Google Analytics Slashdots Itself

See my other post for a description of Google Analytics.

To: Me

From: The Google Analytics Team

Subject: Google Analytics: Service Announcement

Hello Google Analytics User,

This is a quick update to address some issues you may be seeing in your Google Analytics account and what we're doing to respond.

First, due to extremely high demand, we've temporarily limited the number of new signups as we increase capacity. This allows us to focus on our primary objective--to provide a great user experience for our existing users.

Next, here is current information on the most common questions we're receiving:

1. The 'Check Status' button is being reworked to check for properly installed tracking code. This should be fixed by the end of November.

2. The '+Add Profile' link has been temporarily removed until we increase capacity. We'll alert all current users when the feature is restored.

3. While we increase capacity, you may see longer than normal delays in data showing up in your reports. All data continues to be collected and no data has been lost.

For additional help with your Google Analytics account, we encourage you to browse or search our online Help Center at http://www.google.com/support/analytics?hl=en.

Thanks for your patience as we improve Google Analytics and add resources to ensure a high-quality service.

Sincerely,

The Google Analytics Team

It always feels like ... somebody's watching me.

About a week ago I saw a post that mentioned Google Analytics.

What is Google Analytics?

Google Analytics shows you how people found your site, how they explored it, and how you can enhance the visitor experience. Improve your website return on investment, increase conversions, and make more money on the web.

With over 80 reports, your free Google Analytics account will track visitors through your site, and will keep track of the performance of your marketing campaigns - whether they're AdWords campaigns, email campaigns, or any other advertising program. With this information, you'll know which keywords are really working, which ad text is the most effective, and where your visitors are dropping off during the conversion process. Don't be fooled by the fact that this functionality is available to you for free - Google Analytics is a full-featured, powerful analytics package.

It's been so popular that they've had to limit new sign-ups as they increase capacity. It's a multi-user system as well. If anyone is curious and would like to see inside I'll grant view rights to those that ask. The only requirement is that you need a Google Account, and you need to include that in your request to me.

This is the fruition of the purchase of urchin by Google.

So, What exactly is so cool about GA? There are stats about unique visitors, pageviews, and content optimization. The ability to add multiple users and create and monitor goals are also present. But, the single thing that's got me checking GA each day is the geographic overview. It tells me from which part of the world my viewers are coming from. While I am not surprised that south central Wisconsin is leading the way I am surprised by the traffic from Plano, TX; Rancho Cucamonga, CA; Redmond, WA (Hmmm?); and a fairly surprising number or hits from Europe in cities such as Jönköping, Sweden; Grenoble, Douneau, and Vincennes, France; as well as Lisbon Portugal.

The graph of new vs. returning visitors is surprising if only to me. 60% of my visitors are new... hmm, I should just post a screen-capture...



There, click through for a larger (readable) view.

"Wax On, Wax Off" Pat Morita dead at 73

Pat Morita


1932 - 2005

You probably best know Noriyuki Pat Morita as Mr. Miyagi from The Karate Kid (Part II, Part III, The Next Karate Kid) film franchise. Some of you might also remember his as Arnold from Happy Days. Noriyuki, Pat, Mr. Miyagi, if you will, passed away at his home from natural causes.

Here's a bit of trivia for you:

Ralph Macchio played The Karate Kid, which oscar-award-winning actress played The Next Karate Kid?

Give up?

Hillary Swank. Go figure.

HerbieJP says: Morita's "wise" acting techniques paved his path to success on Earth. Here's knowing his reputation in Hollywood as one of the nicest actors in the business did the same for his journey to "Heaven."

Alex Blagg takes a light-hearted approach with his obit for Kesuke Miyagi

Matthew says: To this day, whenever I pretend to know Karate, I always shout out “Wax on, wax off!” as I defend imaginary blows from a ferocious attacker (Yeah, I need to get a life).

Thanks for the memories.

Rest in peace, Mr. Miyagi.

Love Photograpy AND Legos?

If you love photography AND legos you are not alone. Although chances are you probably don't have the passion or the time of one Adrian Hanft, III.

Adrian's blog is a showcase for his tinkering. The output is not only some awesome photography and not one, not two, but three different lego cameras (35mm, Medium Format Pinhole, Polaroid 95a).

Very cool.

The result is a very ethereal looking photograph.

