Web Architect, Entrepreneur
I remember Google acquiring Measure Map sometime ago, and forgot about it when Google Analytics became freely available. However this still looks promising, and hope they bring it out soon. Looks like a souped up version of Analytics made just for bloggers.
Update: I haven’t tried Performancing Metrics yet, but online sources say that it is quite good. If anyone gives it a go, please let me know!
First, if you don’t know what pinging has to with blogs, read this.
Google recently added pings to their blog search. Official announcement:
Today we’re launching the Google Blog Search Pinging Service, which is a way for individual bloggers and blog platform providers to inform us of content changes. Blogging providers who syndicate RSS/Atom/XML and want to be included in our Blog Search index can now ping us directly. We’ll continue to monitor other pinging services and will contribute change notifications to the community. Read more at our FAQ.
Most WordPress users use pingomatic to update blog monitoring services. Until pingomatic adds Google Blog Search to their list, you can set WP to do it automatically:
Once you’ve logged into WP, go to Options > Writing and add this line under “Update Services”:
http://blogsearch.google.com/ping/RPC2
You can also ping manually here.
The new Google groups (in beta!) has been launched, and it looks much nicer than the plain jane text-only interface they had before.
Of course, the current non-beta version of Google Groups is still around and you can still use it (although without the cool new features). But we are going to change all of Groups to this new look soon enough — we’re even trying to (gasp!) take it out of beta reasonably quickly. So try out the new version for yourself. And let us know what else we can do to make the experience even better.
If you’ve tried out Google’s personalized homepage, you’ve undoubtedly seen some of Google’s gadgets in action. Personally, I prefer the clean un-personalized Google home page, so Google Gadgets meant nothing to me until now. Google gadgets can now be embedded on any webpage. I’m sure some of these gadgets will come in useful at some point, like when you feel like a game of PacMan!
October 24th is the date and I can’t wait! (Stop groaning) Anyway, since the release of Firefox 2 is only 3 weeks away, here are a few links to keep you satisified till then.
I hate having multiple applications open. So it’s either web-based, or a fireworks plugin. Checked out Google Reader today because they just redesigned it. The interface is great, finding new feeds is easier than any other RSS reader I’ve ever used. The option to share feeds is cool.
All the same, I’m going to stick with Wizz RSS for now, because it displays posts using the same design template as the original source. I check my gmail account every hour, I don’t need my news reader to look the same.
Have you noticed that everything new on the web seems to have a “beta” affixed to it? It’s getting tiring. According to Wikipedia – “A beta version or beta release usually represents the first version of a computer program that implements all features in the initial software requirements specification. It is likely to be unstable but useful for internal demonstrations and previews to select customers, but not yet ready for release.”
That makes sense, but labelling everything as beta just because you don’t want to take responsibility for the bugs you’ve left in it? I say quit the beta tag and start developing software without the damn bugs/compatibility issues.
Viral Video Chart – Tracks the top videos from YouTube, MySpace and Google Video. Hope they add Metacafe soon.
Great new design for DesiPundit, although I can see it deteriorating already. Typical for sites that are not maintained by the original designer, although I don’t know if that’s the case here. By Chugs Designs.
Text on an image. How complicated. Will never understand why stuff like this is talked about. It took me 10 mins to get this done. A novice could have done it with any picture manager in 5.