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Posts by K:

Possible Google Analytics Alternative - Woopra

13.05.2008 by K Category Good Reads, Tech for Life 10 Comments →

I have used Google Analytics ever since I registered my first website and haven’t had any complaints so far. It does what it does ti my satisfaction and answers most questions about my site visitors plus some more. I haven’t had the need or urge to look for an alternate web analytics offering so far.

I recently came across an interesting alternative, Woopra that seemed worth looking at. One of the main features of Woopra that attracted me was live visitor tracking. Let’s look at some of the other features Woopra offers:

Woopra Features

• Woopra offers web analytics and site statistics that is updated at least once a day with several stats getting updated multiple times a day.
• It offers Live Tracking of visitors so you have more immediate information.
• Woopra can be installed on WordPress, vBulletin forums as a plugin and is also supported by manual installation on other major blog/CMS platforms. (more info)
• It comes with a cool multi-platform client software that is available for Windows, Mac & Linux.
• With the real time information on search trends, traffic spikes, user queries, generating content or taking action becomes immediate based on user actions.
• You can search your data by specific data points to get a deeper understanding of visitors that matter to your site.
• Embed a click to chat button in your site to let your visitors chat with the webmaster.
• If you run WordPress, vBulletin, MediaWiki, etc it allows tracking registered users.
• Custom notification based on your set events like certain user’s visit, or users from certain country, browser, etc or an event like an ad click or sales, etc.
• Woopra is designed to be a platform rather than a solution and can be extended with plugins and skins through their API.
• It has a thriving forum for any questions or issues you may have with the product.

Woopra is free during beta and allows tracking one site. When the paid service becomes available, Woopra says there will still be a free service.

I have registered ShanKri-la to test out this beta service and will share my impressions on it after some time and see if I can compare it to Google Analytics. I am waiting for site approval at the moment to start using Woopra and excited that the client is supported for my Linux desktop as well.

Linux Installation Tip

If you are trying to install Woopra in your Linux desktop like Ubuntu or openSUSE, make sure you have JRE 1.6 installed.

Also, if you get an error when installing with sh woopra_unix.sh command,

gzip: sfx_archive.tar.gz: not in gzip format

Try downloading the file with this from the linux command line,

w get http://static.woopra.com/woopra_unix.sh?anti-cache=12398794379

Then rename the file to woopra_unix.sh before executing it to install the client. ( ‘w get’ is just one word  without the space but WordPress won’t let me save the post spelt right)

A contact of mine on Twitter said he’s been waiting for 2 weeks for approval so I’m not sure how soon mine will be approved. As soon as it does, I will post a followup with more first hand information on this service.

Hello newcomer, did I say welcome to ShanKri-la yet? Before you move on, just wanted to thank you for visiting and we hope you come back and see us again!

Get CommentLuv And KeywordLuv For Your Comments

06.05.2008 by K Category WordPress 31 Comments →

I am a firm believer in showing love to my readers, bloggers and non-bloggers alike. I have been a ‘Do Follow‘ adopter from the very beginning of my blogging days.



DoFollow

For those unaware, WordPress makes comments a ‘nofollow’ link to make it unattractive to spammers. But, there has been a movement to reward commentators with a linkback by removing the nofollow from comments. The DoFollow WordPress plugin makes this really easy to acheive.

So, anyone leaving a comment here will get a PR5 link back to their website helping them a little in their search engine ranking. Yes, ShanKri-la just went from PR4 to PR5 with the latest pagerank update!

CommentLuv

CommentLuv is another awesome plugin in use in ShanKri-la. This is purely to highlight the commentator’s latest post automatically by parsing their blog’s feed. So, with every comment you leave, your latest post is automatically showcased in your comment giving you some exposure with my other readers.

KeywordLuv

Even though you get these benefits, the links to your site doesn’t carry much weight like a link with a targeted keyword as anchor text. That’s why we see comments with names like ‘Free iPod nano’, ‘Detroit Real Estate’. Although it looks spammy, some of these folks are well meaning and leave comments that contribute to their discussion. I can tell a spam comment most of the time and I delete them without hesitation. I do allow comments with keywords but I still don’t get to know the name of the person leaving the comment.

