Here are a few of my observations and thoughts:

• Don’t make it too obvious your cover letter is a form letter. If you are going to use a standard cover letter where you describe why you are uniquely qualified for my specific position, take the trouble to ensure that it is all in the same font, in the same point size. While I won’t write you off for using a form letter (if you’re applying for multiple jobs it is probably a necessity), but making it unnecessarily obvious just shows a lack of attention to detail.
• If I ask for optional writing samples, provide them. Sure, if your resume impresses me I will go ahead and ask you to send them. But you’re making it harder on me. And I should point out that when someone does include writing samples I look at them before I look at the resume. During my recent review there are honestly several resumes I wouldn’t have bothered to follow up on if I hadn’t had a chance to see their writing.
• If part of your portfolio is a website or blog, make sure it looks good. Even if your writing is fine, if your web site looks like something out of 2002 (with 2002 sensibilities) it will not help your candidacy.
• Don’t make it hard for me to find your articles. I love web portfolios, but if I’m hiring for a particular type of work, don’t make me have to search for it. Your best bet is to send me links to the pages that you think capture your ability to perform the work I am (potentially) hiring you to do.
• Have a meaningful resume objective or don’t have one at all. ”To achieve a position with your company” is not a career objective I will respond positively to. Bare in mind that an objective is not required.

Consider the following examples:

This doesn’t have to happen! By following a few basic guidelines, it is possible to have your company logo look great whether as a profile picture, an interest icon or a wall posting thumbnail.

A Few Important Facebook Image Dimensions

While it is true that you can upload just about any graphic or image you like to Facebook, it never hurts to consider the size at which your logo will appear when it displays as a profile picture, interest icon or wall post thumbnail.

It would be great if it were possible to upload images in all of these sizes. so that every presentation of your logo and your brand on Facebook was clean and perfect. However, you really only get to upload one image — the profile picture image — and then the system automatically creates thumbnails as needed. Which means that when you upload your logo you need to think about how it will appear in all sizes.

The Facebook Thumbnail Safe Area

To prevent your logo from getting cut off, you need to leave an appropriate border around the edges. Through trial and error, the folks at Mashable found that in order to avoid having your logo cut off on Facebook when reduced to a thumbnail you need to leave a “border” of about 6% on each side of the image. In other words, if your image is 200 pixels wide, you should leave a 12 pixel border on each side of your logo to ensure that it isn’t cut off. See the following example provided by Mashable:

Facebook Thumbnail Logo Safe Area from Mashable.com

Consider the following examples, which illustrate how some companies successfully uploaded logos to Facebook which look good in the comments:

Note the purple discoloration around the Reese’s logo. This appears to be caused by the way that Facebook compresses the images after they are uploaded. To prevent this from happening the best approach I’ve found is to use a slightly off-white color — perhaps a very, very light gray. If you just leave the background white — no matter what image format you upload — you are always going to get these artifacts.

McDonald’s takes a slightly different approach to the border: instead of surrounding their logo with white, they continue their red logo all the way around. If you look closely you can also see that the top is slightly lighter than the bottom, giving a very subtle iPhone button like appearance to the wall thumbnail.

See how the Pringles logo goes right to the very top of the Facebook image/logo safe area. While this might not have been so attractive is the background were a different color, it works just fine here because the background is white and it has the impact of allowing the logo to butt right up against the top of the wall postings. One other thing that Pringles does that is interest on their wall posting is use a red board around the entire image — my impression is that this helps with the quality of the image AND it compensates for the color of the background:

How Tall Should Your Profile Picture Be?

Facebook allows your corner image to be up to 600 pixels tall, but you will want to be thoughtful about how you use that space and you should spend a little time testing different versions to ensure that when your logo is shrunk down to a thumbnail it is shown and full and not cut off.

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!

Update: It turns out that SurveyGizmo already offers email validation lookup. This means that when you do a survey on their system and validate it using their software, it will check to make sure that the server exists! See their blog posting for details.

