Google Analytics in AIR; That’s What I’m Talking About

Having just bought a Mac after ten years of Windows, I feel as though I have a heightened appreciation for products and services that are pleasurable to use. And while I love websites that implement Ajax or Flash effectively, few online destinations can match the usability of a well-designed desktop application.

That’s why I found Google Analytics AIR beta, publicly released on September 17th, to be such a breath of fresh air (no pun intended, really).

This unofficial AIR version of Google Analytics delivers the functionality of browser-based Google Analytics but with greater usability and a richer experience. If you haven’t heard of AIR (once named “Apollo”), it’s a platform developed by Adobe that enables web developers to deploy their web services outside of the browser so they function more like traditional applications.

This is the first AIR program that I have tested that really gets me excited about the platform. As a beta program, it’s not perfect (I ran into a few errors), but overall it has been executed very well. It’s also nice to see such a full-functional program developed using someone else’s API (in this case, Google’s).

Check out Google Analytics AIR beta and give the developer, Nico, your feedback to help make this thing even better. If you don’t already have AIR, you need to download it to use any AIR-base applications (as with Flash).

Thanks Orli.

Correction and Update: Google doesn’t actually have their own API for Analytics; Nico says he had to make his own to build this program (not exactly sure how that works).

He also says that both Adobe and Google are involved in this project now. Adobe has included the application in its Showcase program, and Google product managers and engineers are providing him with feedback and helping him make it more secure.

Nico says that beta 2 of Google Analytics AIR will be available around the time AIR beta 2 is released to the general public. He’s currently focusing on improved international support and the integration of AdWords.

Real Time Search Soon At Twitter

We just got word from Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey that the company will be launching a real time search feature “very soon.” Type in a keyword or keywords and any time a Twitter is created that includes those keywords, you’ll be notified via IM or SMS. They’ll add the the ability to access this via their API in the near future, Dorsey says.

The feature hasn’t launched yet, and we’re unsure on some of the details. For example, I’m not sure if you can limit results to just people you are tracking, or if you can get results via RSS or email instead of or in addition to SMS and IM. Either way, Twitter is clearly adding features and functionality at a quick pace, which is good to see. Hopefully, the worst of the downtime is behind us, too.

The fuzzy image to the right is a sample user interface that we received from Twitter.

Update: Dorsey says in the next couple of weeks they’ll allow historical search as well. Also, for now, searches can only be done on all Twitter users. Over time, users will be able to refine searches by friends, geography, time and/or language. For now, results are only returned via SMS and IM - RSS, email and the API will come later.

GarageSeek Rates Mechanics, But Yelp Will Kill This Category Too

It seems like every time you turn around there’s another site out there trying to help you rate this, that, or the other thing. There’s Rapleaf (people), StreetAdvisor (neighborhood), YourStreet (neighborhood), SodaRatings (soda), and the list goes on (we wrote about Urbanspoon yesterday). Now there’s a new one in private beta, GarageSeek, for rating mechanic’s garages in your area.

With GarageSeek users will be able to share their experiences with mechanics and rate them on several different metrics. When live, the site will provide a potentially very useful service, the ability to check reviews and avoid hiring a shoddy mechanic. However, while a complete database of real reviews is useful, a lot of review verticals don’t offer a real reason to contribute when they start and fragment reviews across multiple domain names users may not care to remember.

Yelp largely solved the chicken and egg problem that comes with user review services, even if they allegedly paid users for reviews to start. They raised over $16 million and generated traction on the service through having a system seeded with content, rewarding top users with over-the-top parties, and focusing on a service that a wide variety of people use frequently, restaurants. The other large people-driven review site, Insiderpages, had the advantage of $9 million in financing and starting back in 2004. Despite this, Insiderpages went through a slew of layoff and eventually sold off to CitySearch for $13 million.

Yelp is already in the auto repair category, and is poised to expose their audience to other review verticals as well. They’ve already moved into non-geographical service reviews such as media outlets. The one question these review verticals need to ask themselves is “Can niche vertical review sites survive up against one general review site, Yelp or otherwise”? My feeling is no.

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Get A Yahoo Mash Invitation At InviteShare

Yahoo Mash, Yahoo’s new social network experiment, sent out the first batch of invitations moments ago. The service is invite only at this point. Get yours at InviteShare now.

I am seeding the first few invitations. Then it’s up to you. Once you get an invite, come back to confirm it and invite a few more people to keep things going. The more people you invite, the higher you will appear on waiting lists for future private betas.

