Month: November 2011

  • Make an alternate form to register for nanny taxes and increase state tax revenue

    Ah, the nanny tax. Some quick Google searches show a range of 80 to 95% of people who are obligated to pay the nanny tax, simply don’t. (NYTimes, ParentDish.com) That’s a pretty whopping statistic. As I’ve been finding out, it would certainly be easier to just skip it. This past summer I hired a nanny…

  • Much ado about phone numbers

    Lately I’ve been thinking about formatting phone numbers. Of course, there are plenty of options in addition to the ones above, but these are some common ones, although the thin spaces option is perhaps not too common. I added it because I’ve been wondering about the value of the separator characters, and if we can…

  • How can MI UPA, IxDA groups, and MichiCHI work together?

    UX practitioners in the state of Michigan have an enviable problem. We have so many active professional groups that it’s easy to get confused by which one is doing what, exactly. Which groups? Usability Professionals Association, Michigan chapter (MI UPA) Interaction Design Association (IxDA), local groups IxDA-Ann Arbor IxDA-Lansing IxDA-Grand Rapids Michigan CHI (MichiCHI) Each…

  • How I use utm_source, utm_medium, utm_campaign from Google Analytics

    My friend Adam called me this evening to ask how I’ve used the Google Analytics tracking codes utm_source, utm_medium, and utm_campaign. He’s working on an app to help marketers generate HTML e-mails, and is thinking about automating the inclusion of these tracking codes. The utm_medium is pretty straightforward in that the medium would be values…