Beautiful calculator application that comes with a “paper tape.” Also makes satisfying clicking sounds when you press the buttons.

Pandora - Great music program, especially with the annual subscription. Especially like the fact it “syncs” my music preferences between my PC, my Ipad and my phone.

GPS Drive HD - Great GPS application. I signed up for an annual subscription. It is very easy to use, very easy to save locations you visit frequently, and has the capabilities to “simulate” your drive before you go. Also allows you to select playlists and play music without leaving the application.

Livestrong – Diet and exercise program that integrates with the online version of the same software. Has almost any food or exercise you can imagine and a nice interface (although it could stand to be made a little less labor intensive).

Notably – A very attractive Notes replacement.

WordPress - In theory, it allows me to create and edit posts from my iPad. I haven’t really tried it yet though. Kind of hard to do much editing on my iPad.

Tweetdeck - Beautiful interface for monitoring multiple searches and streams of Twittering. I also have the Twitter application, but I’ve rarely used it.

Friendly - Facebook viewing and editing application. It was very highly rated, which is why I bought it. But frankly it seems just as easy to visit the site directly. There is a little latency whenever you run the app that slows you down whenever you want to get a quick update. So while I have it, I rarely use it.

iBooks - I’ve bought a few books. It has a beautiful interface for a reading application.

Kindle - iBooks is prettier, but it is a lot easier to find books that I’m interested using from Amazon.com that are in the Kindle format, and since I used to own a Kindle I already own a number of books in the Kindle format.  So I generally switch between the two readers depending on the content.

GoodReader - Amazing application for reading Acrobat PDF files on an iPad. Can read the files from multiple sources including Dropbox, has a very easy to use interfaces, and is very flexible. If you’re looking for a good PDF reader, this is the right application for you.

Cut the Rope – A fun puzzle game.

Angry Birds – Everyone’s favorite puzzle game. Got kind of bored with it and haven’t plated in a while…

Solitaire Classics – This is a really attractive solitaire game from Electric Oyster. Games include Klondike, Freecell, Spider, and a bonus game. Cards all look like real cards. It is truly a joy to play.

Lux USA – Risk for the iPad. Time consuming, challenging fun.

Cogs HD – Another puzzle game for the iPad.

Skee-Ball HD – Not quite as exciting as the real life game, but fun sometimes.

Harry Potter Sceneit – A fun game for the family. Not really all that hard, and once you’ve played each of the levels its pretty easy to answer the questions. But not very expensive, and fun to play with friends who are Harry Potter fans.

Uzu – Simply hypnotic particle simulator. This is especially fun to play with in the dark, and great if you’re looking for a completely mindless activity that lets you control thousands of tiny particles of light with your finger tips.

Flipboard – I reviewed this application a while ago. It’s still a great way to monitor Twitter, Facebook and other news sources.

NYTimes – We have a subscription to the NYT, but this really delivers most of what I need to know (except for Sunday, when you really need to have the real paper).

Alien Blue HD – Fantastic Reddit reader. Good syncronization with the web site, and generally easier and more fun to work with than the real web site.

AppAdvice – Provides reviews of iPad applications. This is sometimes a great source for news about iPad related stuff.

Reeder for iPad – Fantastic newsreader for iPad. I’ve tried several newsreaders including Pulse (which is also on my iPad) but I enjoy Reeder the most. The interface is very easy to use, and it is a very attractive program too. Make reading newsfeeds go very quickly, and it syncs with my Google Reader account.

Huff Post – Fast and easy way to read the Huffington Post. Much easier than using the web site when it comes to reading on the iPad.

Bloomberg – Good application for reading stock quotes, but I’m kind of in the market for a better one that does a better job of integrating news.

Dictionary – A dictionary. Free and easy to use.

OpenTable – I think I’ve used this three times — so pretty rare. But Opentable is a handy service if you’re going out and like to plan ahead. Plus it is free.

Wikihood – This ought to be useful. I’ve tried to use it a couple of times and never really found it to tell me anything that I really needed to know. But it should so I’ll keep trying.

Urbanspoon – This was a hot program for the iPhone. And it is a neat program for the iPad, but I’m just not really sure I could ever bring myself to randomly select restaurants in this way. It’s a cute concept though.

Free Wi-Fi – Not sure why I have this application — my iPad has unlimited 3G. But it was free and doesn’t take up much room, and maybe someday I’ll be glad that I have it if I’m in a cave and lose my cell signal.

Flixter – Movie information.

Ted – Educational, interesting short talks. It’s great that they put this stuff online.