Awesome Christmas Light Display

Three caveats:
* It's Video.
* Pretend it's after thanksgiving.
* Ignore the "quirky" anchor Amanda Congdon

Now for the coolest Christmas Light Display you will see linked from this blog this week.

Rest in Peace, Sam (& Zippy, Too)

Sam, a pure-bred chinese crested and three time winner of the
'World's ugliest' dog contest has passed away at the age of 14 years (that's 98 in dog years).

Zippy, another contestant in the World's Ugliest Dog arena and also a chinese crested followed Sam just a day later.

There remains the possiblity that a new breed of younger uglier dogs is out there waiting to be discovered but, I find it hard to fathom we'll see as ugly snouts as we did on Sam and Zippy, nor could they be more loved.

What does the blogosphere say?

Brit Blogger Says:

[takes off hat... *sniff*]

farewell Sam, may your ugly mug grace the halls of doggie heaven.

Persian Guy Says:

Rest in Peace little guy

Jessa Jeffries says:

The time has come for us all to mourn him. The most glorious of all God's creatures.
And so, in his memory I ask you all to share a Good Bye Sam Haiku.

watch over us all
from your ugly cloud above
and go scare jesus
~Silent Matt

Forests paying the price for biofuels

It appears you're damned if you do, and damned if you don't.

With rising fuel costs and a prescription to reduce green house gas emissions worldwide people are turning to green energy. This has potentially devastating implications for the world's rainforests that produce the palm and soya plants which each yield oils commonly used in bio-diesel and other alternative energies. It's a disappointing realization that, in hindsight appears so, obvious.

Doodle 4 Google

Doodle 4 Google is one way that Google let's you know that they haven't completely lost their soul as a company.

Big corporations could learn alot about image preservation from Google who arguably could, and some say are, becoming an evil empire without looking like one.

ABC7Chicago.com: Randomly assigned license plate found objectionable

Poor Bastard.

Imagine if your license plates arrived in the mail and declared you the anti-christ.

Heh. The funny thing is if you requested this same combination of letters it would probably be denied.

Taking designs from nature...

It's often said that to find inspired design ideas, one need only look at nature... or nature artists in this case.
Firefox logo 'inspired' by a work by Georgia O'Keefe

Invisible foil hats: Fourth image down from the top.

I was reading through some old posts last night and came across this one. The nice thing about having a blog is being able to go back and look at some of the crazy stuff you've done. At least the crazy stuff you were willing to own up to doing in the first place.

MAKE: Blog: Beck video with Sony QRIOs now live...

MAKE: Blog: Beck video with Sony QRIOs now live...

The QRIOs are Sony's dancing robots that were on display about a year ago. If you saw the initial video you've got the idea. Beck appears as one of several transparent-blue images on a screen behind the robots as they dance for what appears to be a crowd of Japanese reporters.

I've dug Beck since Odelay, I'm partial to "Where It's At" for the lyrical genius that it is, and although this isn't quite on par with his best work it's still pretty good.

Stupid Political Games

Rice brokers Gaza border crossing deal
Condoleezza Rice, the American secretary of state, has helped secure an agreement between Israel and Palestine to open the Gaza Strip's borders. After all-night negotiations, Ms Rice announced that the main ...

Ugh, could they be more obvious that Condi is going to run for the presidency in '08? The picture looks like Deb took it in her basement while waiting for Uncle Rico to get there. The flag in the background, the makeover to soften her image, I wouldn't be surprised if she was told to think of seahorses to get her to relax. Not that I have anything against Rice, it's just annoying that the think the public isn't going to recognize the obvious efforts to presidentialize the candidates.

Homemade Flame Thrower

Holy Cow!

I'd build the "ultimate super soaker" version of it if I thought I could restrain myself from actually trying it as a flamethrower.

Wikipedia, Rocks!

Where else can you find the meaning of the term FIB?

CSSVista Review

Grade: Incomplete

I got CSSVista installed yesterday, here at work we already had copies of the Windows Installer 3.0 and the .Net Framework 2.0.

CSSVista delivers just what it offers:

"edit your CSS code live in both Internet Explorer and Firefox simultaneously."

This is very cool and could be extremely helpful in some cases. However, if it's not in that sentence, it's not in the software. The File menu has one option: Exit. The View menu has one toggle: Split View. The Tools menu, the most robust of the three contains these options: Edit CSS, Automatic CSS Refreshing (in other words, Live! Refreshing of the output).

