Just a quick post to promote the first Web Analtyics Wednesday of 2010 in Portland. It’s this upcoming Wednesday, January 27th, at eROI.  I’ll be giving a short presentation on real-time web analytics reporting; an overview tools available for tracking and reporting, some simple use examples, and considerations for those looking to implement real-time tracking and analyze the data. Please come by if you’re in Portland. Oh, did I mention the free beer and food (pizza probably)? Hope to see you there.

What is remarkable about this is as much the concept as the faith in the Twitter search application not drastically changing in the near future.  Many of the rumors about Twitter’s monetization needs are centered on creating revenue from the search application in some way.

Another concern Skittles may have is the ability for anyone to spam their “home page” by simply including the “skittles” keyword.  There is a splendid example in the screenshot I captured.

Regardless, hat’s off to Skittles and whatever agency developed this concept.  I submitted a contact form on the “site” to see who it was, but no reply yet.

There are a few Firefox plugins I use that make my life (job) incredibly easier.  If there are any that are similar to these, that people find to be better for their desired tasks, I’d love to hear about them.  Here we go.

WASP

HTTPFox

SEO for Firefox

SearchStatus

Foxmarks

I discovered Foxmarks Bookmark Synchronizer a little while ago when I found myself switching to my 6th laptop in 30 months.  Foxmarks stores all your bookmarks and passwords, and then syncs them with any machines you use.  If you use two different machines, and want the same bookmarks on both, this tool is what you want to use.  If you just want the security of being able to setup a brand new computer, and quickly be able to access all the sites you’re used to visiting, without having to plugin the URLs and rememeber the passwords, then Firefox is also for you.  I love this plugin, and have never had any problems with it.

Firebug

If you develop then you know about Firebug, and if you don’t develop you probably don’t need Firebug.  But if you’re kind of in the middle like me, and you don’t know about it, then you may want to check it out.  It helps me out in one major way: working with CSS.  I am a total amature with CSS, and Firebug saves me so much time when it comes to identifying the correct elements, properties or values that I need to change or “fix” when things aren’t looking the way I want.  I couldn’t finish this post without giving credit to Firebug for being one of the most useful Firefox plug-ins available.

There are a few more that I use, but these plug-ins help me out when it comes to productivity.  If you have any other plug-ins you find value in using, I’d love to hear about them.

Ever wanted to draw your own comic, but just don’t quite have the knack for drawing?  No need for those skills, put your imagination to work on toonlet.  toonlet allows you to select from a multitude of characters’ torsos, arms, heads, noses, etc.  You assemble characters and then put them in strips.  The options might be a bit more limited then your imagination, but you can still have a lot of fun and waste a ton of time.  I spent about 20-30 minutes constructing this gem:

Pretty awsome Flash application.  There is, of course, a community and crowdsourcing type aspect to toonlet.  You can follow other creators and I’m guessing you’ll eventually be able to communicate with them on toonlet, or at least there will be other community integration, like links to users Facebook, MySpace, Twitter profiles.  There is a multitude of enhancements the toonlet folks could make to further facilitate sharing and spreading strips.

The crowdsourcing aspect is the “top strips”, which I’m guessing is driven by the number of shares and embeds that are done with a given strip.  It might be cool if some of this data was transparent to the community.  I’m not sure how toonlet expects to make ends meet.  I assume through merchandise and maybe eventually advertising.  But check it out and become the next Bill Watterson or Gary Larson.