Zip Code Validation

There are about 42,000 zip codes in the United States. In Canada there are over 800,000 unique postal codes, although for most purposes (at least, for most survey purposes I’ve ever heard of) the first three characters (the “FSA”) is more than enough and there are only about 1,500 of those. It wouldn’t be hard for a survey software to offer a feature that validates postal codes as they were entered. Which is to say that with a database of less than 45,000 records it would be fairly easy for to automatically validate zip codes as they were entered.

Any why just validate? I can only imagine that a lot of clients would appreciate the option of knowing the city, state, census region, and even latitude and longitude of the people who take their survey based on the zip codes that they enter. All this information is inexpensively available at places like zipcodedownload.com and can be easily integrated into online applications.

E-Mail Address Validation

Real-time e-mail address validation is even easier because it doesn’t require a database. While a lot of survey systems (but again, not all) offer syntax validation, what is much more useful is real-time e-mail address validation where the system uses a component to contact the the respondent’s e-mail server to verify (a) that there is a server there (dns lookup); (b) that it is a mail server (mx record lookup); (c) that it can accept e-mail (smtp server validation); and (d) that the user has an e-mail address on that system.

All of these things are very easy and very fast to do (the deeper you get into it, the longer it can take — for example, verifying that an account exists on a server can take 30 seconds if the system even gives a reply — which is why I usually only go to the level of testing whether there is an active smtp server). Plus it almost guarantees that the e-mail address that ends up in the data base is a valid, working e-mail address.

For example, whenever someone starts one of my surveys I have them first enter their e-mail address — this is so that I can later award them a prize in whatever sweepstakes I have going on at the time. Since it would be troublesome for everyone if the e-mail address they give us doesn’t work, before I start the survey I first validate their e-mail address using a component called aspNetMX. If the e-mail address is valid (or at least links to a valid e-mail server) then I start the survey. If not, I have them re-enter their address until they get it right. You’d be amazed how many people will mistype an e-mail address over and over again (I keep a log of the errors so I can make sure it is working properly, and the errors usually are really respondent errors).

Once again, it would be a great feature to the client (and something you could promote as a feature of your software) if you offered real validation whenever possible which helps the client have better, cleaner data.

• General Linear Mixed Models (part of the Advanced Statistics Add-On) allow you to “create more accurate models for predicting non-linear outcomes based on hierarchical/nested data or data that includes repeated measures.”
• Faster Performance: Supposed to offer faster compiled transformations in SPSS Statistics server, as well as faster pivot table generation in SPSS Statistics Base (which is a good thing — tables in SPSS 16+ seemed to take a lot longer than they did in SPSS 15).
• Statistics Web Portal: Another feature for those of you using the SPSS Statistics Server lets you allow clients to do their own ad-hoc queries and analysis via a web interface. Also requires SPSS Collaboration and Deployment Services.
• Automated Linear Models: This should be fairly interesting. It allows you to build “powerful linear models in an easy, automated way in SPSS Statistics Base and in the SPSS Statistics Server.” It promises “automated data preparation to get data ready for analysis in a single step; techniques to improve model stability and accuracy; support for categorical predictors; more variable selection methods; interactive visualizations.”
• Syntax Editor Improvements: Apparently more than a dozen performance and ease-of-use enhancements in the syntax editor.
• Default Measurement Level: Allows you to automatically set your measurement level. The software automatically looks at the data when you open the file and decides what type of measurement level is best. Not that this took a lot of time, but every little time saver helps I suppose.
• New Direct Marketing Capabilities include an improved interface; a scoring wizard; better, smarter output; integration with Salesforce.com.
• IBM SPSS Collaboration and Deployment Services: New software to let you share and re-use data sets, secure them, and make them easier to use across the company.

