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10/28/2008 NuConomy: Next-gen web analytics Filed under: Developer, Web services, web 2.0
Web analytics is an increasingly important metric for web publishers. It used to just be about tracking how many visitors you get and how many pages they view. Technology has improved so that you can now track site entry points, popular keywords, specific post metrics, out-bound clicks, nationality of your visitors and more. The problem is, to actually get that data into something useful, you usually have to dedicate a bunch of time analyzing statistics or you have to pay for an expensive commericial analytics package. Today, NuConomy is officially launching its free web analytics platform, NuConomy Studio, designed to meet both of those challenges. The platform that NuConomy will most likely be compared to is Google Analytics, because both are free and both offer easy integration into various web platforms. In its scope, however, NuConomy Studio is much more akin to Omniture, but without the hefty licensing fee that pretty much excludes all but the biggest sites from taking advantage of its enhanced metrics. For instance, most analytics programs can't monitor interaction with JavaScript (AJAX) or Flash elements. So you can't get a metric on how frequently that YouTube video is played (or which video is most popular). NuConomy can track AJAX, Flash and Silverlight and then show you what elements (or videos) were most popular. With YouTube videos, you can even find out how visitors are watching the videos before stopping or going to another page. So if you're a VBlogger, you can better pinpoint what is working and what isn't. Continue reading NuConomy: Next-gen web analytics
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10/28/2008 Microsoft unveils Windows 7, releases early developer preview Filed under: OS Updates, Windows, Microsoft  As expected, Windows 7 looks a lot like Windows Vista so far. Which isn't necessarily a bad thing. I don't know too many people who take issue with the way Windows Vista looks. It's performance, especially on older machines with slower processors and less RAM than newer computers, on the other hand, has been less than stellar. It looks like Windows 7 will carry many of Windows Vista's design elements, while tweaking a number of things below the hood. You can find a boatload of new screenshots of Windows 7 at ZDNet, Ars Technica, or on Flickr. Feature-wise, Windows 7 adds support for multi-touch inputs, has an improved task manager, and uses fewer system resources than Vista. As you can see from the image above, Windows 7 also has a new taskbar which combines features that are currently divided between the taskbar, and quick launch menu. You don't get text descriptions of items in the taskbar anymore, but clicking on an item brings up a list of actions you can perform with that program. Window management has also been improved. You can maximize any window just by dragging it to the top of your screen. And if you have multiple windows open but want to read something on one of them without actually switching windows, you can just sroll your mouse over the icon in the taskbar to "peek" at it. This turns any other windos that are blocking it transparent. This comes in handy when you just want to read something quickly, or if you want to see the weather, clock, or other gadget hanging out on your desktop without minimizing all of your open windows.
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10/28/2008 Microsoft to launch web versions of Word, Excel, PowerPoint Filed under: Office, Web services, Microsoft, web 2.0, Web  The Office Web applications will reportedly be stripped down versions of the desktop apps. And it looks like Microsoft will offer at least two tiers of service, with an ad-supported version and a subscription based option for business customers. The next version of Microsoft Office for the desktop will include the ability to synchronize documents over the web for access on the go. So Microsoft clearly expects customers to continue paying for the offline version of Office. Somehow I suspect the company will also set aside at least a few special features that are only available in the desktop version. [via ReadWriteWeb]
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10/28/2008 Walmart MP3 store adds 74 cent tracks, Mac, Linux support Filed under: Audio, Internet, Windows, Macintosh, Linux, Web  Walmart is also rolling out improved support for web browsers that aren't Internet Explorer and operating systems that aren't Windows. You can now download MP3s from Walmart's web store using OS X, Linux, or Windows, Firefox, Safar, or Internet Explorer. Walmart has a library of over 3 million DRM-free MP3 tracks from the four major lables and a number of independent artists. [via Electronista]
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10/28/2008 World Map geography tester Filed under: Fun, Kids, Time-Wasters, Education  If you're past all that school stuff and want to see how much geography you remember, check out the World Map by Game Design. You are given a world map and the names of 20 countries. You have about 10 seconds to find each country on the map. If you are lucky to get some of the bigger countries it's quite easy, but once you have a few small African nations things become much more challenging. I'm not going to share my score. It's too embarrassing! If you're good at naming countries but not finding them you can try the 192 UN recognized states in 10 minutes. Basically, once you load the page a timer starts to count down. You have 10 minutes to name as many UN recognized countries as you can. When you type in a correct answer it is added to the list. So if you type something in and it doesn't disappear, it's not right. My biggest challenge was spelling some of the country names. I got about 70 countries entered before I ran out of time and had about 10 that I just couldn't figure out how to spell properly. So, DLS readers, how are your geography skills? [Via Eco Worldly]
