Appraisal Podcasts

Two monitors are better than one

Microsoft has a nice article espousing the virtues of a dual monitor set-up. I have used this before I switched to a 24″ widescreen format LCD which serves the same purposes. Take a look and see what you think. Productivity gains make it worth the investment.

You can never have enough screen space, especially when organizing and working on your digital pictures. Instead of buying a larger monitor, if you’re using Windows XP, you can buy an inexpensive second monitor and connect it to your computer—instantly doubling your desktop space. Flat panel LCD monitors look great and will save room on your desk; CRT monitors also work well and can be less expensive.

The New York Times sings the praises of expanding your screen real estate across two monitors, using two video cards or an upgraded card with two outputs:

“Survey after survey shows that whether you measure your productivity in facts researched, alien spaceships vaporized, or articles written, adding an extra monitor will give your output a considerable boost — 20 percent to 30 percent, according to a survey by Jon Peddie Research” 

Others have reported simialr findings such as:

“Recently many businesses have started using a dual-monitor setup for their employees in order to increase productivity. Many studies claim that having a dual monitor setup can increase productivity in the workplace by 20%-50%. By using two monitors the available screen area for running applications is effectively doubled which creates all kinds of benefits.”

Which ever route you decide to go, I suggest the dual monitor or very large format monitor. You will find the experience worthwhile.

The 10 Worst Presentation Habits

This article provides some great advice for those who do public speaking or instructing. A quick read from BusinessWeek Online that discusses these factors:

Bad Habit #1 - Don’t Read from Notes
Bad Habit #2 – Avoiding Eye Contact
Bad Habit #3 – Dressing Down
Bad Habit #4 – Fidgeting, jiggling, and swaying
Bad Habit #5 – Failure to rehearse
Bad Habit #6 – Standing at attention
Bad Habit #7 - Reciting bullet points
Bad Habit #8 - Speaking too long
Bad Habit #9 - Failing to excite
Bad Habit #10 - Ending with an inspiration deficit

PowerPoint Triggers

A trigger results in an animation sequence, or a sound or movie playing when an object is clicked. This can be an excellent way to display additional information about data in a chart or to describe a concept more fully.

PowerPoint Tips

Looking for an interactive way to review material? This use of PowerPoint gets the class involved and reinforces the concepts they will be tested on.

Mouse overs in PowerPoint

This is a great way to display images in a before and after type scenario. The PowerPoint slide displays the first image and then when you slide your mouse over the image it changes to the second image. Take a look and see if you can find useful ways to incorporate this into your presentations.

Light Blue Optics PVPro mini projector - HD Beat

Not sure how appraisal related this is, but for instructors, the ability to carry a projector in your shirt pocket is appealing. No word on price or a full color model yet (later this year), but this might be a real paradigm shift for those PowerPointers out there. Company home page can be found here

If you are like me, you go to several web sites each day and look for new content. For instance I monitor the Office of the Comptroller of Currency and the FDIC for bulletins that may have an impact on appraisal related issues. Many sites are now using RSS - an acronym for Really Simple Syndication, a family of XML file formats for web syndication used by news websites and weblogs - that make it much easier to track changes. In fact, there is an RSS link for this blog - if you have a feed reader/news aggregator you can see automatically when new posts are added or the page changes. But what do you do for sites that don’t have RSS? I found a utility called URLy Warning (Early Warning with a play on URL) that accomplishes this task very well. It can help remove some of the friction in your life and web surfing. The software download is free and will monitor one site free of charge. To monitor more than one website, there is a one-time charge of $29.95.

Optimus keyboard

While still vaporware, if this keyboard comes to frution it has the potential to be a real time saver for those who use multiple applications on a daily basis. I can see a use for this while instructing, assigning graphical keys to a particular document or example I’d like to pull up on the fly. I heard from another podcast that they are releasing a “3″ key version. I say why bother, if you can do 3 do them all.

Have you ever wanted to edit a presentation on the fly so that the viewers see the main slide while you had complete control of the laptop and the editing abilities of PowerPoint? How about viewing the slide, outline view, or speaker notes while the audience only sees the main slide images? In this article I’ll show you how to make this work. Your presentations may never be the same!!!

View your outline, slides, and speaker notes in normal view while the audience sees only slides. The default view for editing presentations in PowerPoint 2000/XP/2003 is the Normal view. This view let you see your slides, outline, and notes at the same time. When you display your presentation in normal view on one monitor, you can see the slide that your audience sees, as well as your notes to remind you what you wanted to say.

View upcoming slides and speaker notes without advancing the slide show. In normal view, you can move around in the presentation to see upcoming slides and speaker notes without advancing the slide show on the second monitor. When you do advance the slide show, the presentation in normal view on the first monitor matches up to the slide shown on the second monitor.

This document will show you how Doing More with PowerPoint - No More Fumbling for Notes - Dual Monitor Use

Many people ask me if they can use Firefox instead of Internet Explorer with www.stdbonline.com. Until today I have had to tell them that they could use Firefox for everything but the mapping component which requires an IE only plug-in. The answer has changed as I just discovered a way to use “FireFox” completely with STDB. Here is the process for Firefox v1.5:

1). Download the Extension called IE Tab. Restart Firefox.
2). Open Firefox and right-click on the Navigation Toolbar and select Customize.
3). Drag the IE Tab Icon to the Navigation Toolbar so that it is visible.
4). Open Firefox and in the address bar type www.stdbonline.com
5). Once www.stdbonline.com is open, left click on the IE Tab Icon on the Navigation Toolbar and STDB will open in an IE tab within the Firefox Shell. Looks like Firefox, acts like Firefox, but it is actually an IE window in a Firefox Tab. Reports work, mapping works. Life is good.