My friend Stephen Cronin has solved this problem with his new plugin, KeyWordLuv. Here is an excerpt:

KeywordLuv helps you reward your commentators by separating their name from their keywords in the link to their site. This gives them improved anchor text, which can help their site rank higher in the search engine results.

You can now leave a comment with your name as well as a keyword of your choice here and get a PR5 link back to your site! How cool is that? People pay big bucks for that and all you have to do is comment here.

Here is how you do it:

Leave a comment with the name field like this : (spaces are fine)

K-IntheHouse@Top Firefox Extensions

The name link in the comment will appear as:

K-IntheHouse from Top Firefox Extensions

If you are a registered user, make sure you logout to see this. Check out Stephen’s other useful WordPress plugins as well.

Words of Love

I have taken the time to make this blog friendly as well as rewarding to you should you participate in any discussion here. And I highly encourage you to do so as a blog’s real value most times lies in the discussions & comments.

But, please don’t abuse it by leaving meaningless comments like ‘Nice post’ just to get some keyword love. It doesn’t help anyone and I will delete it even though I appreciate the encouragement.

Are you ready for some loving?

(image credit: geishaboy500)


MagicJack Review - VOIP Service for $20/Year

05.05.2008 by K Category Money Matters 5 Comments →

I am one of those who’s been paying about $40/month for traditional long distance phone calls here in the US. I have long known the benefits of VOIP but the cost difference wasn’t that big for me to leave my convenient setup with AT&T - DSL + Long distance phone. Plus, I was just plain lazy to switch.

Recently, when I heard about MajicJack’s VOIP service I thought it was one of those shady deals that I’d end up getting swindled. It was the price of the subscription which is a ridiculously low $20/year that made me wrinkle my eyebrow and say ‘Is this for real?’

With that information in hand, I just found out that AT&T offers an Internet-only DSL or naked DSL as opposed to a DSL service requiring a phone line. So, I immediately jumped in to try out the obviously cheaper alternative, MajicJack to see if I can really save some money. I have been testing this out for a couple of weeks now. I am impressed enough with MajicJack to share it with you.

MajicJack Overview

• It is a TicTac sized box with a USB connector (with 1ft extension cord) on one end and a phone jack on the other end.
• Costs about $40 for the first year to purchase the MajicJack box including a years subscription and $20/year thereafter
• Unlimited long distance calls to US & Canada but no international calls yet although I have been seeing 2c international call ads in the dialpad, I can’t find further information at the time of writing this.
• Self-installing software from the MajicJack device itself. No CDs!
• Software runs on Windows XP & Vista only. No luck for Mac/Linux users at the moment.
• Phone numbers available in a lot of area codes in the US
• You provide your address during setup to get a phone number assigned to you as well as have e911 configured.
• Just plugin your home phone to the phone jack on MajicJack and you are all set with a new number.
• You get a dialpad as well in your computer should you want to use it with a headset.
• You get all the features like call waiting, caller id, voice mail, voice mail by email, etc.
• You can get your current number ported to MajicJack as well but the information on how to do it could be better.

My Impressions

• The call quality is not bad with my 1.5Mbps connection but if I am watching streaming video, the voice does break. But, this isn’t MajicJack’s fault but limitation with my available bandwidth. I am thinking of bumping my Internet speed to 3Mbps by paying $5 more per month.
• For MajicJack to work, you have to have your computer on but if your computer is turned off, the voicemail still picks up the call and sends it to your email. I think this is acceptable that if I am not at home or have the computer turned off at night as long as I get the voicemail but we leave the computer on all day anyway.
• If you don’t get a phone number in your area, using a GrandCentral number is an option.
• If you installed MajicJack in your laptop, you can take your MajicJack phone number anywhere you are traveling as long as you have a broadband connection.
• I have read reports of people plugging MajicJack into their home’s phone jack in the wall and have all the other phone jacks activated to be used with other jacks including faxes. But, it seems you need to have your landline disconnected before this can work as the additional pulses in the line will interfere. I haven’t tested this yet as we are yet to disconnect our landline.
• At the moment, you could potentially get a second MajicJack number and ship it to your family/friend abroad and make US phone calls for free! I am not sure if it’s legal so don’t quote me on it if you try it.
• Love the ease of use and the plug and play nature of the device making it very portable.
• It’s hard to find much information about it on their website but you can get a pretty good idea about the service here at DSL Reports forums. And their, free trial numbers is a joke as you can easily tell that’s fake!

