It's a Wonderful Internet

http://www.itsawonderfulinternet.com/

Getting in the holiday spirit, this site's quite fun, but does show just how much the internet has become integral to our daily lives! I know I'd have trouble without it!!

It's amazing how quick technology progresses!! :)

(Thanks to Scoble for the link)

The Best Web 2.0 Software of 2005

This article is quite interesting as Dion provides his opinion on The Best Web 2.0 Software of 2005.

I haven't tried all of the software mentioned, but some of the ones I do like (such as Writely and Netvibes) do win their particular categories!

On a similar note, the Museum of Modern Betas provides a good blog to discover new 'Web 2.0' applications, while making a joke of the recent trend (started by Google) for products to never come out of beta! :) (Link from Scoble)

The Online Shopping Experience

I am currently trying to build another myth based PVR system (this time for my parents) and so have been buying all the required components from online retailers.

I think it's interesting that given how good some sites are (eg Amazon) you just expect them all to have the same features, and find it very annoying when they don't!

In the end, I ordered half my stuff from ebuyer, and the other half from scan, and had very different experiences.

I am very impressed with the ebuyer website, It has pretty good search facilities to find what you want, and then provides the number currently in stock for each item.
Then when you've placed an order you can track the progress online, and easily amend it by adding or removing items for example.

If you compare this to Scan, they provide only limited search features (you can't even order by price as far as I can tell) and for each item they only state whether or not it is in stock, and based on my experience this information could be wrong on 60% of goods!!
Once you've placed the order there are only very limited tracking facilities that just show that the order has been placed. It took them a week to tell me by email that some of the items I ordered were not in stock, and I am still trying to sort out the order with the out of stock items seeming to change with each new email!
Meanwhile the ebuyer goods arrived days ago!

I found this recent article on the Register (E-tailers must provide more information) interesting as this seems to be stating the problems that I've seen.

I think most of these sites are fine when everything is normal, items in stock etc. (I have ordered successfully from Scan before), but when any kind of issue occurs you can really tell the good from the not so good.

In future I'll be buying more IT equipment from ebuyer and avoiding scan as much as I can, so it costs them in the end.

Google Analytics

A couple of weeks ago, Google released the first version of their Analytics Service.

This is the result of their acquisition of Urchin, but being Google they had to shake it up a bit by offering a previously $200 a month service for free!! :)

Being a free service I thought I'd give it a go, and so signed up for this blog. The signup was easy (just use your existing Google Account), and it provides you with a JavaScript fragment to insert on all your pages. This can be put in the Template of most blogging services.

Then it's just a matter of sit back and wait for the data to come in!

It took a couple of days for the data to appear for me, but once its there, you can see that Analytics is a very impressive service. Admitedly its very depressing to see that nobody actually visits this blog, but the range of information provided is pretty neat.

It provides basic information such as number of visitors, most popular pages, number of repeat visitors etc through to information on the geographic (and network) location of visitors through to details on their system setup (OS, Browser, Screen Resolution, etc.)

All of this information is presented graphically using charts and graphs, and shows trends over time.

It is also possible to set up conversion goals to track the flow of visitors down unique paths through your site, although I have not looked at this area yet!

I'd recommend this service to everyone. You're getting a whole load of details for zero outlay, so unless you're scared about the privacy issues with Google having access to all this data, I can't see any reason not to sign up!

Having just said that, I think they are currently closed to new registrations due to demand being greater than expected! :)

You can enter your email address to get informed when it reopens though!