Disclaimer: These ideas are rough and often in note format so sometimes a little hard to follow. If the idea already exists out there please let me know. I create these from somewhere in my head and I may be influenced by external factors but I’ll never take someone else’s idea as my own. Remember though there is no such thing as an original idea.

If this idea catches your interest I’d love to talk more with you about it.

The Premise

Let’s say you’re looking to buy a house or just like to look at houses for fun – my wife and I do this all the time. Let’s also say that referrals are highly influential in your decision making process and that customer service and attention to detail are important to you when making a purchase.

When it comes to buying and/or selling a house there are many websites, apps, flyers, signs and videos that help to sell the house but the only source of this information is the seller and the broker trying to make money by selling it.

The Idea

My idea to is to create a crowd sourced real estate review website and app. Think of it as Yelp for buying a house. When you stop by for an open house or even just walk by the house and notice it’s for sale you can document your experience for others to reference. It’s a real world opinion rather than a sales pitch.

The location-based app will allow you to locate the house for review and enter details. Other users can rate your review and those ratings will determine the order of display – obviously biased or sponsored reviews can be flagged or blocked.

Agents can include QR codes on flyers/signs to link to the listing on the service to prompt review/feedback.

The app could integrate with other social media (Twitter, 4square, Yelp, etc) pulling geo-location data to show you what events, people, places, schools are near the location and what people are saying about the neighborhood/area.

Examples of use

It can be used as a warning to potential buyers. Eg. 123 House Street: Open house on Sunday afternoon made the house look amazing and accessibly but when we walked by on Monday at 9am we realized there was absolutely no street parking within 5 blocks.

It can be used as a review system for the real estate agent. Eg. Agent at 123 House Street was very polite and knowledgeable about the house. I would feel comfortable having them sell my place.

It can be used to promote your open house and get more people through the front door. Eg. Open house at 123 Street has the best Rosemary Flatbread Paninis I’ve ever tasted.

GOALS

• To provide potential buyers with more accurate information about a property that is provided by non-interested/biased parties (people who don’t stand to benefit from the sale of the house).
• To hold Real Estate agents up to a higher standard. For most people the purchase of a house is the largest purchase they’ll ever make. For those selling it is a stressful experience. You want this process to be as smooth and simple as possible and you want the professional involved to be just that – Professional.
• Help people learn what to look for when buying a house.
• Provide feedback to buyers/sellers about the reasons the house isn’t selling.
• Encourage FSBO as they can generate authentic reviews of the property without relying on agents + another means to market the property.

Before starting any design in AutoCAD, it’s important to format your drawing space to your project’s requirements. This is how I prepare to start CADing.

I will run through this article with references to the Windows version of AutoCAD, but the same commands and menu locations work on the Mac version, too.

NB: if your menu bar (file, edit, view etc) is not showing, then click in your drawing space and type MENUBAR. Your command bar will show that MENUBAR is currently set to 0; enter the number 1 and hit enter – ta da!

My first stop is Units to establish what measurements will be used in the Drawing:

From the menu bar, choose Format –> Units. In this dialog box you can select the type of units you want for length and angle measurements. Most of the work I have done in America is of the architectural nature, so I usually chose that option and just leave it with Decimal for the angle measurement. Upon selecting Architectural, your units will change to the Imperial feet and inches and obtain the standard architecture precision of 1/16″. Of course, if you’re using AutoCad in most other countries your dimensions will be in meters and centimeters. Don’t worry, the same process applies. You’ll just have a different precision number.

Next, it’s time to set up the drawing space. Along the bottom of the AutoCAD window you’ll see square icons, one of which is a small grid. When you right click on that icon you’ll get a contextual menu. Choose Settings from that menu to enter the Drafting Settings dialog box. You can also get there by choosing Tools from the menu bar and selecting Drafting Setting.

There are two boxes that are checked by default and, for me, they make designing in AutoCAD much harder. I always turn off Adaptive Grid and Display Grid Beyond Limits under the Grid Behavior section. I do this so that once I enter my Drawing Limits, I’ve got a definitive working area for my project rather than a grid that goes on forever.