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10/28/2008 Open Google Calendar in Firefox from any page Filed under: Utilities, Productivity, Google, Browsers, Web  If you're already logged into your Google account you won't even need to login to Google Calendar when the window pops up. This is listed as an experimental plugin, which means you'll need to register for a Mozilla account and login before downloading. But the add-on seems to be stable enough and hasn't caused my computer to burst into flames. Yet. [via gHacks]
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10/28/2008 PMS Buddy - don't get caught using this site Filed under: Web services, Freeware, Web  I struggled briefly with whether or not to write a post about PMS Buddy, due to the fact that it could possibly offend some people. But I'm not here to tell you you should support or use it, or that you shouldn't - I'm just saying, "hey, look at this."PMS Buddy is a website with a cute slogan and a simple goal. The slogan, "saving relationships, one month at a time!" refers to PMS Buddy's only function: to remind you when significant women in your life might be experiencing PMS. Used appropriately, i.e. to remind you to be extra understanding (not condescending) of any abnormal behavior exhibited by the women in your life. They also suggest that the site could be a useful resource for women wishing to help the men in their life understand why they seem to get unreasonably intense for seemingly no reason at all, without having to have an uncomfortable discussion with them every month. While I can't say that I use it, I can certainly see how some people might want to. Or not. I mean, if it offends you, I think it's terrible too. And if you like the idea, yeah, it's pretty cool. Just tell me what you want to hear, okay? But the one thing I can't understand is how or why you might want to install a PMSBuddy Facebook App (they have one). "Hey friends and family, I track someone's PMS!" Uh, no thanks. [via Darren Barefoot]
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10/28/2008 Idée's super Multicolr gets Creative Commons awesomeness Filed under: Internet, Photo, Search  How times have changed. Just three months later, the colour search has a 10 million strong database of Creative-Commons photos the Idée Inc. folks have indexed from Flickr using their own 'visual similarity technology' and Multicolr now presents you with a grid of 50 matching CC-licenced photos. And yes, you read it right: that's 10 million Creative Commons-licenced photos indexed. After playing with this new version of the mashup I'm still astounded - both by how the mashup works now [with a far larger image pool that previously], and by potential further uses. Multicolr, with perhaps tag-refinement for helping you find just the right photo subject, would be image-search nirvana - no doubt Idée [and I daresay Flickr] must be aware of this.
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10/28/2008 Download CrossOver for free today, run Windows Apps on Mac, Linux Filed under: Games, Utilities, Windows, Macintosh, Linux, Commercial  You see, earlier this year the CEO of CodeWeavers, the company behind CrossOver issued a challenge to president George W. Bush. If the outgoing president of the US could accomplish one of a handful of goals before leaving office, the company would give away free licenses for all of its software (with a limit of one per license per user). Surprisingly, one of those goals has been met: CodeWeavers CEO Jeremy White recently noted that he was able to fill up his tank with $2.79/gallon gasoline. In order to claim your reward, just visit the CodeWeavers page today to snag a coupon good for one software license. CodeWeavers makes CrossOver for Mac and Linux, and also has a special CrossOver Games version that brings support for a number of popular Windows video games to those applications. While CrossOver won't necessarily let you run every Windows app on your platform of choice, it does boast support for some programs that won't run under the free and open source WINE utility. CodeWeaver products typically start at $40. So if you think there's even a chance you might want a free copy, today's the day to grab one. Or you can wait until George Bush meets one of the other goals that Jeremy White has set for him, including capturing Osama bin Laden, creating jobs, or bringing average home prices back to the level they were at last year. [via OStatic]