MajicJack is not for everyone but if you are willing to accept a few limitations that’s inherent with many VOIP solutions, you could end up saving a lot of money in phone bills. It’s true that it smells like a service that could go under any time but to me the cost savings is big enough to switch to it. Mind you, my wife and I have our cell phones as well so our dependence on our home phone may not be the same as if your only phone number is your home phone.

Even if the service should fold in a month, I wouldn’t have lost anything by paying $40 for the first year as that is what my one month of landline phone service costs! And I bought it in a nice deal at 1saleaday.com for only $30.

Would you try it?

Firefox Extensions: Picks of the Week 08-04-29

29.04.2008 by K Category Tech for Life 9 Comments →

Ah, the good old Firefox extensions. Let’s see what kind of extensions I have been able bring to you in this week’s picks.

• No-NSFW: Ever accidentally click a link just to see a Not Safe For Work picture with blinking banners around it? This extension is set to help warn you if you are about to view a page not safe for work or all ages. You can help other folks by voting on an unrated page as you come across it.
• Unplug: Unplug creates links to flash videos, pictures, videos in a separate page so you can easily download the ones you want. It is similar to Download Helper extension and looks pretty good.
• AutoSlideshow: I have been a long time fan and user of the famous PicLens Firefox extension for viewing pictures from Flickr. Another worthy mention is this AutoSlideshow extension, that creates slide shows from various sources on the Internet like Flickr, Google Image, Facebook, 23hq.com, sxc.hu, wikipedia, yahoo images, etc.
• Auto Shutdown: Are you the kind of person who religiously shutdown your computer every night? What is you were downloading something that’s going to run past your bed time? Or if you were leaving town but you really don’t want to cancel that big download? This extension let’s you shutdown your computer automatically as soon as the downloads are complete.
• ReminderFox: This is an extension that brings me warm memories as I had used it in my new to Firefox times. Before I started using an online to-do-list like Remember the Milk. Very useful for managing date based tasks, birthdays or anniversaries. Perfect for thos whoe don’t need a full-blown calendaring application.
• ScribeFire: Not a new one again but one that has seen some cool improvements. This full featured in-browser blog editor has added support for Flickr images, YouTube videos and improved social network sharing capabilities. Posting to major blog platforms are supported.

Hope you enjoyed this week’s picks and if you’d like to see my past picks, check out any of the links in this series listed below. I am sure you’ll find something that you can use.

I would like to apologize to my readers for my light posting this month. I have been completely swamped with personal work with my parents visiting us this summer. They will be here this Friday and we are so excited as it’ll be their first visit abroad.

Also, I would like to extend my welcome to you, if you have recently made ShanKri-la part of your read. It would just make my day if you dropped by to say hello. Plus, watch out for some cool webapp reviews coming up shortly.

MySpace Private Profiles

Previous in series

Firefox Extension Picks

• Top Firefox Extensions
• Firefox Extensions: Picks of the week
• Firefox Extensions: Picks of the week June 20 2007
• Firefox Extensions: Picks of the week July 9 2007
• Firefox Extensions: Picks of the week July 18 2007
• Firefox Extensions: Picks of the Week July 25 2007
• Firefox Extensions: Picks of the Week Aug 7 2007
• Firefox Extensions: Picks of the Week 2007-08-29
• Firefox Extensions: Picks of the Week 07-09-18
• Firefox Extensions: Picks of the Week 2007-10-24
• Firefox Extensions: Picks of the Week 07-11-05
• Firefox Extensions: Picks of the Week 07-11-13
• Firefox Extensions: Picks of the Week 2007-11-29
• Firefox Extensions: Picks of the Week 2007-12-20
• Firefox Extensions: Picks of the Week 2007-01-11
• Firefox Extensions: Picks of the Week 08-01-24
• Firefox Extensions: Picks of the Week 08-02-06
• Firefox Extensions: Picks of the Week 08-02-14
• Firefox Extensions: Picks of the Week 2008-02-21
• Firefox Extensions: Picks of the Week 08-03-13
• Firefox Extensions: Picks of the Week 08-03-28
• Firefox Extensions: Picks of the Week 08-04-10
• Firefox Extensions: Picks of the Week 08-04-29

Top Web Applications Best Suited for Mozilla Prism

23.04.2008 by K Category Tech for Life 6 Comments →

Mozilla Prism, previously known as WebRunner, is a great application that splits the web applications from the browser and lets you run them from your desktop. Although in it’s infancy, Prism is already very useful for me and I use it for a variety of web applications that I need open throughout the day.

