kdmurray.blog

The crossroads of life and tech

New look for Google Analytics

New look for Google AnalyticsLast week Google revamped their web-statistics package Google Analytics.  The new look boasts some very web 2.0-ish graphs and provides all the same reports as before.

One of the new features is a drill-down world map, which provides a bit of an easier view of where your visitors are coming from.  Some more detail from the “what’s new” email that was sent to analytics subscribers:Geographic Drill-down reporting

  • Email and export reports: Schedule or send ad-hoc personalized report emails and export reports in PDF format.
  • Custom Dashboard: No more digging through reports. Put all the information you need on a custom dashboard that you can email to others.
  • Trend and Over-time Graph: Compare time periods and select date ranges without losing sight of long term trends.
  • Contextual help tips: Context sensitive Help and Conversion University tips are available from every report.

This is a great new look for the Analytics tool, which in fine Google tradition has been kept as a free service for everyone in the web community.

You can read more detail in the Google Analytics Blog post by Jeff Gillis from the GA team.

Good on ya, Google.  I’ve enjoyed looking through the GA changes over the last week or so and will do so in more detail in the coming days and weeks.  Now if you could just fix that pesky 10MB file limit in GMail….

Silverlight – Microsoft takes on Flash

Microsoft has recently released Silverlight 1.0, a .NET-based competitor to Adobe’s Flash animation product.

This is an interesting strategic move as Microsoft is moving into what is clearly established territory for the Flash brand.  Microsoft is extending the reach of the new Windows Presentation Foundations (WPF) to the web with a version being called WPF/E (WPF/Everywhere).

I’ll have a more in-depth look at Silverlight in the next couple of weeks.