Touchscreen iPod? Fat Nano? Find Out ASAP from CrunchGear Tomorrow

Whatever Steve Jobs chooses to unveil tomorrow at a special media event in San Francisco, yours truly will be on location sending the guys over at CrunchGear the news as it unfolds. They will be posting all announcements to CrunchGear so be sure to keep checking that blog throughout the day to get your fill of Apple mania.

Live coverage will begin at 10:00 AM PST (1:00 PM EST) sharp on Wednesday, September 5th. The event is expected to last an hour and a half, but tune in at the beginning to find out what Steve will be wearing.

The rumor mill informs us that we have these announcements in store for us:

* Video iPod with 3.5-inch touchscreen display
* iPod Nano with video, a 320×240 display, 12 and 16GB capacities, and CoverFlow technology
* iPod support for digital radio and the purchasing songs from iTunes over WiFi
* Redesign and increased storage for the iPod Shuffle

Wiki Jacking

Following the decision in January by Wikipedia to strip SEO benefits from outgoing links by adding the link-nofollow tag (see our coverage of how the rule doesn’t apply to certain third party wiki links) the once rampant gaming of Wikipedia has all but disappeared. SEOMoz’s Rand Fishkin posted during the week on a new technique being used that instead of building Google juice to a particular site, aims to knock others off the top positions on Google by promoting the position of Wikipedia pages to the top of each specific Google search query. I’m not quite sure exactly what color hat the method may be (and Rand asks the same question), but it is clever.

CrunchGear 1st Birthday Bash Recap and Photos

We at one of the “other” Crunch blogs celebrated our first birthday last night and we have a plethora of pictures featuring some of the New York tech scene. It wasn’t quite a bunch of tanned, attractive people partying under a fading Palo Alto sunset, but was still a party. Special thanks to all the sponsors and Blast Media for allowing us to give out great prizes — including a robotic Elvis from Wowwee.

Thumbalizr: A Really Good Idea, If It Worked

Thumbalizr is a newish online image tool that allows users to take screen shots of web pages.

Users can customize the dimensions of each screenshot taken, from standard sizes through to a custom option. Screen shots can consist of an entire page, or just a standard screen shot. To use Thumbalizr, users simply type the URL of the site they require a screenshot of, and hit the “thumb it” button. The image is then available for download in various sizes by pixel.

Thumbalizer is a really good idea; I’m a regular creator of web page screenshots so to not have to manually take a screen shot, open it in Photoshop, crop it, resize it, save it then upload it appeals to me, as I’m sure it would to others who frequently create screenshots. There is only one significant problem with Thumbalizr: it regularly doesn’t work. It happily made screenshots of TechCrunch, but it failed on a range of other sites. Hopefully they will fix the issues shortly.

New Playboy Social Network Built On Ning

Well, this is a big win for build-your-own-social-network Ning, which just raised a massive round of funding. The new Playboy social network we covered earlier today is actually built on Ning, not self-built code or one of the many other white label social networking options available.

Once you actually sign up for the site it becomes clear it’s Ning, since their pervasive toolbar remains at the top of the site. Users actually use their Ning address to log in. You must have a .edu address to get an invitation, but you can then sign up using any Ning account.

Whether or not this network is successful, it’s great validation for Ning.

http://www.techcrunch.com/

Restrain Discipline on Partnered Lutheran Gay Clergy

Until August 11 of this year, gay clergy ordained within regular ecclesiastical channels of the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America (ELCA) were expected to remain celibate, even if they were in long-term, committed relationships with their same-sex ...
Lutherans vote not to punish gay ministers Los Angeles Times
Gay Clergy OK'd By Evangelical Lutheran Church In America WBBM780
Milwaukee Journal Sentinel (subscription) - Kansas City Star - WQAD - United Press International
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Happy Birthday, CrunchGear!

In honor of CrunchGear’s first birthday, the CG team is giving away over 30 prizes in the next 10 days, culminating in a get-together in Manhattan and maybe an iPhone or two. Head on over to check it out.

Nokia Publishes Access Code For Mosh Private Beta

If you are going to have a private beta, it may be a good idea not to publish the access code to the site on your forums. But that is exactly what Nokia did with their new Mosh service.

If you want to see what Nokia Mosh is all about, just type “ALLACCESS” into the box on the landing page. You can then register for the service.

Mosh is actually a great idea, albeit not great enough to counter the iPhone tidal wave that is coming. It’s a portal that can be accessed from a normal computer or a Nokia mobile device where users upload and share content - applications, games, images, etc. These are then downloaded to the mobile device.

Coincidentally, Yahoo is also working on a new service with the working name “Mosh.”