So, after unchecking those two boxes, head over to drawing limits. From the menu bar choose Format –> Drawing Limits. I usually enter 0,0 as my lower left corner and the width and length measurements of the project for the upper right. The video below explains this a little more.

Now you have a working area that is approximate if not exactly the same size as your project and you can start drawing. I find this process helps me get the design moving faster. If you need more grid space later, just go back into Drawing Limits and increase the upper right boundary.

In my next article, I’ll take a look at some of my favorite AutoCAD commands.

In PART 2 I’m going to run through how I got the video up on my website. This post assumes you are familiar with HTML and WordPress. I’d be happy to create a more in depth beginners post if there is anyone interested.

So, I’ve got my three video files ready to go and now I need to upload them into WordPress. H.264 and Ogg Theora versions uploaded just fine but on the WebM version WordPress spat back a “sorry, this file type is not permitted for security reasons” error.

A quick search of the WordPress support forums and it turns out a .webm file is not a supported MIME type (or Internet media type). The forum suggested PJW Mime Config plugin to add the .webm MIME type. This was a really easy plugin to use, just enter the File Extension: “webm” and Associated mime-type: “video/webm” in the spaces and hit “add mime-type”. Re-upload the WebM video and this time WordPress is happy.

Getting the video inserted into a page was easy for me as the WordPress Theme I’m using, Protein, has a built in shortcode for embedding HTML5 video. If you have get the video up using code then the below snippet should come in handy for you. Just change all the “[ and ]” to open < and close > tags.

[video width="" height="" preload="auto" poster="URL of a placeholder image" ]
[source src="URL of H.264/mp4 video" type="video/mp4"]
[source src="URL of WebM video" type="video/webm"]
[source src="URL of Ogg video" type="video/ogg"]
[/video]

As a Chrome user on the Mac platform everything seemed to work great until I tested in Firefox (on Mac) and IE9 (Win). The video would not load. I checked and checked but everything seemed right. I could even type the URL of the WebM or Ogg video into Firefox and it would play but would never play directly on the page I wanted it to.

I finally decided (after reading a post suggesting it) to hard code my MIME-types into the .htaccess file, at the root of my website hosting files, using the following lines (just insert these three lines at the end of everything else in .htaccess).

AddType video/webm .webm
AddType video/ogg .ogg .ogv
AddType video/x-m4v .m4v

Voila! My HTML5 video is now working across all modern browsers.

N.B. It was interesting to find out that Safari requires QuickTime to also be installed to play HTML5 video. I’m not sure if this is the case for Mac but it definitely was for Windows. Seems like a huge drawback to using that broswer on Win to me??

After getting a decent take I imported the video file into iMovie to trim the clip and produce the final video file. Using iMovie’s Export Movie option I now had my welcome message. This is where I started to look at the format and browser support for those formats. I found that I would need, at minimum, two different versions. This table from wikipedia was very helpful and I decided I would need the video in H.264 format (the format that iMovie exports into) as well as either Ogg Theora or VP8 (WebM) or both.

I started checking out both formats and how to encode video into them. I found VLC Player would export my video file into Ogg Theora but not WebM. After a quick read of the WebM Project website they listed Miro Video Converter as an option and it supported encoding to both the formats I needed. I’m so glad I checked it out because it will make projects requiring HTML5 video so much easier in the future. Simply drag in your movie that was created in iMovie (or other video editing software) and select the output format from the dropdown menu. So easy! It took about a minute and I now had all three formats – H.264, Ogg Theora and WebM.

In my PART 2 I’ll explain how I got the videos into WordPress and working properly.

Disclaimer: These ideas are rough and often in note format so sometimes a little hard to follow. If the idea already exists out there please let me know. I create these from somewhere in my head and I may be influenced by external factors but I’ll never take someone else’s idea as my own. Remember though there is no such thing as an original idea.

If this idea catches your interest I’d love to talk more with you about it.

This one I came up a while ago (early 2010) when I was first learning how to manage a Cisco based system that controls a phone and Internet network. It’s difficulty is on par with learning a new language. I figured there are WYSIWYG editors for web design why not have one for Cisco devices. If you’re not familiar with Cisco this one may not mean anything to you.

Idea is to build task management software and/or a plugin for Call Manager/IOS (Cisco’s command line software that runs on their switches, routers etc) that allows the quick and easy management of and execution of tasks within a Cisco environment.