FlightTrack – Neat program for tracking flights. Shows you where the flights are on a map, and tells you information about gates and takeoff/landing times.

Google Earth – Always fun to play with.

Wikipanion – I nice application to read Wikipedia with. I’ve tried some others but this is generally the easiest to use and most attractive. There is a “Plus” version that costs money, but I can’t seem to convince myself that the added features are necessary.

ToDo – Great Todo list manager. I’ve tried a few others, but this one is the easiest to use.

VLC – Video viewing application. This program lets you view videos without having to first convert them into iPad format, so it saves a lot of time.

Live Cams HD – Great for viewing traffic cameras. It doesn’t cost very much, but it is surprisingly useful (when you’re worried about traffic, or just want to see what’s happening on the other side of the planet)

RDP Lite – Useful for logging into remote computer systems if you need to check something. Not great for lots of long term work.

VNC Viewer – Allows me to work on my home computer (or at least access it) from anywhere in the world. Has a great easy to use interface, and it can handle multiple monitors (some other programs cannot). Also encrypted for high security.

SpeedtestX HD – OK program to measure the speed of my iPad’s internet connection. That’s pretty much all it does…

TimeronFire – It’s a countdown timer. With huge numbers. Occasionally very useful, definitely the best time application I’ve found.

GesturePlay – This is an OK application if you want to be able to control your music without having to look at the screen. Lets you use big gestures to move forward a song, backwards a song or change the volume. Requires that you keep the iPad on though so it isn’t perfect.

Dropbox – Amazing program that I use on my computer to back up all my stuff. But also good on my iPad so I can download and use any of the stuff.

Outliner – OK program for making outlines. I feel like it could be easier to use though, and I wish someone would come up with a really good, simple outlining program.

StumbleUpon – Great for randomly browsing the web within the context of topics that you find interesting. Plus it is free.

Numbers – For editing spreadsheets. I wouldn’t want to edit a lot of spreadsheets in this application, but for quick projects it can be handy.

Zillow – This was particularly useful when looking for homes. Especially when you’re driving around — you can just look up the houses as you are driving. And it shows you a number of houses that are for sale.  We used it to find our current house.

DirecTV – Allows me to program my DVR from my iPad. Wish they would make a real iPad app though — this is an iPhone app. It gets the job done.

Amazon Windowshop – What an amazing way to shop! It really does help me to find products I never would have thought of. Very easy to use too — almost too easy to make purchases. I guess that is the point.

Fuze Meeting – Great remote conferencing application that integrates very well with their web site. If you are looking for audio/webcast conferencing software, this is definitely a system you should consider. Easy to use, and very attractive and professional looking.

Kayak -For finding flights and making travle plans.

And of course the traditional Photos, iTunes, Calendar, Contacts and Safari!

I’ve been looking for a set of wireless headphones for a while, and it wasn’t really until recently that it seemed as if they were commonly available in a size and shape that was appropriate for exercise. I was on my treadmill using some traditional wireless headphones which worked OK for a while but weren’t really designed for running (even in place). The original JayBird Sportsband was in December just getting ready for shipping, so I put in my order and received my pair (the original SB1) right after the first of the year. The total cost was about $101.

The package for the Sportsband included the headset, a USB cable for recharging (you have to plug it into your computer or some kind of USB charger) and a six panel instruction sheet. While the instructions were short, it really didn’t take much time to get the headphones set up and and paired with both my iPod Touch and a small Sony Bluetooth transmitter which I had attached to my TV.

The controls on the Sportsband headphones are very simple — there aren’t a lot of them and the functionality they provide depends on the device you connect the Sportsband to. There is a power switch, up/down volume buttons and two additional buttons which (depending on the device) will move you to the previous or next track. I found that when connected to my computer I was able to use all five of the buttons — when connected to my iPod or (more recently) my iPad, only the volume controls work (that is to say, the previous/next track button doesn’t do anything).

The JayBird Sportsband is very small and light. It fits comfortably on my head. I should note that it is warrantied against damage caused by sweat, which can be important if you use it for exercise. I find that the Sportsband does a very good job holding a signal with any of the devices I’ve used it with. The sound quality is very good (at least to my ears) and there is no static or other improper sounds I had gotten used to hearing with non-Bluetooth headphone devices. Everything sounds good!

Speaking of other devices, I’ve also connected the JayBird Sportsband to my Blackberry (which also has a Bluetooth connection) with excellent results. The headphone also has a built in microphone, so even though I’ve never tried it, one would imagine that you could take it running and answer the phone if someone were to call (to switch from one device such as your iPod to another such as your phone you simply press the on/off button once. You can switch back by pushing it again).

