Juixe Techknow

I use Google Documents to manage drafts of blog posts, to keep track of house hold finances, and even to manage an invite list to gatherings at my house. You can do a lot with nothing more than Google Docs. Recently I had to help a friend create a small informal survey to use with her clients and we choose Google Docs from her Google Apps for Domain account. In this article, I’ll go through the motions of creating and using a simple form in Google Docs which can be used in polls, surveys, or questionnaires.

Create New Form in Google Docs

Log into you Google Docs account and create a new Form document. Creating a new Form document takes you to the Form builder which allows you to enter a title and description for your form and any number of questions. For each question, be sure to enter the question itself, any short description to describe the question further, and the question type. There are several question types, most common are the text, multiple choice, checkbox, list, and scale. You can use the text question type for things like persons name, addresses, city, etc. The multiple choice question type is also known as the radio button, meaning that out of several choices you can only select one. The checkbox allows you to check multiple choices at the same time. The scale question type can be use to identify a range between 1 and 5 of how much a person liked the product or service being asked about.

Google Docs Form Editor

Once you filled out your form, you can choose a theme. As of this writing there are over 90 themes available, from plain to whimsical. With the form done you can email the form, make it public, or embeddable in a blog or website. If you reopen the form, you will be presented with the spreasheet view of the form. The form data is saved in the spreadsheet, to view or edit the form again, click Form | Edit Form under the main menu.

Google Docs Form Sharing Settings

You can have three basic sharing options. You can make the form public to everyone in the web, or available to only those that have a link for it, or those you explicitly grant access to.

If you run a small business or a large family, you can use Google Docs to create forms for surveys, polls, questionnaires, or even a small customer relationship management system.

If I’ve had a dollar for every time someone come to me with a half baked business idea, that wouldn’t make for a good business plan but I would have enough for a latte. Everybody at some point has had a great idea about a new business or product, but very few people do anything about it beyond telling a friend. I’ve had way to many friends and family come to me telling me about how if we can get into such and such market and sell such and such product we could make such and such amount of money. It’s almost funny to see people like this just make up numbers up how much money we would make. Every time I hear someone make up a number, I ask for for simple spreadsheet with some basic formulas that describes the business case model. To understand the business risk, you need to understand the cost and benefit of the business.

Let’s imagine we are thinking of getting into the online t-shirt business, we can use a spreadsheet to calculate the estimated costs of running the business to profitability before even getting started. If you are thinking of selling t-shirts online its good to track the base cost per shirt, the markup per shirt, shipping costs, the monthly operating cost. Having these figures you can calculate the total price of the shirt (base cost + markup + shipping) to for each item and how many shirts you would need to sell to cover your operating costs. If your business plan is simple, such as this, the minimum you can do is create a spreadsheet to describe it and model your business.

You can use Microsoft Excel or with spreadsheet document in Google Docs. I’ll be using Google Docs but the following would also work in Excel. In Google Docs create a new spreadsheet. In the new spreadsheet add a header for each variable you would like to track, such as base cost, markup, shipping, operating cost, expected sales, and expected gross profit.

Let’s say that it costs $10 for the each shirt, and we would like to make $4 off of each shirt sold, and that on average it costs $3 to ship, we can easily calculate what our recommended sale price of each shirt is by adding all of this together. To add it all together in the Cost/Item cell, type into the cell and enter the equal (=) symbol. This would allow tell the spreadsheet that this cell will be a formula. You can add two values from two different cells by the something like the following = A2 + B2 + C2. The formula will add the value at A2 with that of B2 and C2 and put the computed value in the cell with the formula.

Using Formula on Google Docs Spreadsheet

If we expect to sale 50 items at this price we can calculate how much money we will take in by using another formula, the cost per shirt times the number of shirts you plan to sale, and in this example the formula would be the following = E2 * D2.

Calculate Expected Revenue

Now the value of simplifying your business into a spreadsheet like this is that if you can easily visualize the effect on your business if the base cost per shirt goes up or if you don’t hit your target expected sales numbers. If you model your business in a spreadsheet in something other than a cocktail napkin you can simulate different business scenarios more easily and come up with numbers closer to reality and based on some thought. Of course, when modeling a business you will have a lot more variables to take into account, but fortunately spreadsheets like those supported in Google Docs and Excel have a wide range of formulas and functions.

I’m not too big into all this social media networking virality stuff, but I been known to occasionally use The Twitter. Here are some snippets from conversations that I’ve had on The Twitter. If you like to say hi, reply the reply button at juixe and techknow.

V-Day Victory!!!

• @techknow: I like the day after Valentine’s Day 50% more than V-Day, that is because I can get all the chocolate covered marshmallow for 50% off.
• @ladyfox14: Hahaha, just make sure you don’t get a stomach ache. It sounds like Halloween all over again.
• @techknow: LOL I did get a tummy ache eating all that chocolate… I overdosed on marshmallows.

In the this conversation, I think of the meaning of life and everything in terms of software development life cycle and software process best practices.