Tasks or commands that could be set up include – “Add a dial peer”, or maybe “set up a new virtual LAN”, how about my favorite “Configure a public IP NAT rule and open up specific ports for that IP” – if I lost you, sorry, these are annoying tasks that while relatively simple once you know how still require many different command line entries.

These tasks can be organized into workflows so that you can run multiple commands in a row on multiple devices to accomplish a final goal. That goal may be to add a new local phone number for your company. You can schedule the dial peer task, followed by configuring a call group, add the number to the phones that will receive the calls and personalize the phones for the users, finally the voicemail accounts for those phones are set up and an email sent to the users informing them of their passwords. If you have an IPCC server then maybe you need to set up a new call queue for that number and assign agents to the queue.

All these tasks could be accomplished from one application that looks the same throughout rather than switching from IOS, to Call Manager, to Unity, to IPCC, to email.

The app could have a built in Cisco VPN client so you don’t need two or three applications running to interact with the network remotely. To send tasks to the call manager, unity etc you’ll be able to enter login credentials that will be remembered and become part of the task workflow. Eg. 1. login to Call Manager 2. Delete User rheggen.

It should contain a database of all functions for CCM/Unity/IOS etc to allow easy addition of tasks and on the spot learning. The application will tell you what information you need to enter (like a web form that has a pop up dialog box).

This means it could also be used as a training tool. Perhaps add a button that reveals the detailed step-by-step method of achieving a goal. Would need access to Cisco online knowledge base for additional resources.

Below are my six most hated forms of mail (in no particular order).

1. A letter from the company thanking me for being “green” by signing up for their online account management and paperless billing. Thanks for keeping the balance intact.

2. A letter confirming for me what I told a representative over the phone. I appreciate the reminder that I didn’t want the accidental death by sea anemone insurance coverage.

3. A letter that asks you to fill out information WITH A PEN, usually as a way to gauge whether you’re paying the company enough money, and send it back to them. That’s the personal service and knowledge of my account and usage that only the most customer-centric businesses can achieve.
3.a. Even worse is when the envelope included doesn’t have a pre-paid stamp on it.

4. Advertising-supported publications. I get a weekly “Food News” paper from the local newspaper here in Omaha. I’ve called twice now to discontinue it’s delivery (I didn’t sign up for it in the first place mind you) but I still continue to get it. I guess its publication is how they convince other companies to continue to spend advertising dollars – I’m sure their impression numbers are huge (as this paper is delivered to everyone in the city) but I wonder how many people like me take it directly from the mailbox to the recycling bin.

5. Deposit slip booklets for student loans – I have never used one of these. I have a direct debit set up, every month without fail – I think they sent me countless letters asking me to do this years ago.

6. Letters from Domain Registry of America trying to trick me into using their service to register my domains with. Say what you want about GoDaddy but I’ve never received any junk mail from them (even in email form).

Anyone else got any paper mail that they find annoying to receive?

As a lover of architecture and self-labeled technology geek, I was immediately drawn to a program offered at a local technical college in Omaha, Nebraska. A semester in to my degree course in Architecture Design Technology, I have become intrigued by the software used by architecture firms, most of which I will cover over the next year.

There are plenty of niche players out there, but I’m going to stick to the big boys for the purpose of this series. The titles I’ll be reviewing include: AutoCAD, Revit, ArchiCAD, Google Sketup, and 3DS Max. I had thought to include Chief Architect in here, too, but it just doesn’t seem as capable or as widely used as the others. If I’m wrong about this, then let me know and I may decide to include it.

While this post will be mainly a written introduction to the series, I’ll make sure to include plenty of eye candy in the more detailed posts about the individual titles.

Here’s a quick run though of each title and how I’ll learn it:

AutoDesk AutoCAD

I’ve just about wrapped up the intermediate course in AutoCAD now, and I’ve had a lot of fun using the software, although I haven’t had the chance to explore the 3D portion of it. AutoCAD seems to be the starting point for most architectural drawings and has replaced, for the most part, the need for manual pencil and paper drawing boards. It is used to create electronic drawings of floor plans, elevations, sections and other necessary details. AutoCAD’s power comes with the ability to replicate and manipulate objects that have been built to actual scale.