I should say that a couple of weeks ago my original headphones (the original SB1) stopped working. I’m not entirely sure why, but the battery (which usually can last about 8 hours) refused to hold a charge. The warranty on the headphones is one year so I very easily requested an RMA, returned it, and got a brand new set of headphones back via FedEx within just a week or so. Not only that, but the company had upgraded my Sportsband SB1 to a brand new Sportsband SB2 which I’m just breaking in now (it comes with the same box contents, although the instructions are more detailed…plus they included two extra pairs of earphone padding foam — something my original SB1 did not come with).

.The new Sportsband SB2 comes in a variety of different colors. It also has the ability to integrate with your Bluetooth devices in such a way as to offer CD quality sound through something called apt-X. As far as I can tell some Bluetooth devices have this broadcast capability built in — for use with an iPad, iPod or iPhone my understanding is that you need to purchase a separate adapter. For myself, I’m fine with the sound quality that I currently get from the device.

As a six-month user of the Jaybird Sportsband, I report myself to be a satisfied customer. The product did exactly what it was supposed to do, and when I had an issue with the device they resolved it by sending me a new one with no questions asked. I gladly recommend it to anyone looking for durable Bluetooth headphones that are light, have strong battery life, and are great for exercise.

Learn more at the jaybirdgear.com web site.

Flipboard is fairly straightforward in terms of its purpose — it allows you to select from a variety of different sources of information (including your own Facebook and Twitter account) and have it displayed in a beautifully laid out, easy to read magazine format.

I’ve been a NewsRack user for some time now. And when Pulse was introduced I bought that as well. Both had their issues, and while I preferred the look and feel of the Pulse newsreader, it wasn’t as easy to quickly read through my feeds as it was to do with NewsRack — which, while it isn’t as pretty, made straightforward and what it sacrificed in prettiness it made up for in efficiency.

Flipboard isn’t necessarily the most efficient in terms of getting through a lot of different content, but once you start to use it you’ll find you don’t even care.

The app opens with the equivalent of a magazine cover. A moving magazine cover that shifts from one image to the next with the only consistency being the Flipboard logo and the word “<Flip>” in small letters on the right. And flip it is — to navigate to the table of contents, you simply drag your finger from left to right across the screen, which causes the page to turn to the table of contents.

On the Flipboard content page you have nine blocks for assigning content — two of the blocks are pre-assigned to Facebook and Twitter and the other seven are available for you to assign content.

Flipboard allows you to search for Twitter users and lists as a basis for your content, or you can choose content that has been preselected by the Flipboard editors. Some of the pre-defined categories include World News, Business, Finance, Design, Photos, as well as Sports, “Green” (environmental) and even The Onion. Think of it as selecting the sections of your own magazine.

When you’re done adding content, it is easy enough to read it by simply selecting a section and flipping to it. One of the near touches is that when you do flip to a section, you can see multiple pages turn.

All of the pages look like they have been laid out by hand. On some pages, articles and pictures will be split left and right; in other cases, a picture may cover the entire top of the page. Other pages of Flipboard will seamlessly mix pictures and content. All of it looks amazing.

If you tap on an article it will expand to fill the entire screen. Not usually the entire article — usually just the excerpt at the top, with retweets of the article located at the bottom of the page. At the very bottom of the page is the option to add your own retweet of the article, which makes the literally a social magazine — enjoyable to read, easy and enjoyable to pass on to your friends through your Twitter account. Each page then also makes it easy enough to read the full article content on the web (once you are in this “reading mode” you can also swipe across to simply go to the zoomed in version of the next article — a smart move, otherwise you’d have to do twice as much work to read all the way through the feed).

I can’t really think of anything to complain about Flipboard. Certainly, it isn’t as efficient for plowing through a lot of content, but it is much more enjoyable. It does appear to limit the number of “sections” you can add, but it also appears that you can combine multiple subjects into a section — so I think I have to learn more about how this works. Plus, I have kind of come to realize that many I don’t need to read so many different feeds?

Anyway, I strongly recommend Flipboard for iPad. It’s one of the best apps I’ve come across for the iPad, and it’s free.