There are lots of information and documentation available for SPSS 19. Read “IBM SPSS Statistics: What’s New” for detailed descriptions of the new features or you can download a free 14-day trial of IBM SPSS Statistics 19 from the SPSS web site. All of the user manuals for IBM SPSS Statistics 19 are also available online, including plug-ins, tools, command syntax reference, and guides to each of the modules.

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.

Note: IBM/SPSS has announced the features of SPSS Statistics 19.

Of course I understand that the development costs are lower when you write only one version of the software that runs on PCs, Macs and Linux systems (although it doesn’t seem like the price is lower). I also imagine it makes it easier to do certain kinds of integrations with other languages (although I don’t know which ones). And maybe academia has embraced Java and prefers the Java interface for SPSS. And I do appreciate that SPSS has made every effort to try to make the Java interface as friendly and as similar to what I’m used to seeing as possible.

But it isn’t enough. SPSS versions 16-18 do not have the same look and feel as all of the other programs I work with on my PC every day. SPSS is more sluggish, the spacing of the fonts look weird, and whenever I try to copy and paste data from SPSS to Excel (which I do hundreds of times a day) it takes five or six times as long because I have to unformat the data that has been transferred.

This isn’t the first time I’ve had this rant. It happens every year or so when I say, “Ok — I’m going to give this next version of SPSS a try.” I put away my half-broken-under-Windows-7 version of SPSS 15, load up SPSS 18 (despite the fact that I never upgrade, we keep buying updated licenses) and give it a try — only to slink back to SPSS 15 once I’ve had my fill of frustrating, non-value added experiences.

With that said, there are a couple of things IBM/SPSS could do to make me finally make the switch to SPSS Statistics 19.0 when it is released.

Better Variable Organization Tools (Folders)

I’ve asked about this before, and I’ll keep asking! Many of my data sets have hundreds of variables (multi-response questions can do that to you). Life would be so much easier if it were possible to organize these variables into folders. Folders that could be closed so that variables that I’m done with can be hidden.

The ability to color code variable variables would also be extremely helpful. Even better — let me add folders that I can color code.

This is much more preferable to what I have to do now, which is create “fake” variables with repeating x’s (“xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx”) in order to make it visually easy to identify different sections of variables. And what kind of solution is that?

Another useful capability I’d love to see in SPSS 19 would be the ability to have “aliases” of variables. There are times when I like to keep a copy of a variable with several different groups of variables (for example, if I’m doing segment analysis). Instead of having to pull the variable out of it’s “natural group” of variables, it would be nice to be able to easily create an alias which I could then store with the other variables.

Cleaner Cut/Paste Options

I would switch to SPSS right now if it were possible to copy tables and paste them into Excel without all of the Tablelook formatting. I know someone must have thought it would be a feature to copy the formatting along with the data. This might even make sense if you were copying the data into Word or Powerpoint. However, there is no reason I can think of as to why I would want to copy all of that formatting from SPSS into Microsoft Excel. It is absolutely a nuisance. I would much prefer if IBM SPSS Statistics 19 gave me a choice (perhaps somewhere in the options) to be able to copy data without any formatting — much like it used to do in SPSS 15.

Pre-Defined Banners in Custom Tables

I won’t say that I need this feature, but when I’m working with SPSS Custom Tables it sure would be useful to be able to pre-define sets of variables that I could easily drag to the top of my table in a group — without having to hunt them down in the list of variables one at a time.

I realize my requests are pretty much focused on my work-flow and how I will/would use IBM SPSS Statistics 19, but I can’t imagine I’m the only one with these issues. And please, IBM, if you really want to make me smile go the extra mile and bring back the OS-specific versions of SPSS!

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

For example, when I enter my name it tells me that there are 1,459,093 people with the first name of “Mark.” And there are 303 people with the last name of “Kupferman.” When it puts the two together, it turns out that there is only one Mark Kupferman in all of the United States.