Life as Beta

• @juixe: Life is a beta release.
• @gkmaestro: Then is death the Product release ??? :P
• @juixe: LOL it depends on your views of the after life, death + rebirth might mean upgrade.
• @gkmaestro: ha ha perhaps, then Patches n hot fixes might be moments of happiness in ur life :-)
• @juixe: as a developer, and user, no hot fix has ever made me happy. ;)

Here I must have had in mind some story about when programmers would get royalty on the code the write. If you get paid on the usability f an application, imagine getting dinged $10 per bug.

Bug Bounty

• @techknow: Can you imagine only getting paid if there is no bugs in your code?
• @mcory1: I’d be panhandling if that were the case.
• @techknow: LOL I often think what I would do if I wasn’t doing what I do, and panhandling is an option.

I try not to get political on my timeline but it’s been hard to not tweet about what is happening in the world, fires in Russia, floods in Pakistan, earthquake all over the Western Hemisphere, financial collapse in the develop world, world recession, etc. And yet, what technology pundits focus on is what laptop brand world leaders are using!

Economic Fail Because We Focus on the Wrong Thing

• @cote: Watching Papandreou on the Zakaria GPS bit. The Greece PM has a MacBookPro on his desk, in background. Wonder if that’s his.
• @techknow: Greece might default on billions, people protesting in the streets and all you notice is the Mac. LOL. I wonder if he has an iPad?
• @cote: Yeah, a bit too micro, I guess ;)

Again, I try to not get political but when someone makes a comparison of Facebook to a country I had a little something to say, unfortunately it didn’t all fit into the 140 character limit on Twitter.

Facebook Nation

• @ArabCrunch: If facebook was a country it would be the 3ed biggest country in the world.
• @techknow: and it would be a dictatorship not unlike North Korea, where the country is built in labor camps which look like Farm Ville re-education camps and your data can’t travel outside the country without permission of the Fhurer Zuck.

When it comes to Apple you have two camps, the fanatical Apple fanboys and the Apple haters. The divide in between these two camps is wider than the digital divide and when it comes to real points both sides usually get them wrong. Since Apple announced iTunes 10 and its social commerce component Ping, I’ve seen this debate flare up again with new FUD and fodder. The first misconception between Apple fanboys and haters alike is that Ping is another social networking site. Ping is very much social, but it is not a networking or a site. Ping is a social commerce component integrated into iTunes via the iTunes desktop application and the iOS iTunes app available for the iPhone and iPad. Ping is a game changer, just like the Apple App Store was before that, and the iTunes before that, and the iPod before that. Ping is a game changer and tech pundits and press are trying to make it out with old rules from previous games/products, that’s their first fallacy. It is clear that one will use Ping to contact an old high school buddy or stalk an ex, like they would on social networking sites like Facebook or MySpace. Ping is all about social commerce, not social networking.

Unlike Facebook, that is forced to make money by extorting advertiser to buy ads to their own Facebook Pages, or forcing application developers in using their Facebook currency that is as worthless as a $10 billion Zimbabwe bill, Apple Ping is not about connecting you to friends and family and it sure doesn’t care about your social graph, it care about your consumption graph. Ping won’t compete for users with other social networking sites at the same level that Facebook does with Google Buzz or MySpace. For the most part, social networking sites like Facebook aim to be nothing more than a time sink, and they have grown in large part by social games oblige users to poke and send virtual lasagna to each other. Ping complements the users iTunes experience when they are already on iTunes looking for new music. This is evidently clear especially when you look at how social networking sites like Facebook uses numbers to describe their growth. Facebook describes their growth by counting the number of users that were active in a given month and trying to track the average number of hours a user is on Facebook. Apple tracks its growth by the number of products it has sold. Facebook is designed to simply waste peoples time and have them click on clicks, and Apple designs products that appeal to users.

I want to be clear about the following fact, especially since it is what most Apple haters get wrong. Apple does not need to be the marker leader to make the most money!!! Even though Apple has seen a growth in its market share in laptops, for example, it still has a small slice. But with double digit margins, it means it can sell less product and still make more money than commoditized competitors like Dell or HP. Apple has played this card well before, for example it is choosing a similar approach in the mobile space. It would rather have a small market share, and simply have a better profit margin and more control over its products. Unlike Facebook, Ping doesn’t need market share to be profitable. For example, Facebook requires millions of impressions to make a buck or two on ads.

In its current release, Ping reminds me a lot more to the first generation iPod than the iPod Touch. Currently, Ping feels clunky, is sparely populated, doesn’t have enough bands listed, has a ton of spam, doesn’t support music or apps, etc. At this stage, Ping is still lacking many features to make it comparable to what we expect from a social networking site. For example, when it was released numbers where not formatted with a comma for values larger than a thousand. This issue was fixed within a day of release. I would also like more personalization of my profile page, the ability to add my homepage URL, my other social networking sites, etc. Basically Ping needs a lot more polish, but I’ve heard that Steve Jobs has done that once or twice before for a new revolutionary product line.