Download Flipboard

I own a car that is long out of warranty and is frankly starting to wear out a little. I’m probably not the best owner in the world — it’s probably been two years since I brought my car in for a check-up, and the display panel has been gradually filling with more and more lights. But there aren’t a lot of BMW service options here in the Orlando, Florida and it seems like every time I bring my car to the BMW dealer for service they charge me an insane amount despite the fact that don’t seem to do very good work. In my mind, visiting the local BMW dealership for service has come to feel a little like going to the dentist and I was starting to think that maybe I just wasn’t the right type of person to own a BMW.

That was until I found Nelson Aviles and BMW Tech LLC.

Nelson doesn’t have a big garage with lots of BMW technicians. In fact, it isn’t even in it’s own building — it’s just one bay in a row of several bays and I had to struggle to find it when I first got there. The general location is easy enough to get to — right on Orange Blossom Trail across from the CostCo and perhaps half a mile south of the regular BMW dealership. I live in South Orlando, and it’s probably about as convenient a location as you are ever going to find. There is no big sign — you need to know the address, and even then you have to drive into the back to find it (it’s behind the Goodyear — although don’t drive into the Goodyear lot — go next door and you’ll see a bunch of businesses in the back. Nelson’s place is all the way at the end).

There is a small office next to the garage manned by just one woman who welcomed me and offered me a fresh donut from a full box of Krispy Kremes sitting on her desk. She had me fill out a quick form, and then went to get Nelson who was working in the adjacent garage. He offered me a donut too. We chatted for a few minutes, he told me about his background, and how he had started doing mobile work (going to people’s houses look at their cars) and then how his success had led him first to a location in Kissemmee and then to his current location. We talked about the various issues with my car and went outside to take a look. He was very friendly and very personable.

Nelson asked whether I planned to wait for the car to be ready or whether I intended to leave it. I told him that I had a ride and that I was ready to leave it (but points to Nelson for giving me the option!). I left my phone number and keys and waited to hear back.

Nelson called later in the day with the results of the diagnostic. He described several issues he had found with the car (mostly related to items I had told him about). He was very frank and straightforward about which items probably needed to be done right away (oil change, brake light replacement, and a couple of other items I don’t remember) but was also very clear about items which could wait. One of the issues with my car had been that there was a leak in the roof (it’s a convertible) right at the edge of the window — he told me what my options would be to fix it, but said he would see what he could do to adjust it so we could see if it fixed the problem without the need for the full part replacement.

For one item, he indicated that it might not even be broken — apparently the BMW dealership who had serviced my car most recently had overfilled the oil by about a quart and it might have been causing issues that were setting off sensors. He removed the oil and fixed the problem and said that rather than buying a new sensor now, we should wait a bit and see if fixing the oil level solved the problem.

The point of all this is that Nelson was very respectful my car, my time, and the fact that I didn’t have a million dollars to spend on a car that was almost a decade old. He gave me good, fair honest options and he wasn’t at all pushy. He even suggested items that could wait until my next visit. The total he quoted sounded fine, and I gave him the go-ahead to do the work.

He called me back a couple hours later. He had forgotten one of the items I had brought the item in for (actually, it was the main reason I brought the car in — the air conditioner fan had stopped working). He said that he felt terrible that he had forgotten to put it into the original estimate, and that he was just going to charge me for the park (without the labor!). I said that it wasn’t necessary but he insisted.

I should also point out that he did all of my various repairs in a day and that I was able to pick my car up the next morning. For those of you who think that is too long, keep in mind my various note that he had offered to do the work while I waited. I don’t know how long it would have taken, but as far as I was concerned the work was done as fast as I needed it to be done.

He said that the car would be done at 9am, and the car was definitely ready to go when I arrived to pick it up at 10:30am. I had to wait a few minutes for my bill to be organized, but that was OK — in the midst of it I learned that Nelson had actually charged me LESS than the original quote on one bit of labor and absolutely didn’t charge me labor for the item he said he wasn’t going to charge me for. I paid, I got my key, and was out of there.

One more thing — before I left, Nelson gave me another copy of his card. He told me that he was closed on Sundays and Mondays, but that if I ever had an issue with my BMW I should send him an e-mail — even if it was on a Sunday or Monday — and he would see what he could to do help.

I do not know how much I saved. I’m pretty sure it was a lot, and I felt very good about the money that I paid. I felt like I was treated honestly, respectfully, and I haven’t experienced such personal, friendly customer service from a car repair place in years — especially a BMW repair service. I will gladly bring my BMW to Nelson Aviles for repairs in the future, and I most wholeheartedly recommend him to anyone looking for BMW repairs in the Orlando area.