The site also features some interesting stats about the most popular last names (Smith, Johnson, and Williams); the most common boy names (James, John, and Robert); the most common girl names (Mary, Patricia, and Linda) as well as an interesting list of the most searched famous people (Harry Potter, George Bush, and James Bond). Incidentally, there are a total of 102 people in the US with the name “Harry Potter.”

The Attributes

For my CBC study I had a total of eight attributes. Seven of them were binary product features (either the feature was included or it wasn’t), and the ninth was the price level. The structure basically looked something like this:

Feature 1 (Included or Not Includes)
Feature 2 (Included or Not Includes)
Feature 3 (Included or Not Includes)
Feature 4 (Included or Not Includes)
Feature 5 (Included or Not Includes)
Feature 6 (Included or Not Includes)
Feature 7 (Included or Not Includes)
Price Level (L1,L2,L3,L4,L5)

What was tricky here is that I wanted to be able to display different ranges of prices depending on how many different Features were included. That is, products that only included one feature would be tested at five specific price points, while products that included three of the features (doesn’t matter which ones) would be tested at a different set of price points.

Think of it as if I had an ice-cream store and that I had seven different flavors of ice cream for you to choose from. You could have anywhere from one scoop to seven scoops, and your pricing would be determined based on the number of scoops of ice cream you buy — not by which flavors you choose.

If we were talking about just three different features (or three different flavors of ice cream) it would be easy enough to use the internal conditional display functionality (three features plus a price level variable = four attributes). I would simply calculate all of the prices for each combination of variables and hard code them into the conditional relationship tool. However, since I needed to be able to include eight different variables in the mix, I needed to go another route.

One possibility was to combine some of my binary attributes. So instead of giving each of the seven features its own attribute, I could combine four of the attributes into one “mega attribute” which included every possible combination of the four features, like this:

So what I’ve done above is take four of the Features (F1-F4) and infused them into one attribute with 16 different levels. I’ve then taken the other three features (F5-F7) and infused them into a second attribute with 8 levels. The remaining attribute (price level) goes into the third attribute, and it is then fairly easy to combine the three variables using the built in conditional pricing tool.

However, this solution didn’t seem particularly elegant, and not being a mathematical genius I couldn’t say whether doing this would really achieve what I was try to accomplish. I really wanted to leave each product feature as its own attribute, so I had to come up with another way to calculate the prices on the fly without being able to use the built in tool.

The Javascript Method

The solution I came up with basically involved using the Free Format question type to stuff the value of each attribute (in each scenario) into Javascript variables, which I could then do math with to set the appropriate price level based on the number of features which were included.

Setting up the Attributes. I started by setting the display levels of each of my attributes to something that Javascript could easily work with — in this case, 1s (for when the feature was included) and 0s (when the feature was not included. That made it easy to determine the total number of features that were included by simply adding up the values that SSI Web inserted into the web page. I did something similar with my pricing variable — instead of putting in something like “Level 1″ or “Level 2″ I just put the numbers 1,2,3,4,5 (for each of my five levels.

Setting up the Free Format Questions. I then inserted Free Format questions for each question in the “Write Questionnaire” section (see the SSI Web documentation for a detailed explanation of how this works).

<SCRIPT LANGUAGE="JavaScript">
function col1F1()       {return '[%CBCDesignLevelText(CBCRAN1,1,1)%]';}
function col1F2()       {return '[%CBCDesignLevelText(CBCRAN1,1,2)%]';}
function col1F3()       {return '[%CBCDesignLevelText(CBCRAN1,1,3)%]';}
function col1F4()       {return '[%CBCDesignLevelText(CBCRAN1,1,4)%]';}
function col1F5()       {return '[%CBCDesignLevelText(CBCRAN1,1,5)%]';}
function col1F6()       {return '[%CBCDesignLevelText(CBCRAN1,1,6)%]';}
function col1F7()       {return '[%CBCDesignLevelText(CBCRAN1,1,7)%]';}
function col1Level()    {return '[%CBCDesignLevelText(CBCRAN1,1,8)%]';}