If you are new to Prism, you could read my brief Prism review. Here are a few links that can help you get started with Prism:

• What is Mozilla Prism? - a short review
  (with instructions to run from behind a proxy)
• Google Gadget for Mac/Linux with Prism

Prism probably won’t be all things to all people, but if your browsing style mimics remotely to my style you are probably already nodding your head. Prism lets me keep my usual web applications open or atleast be available on my desktop when I need to get to them. I don’t have to worry about signing back into every one of them when I have to restart my Firefox browser multiple times a day.

I have found in the past that when I share my ideas or the way I do things, most often, I usually receive better ones from you. In the same spirit, I am going to share the list of web applications I have started using on my Desktop. I am hoping to spur a discussion in the comments to find what other web applications would be best suited.

Top Prism Applications

• Google Reader - Although I miss the Greasemonkey scripts that add functionality, it is very convenient to open and close Google Reader like a desktop application.
• Remember the Milk - I use the Remember the Milk for Google Gadget url with Prism to get a desktop app that’s very functional and easy to access. Use this url to access Remember the Milk to get the Google gadget version. http://www.rememberthemilk.com/services/modules/googleig/ . You could even try the mobile version or the regular website interface of that’s your thing.
• Google Talk Gadget - I prefer the Google Talk gadget over the GChat option available within Gmail. If you have a preferred IM like Digsby, then you won’t need this. But, if you are stuck on a linux machine like me with the usual IM client’s proxy setting not working, then you’ll love this option.
• Evernote/Google Notebook - Evernote is one of my recent addition to Prism web apps. I like to have this running in a separate window so I can just copy and paste any notes into it. If you haven’t seen it yet, I have written a short Evernote review last week. If you are a Google Notebook user, you could use that in Prism too.
• Passpack: Passpack is an excellent online password manager and is a great candidate for me to run on Prism. I do miss the use of the PassPack bookmarklet when I run it in Prism but the convenience of having atleast the passwords anytime I need it is heavenly.
• Google Calendar: If you are a Google Calendar user, you can run the full version of it in Prism. Or, you could use the url from the Mini Google Calendar that you may be running in your sidebar.
• Mint: Mint is a personal finance application that can aggregate transactions from all your bank accounts and credit card accounts and show you in an easy to digest format. I find it another great tool to have it in my desktop check at various times of the day.
• Any Google app: Google has a suite of useful web applications available and you can create a Prism application for any of them and access them as if they were a desktop application.

As you can see depending on what web applications you use, you can create Prism application for it. The sky is the limit.

Prism, built on our favorite Firefox technology, doesn’t support installing extensions at the moment even though it is coming soon. I have found blog posts indicating that some folks have successfully installed some Firefox extensions in Prism but I haven’t been able to yet.

Why is Gmail missing in the list?

The moment you can add Firefox extensions like Greasemonkey to Prism, the range of web applications I can see myself using is increasing two-fold. That is exactly why you’ll find Gmail missing in this list. I have gotten too addicted with the Stylish script Gmail redesigned, that I have decided to keep it in my browser for now.

I am looking forward to suggestions and ideas for web applications best suited for Prism from you and very interested to hear what you run on Prism.

Previous in series

Top Stuff Series

• Top WordPress Plugins
• Top 5 GreaseMonkey Scripts for StumbleUpon
• Top 15 Greasemonkey Scripts for GMail & Google Reader
• 5 Great Ways to Use Google Alerts
• 4 Cool Ways to Track Flights
• 5 Ways to Find Free Music Using Google
• 12 Must have Portable Apps for your USB drive
• 5 easy ways to read RSS feeds
• ShanKri-la’s Top 5 Firefox Extensions
• Ready for a Serious Windows Explorer Makeover?
• Top Greasemonkey Scripts for New Gmail 2.0
• Top Browser Bookmarklets
• Free High Quality Open Source Software In One Disc - OpenDisc
• Top Web Applications Best Suited for Mozilla Prism

Evernote - Google Notebook Done Better.. Way Better

16.04.2008 by K Category Tech for Life 23 Comments →

Last week, I reviewed a cool file sharing web application in private beta - DropBox. I have had a chance to get a sneak peek at another cool web application, Evernote, in the last few weeks. It’s quickly replacing my need for Google Notebook and I find it worth the hassle to login to yet another web application.