BMW Tech LLC is located in Orlando, Florida at 11245 South Orange Blossom Trail. Telephone number is 407-802-4920. The shop is operated by Nelson Aviles, a BMW Factory Trained Technician.

Qualtrics: (internet survey software) has a fantastic variety of question types with a really easy to use survey development system. Also features advanced survey branching capabilities including looping, random blocks of questions and more.

SurveyGizmo: (internet survey software) Also extremely easy to use survey package with a lot of features. Probably the most “Web 2.0″ survey system out their. Friendly, irreverant, with plenty of features for both the advanced user who wants to control every element of the survey experience and the analyst who just wants to get the project done. Has good e-mail invite capabilities, basic analysis tools. Plus, the free account has more features than any other “free” accounts I’ve seen.

SurveyZ: (internet survey software) This is the “light” version of Qualtrics, great for academic surveys. The survey development system isn’t anywhere near as pretty as the Qualtrics engine, but it offers a lot of advanced capabilities and question types. If you’re not doing a ton of surveys and you don’t want to spend a crazy amount of money, take a look at this package.

Digivey Survey Suite: (kiosk survey software) If you’re looking to do a survey in your store on a computer or kiosk, this software is absolutely for you. It is super easy to program, allows you to create really great looking surveys, and is fairly indestructable in the field (that is, respondents have a hard time breaking it). Great company too willing to work with you to make sure you have what you need. I’ve been a customer for quite a while now.

Techneos Entryware Software: (handheld survey software) If you’re trying to do surveys on handhelds, then I absolutely have to recommend Techneos Survey Software. I’ll admit I don’t love their pricing model, but I’m stuck because no handheld based survey platform offers as many features and is as easy to use — and as customizable — as the Techneos Entryware platform. I’ve been a customer of this group for over 5 years.

Detailed reviews of all these packages can be found on this site, including everything I liked and didn’t like about each of them. Many more reviews are coming shortly. Thanks for reading!

SPSS 17.0 new features will include:

• Various new algorithms, plus improved speed and performance with additional multithreaded procedures.
• New multiple imputation procedure in SPSS Missing Values that helps you more easily compelte datasets for more reliable analysis
• Updated syntax editor that makes it easier to create, test and correct syntax
• Improved integration with Microsoft Office
• New SPSS EZ RFM (Recency, Frequency, Monetary value) module to help analysts identify top customers and clients
• Ability to integrate third-party applications, procedures, and graphics packages created in R (through plug-ins)
• Enhanced administrative tools to improve IT configuration of software.

Also to be released is a new SPSS EZ RFM module, designed to help marketers use recency, frequency, and monetary value analysis to find their most valuable customers.

I’ll be the first to admit — I didn’t start using SPSS until version 11.5 so I’ve always had the menu-based, visual interface to work with. I can do some reptitive tasks in SPSS syntax, but most of what I do isn’t repetitive and the menus are much faster.

My objective for SPSS: clean up the data, weight it, and spit out attractive tables broken down by a variety of different market segments.

SPSS Tables makes it easy to do just that. Provided you have your variables set up properly, it is very easy to drag-and-drop all sorts of different crosstab scenarios, and just as easy to create a “banner” with multiple variables (some of the banners I’ve created have 12-15 different variables going across the top with over 50 columns).

The SPSS Tables Editor

The layout of the SPSS Tables editor is fairly straightforward. In the upper left corner is a list of all of your variables with little icons indicating whether they are nominal, ordinal, or scale. This is, in fact, one of the special places in SPSS where it actually makes a difference whether or not you take the trouble to identify each variable type. No worries though — if you want to produce results that are really only appropriate for nominal variables but your variable is set as “scale” you can right click on the variable and temporarily change it.

The lower left panel of the SPSS Tables dialog box (blank in the image shown above) shows you a preview of all of the different values of your categorical variables. You can’t do very much with them other than see them — which is why I tend to hide the “categories” area and use the entire space on the left side to list my variables (all you have to do is click on the space between the “variables” list and the “categories” list and drag down).

On the right is the main work panel, where you can see I’ve already dragged a couple of variables (level of education on top and geographic region on the left). Adding variables is as easy as grabbing them from the list over on the left and dropping them into the “Rows” bar or the “Columns” bar in the work area.