SONY ERICSSON - K320i

SONY ERICSSON - K320i This 82 grams phone has a Lithium Polymer battery type, which allows you talk time of 420 minutes and stand by time of 360 hours. It has added features like 65K colour TFT display with resolution of 128 x 160 pixels, voice dial, voice mail, call conferencing, triband, vibration mode, predictive text input, polyphonic ring tones, stopwatch, calculator, calendar, tasks, handsfree speaker, ring tone composer, countdown timer, SMS, EMS, MMS, GPRS, Bluetooth, Infrared, USB connector, flight mode, inbuilt Dictaphone, mp3, mpeg4 and media player, and is WAP enabled. It has a VGA camera with 4x digital zoom and video recording. It has an inbuilt memory of 15MB. Price Rs. :- 5,757 User Rating : 6.20 Good

Latest future bazar mobile phones

SAMSUNG - SGH-E690 This 83 grams clamshell phone has a Lithium-Ion battery type, which allows you talk time of 360 minutes and stand by time of 250 hours. It has added features like 65k colour TFT internal display with resolution of 128 x 160 pixels and 65k colour external display with resolution of 96 x 96 pixels, voice dial, voice mail, call conferencing, triband, flight mode, vibration mode, predictive text input, polyphonic ringtones, music player (mp3, AAC and AAC+), fm radio, alarm clock, calendar,inbuilt dictaphone, handsfree speaker, MMS, EMS, SMS, EDGE, GPRS, Bluetooth, USB Connector and is WAP enabled. It has a VGA camera with features like 4x digital zoom, photo effects, multi shot, self timer, mosaic shot, image quality adjuster and video recording. It also has an inbuilt memory of 16MB, microSD card slot and sales package consists of 256MB microSD card. View More Price Rs. :- 8,079 User Rating : 10.00 Perfect

SAMSUNG - SGH-P310 This 73.6 grams phone has a Lithium-Ion battery type, which allows you talk time of 240 minutes and stand by time of 242 hours. It has added features like 262k colour TFT display with resolution of 320 x 240 pixels, voice mail, call conferencing, triband, flight mode, vibration mode, predictive text input, polyphonic ringtones, music player (mp3, AAC and AAC+), alarm clock, stopwatch, calendar, document viewer, inbuilt dictaphone, handsfree speaker, MMS, EMS, SMS, EDGE, GPRS, Bluetooth, Infrared and is WAP enabled. It has a 2MP camera with features like 4x digital zoom, flash, photo effects, multi shot, mosaic shot, image quality adjuster and video recording. It also is pda enabled and has an inbuilt memory of 80MB and a microSD card slot. It comes with a Leather Case with inbuilt secondary battery. View More Price Rs. :- 18,999 User Rating : 4.00 Mediocre

MOTOROLA - W375 This 88 grams clamshell phone has a lithium-ion battery type, which allows you talk time of 450 minutes and standby time of 250 hours. It has a 65k colour TFT internal display with resolution of 128 x 160 pixels and a mono external display. It also has features like VGA camera with 4x digital zoom, polyphonic ringtones, predictive text input, vibration mode, triband, mp3 capability, fm radio, MMS, EMS, SMS, GPRS, USB Connector, WAP, handsfree speaker, calculator, calendar, currency converter, alarm, clock and ringtone composer. View More Price Rs. :- 5,490

MOTOROLA - L7i This 96 grams phone has a Lithium-ion battery type, which allows you talk time of 315 minutes and stand by time of 345 hours. It has added features like inbuilt dictaphone, handsfree speaker, voice dial, voice mail, call conferencing, specific caller tones, vibration mode, quad band, predictive text input, bluetooth enabled, SMS messaging, picture messaging, inbuilt games, polyphonic ringtones, EDGE, GPRS, MMS and is WAP 1.2 enabled. It has a microSD card slot, inbuilt VGA camera with 4x digital zoom and video recording feature. Its sales package consists of 128 MB microSD card, USB connectivity cable and headset. Price Rs. :- 8,200

MOTOROLA - RIZR Z3 This 115 grams slider phone has a Lithium-ion battery type, which allows you talk time of 400 minutes and standby time of 350 hours. It has added features like voice dial, call conferencing, specific caller tones, quad band, 2MP camera with 8x digital zoom, photo light and video recording, email client, calendar, calculator, flight mode, inbuilt dictaphone, handsfree speaker, vibration mode, predictive text input, PTT, SMS, EMS, MMS, EDGE, GPRS, Bluetooth, Infrared, USB Connector and is WAP enabled. It comes with 262k colour TFT display with resolution of 176 x 220 pixels and also has features like mp3 capability, polyphonic ringtones, pda enabled, inbuilt memory of 20MB and a microSD card slot. Price Rs. :- 13,138