function col2F1()       {return '[%CBCDesignLevelText(CBCRAN1,2,1)%]';}
function col2F2()       {return '[%CBCDesignLevelText(CBCRAN1,2,2)%]';}
function col2F3()       {return '[%CBCDesignLevelText(CBCRAN1,2,3)%]';}
function col2F4()       {return '[%CBCDesignLevelText(CBCRAN1,2,4)%]';}
function col2F5()       {return '[%CBCDesignLevelText(CBCRAN1,2,5)%]';}
function col2F6()       {return '[%CBCDesignLevelText(CBCRAN1,2,6)%]';}
function col2F7()       {return '[%CBCDesignLevelText(CBCRAN1,2,7)%]';}
function col2Level()    {return '[%CBCDesignLevelText(CBCRAN1,2,8)%]';}

function col3F1()       {return '[%CBCDesignLevelText(CBCRAN1,3,1)%]';}
function col3F2()       {return '[%CBCDesignLevelText(CBCRAN1,3,2)%]';}
function col3F3()       {return '[%CBCDesignLevelText(CBCRAN1,3,3)%]';}
function col3F4()       {return '[%CBCDesignLevelText(CBCRAN1,3,4)%]';}
function col3F5()       {return '[%CBCDesignLevelText(CBCRAN1,3,5)%]';}
function col3F6()       {return '[%CBCDesignLevelText(CBCRAN1,3,6)%]';}
function col3F7()       {return '[%CBCDesignLevelText(CBCRAN1,3,7)%]';}
function col3Level()    {return '[%CBCDesignLevelText(CBCRAN1,3,8)%]';}
</SCRIPT>

I know…I absolutely could have used an array for these variable names and probably saved myself some coding down the line. However, for various reasons relating to other projects this was the easiest and fastest way to capture each of the values.

Now that I had an easy way to access each of the features (for example, I could find out whether Feature #1 was included in the middle scenario by checking the contents of variable col1F1()) I needed some functions to do the math for me.

To find out how many features were included in the scenario, I created a function to add them up:

function CountFeatures(F1,F2,F3,F4,F5,F6,F7) {
var v = Number(F1) + Number(F2) + Number(F3) + Number(F4) + Number(F5) +
        Number(F6) + Number(F6);
return v; }

Note that in the function above, the functions shown in the previous section of code would be pushed into this function, depending on which scenario I was working with.

Once I knew how many features, it was easy enough to return a price using a function like this (in which I pushed in the number of features and the price level):

function lookupprice(pcount, level) {
var lookupval = pcount + '-' + level;
switch(lookupval) {
case '1-1' : return 10;
case '1-2' : return 12;
case '1-3' : return 14;
case '1-4' : return 15;
case '1-5' : return 17;
case '2-1' : return 13;
case '2-2' : return 14;
case '2-3' : return 116;
case '2-4' : return 137;
case '2-5' : return 159;
case '3-1' : return 110;
case '3-2' : return 142;
case '3-3' : return 175;
case '3-4' : return 107;
case '3-5' : return 139;
case '4-1' : return 155;
case '4-2' : return 100;
case '4-3' : return 146;
case '4-4' : return 191;
case '4-5' : return 137;
case '5-1' : return 191;
case '5-2' : return 147;
case '5-3' : return 103;
case '5-4' : return 159;
case '5-5' : return 115;
case '6-1' : return 126;
case '6-2' : return 193;
case '6-3' : return 159;
case '6-4' : return 126;
case '6-5' : return 192;
case '7-1' : return 162;
case '7-2' : return 139;
case '7-3' : return 116;
case '7-4' : return 193;
case '7-5' : return 170;}}

The value returned could then be formatted as money and inserted into the scenario.

This is the basic outline of how I got my project to work — obviously it leaves out several details, such as how to get it onto the page, how to display each of the included features (you do, after all, have to show them which features are included!) but it makes for a fair starting point. If you have specific questions send me a note.