Now while this might sound very Microsoft Excel Pivot Table-like, SPSS Tables has a few extra tricks up its sleeve. For example, let’s say I want to add another variable. In Excel — and in SPSS Tables — I could do something like this:

Notice how I added “Gender” over on the left, and I now will be able to see all of the data for each level of education broken out by gender. I can also do this:

This time the variable is above the geographic indicator. Admittedly, these are both things that you could do in a pivot table. What makes SPSS Tables somewhat special is the ability to do the following:

In the example above, notice how I put the “Gender” variable next to the geographic indicator — in effect creating a banner. This can be very useful when you want, for example, want to quickly see a variable broken down by a variety of different market segments. And because SPSS Tables allows you to select and drag all of your column headers from the left side at once, building such tables go very quickly.

You aren’t limited to one variable going one way or another. You can also create relatively complicated tables to meet your needs. Consider the following:

 In the example  above, I have two variables on the left. I have the geographic indicator on top, but I now have the gender columns broken down by whether they are retired or not retired. Let’s see you do that in Microsoft Excel!

SPSS Tables also has something called a “compact” view to keep your work space from getting to confusing (it is also useful if you have a lot of boxes displayed, which can really slow down your computer).

Incidentally, if you want you can filter in a way equivalent to the “Page” capabilities in the Excel Pivot table by pushing the “Layers” button in the upper right corner of the screen. This will allow you to show (for example) on the results of female respondents in your table. Tables created this way are dynamic — you can switch between the different “layers” in the output screen.

Once you’ve set up your rows and columns, you have several options regarding the types of statistics you want shown. Using the “Summary Statistics” button you can show counts, unweighted counts, row percentages, column percentages, whole table-based percentages, etc, etc. You can display only one statistic per row/column combo or you can display multiple statistics (you might want to show both the count and the column percentage). You can also do the same thing for the totals and subtotals.

This display of categories and subcategories — as well as variables values that you would like to exclude — can be controlled from the “Categories and Totals” page. Here you can also tell SPSS Tables what order to put the variables.

SPSS Tables can also do statistical testing: it can test for independence (Chi-square); compare column means (t-tests); aond compare column proportions (z-test). Results are displayed in relevant tables below your main table. SPSS Tables also has options which allow you to income what should be done with cells that contain missing values.

You have a lot of control over the look and feel of the output using TableLooks. SPSS Tables uses the TableLook you select in the SPSS Options dialog box. Shown above is the TableLook called “CompactAcademic Times Roman” which is my personal favorite. But you do have more than a dozen different formats to choose from.

Tables created by SPSS Tables can be copied and pasted right into Powerpoint or Excel. Tables pasted into Powerpoint appear as graphics, while tables pasted into Excel enter as data fields (without formatting, which can be very helpful).

Incidentally, if you’re one of those people who do like to have syntax for everything you do, you can use the “Paste” button to paste the code needed to generate your table into the SPSS Syntax Editor.

I use SPSS Tables a lot — it is, as I mentioned above, my favorite SPSS add-on module and definitely the one I use the most. But alas — such great functionality comes with a price. SPSS Tables is available for purchase (Windows, Mac or Linux) for $949 on top of the $1,699 that you’ll already have to pay for SPSS Base 16.0 (because SPSS Tables is an add-on you will only be able to use it if you have SPSS Base). Maintenance will cost you an additional $237 a year. It appears that some web sites offer it for as little as $510 for students.

But it is extremely useful, and it will save you a lot of time. If you don’t have SPSS Base, you might want to consider SPSS Desktop Reporter, which contains many of the same features (although I have to admit, Desktop Reporter can be extremely difficult and frustrating to use if you don’t have SPSS Base to edit your data).

• SPSS Tables home page
• SPSS Tables 16.0 at the SPSS Online Store
• SPSS Tables online demo
• $510 student edition of SPSS Tables at JourneyEd
• SPSS Tables instruction manual

Let’s start at the beginning: the survey design interface. Beginning a new survey is as easy as selecting “Create Survey” from the main screen. You can either start with a blank survey, use one of the nine templates that are available (not a very big selection actually…and they’re pretty simple too), or you can copy one of your existing surveys (SurveyGizmo allows you to create an unlimited number of surveys, even if you’re using the free account).

SurveyGizmo’s survey development environment is clean, easy to navigate, and doesn’t require any training or instruction. For example, consider the blank questionnaire I’ve started above — the page even includes a green arrow telling me exactly what I need to click in order to add my first question. The entire interface is like that.