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10/28/2008 MTV Music: Hulu for music videos, or too little too late? Filed under: Audio, Internet, Video, Web  The site has a nice mix of new and older videos. You can watch videos on the site or embed them on another web page. And you can watch in full screen. There's also a handy "similar artists" feature that will let you know that if you like Tori Amos you might want to look for videos from Fiona Apple. But the recommendation engine is far from perfect. For example, when you click on the page for Mike Doughty, you'll discover that Jack Johnson is a similar artist, but there's no link to the 5 music videos from Soul Coughing, the band Mike Doughty used to perform with. The biggest challenge MTV Music faces is the fact that there are dozens, if not hundreds of places to find the exact same content on the internet, and then some. You can find a much wider selection of music videos on YouTube or dozens of other online video sites than you can on MTV Music. It's true that some of those videos may not have been uploaded legally, but they're out there. So while Hulu is one of the few places you can go for free, legal, and full length TV episodes, MTV Music is jsut the latest music video portal to hit the web. And while the web page is new, it's not like MTV hasn't had hundreds of music videos on its website for years. [via Silicon Alley Insider]
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10/27/2008 LastSharp silently downloads MP3s from Last.Fm playlists Filed under: Audio, Internet, Utilities, Web services  Last.Fm is one of the better streaming music services around, but you're probably wishing you could save the tracks it plays. Brush up on your German (or just keep reading) and grab LastSharp, and you'll be downloading in no time flat. The download link on the author's site is just below the Aktuelle Version text (to save hassles, it points to RapidShare or you can find mirrors on Rapidspread). LastSharp doesn't require installation, just extract the contents of the rar file. As you may have guessed from the name, you'll also need the .Net 2.0 runtimes to use it. When you launch it the first time, the interface will be in German. To change it, click the tab marked Erweiterte Einstellungen. Click the dropdown marked Deutsh and change it to English, then close and restart the program. Log in with your Last.Fm username and password, and enter your search text - results are displayed neatly in the "Tune In" box. Downloading is as simple as checking the songs you want and marking the Continue Downloading Automatically option (otherwise you'll be grabbing them one at a time). LastSharp has a lot of useful options, including on-the-fly normalization with MP3gain, automatic scrobbling, cover downloading, and filtering. Downloads are automatically filed in a tidy Artist -> Album name folder structure. This is a great app for music downloaders, and I hope it sticks around long enough after this post goes live for our DS readers to enjoy it. [via gHacks]
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10/27/2008 Windows 7 privacy statement describes new features Filed under: OS Updates, Windows, Microsoft  Here are a few highlights:
[via i started something]
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10/27/2008 Intelligently resize images with Seam Carving GUI Filed under: Design, Utilities, Windows, Macintosh, Linux, Freeware  The program can make a semi-educated guess as to which elements are safe to remove. Or you can highlight the areas you want to keep or remove before hitting the reize button. There was a lot of talk about seam carving last year. The developer who came up with the original concept was hired by Adobe. And we've seen the technique show up i na number of other applications, including web based image editor FotoFlexer. But Seam Carving GUI is a simple tool that does one thing and does it both well and quickly. It's available for Mac, Windows, and Linux. [via Life Rocks 2.0]
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10/27/2008 Foxmarks now synchronizes Firefox bookmarks, passwords Filed under: Utilities, Windows, Macintosh, Linux, Browsers, Web  The most recent version of Foxmarks adds support for secure password synchronization. In order to use this feature you'll need to enter a new PIN which is separate from the password you use to login to Foxmarks. For security purposes, if you forget this PIN, Foxmarks will not be able to help you recover it, so make sure to write it down or pick something you'll remember. But for obvious reasons, make sure it's also not something that's easy to guess (unless you like the idea of synchronizing your online banking password over the internet with only your birthday as a password). [via jkOnTheRun]
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10/27/2008 Google Earth comes to the iPhone, and it is good Filed under: Fun, Utilities, Google, iPhone  In an impressive case of two great tastes that taste great together, Google Earth for the iPhone is now available in the iTunes app store. If you like Google Earth on the desktop, you'll like it even more when you can manipulate the globe with your fingertips. Zooming and rotating are easy with the familiar iPhone pinch motion, and the iPhone's GPS adds a new dimension to Earth.I was hooked on this app from the first time I made Google Earth zoom in on my location. The visuals are stunning, and you can activate Street View once you're zoomed in. It literally took two clicks to get a view of my front door: one click on the location button, and one to allow Google Earth to use the GPS data. There's also a compass button to point you North, and a search function that even includes your Address Book contacts. The only thing missing is a tilt mode: it would be fun to explore the earth by using the accelerometer, but it wouldn't be very practical. UPDATE: Google Earth does have a tilt mode! You can turn it on and off in the preferences. Thanks, Belden. CORRECTION: Street View isn't coming until the iPhone 2.2 firmware is released. The satellite image of my apartment is just at an odd angle and looks really good on an iPhone screen. Thanks, Steve.
