Archive for the 'news' category

Happy Holidays: from Google, but for Facebook

Dec 30 2009 Published by under analytics, communities, news

Happy Holidays from Google Analytics

Happy Holidays everyone. I just wanted to extend a quick holiday greeting.  I’m going to borrow the holiday greeting image from Google Analytics, because I like it so much. It is from Google Analytics’ Happy Holidays post to everyone.

Biggest takeaway from the 2009 holiday season? For me it is the fact that according to Hitwise, Facebook was the number one most visited site on the web on Christmas day. Phenomenal when you take into account the incident in Detroit, which presumably drove loads of traffic to Google and the major news sites.

Hitwise Tweet - Facebook Number One on Christmas

What does Facebook’s dominance mean? Well, nothing that we didn’t know already, but perhaps a slap in the face for some media providers, that rather than focusing on your own sites, maybe looking for creative ways to integrate into your audience member’s Facebook visits is where the focus should be.

Just some food for thought; I’d gladly write a longer post but we’re scrambling to finish up year-end activities at SwellPath before the first monthly reporting session of the new year hits. Enjoy the rest of 2009 everyone and best wishes for a wonderfully successful 2010.

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DevGroup NW Meeting: Beyond the Pageview

Mar 10 2009 Published by under news

I’ll be presenting on integrating web analytics into interactive design and development next week at the DevGroup NW monthly meeting.  It’s Thursday, March 19th, and the actual title is Beyond the Pageview: What’s Going On with Your Dynamic Content?

Among the principles I’ll be covering are how to “think” analytics from the early stages of site design and development, how to actually place analytics code into AJAX and Flash applications, and how to really benefit from the ensuing reporting and analysis.  The complete description and all other important information can be found here: http://www.devgroupnw.org/wp/?cat=3

Hope to see you there.

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Skittles New Site All About Social Media

Mar 02 2009 Published by under news, Portland

Skittles Home Page

If you haven’t seen the new Skittles.com I highly suggest you check it out.  It’s a fascinating concept that is pretty much entirely focused on Skittles presence in social media sites, rather than the Skittles domain itself. The “Products” links all direct to Wikipedia, the “Friends” link takes you their Facebook page, and the main underlying “home” page is Twitter search.  “Media” links to “Photos” on Flickr and “Videos” on YouTube.

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.

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Firefox Plugins for SEO and Web Analytics

Dec 04 2008 Published by under analytics, blogs, news, Portland

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

WASP Full Screen

Web Analytics Solution Profile/Debugger (WASP) is a wonderful plug-in developed by Stephane Hamel.  I haven’t indulged in the paid version yet, but I may have to, as WASP’s current version only lasts 20 minutes.  But the best thing about WASP is it allows you to quickly identify the web analytics solution(s) being used on a site, via the status bar.  The tool also allows you to glance at the parameters and values being sent with the request, by toggling a side bar.  This is nice if you need to check if you’ve correctly set up the tagging on a given page.  The paid version provides some additional benefits, so it may be worth checking out in more detail.


HTTPFox

HTTPFox Fullscreen

If you need to see your analytics data in more detail, HTTPFox is perfect.  It monitors all http requests from your browser, allowing you to filter out the analytics requests and see in greater detail if things are in order with your tagging.  You can view the query string for any request, and also view any cookie requests being made.  It really is a necessity if you are either tagging a site yourself, or verifing that tagging was correctly setup on a site.

SEO for Firefox

SEO for Firefox - Google SERP

SEO for Firefox provides so much data, I can’t describe all of its features.  You have to use it if you even remotely care about SEO for your own website, or for your clients.  If there is a better SEO plugin, I want to know about it.  The two features I use the most with SEO for Firefox are the abiltiy to “X-ray” a page and see the SEO oriented details in a snap; and the ability to see intricate details for all pages on a Google SERP.

SearchStatus

SearchStatus

I think SearchStatus may really slow page loading in Firefox, but I’m not sure about that, and it hasn’t deterred me from using the plugin.  The simple benefit I get from SearchStatus is the Google PageRank in my status bar.  This means I don’t have to run the Google ToolBar, and I can still see the PageRank in a glance.

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.

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Create Your Own Comics with Toonlet

Dec 01 2008 Published by under applications, communities, news, Portland

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:

Kitty and the Baby

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.

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