From time to time I just blast tweets about software development, project planning, team dynamics, or whatever else comes to mind. Here is a synopsis of recent tweets and rants. If you want to follow the conversation follow me at techknow and/or juixe and I’ll be sure to follow back.

Software Development

• If developers think that QA is going to find all their design problems, they are doing it wrong.
• Code wants to be dynamic.
• Unlike what it sounds like, Extreme Programming isn’t a spectator sport where you jump off a ramp with your favorite IDE.
• The web needs an open standard API for user badges and achievements.
• Social network sites should adopt a open standard API for user badges and achievements!
• The user interface made me do it!
• Show me the money, show me the data.
• Technology will date you, as in it will give away your age, like if your used a floppy vs a thumb drive vs neural memory implant..
• I’m sure Hallmark has a card for that, to show our appreciation to the QAs in our lives.
• The meek shall inherit the earth, the geek shall inherit an earth simulation on some social virtual game running on the cloud.
• Can you debug dreams?
• Men are digital, women are analog.
• Refactor yourself!
• Trust No Technology

Team Leadership

• Good things come to those that make them happen.
• Cut out the 20% from Pareto’s Principle from your process.
• Follow your dreams and you will be your own leader!
• Our attitude affects the outcome of our experiences and that is reflected in our perspective which influences our attitude.
• Fear is a virus of the mind!
• Some people are proud instead of productive.
• Sometimes we need to accept and move forward before we can understand.
• One persons Epic Fail is another’s FTW!
• If you don’t remember when you took a vacation last, you need a vacation!
• There are somethings that we are just not going to understand, but that we need to accept.
• If better is not easier and cheaper then it’s not.
• Just because something is better (function) doesn’t mean it’s better (form).
• You have to feed, exercise, and train your creativity before you can make it work for you.

Product Placement

• GIA: Google Intelligence Agency. FBI: FaceBook of Investigations.
• Is Facebook too big to fail or just big enough to get regulated?
• And then Steve Jobs said, “Let there be multi-touch.”
• Cost Plus World Market should really rename itself to 3rd World Market since they mostly sell trinkets from under developed world.
• CVS has the widest and weirdest selection, they sell everything from hard liquor to underwear. It’s basically my party supply store.
• Someone should invent foursquare for fictional places, I would like to check I the Star Wars Cantina.
• I wish iTunes could organize songs by mood in addition to genre and album.

Overheard

• OH: Awww, that gansta cute.
• OH: Travel is my drug of choice, I rather go on a real trip than a hallucinogenic trip.
• OH: I woke up so tired from that dream because I was running in it.
• OH: It’s very hard sometimes to think on your own.
• OH: when you are a parent and are dealing with your kids, you have to be the bigger person.
• OH: I’m sorry for whatever I did in your dream that made you upset, trust me that is not typical of my behavior in other people’s dreams.
• OH: It’s not that you did anything wrong, it’s that you didn’t do anything spectacular.

Quotes

• Bulls make money. Bears make money. Pigs get slaughtered. – Anonymous
• Everyone specializes in their own area of weakness. – Rothbard’s Law
• Software is getting slower more rapidly than hardware becomes faster. – Wirth’s Law
• It is not how much you make that counts, but how much money you keep. – Robert Kiyosaki
• All these computers and digital gadgets are no good. They just fill your head with numbers and that can’t be good for you. – Prince
• Hope. Deleted – Emotionless Wine Bucket #futurama
• There are no traffic jams along the extra mile. – Roger Staubach
• Control the music industry? Check. Control the publishing industry? Check. Control-alt-delete? Never. – @ceoSteveJobs
• I bet if they had Yelp in 1850, nobody would have taken the Oregon Trail. – @badbanana
• People don’t like to be sold, but they love to buy. – Jeffrey Gitomer
• Welcome, to the real world. – Morpheus
• I’m sorry, Dave. I’m afraid I can’t do that. – HAL
• Would you rather your kid be a drug dealer than a drug addict? – John Waters

I’ve recently had an opportunity to interview for a job opening at my company. From my experience with the interview process, from both sides of the table, I have a few non-technical tips that might be helpful for someone looking for a new challenging position where they will leverage their skills and such and such years of experience in x, y, and z programming languages.

• Proof read your resume and fix obvious typos, you can’t say you detailed oriented if you have basic spelling errors.
• I would leave out MS Access 2000 out of technical skills. It’s also not necessary to list HTML, DHTML, and HTML5.
• Ensure your cover letter or email is in one font, it shouldn’t look like you cut and pasted from somewhere else.
• The minimum research a candidate needs to do is look up the company website himself prior to interviewing.
• At a minimum candidate should be able to figure out our URL by a) clicking the link on job description b) from my email.
• Use a good phone line for a phone interview.
• Make sure the interviewer gets the feeling that you want to work there, not only that you have the skills to work there.  If you don’t got the skills show enthusiasm, their is always a job for the great candidate, even if they have to rewrite the job description.
• Don’t name your resume anything but you name, and maybe the word resume  on it.  Don’t put a date geolocation or airport codes, etc.