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10/27/2008 Z-Rox - skill testing Time Waster Filed under: Fun, Games, Kids, Freeware, Time-Wasters, Web  How good are you at identifying well-known alphabetical characters and shapes? Well, I'm pretty good at it. I can even read, and stuff. So at first I wasn't sure how a game that had to do with identifying shapes and letters would be all that interesting. But what if you can only see a one-pixel slice of a letter at a time, and you have to imagine that that slice is scanning from top to bottom? Basically, you're looking at a little line that changes size and moves back and forth, but is representing a shape or letter. Well, it certainly gets more challenging. Z-Rox is a quick little online game that presents letters and shapes in exactly this way, and challenges you to identify them. For letters, you just enter the letter as the answer, but for shapes you must type the name of them.
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10/27/2008 Microsoft launches Windows Azure: Cloud operating system Filed under: OS Updates, Windows, Microsoft, Web  Developers can build applications using existing Microsoft tools like Visual Studio. Azure can be used to add web capabilities to existing desktop applications or to host completely cloud-based apps. In other words, you could build an online calendar or task management service and host it on Windows Azure, or you could create a desktop calendar that synchronizes with a web calendar. Or you know, something far more creative. Microsoft unveiled the platform at the Professional Developers Conference today, saying that what's being made available today is just a community preview. More features will be available when the full version is released. [via ReadWriteWeb]
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10/27/2008 Facebook Exporter for iPhoto Filed under: Internet, Photo, Macintosh, Web services, Apple, Freeware  If you've ever wondered what the easiest way is to send photos from iPhoto to Facebook, the answer is Facebook Exporter for iPhoto.Since Facebook is the largest photo website on the web in terms of images served, it makes sense that people would want to streamline the process of uploading photos to it as much as possible. Using Facebook Exporter for iPhoto, the process couldn't be more simple. just choose the pictures that you want to upload, optionally add an album and picture descriptions (and you can even tag people!), then press Export. You'll have to approve the photos on Facebook, but the plugin pops up a dialog with the option to go straight to your new album and do so. You need to log the Facebook Exporter plugin in to your Facebook account before using it, and I had a little trouble logging in the first time, but once I was logged in everything was smooth sailing. I suspect I was experiencing a PEBCAK error.
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10/27/2008 FlickrDown: bulk photostream downloader Filed under: Internet, Photo, Utilities, Productivity  My wife takes a lot of photos of the jewelry she creates, and she uses Flickr to store and share them. Recently, however, she was shooting out of town and ran out of room on her SD card. Her solution: plug in to a friend's PC and upload them to her photostream.When she got home, she wanted a quick way to download all 300+ images for editing. That would have been a pretty tedious chore, were it not for FlickrDown. You can search by username, e-mail address, tags, or groups. Results display quickly, and downloading is as simple as checking a few boxes, browsing for your destination folder, and clicking download. Authorization is supported - and necessary if you're going to download private photos. FlickrDown will automatically create a new folder inside your destination to make sure your selected photos are stored neatly. Folders are named based on your search text or the group name. You also don't have to worry about it overwriting existing files - it will automatically append -fd to the new ones. My only minor gripe is that the download progress shows in a separate window (and adds another button to the taskbar). It's easy to overlook since FlickrDown so good at what it does. FlickrDown is freeware for Windows only, and the .Net 2.0 runtimes are required.
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10/27/2008 Zviewer offers an almost-useful full screen browser for web video Filed under: Internet, Video, Windows, Beta  ZeeVee is a company that offers offers an overpriced $499 set top box that you can stick next to So I was pretty excited to take Zviewer for a spin. But after playing around with it for a few minutes, the excitement has dissipated. First of all, the software is really designed for users with HDTV displays. The menu text is really too small to read on a standard definition TV. I know that the digital cutoff is coming soon, but would it have been that tough to let users toggle between high resolution and lower resolution modes? Second, the Zviewer browser is basically a frontend for Firefox 3.0.3. That's good, in that it means any web video you can play in Firefox you can also play with Zviewer. But it also means that once you find the program you're looking for using the custom Zviewer interface, you click play and a version of Firefox opens up. If you have a $130 ZvRemote control that's designed to let you navigate the web pages without a keyboard and mouse, you're golden. If you have a standard media center remote control, things might be a bit more complicated. Zviewer certainly shows promise. The software has the potential to turn your computer and television set into an easy to use video on demand terminal that's reliable enough for you to cancel your cable or satellite subscription. But today it's still just a bit too awkward to use unless you shell out the cash for ZeeVee's custom hardware. Zviewer is free while in beta and is available for Windows only. A Mac version is expected soon. [via ZatzNotFunny]
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