There is no option to Save your work without copying and pasting it to your favorite editor. There is no context menu, no right-click copy.

I'm an avid reader of 37Signal's blog Signal v. Noise and understand less.

I will be watching CSSVista, because as Nathan Pitman says "I think this liitle application has some great potential!".

Candy Order Form

It's that time of year again. Anyone interested in ordering candy should return a completed order form, available in PDF & Excel formats. We will be taking orders for candy until January. Just a reminder, we do get busy around the holidays. If you want orders for Thanksgiving or Christmas submit them early to ensure delivery by the desired date.

If you have any questions let me know or post a comment here.

CSSVista Launched

CSSVista: Live CSS editing with Internet Explorer and Firefox simultaneously

How cool is that?

Downsides: WinXP only. A myriad of dependencies you're not likely to have installed on your machine (.Net Framework 2, Windows Installer 3). The latter dependecy requires Genuine Windows Validation, "hmm what's that?" I wondered.

Oh! You have to actually have a legally licensed version of WindowsXP and be able to prove it for the install to work.

Does it matter if your copy of Windows is genuine? Yes, if you want the confidence of knowing that your software is legitimate and fully supported. And only genuine Windows customers can receive product downloads, Windows updates and special offers.

Wonderful.

Mozilla Extension: IE Tab

Mozilla Update :: Extensions -- More Info:IE Tab - All Releases

IE View always open IE-only pages in newly launched windows of Internet Explorer, IE Tab can open them in tabs of Mozilla/Firefox.

Friends of Bob & Tom Comedy Tour

Last night we went to the Friends of Bob & Tom Comedy Tour featuring:

David Crowe ****
Greg 'Flute-man' Warren ***
Mike Birbiglia *****
Auggie Smith *


(*'s = iTunes style ratings)

It was a great night of comedy. David Crowe was the opening act and acted as host for the remainder of the show, he was a pleasant surprise as I didn't recognize his name. Mike Birbiglia stole the show in my opinion. He looked absolutely comfortable on stage and delivered laugh after laugh (highly recommended). Auggie Smith got caught up in the smoking ban, which appeased a lot of the audience so despite the equine death he kept whipping. Flute-man is Flute-man not much more, still funny though.

Although much of their best material can be heard on Bob & Tom, if you go the the Friends of Tour you get to hear them deliver their jokes without Bob, Tom, Christy, and Chick drowning them in their live laugh-track.

Washing Sacks, Great Idea, Name needs work.

This would make me dread laundry less. We often let our baskets fill up until we have to do laundry. At least some of us would allow that to happen.

flickrDogs

Schotzy's Bath
Originally uploaded by brykmantra.

The flickrDogs photogroup on flickr (and flickrDogs.com) is updated near daily and usually has a great picture like this one.

PowerSquid Outlet Multiplier

Here is an idea whose time has come.

PowerSquid Outlet Multiplier, it's a powerstrip without the strip!

Add this to my christmas list.

LEADER OF THE FREE WORLD?

Ha, ha!

This is entertaining even if you are a Bush supporter.

Cash, Money

Some of you may have noticed the advertisements at the top of this page.

I thought I would give the big G's ad service a try. By my estimate after approximately one week I've made $0.365 for each click-through on an ad. This is a small set that may not be valid as the data grow but, it's interesting to watch. It's also one way to monitor traffic on your site. It does not, however, provide any metrics other than page counts.

Apple's Aperture

I am quickly falling in love with Aperture from Apple. Two impediments lie in the way my using Aperture.

1. Aperture is Mac Only, I don't have a Mac.

I've consiered getting a Mac to play with for a while, the most recent lure being the MacMini. I'm ascared that the MacMini isn't going to be able to handle Aperture or the other cool stuff I'd want to do with a mac.

2. $499 Price Tag.

I've been using Picasa for quite some time. It definitely gets the job done. It's got a nice feature-set, it's available on Windows, oh and it's free. I'd like to think that eventually Picasa won't be enough, or at least annoy me into a splurge. Unfortunately, it's a nice... free.. photo manager.

DP Review's List of Aperture features.

This pic was snapped automatically by a camera triggered at the launch of my run. If only we had a way to do this with say RC cars and a certain track. *nudgegarrettnudgegarrettwinkgarrettwink*