SurveyGizmo has a number of question types — and as far as I can tell new ones are regularly added. It of course includes all of the traditional questions such as single choice radio buttons, multi-choice checkboxes, drop down menus, text boxes and essays,but it also includes some really fancy question types that I’ve never seen anywhere else. For example, SurveyGizmo offers a star ranking table question (see below) that makes it easy and fun for respondents to rate items. It offers image-based single selection question (and makes them easy to implement). It allows for tables/matrixes of radio buttons, drop down menus and checkboxes and also supports a fairly friendly continuous sum and ranking question. SurveyGizmo also supports custom matrixes (table questions that allow for multiple question types in each row) and custom question “groups”, as well as file uploads — but these three features are only available to paying customers.

SurveyGizmo gives you a number of “advanced” option for each question type without making the process intimidating — thereby ensuring that you’ll have an easy time creating your survey but still have the ability to make it do exactly what you want. For example, I created a simple single-selection radio button question with three options. After I finished entering the basic question, I could then easily change the type of answers (checkbox, radio button or dropdown menus); change the orientation of the answers; set a default value; change the number of columns; randomize the options; indicate whether I wanted the question randomized on the page; hide the question based on criteria; number or not number the question; etc. I could also add a custom CSS class name. That’s a lot of options!

For text questions, validation is available to ensure that the responses fits a certain criteria. It is extremely flexible, and is based on regular expressions (or you can choose an option from the drop down list). It is very easy at any point to mark a question as required or not required. If you indicate that a question is a date, it will pull up a calendar when the respondent clicks on it — if you indicate that the field is an e-mail address, the system will do validate that the e-mail address is valid — not just by checking the format, but by contacting the respondent’s e-mail server to make sure it exists. Numeric fields can be automatically formatted as percentages, currency, or whole numbers (it won’t let the respondent enter decimals).

SurveyGizmo’s development environment is entirely AJAX based, which means that when you click a button or make a change you don’t have to wait for a postback — the change takes place immediately. Not a lot of survey packages offer this and it will greatly speed up your survey programming. Surveys can be previewed at any time.

It is very easy to add images or multimedia to your survey — however, only paid accounts are allowed to upload media for storage on the server, so if you’re using the free account you’re going to have to store your images on an account on a different system. Hard to complain though since it’s free…

SurveyGizmo allows branching, skipping and piping. Skipping can either be managed through a simple drop down box (show this question when some other question equals some value) or using advanced rules which have to be manually entered. Piping can be used to add responses to other questions to either the question text or the response area.

In addition to questions, SurveyGizmo allows for “Actions” to be inserted between questions. Some of these actions are about as advanced as any I’ve ever seen in a survey software package and allow you to do random branching, send mobile messages, allow for subscribers to log in, retrieve web content and send e-mails. Most of the actions are available only in the “Pro” version and the “Enterprise” version, but I think it is fair to say that many of the features available in SurveyGizmo aren’t even available in many of the paid packages I’ve tried.

SurveyGizmo allows you to choose from around 20 different “themes” which let you control the color scheme and the general look and feel of your survey. You can have your questions appear in whatever font you choose, and you can add your logo to the top — even for the free surveys. If that’s not enough customization for you, SurveyGizmo gives you direct access to the survey page’s underlying HTML template and the CSS file used to control how your page looks. Most survey packages make it difficult to get this level of control…

If you sign up for an account, you also get access to response quotas, auto-close on date, vote protection (de-duping), forward-only surveys, URL variable patterns, and IP-based geotracking. With the Enterprise version you can also eliminate the “powered by” icon that appears on the page.

Launching your survey is very easy and the system lets you go back and edit it at any time. Every survey has it’s own custom URL, and you have the option of creating your own custom survey URL as well. Surveys can easily be embedded into your web site and all of the code is provided for you. Special code is provided so that you can embed the entire first page of your survey into a MySpace page, an e-mail blast, or just into a page on your web site.

SurveyGizmo will send out survey invitations for Personal, Por and Enterpise accounts (not for free accounts). Upload a list, and the software makes it fairly easy to track who has taken your survey. You can also send out followup invitations.

Data can be exported in either text format or as a CSV file (no SPSS option except in the Enterprise version). One neat feature is that all data is saved on their server until you delete it (not automatically deleted after a certain period). SurveyGizmo offers an external database sync which allows you to send/receive information to outside websites and databases.

Reporting is extremely flexible — you can create multiple reports for each survey including charts, graphs and crosstabs. All account types can filter reports by date range, although only paid accounts can filder data by responses.

SurveyGizmo Pro and Enterprise allow for multiple user accounts (5 accounts for Pro, 20 accounts for Enterprise). Permissions can be user based, and team-based permissions (where groups of users can be partitioned) is also available. Surveys can also be secured to ensure privacy, although media (such as videos and pictures) cannot be secured using the software.

