Tagged: google

Request for MeasureMap


I’m shameless! Can someone //please// send me a MeasureMap invite? I’m too cheap to buy mint, too lazy to try out weed, have already tried out Slimstat (rocks!) and Google Analytics (umm, its just about ok). So the only thing left for me to try out now is MeasureMap. :-)

Meanwhile, it seems the quality of the Adsense ads on floatingsun has been gradually improving. And they even get updated more frequently. Now if only people were clicking on them and I was making some //real// money… dang! I think I’m going to just get rid of them eventually. In the past 3 months, I think I’ve managed to make.. lets see… oh, I almost forgot, I’m not allowed to reveal my earnings according to the Terms of Service.

I guess its better that way. Saves me some embarassment :-)

Digg it


Fans of [[http://slashdot.org|slashdot]] should check out [[http://digg.com|digg.com]] — a relatively new kid on the block. While slashdot is often about the comments, digg is mostly about stories. While slashdot is moderated, digg is democratic. Recently, digg itself was [[http://slashdot.org/articles/05/11/17/1439224.shtml?tid=95&tid=124|slashdotted]] and people have started talking about getting //digdotted//.

Meanwhile, it seems that [[https://www.google.com/webmasters/sitemaps/|Google Sitemaps]] also lets you view some stats. Perhaps Google will integrate this with [[http://google.com/analytics|Analytics]] at some point of time. No matter what, one things is for sure — the number of people using awstats, nedstats, mint, slimstat, shortstat and all the other free/non-free stats is going to change drastically in the coming few weeks.

Google Base


Right on the heels of Google [[http://google.com/analytics|Analytics]]’s launch comes the [[http://googleblog.blogspot.com/2005/11/first-base.html|launch]] of Google [[http://base.google.com|Base]]. What is it? Here’s the official quote:

>Google Base enables content owners to easily make their information searchable online. Anyone, from large companies to website owners and individuals, can use it to submit their content in the form of data items. We’ll host the items and make them searchable for free.

Given that I’m yet to see a _single_ report of people actually getting any data out of Analytics, even after 30+ hours, I’ll retain my judgement on Base. It could be a competitor for Craig’s list and Ebay some day, but not today. As for Analytics, I’m sure the results will //eventually// come in, but if Google can’t handle this load, who would?

Google and Urchin


I was talking to Asim yesterday and he seemed to be having a hard time understanding exactly what my problem was, vis-a-vis the Google/Urchin/Analytics fiasco. He couldn’t imagine why anyone would get pissed if they were paying for some product and now that product comes for free.

I guess I didn’t communicate well. Perhaps, the [[http://onotech.blogspot.com/2005_11_01_onotech_archive.html#113200904055483341|this story]] from [[http://zevents.com|Zevents]] will help — its a good example of what has happened to many Urchin customers. And this was just for Urchin 6. The older, Urchin 5 customers have had to deal with even worse customer support.

Here’s one quote from a Mr. Scott Crosby, supposedly at Urchin in response to [[http://simplicio.com/index.php?id=4|this post]]:

>Urchin certainly isn’t “killed” a la Keylime, quite the opposite – it’s going absolutely gangbusters. Perhaps the best analogy is that being part of Google is like trying to drink water from a fire hose – not easy to keep up with the volume. We are rapidly ramping up staff and resellers to accommodate the flood of inquiries, have massively expanded our infrastructure, and have cut the price in half (on demand). Not sure how that’s evil, but I can appreciate customer frustration. We’re doing our best to keep up, but there are only so many hours in the day. That said, please try sales@urchin.com or http://www.urchin.com/support/ – many improvements have been made and response times are much better.

To which, Nathan said:

> There’s one thing that continually surprises me, and what I think Mr. Crosby missed:

> Not only is TextDrive itself upset at Urchin’s poor response and customer service, TextDrive’s customers are taking the company to task for how Google has handled their acquisition!

> Pissing off your customers is one thing. But pissing off your customer’s customers? How many other hosting companies have been left in this kind of situation, and what do their users think about Urchin now?

I think that sums up the situation quite nicely. While everyone is going gaga over Google Analytics, clearly a lot of people are not very happy with how the entire transition has been dealt with.

More Web2.0 stuff


[[http://blogs.zdnet.com/BTL/?p=1980|This article]] on ZDNet talks about some of the //Web2.0// products that showcased at the [[http://www.web2con.com/|Web2.0 conference]] going on right now. I really like Rollyo. Flock is all over the place last 2 days — but not much is known about what exactly it looks like. Wink looked //ok//, but I think Yahoo’s [[http://myweb2.search.yahoo.com/|MyWeb2]] is a much hefty competitor for them.

[[http://zimbra.com|Zimbra]] is a desktop like web-based outlook replacement. Again, there is already a lot of competition in this arena (most notably, Microsoft’s Outlook Web Access and Yahoo’s upcoming redesign of the email interface). A more interesting news is the announced [[http://weblog.infoworld.com/techwatch/archives/004210.html|tie up between Google and Sun]] to develop a web based office app that would take on Microsoft Office.

A look at the list of sponsors of the Web2 con is a very good indication of the players in this field. My guess is that this entire Web2.0 thing will spawn off a whole bunch of startups that will (and are already) get consumed by the big players like Yahoo and Google.