Author: marionvermazen

I am a traveler, hiker, avid reader, Sun alumnus, computer geek, Spanish and French language student, knitter and genealogist. I am retired after working for almost 30 years in the Computer Industry. I live in Reno, Nevada with my husband Duke.

Fart Proudly

Thanks to Digital Rules: The Blog by Rich Karlgaard, I was reminded that today is Benjamin Franklin’s 300th birthday. Franklin is absolutely my favorite historical figure.  If you want to read something fun and different I suggest Fart Proudly – Writings of Benjamin Franklin You Never Read in School edited by Carl Japikse. At the end of his introduction Japikse points out that Franklin was not an "antiseptic, prudish man …. He was bawdy, roguish, and loved to play jokes on his friends. And when England grew oppressive, he was not afraid to rebel." Two of my favorite pieces in the book are "On Choosing A Mistress"  in which Franklin advises why "in all your Amours you should prefer old Women to young ones." and "Who’s the Ass" about trying to please everyone at the same time.

On a different note… I am really enjoying Rich Karlgaard’s blog. Before I started reading his blog I always read and enjoyed his column in Forbes. It has the kind of voice that good blogs also have.  Not to mention the coincidence that Karlgaard went to the same elementary school as I did in Bismarck, North Dakota. He was two years behind me and in my sister Barbara’s class.

It is Hard to Make Something Easy

I think I have mentioned before that as we get ready to launch PortfolioMinder we are doing a lot of watching people use the product. I would say this ability to learn from how people use our product is a core competency of the people in my group and I suspect it is a core competency of Intuit. It has been fascinating and a bit awe inspiring to watch how the designers and user experience experts work.

This really hit me in a research session on Friday. There is a part of the basic PortfolioMinder data architecture that is key to the product. Over the past year no matter how the screens were laid out people just weren’t getting it. It was fascinating and frustrating to watch how they would fill in the wrong information on the screen and then find that the data didn’t make sense. The designers have been trying different things to make it easy for people to get it right since the beginning of the product design.

On Friday we were watching a pilot tester use our latest build and he Got It! He put the right data in the right place. What was weird and cool at the same time was that it was easy. It was obvious and it seemed like no big deal. He filled in the data and everything made sense. No one will ever comment on how well this screen works. It just seems obvious. But I am really impressed with how hard it was to make it easy.

PDAs

A few weeks ago I took the time management class that Intuit offers. My main reason for taking the class was to improve my effectiveness using Outlook. Before I started at Intuit I had never used Outlook. I came out of the class with a great Outlook based system. It allows me to focus on what I need to do as opposed to letting my email manage me.

Anyway the purpose of this post is not to talk about Outlook or time management. The class got me interested in using a PDA again.  I had a couple of Palm Pilots a few years ago buy syncing them on  a Sun system was a difficult exercise and after I lost all my data a couple of times and then had the last one stolen out of the office where I was charging it I decided to go back to a paper based system. Currently I carry an address book, a calendar and a little Moleskine notebook in my purse. I like how easy it is to access them. The class made me think I’d like to have everything synced up and current in one place, especially my to do list.  So I thought I would take advantage of the fact that I am due for a new phone. I had decided to buy an integrated phone / PDA. A guy in the class said he liked his Palm PC.  And I have some Christmas money to spend.

I went to the Verizon store a couple of weeks ago and found out that they won’t sell you a integrated phone / PDA unless you subscribe to wireless Internet. I have a personal aversion to monthly fees. I already pay monthly fees for for cable TV, DSL,  telephone, cell phone,  utilities, and home owners dues. Why would I want to pay another $60 per month ($60 per month at 8% interest over 10 years comes to $10,976) for wireless Internet). I’m sure it is nice to have but I’m not convinced it is worth it.

So the question is… and I would love your input. Do I stay with the paper based system? Or do I buy a new PDA without the cell phone and wireless Internet? If I do get a PDA what kind should I get?

Yoshi’s

I usually listen to Alisa Clancy on the jazz station, KCSM on my way into work. On Monday morning she was giving away tickets for the 10 o’clock show at Yoshi’s Monday night. I called in and won! The question I answered to win the tickets was "Who was our 37th President? Monday would have been his 94th Birthday." (answer at the end of this post)  Duke and I were already planning on going out to dinner with some people from work so after dinner we just drove over to Yoshi’s in time for the show. We saw and heard The Moutin Reunion Quartet from Paris.They are exceptional musicians. There were probably only about 40 people in the audience and Yoshi’s is a wonderful place for live music. What a great evening.

We had such a good time that we decided to go to the 8:00 show on Thursday nigh to hear E.S.T. Esbjorn Sveneeon Trio. They were wonderful too.  We are very lucky to be able to hear wonderful live music, quite inexpensively in such a wonderful venue so close to home.

I highly recommend Yoshi’s. If you live in the San Francisco area and have never been there you are missing out and if you are visiting this area a visit to Yoshi’s would be the highlight of your trip.

(Nixon was our 37th president.)

Some Intuit Links

Some updates on what is happening in the group I am in at Intuit, The Quicken Solutions Group (QSG).

The product I am working on, PortfolioMinder, was favorably  highlighted by Joel Bruckenstein in his  year end wrap up of financial planning industry software. We will be launching PortfolioMinder soon so I have started bringing on Customer Care agents. It is going to be a great team.

There is an article about Intuit in the latest issue of FORTUNE  – "CEO – Intuit’s Scott Cook on How to Be a Great Leader. In the copy of the magazine that I saw the article included a picture of the PortfolioMinder team room. I spend a lot of my time in that room. I  tried to find the magazine on the new stand but the article and picture weren’t in the copy of the magazine that I found. I guess they were just in the copy of the magazine that people get in the mail.

Zipingo is another product that comes out of QSG. They have made a lot of improvements to the site since it went into beta last summer, especially in the ability to search for businesses. The number of companies rated is growing too. Check Zipingo out. It is a cool site.