SurveyGizmo offers a variety of tutorials (some of them as videos) on how to use the software, ranging from how to create a new survey to personalizing your survey to details on some of the more unique advanced features. In addition, SurveyGizmo has a very active support forum with over 2000 posts one of which is dedicated to new feature requests.

SurveyGizmo is available is four flavors: “Free,” which gives you access to all of the basic features, the ability to create an unlimited number of surveys but only allows you to collect 250 responses a month; “Personal” which costs $19 and offers 1,000 responses a month plus some of the more advanced features; “Pro” which comes iwth 5,000 responses a month and “Enterprise” which comes with up to 50,000 responses a month (that’s a lot of responses).

I really like SurveyGizmo. I like the clean interface, the variety of features and the fact that it appears that they are constantly updating it with new capabilities. I can say with a great deal of confidence that I will be using this survey package for my own future projects and may even consider the enterprise version for larger applications. Certainly, if you’re doing a simple project for school or for your internal organization, I would recommend the free version of SurveyGizmo over either SurveyMonkey or any of the other free applications out there.

• SurveyGizmo

For those who don’t know, Confirmit is one of the most prominent online survey software packages. It is used by a number of market research agencies and allows for pretty complicated, interesting surveys. Frankly, I would probably use Confirmit if I could except for the fact that the price tag is higher than I want/need/can afford to spend.

Points to Confirmit for making part of their new release about improving the user experience: some of the new features include a new hierarchy selector (which could be used, say, to let you pick a state and then narrow it down to the city); a new slider for entering numbers (not the first time such a feature has been implemented in a survey software package both GMI and Vovici offer sliders too) which could be fun for scale-type questions; a card sort feature, which allows the respondent to drag and drop responses into different piles. Two improvements I especially like are the "highlight required grid input field" which can be used to show the user precisely which answer they forgot to fill in and the AJAX dynamic content, which makes it possible for other questions to appear or disappear on the page depending on the results of other questions on the same page (without a page refresh).

Confirmit 12 also allows for different images to appear in answers depending on the state of the response. Simply put, this means that you can have one image shown when the answer is not selected (such as an empty check box) and replace it with a different image when the image is selected (such as a checked check box).

Confirmit 12 has new security features as well, although to my untrained eye they don’t seem all that exciting. That is, they’re not so much about protecting the data as much as they are about encrypting the information that is shown to the respondent (so they can’t figure out your secret methodologies). Confirmit 12 does make it possible to set an option that requires the survey to be conducted over a secure, encrypted connection.

Confirmit adds new survey development features, including additional information within the context of the project overview, the ability to increase the size of text box text, and an easier to use URL setup page. The scripting editor also includes a code completion feature similar to what you might find in Visual Studio or Flash. This feature makes it easier to write code by suggesting functions, methods, and properties that are context appropriate.

On the back-end, Confirmit 12 includes a new data processing engine which adds new data import features, data cleaning, recoding and merging features, and new data exports.

Confirmit Express, the simpler version of the survey system, also includes a variety of new features such as a new user administration interface, MS Word export and the ability to quickly and easily test surveys.

For a full list of new features, see the Confirmit web site.

• Confirmit 12 new feature list
• Confirmit 12 web site

However, if you’re on a Windows PC and are used to using a version of SPSS that is fully integrated into the Windows operating system, then the new version is a little jarring — and perhaps even a little annoying.

All of the same functionality is there as before — SPSS gets credit for that one. They must have put a lot of work into recreating every function in Java for SPSS 16. Most of the dialog boxes even look similar. All of the menus now have spiffy little icons which I’m sure will be helpful when it comes to quickly locating the option that you’re looking for.

Furthermore, all of SPSS 16 dialog boxes are resizable. All of them. Sometimes the way in which it resizes makes more sense than others, but it is especially handly to be able to resize some of the smaller dialog boxes where it was hard to see what you were doing.

Buy as a Windows user who is used to all of the Windows controls — you know, all of the standard drop down fields and the standard buttons, and the standard checkboxes — the switch to Java is a little wierd. Things in SPSS 16.0 don’t have the same feel as they used to. Things feel a little sluggish. Everything feels a bit like one of those online calculators or games that are written in Java.

But like I said before, everything seems to work. All of the buttons are in the same place they used to be. And if it speeds up the development time for new features — if it makes it possible for SPSS to meet my needs better in the future — then I’m willing to give it a shot and hope that I get used to what feels like a step backwards.

The jury is still out.