Evernote

Evernote, currently in private beta, is definitely Google Notebook done better. Way better.

I have used and liked Google Notebook for a long time. It is very easy to use and is very handy to store things I come across on the web. It helps me store information in different notebooks, with titles and labels so I can easily find what I need at a later time. The Google Notebook Firefox extension made it super easy to add notes without opening up a webpage right from my browser.

Recently, I read about Evernote and signed up for their private beta and have been using it for a few weeks and I am ready to share my findings with you.

Yes, I like being the guinea pig with these new web applications so you can sit back and read my posts and see if you want to try it yourself.

Lets look at what Evernote has to offer:

• Evernote is a note taking application with a motto of making your notes available anywhere.
• Evernote is available as a web application, a Windows application, a Mac application as well as a Windows Mobile application. Can you see the common thread with DropBox?
• All your notes in Evernote are always synchronized across all your devices!
• You can create new notes with desktop/web or mobile versions of Evernote
• Create snaphots using camera phone or webcam
• Clip whole webpages, screenshots or portions of web pages - I like the ability to tag and file a clip as I am clipping.
• Desktop clients for Mac & Windows even allow drag and drop
• With the account, you get an ultra-personalized (read: obsure looking) email address that you could use to send notes to Evernote by email!
• You are supposed to be able to record audio as well and listen to it whenever you want. Haven’t tried this one yet.
• You get to save your searches and this is a great feature that’ll come handy as your notes volume increases.

In fact, on my linux machine this makes a great web application for Mozilla Prism and it works great as a standalone app! See how the green matches so well with my desktop background.



I have tried everything except the audio part and they all work great. So far, I can hardly tell that it’s a beta product. Either it’s really good or I have been lucky to avoid the bugs. I am thinking it’s just that good.

Evernote is a Freemium product which means it is free while in beta and will stay so after going stable. But, there will be a paid subscription level in the future and the exact feature split is unknown at this time. I hope it will something like Remember the Milk where you get all the features in the free account but you pay for support and out of good will.

Take the Tour

If you’d like to see some of these features in action, take the tour and see it in video.

Beta Invites

My private beta account has 10 invitations in it and as always I would like to share it with my readers. Just leave a comment and the first 10 of you to leave a comment will receive it in their email.

I do have a request to those receiving invites. Since your account will probably come with 10 invites, if each of you could a spare a couple for our readers requesting invites after you, that’ll make it 20 more invites available.

If you’d like to share the good will, mention that in the comment (with number of invites you’d like to share) and I will send you the emails you can share your invites.

In fact, if you have any DropBox invites and would like to share, there are a lot of folks looking for one as I’ve exhausted mine, please visit this post or contact me and I’ll hook you up with folks who want one.

Popular in search engines: Who called us?

Twitter is here to stay

15.04.2008 by K Category Tech for Life 6 Comments →

As much as I love trying new web applications and services even when they are in private beta, I was a late adopter when it comes to Twitter. I finally gave in a couple of months back just to see what gives and was immediately taken by the power of it as well as the addiction factor is amazing.

In fact, a post by RT Cunningham on how he just joined Twitter is what prompted me to write this post. I am following you now, RT!

I am still not a heavy Twitter user yet but I have been following the tweets regularly from the people I am following. I think it’s a great medium and has a lot of potential. I like the fact that you can send out a message so quickly but it can also be such a time sink reading through all the messages. So, I’m trying to keep it under control at the moment.

I have added a Twitter widget in the blog sidebar where so you can see my current Twitter updates right here from the blog. I think this gives some more personal touch to the blog and you can see what I am up to besides blogging. Plus, now that I publish my tweets to the blog, I’ll be more inclined to post useful links that I come across but don’t have the time to blog. I already do that a bit by publishing my StumbleUpon feed in the sidebar and this will hopefully be a nice addition.

If you are on Twitter, send me a message and it will be nice to connect with you in another way besides the comments here.

Happy twittering!



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