As I said, I’ve just about completed the intermediate course and my next few posts will be about AutoCAD and my experiences so far.

AutoDesk Revit

From what I’ve heard about Revit, it is the holy grail of software for architects. It’s an example of Building Information Modeling (BIM) software where real life information (materials, texture, lighting) is stored about real objects (walls, windows, doors, etc.) to make up a model of a structure. You can see the strength of BIM software when it comes to pulling data out of the model. Rather than relying on the architect or project managers to calculate quantities of the materials needed to construct a house, the software can automatically pull that info based on the objects you’ve included in the drawing. Multiple floor plans and systems – HVAC, electrical, plumbing – can be included in the same model and technical drawings can be pulled out of the model, too.

I’ll be starting with Revit in June in a formal class environment.

ArchiCAD

Billed as the best alternative to Revit, and even a preferred alternative for many architects, ArchiCAD is another example of BIM software. One of my instructors described ArchiCAD as a “dumbed-down” Revit, but I’m really excited to see what it can do, especially because it has a native Mac version whereas Revit is Windows only.

ArchiCAD seems to have a great online tutorial and wiki section, which is beneficial since I’ll learn this software entirely using online resources.

Google Sketchup

Definitely not as complex as the other software titles above, Google Sketchup is a 3D modeling program that brags of its ease of use and a shallow learning curve. I’ve used Sketchup before in an interior design presentation and found it more than capable of representing both room and furniture layout three dimensionally.

This is another piece of software that I will learn exclusively online. I got a tip from Jeremiah Russell over at r | one architecture that Sketchup is great for lighting studies. Looking at the list of plugins for Sketchup, it seems very flexible.

3DS Max

If Google Sketchup is the quick and easy entry to 3D modeling, then 3DS Max is at the other end of the spectrum. It’s a sophisticated 3D modeling, animation, rendering and compositing tool that is capable of creating life-like representations of structures. From what I’ve looked at so far, this software seems to be a visual tool for architects rather than a production tool. I can imagine expertise in the software makes you the sales team’s best friend as the client can see exactly what their project will look like rather than having them stare blankly at 2D floor plans.

This is the third course offered at the technical college, which I’ll cover later this year.

I look forward to sharing my experiences about all the above software. From your own experiences, what program is best? Why do you like it? Have you tried any of the others and switched because of a bad experience or complication?

Disclaimer: These ideas are rough and often in note format so sometimes a little hard to follow. If the idea already exists out there please let me know. I create these from somewhere in my head and I may be influenced by external factors but I’ll never take someone else’s idea as my own. Remember though there is no such thing as an original idea.

If this idea catches your interest I’d love to talk more with you about it.

FIGJAM or Fuck I’m Good Just Ask Me is a bragging website where you can post about your accomplishments, skills, trophies, athletic ability, creativity, intelligence, influence, high morals etc etc and people can comment, abuse, congratulate, or ridicule you in return.

It’s the place all those annoying people on Twitter should go instead of thinking that the rest of us enjoy being reminded how much more talented you are than us. Or how your design award makes you a better person. Did you just finish your first ultra marathon, awesome post it on FIGJAM so everyone can let you know exactly how much they don’t care.

Of course, this is a pointless website as people probably wouldn’t want to spend time on a site just to be reminded about how much better someone else is than them but on the other hand people may love abusing those who, well, are in fact better than them… it’s the internet, it might work.

I even have a domain bought for this one – http://www.figja.me – it’s not live though.

I hope to keep the updates going with the new design, some of the topics I’ve got in mind include:

I’m not referring to content, although you can disagree if you want, but rather the format of my blog. I built this site a while ago and it was going to be more of an online resume rather than a regular blog. Therefore, I didn’t really pay too much attention to the formatting on the blog page or the posts themselves.

Since I’ve decided to write more often I’ve come to realize it really sucks to read any lengthy piece of writing that is 777px in width – should have stayed awake in my Intro to Print Design class or maybe enrolled in the first place.

So, sorry about the wide columns of text, I hope it’s bearable, and I’ll have a new design up soon that won’t cause you’re eyeballs to overheat.