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!

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

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.

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?

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!

Firefox 3 beta 5 has been in the wild for a few days. If you haven’t had a chance to try it yet, you can snag this portable version of it and read this post to run Firefox 2 and Firefox 3 simultaneously. The advantage of the portable version is that there is no installation and you can even carry it in your usb flash drive. When the next beta/release candidate comes out, you can simply delete the Firefox directory and grab the new one.

Let’s look at some of the new Firefox extensions I came across in the last couple of weeks:

• CraigsToolbox: If you are a heavy Craigslist user, you will appreciate the features this extension offers. One of the primary feature is that it loads thumbnails of pictures attached to a listing in the listing page. Saves you from clicking into every listing to see the pictures. Plus, it lets you save a dollar amount and a favorite search string to search by default. Check out this video to find out more.
• Download Statusbar: A very nice download manager that can be run in full or mini mode. The full mode gives you a visual progress bar above the status bar of ongoing downloads. Also has a plenty options to set colors, etc.  No more annoying download window to manage.
• OpenDownload: Ever been annoyed by the fact that when you download .exe files, Firefox doesn’t have an option to just run the .exe. Well, this extension gives that to you.
• RetailMeNot: There are plenty of sites to find online coupons. With this extension, when you are on a site like Amazon you will automatically see if there are any coupons available. Your online shopping just got snazzier.
• BuyLater: Another one for you online shoppers. If you find an item out of stock or would like to follow a price closely, this extension adds a ‘Buy This Later’ button. It’ll monitor for updates every minute and notify you by email or Twitter. I like the Twitter idea as you can get these updates as tweets without flooding your inbox.
• FoxTor: If privacy and anonymity is in your radar when you are browsing for whatever reason, FoxTor gives you just that. Make your browsing anonymous with the touch of a button.

Hope you find an extension or two that you can use to make your daily browsing a little easier. Has anyone noticed the performance increase in Firefox 3 beta 5? I love it.

Here I go with another one of my favorite web applications. This one is a cross-over web/desktop application. Read on to find out why:

Anyone with multiple computers like a desktop, personal laptop and a work laptop would know the pains to find the right file you need for a task at hand from one of those computers.

It just adds to the complexity if you are sharing some of those documents with someone else. You probably find yourself continuously uploading, downloading files, syncing you folders with an online storage solution.

I have had the privilege of using DropBox (still in private beta) for the last few weeks and I am definitely amazed by the thoughtfulness of the developers. It is designed to be completely painless to use while consuming reasonable amount of resources - cpu & bandwidth.

DropBox

You just need to install the DropBox software (7 MB file) in your computer and it integrates with the file explorer and runs in the background. From your online account, you link your web account with the desktop software. From then on, anything you drop in the ‘My DropBox’ folder gets sync’ed with your online account.

• Access files in your home computer from anywhere via Internet in a web browser
• Synchronizes multiple computers if you linked them all with the same account instantly.
• Dropbox saves your previous revisions as backups online and you can revert to an older version very easily
• Delete a file by mistake? Restore a copy from online.
• No software interface to learn. Seamlessly integrates with your Windows/Mac native environment
• Share files with friends and family by sharing a folder with them.
• Sync is almost instantaneous. File changes are detected as incremental changes instead of uploading/downloading whole changed files.
• Blue icon on a file/folder indicates that the sync on that particular item is pending and green means it’s in sync.
• 5GB of free online storage while in private beta
• Even when you are away from your computer, just upload files (25MB max) to your online account and when you go home, it’ll be in your home computer. Ready for you.
• If all this isn’t enough, if you’d like to download a large folder from your online account, there is an option to download the contents of the folder as a zip file saving you precious time.
• You can share a url to your photos folder with friends and family. No more choosing photos to upload to special service.
• Works right now on Windows & Mac but a Linux version is promised in the future.
• Works seamlessly through proxies as well.

The real beauty of this solution is in the simplicity and how transparent it is to you once you start using. Since it’s in beta, it is free for 5GB but the developers have plans to add paid plans in the future. For such a cool service, I really wouldn’t mind paying as I have already been contemplating a reliable online storage system like Amazon S3.

I would love to see more features like profiles for different computers. It would be nice not to sync my personal files like Music, Photos, etc. to my work laptop. With the service in closed beta, I am sure there will be more features coming up before the public release.

Here are some screenshots for you to enjoy:

Green = In sync; Blue = Sync-ing

Online interface to your files/folders

Revisions of a file I was working on

I have a few invites for Dropbox. If you’d like to try it, leave me a comment and I’ll send it to your email.

What do you think of this service? How much is the comfort this service offers worth to you?