MathPoints

Amazing Web 2.0 World

2009-03-16T22:48:00.004-04:00

I can't find the creator of these two amazing web2.0 images. If anyone knows, pls let me know!

Google Analytics Starter Guide

2009-03-10T12:50:00.002-04:00

Google just released a starter guide to walk through users on the setup, analysis and reports for the Google Analytics.

The guide's purpose is to walk new users through the basics of having an Analytics account, and it also picks out must-know definitions like goals and funnels. It also has a diagram of the reporting interface so first time users can follow along and learn about the various reports and features. Finally, the guide also provides practical set-up and implementation instructions in the 'Installing Analytics' section, as well as tips on how to set up your reports and interpret the data once you start receiving it.

If the Getting Started Guide is too basic and you're ready to get started on more advanced code customizations or look through videos on tips and tricks, you can browse through the 'Other resources' section at the end of the guide.

Skittles Homepage Becomes Twitter Search for Skittles

2009-03-02T00:50:00.007-05:00

Skittles has scrapped their original Home page and becomes a Twitter search page.

Customize your Gmail

2009-02-24T00:21:00.003-05:00

Gmail has some under development features that you can add to your Gmail account. They are hidden under the Labs tab in Settings:

Mark as Read Button:
Tired of spending all that effort to click on the more actions menu every time you want to mark messages as read without reading them? Now just enable this lab and that is just a button click away!

Multiple Inboxes:
Add extra lists of emails in your inbox to see even more important email at once. The new lists of threads can be labels, your starred messages, drafts or any search you want, configurable under Settings.

How to use Multiple Inboxes?

If you forward all your work or school email to Gmail, you can use Multiple Inboxes to see your two accounts separately within the same browser window. Here's how:
1. Turn on Multiple Inboxes from the Labs tab under Settings.
2. Set up a filter to auto-archive all mail sent to your work or school address.
3. Customize one of your multiple inboxes to show mail sent to your other address. To do this, go to the Multiple Inboxes tab under Settings and set up one of the panes to search for mail sent to your other address.

The State of Twitter in Canada

2009-02-20T17:23:00.004-05:00

Twitter Blog: For Whom The Bell Texts
Today Twitter has fully activated the two-way SMS service for Canadian Twitter-ers who are also customers of Bell Mobility. If you're a Bell Mobility customer, you can update Twitter via SMS and receive updates from Twitter via SMS. There are no limits and no added fees (beyond your normal texting plan). If you haven't already, you can activate your phone to Twitter over SMS.

Rogers to follow suit?

Update: Feb 24, 2009
CBCNews.ca is reporting that Bell is charging users 15 cents for each Twitter message they send or receive, even if they have an unlimited text messaging plan.

This contradicts Twitter's own announcement on Friday which said:

There are no limits and no added fees (beyond your normal texting plan).

Update: Mar 1, 2009
Okay, Twitter and Bell will end this saga once and for all. No charges!

Track Telephone Leads with Google Analytics

2009-02-18T21:59:00.003-05:00

Google Analytics allow you to track Telephone Leads & Live Chat with two integration. The first one is offline phone tracking, which is tracking Calls to Unique Sales Phone Numbers. The second one is tracking live chat with customers.

Tracking Calls to Unique Sales Phone Numbers
Mongoose Metrics supplies toll free numbers in bulk for extremely cheap in case you'd like to use unique phone numbers to track campaigns or even different product orders. Even better though, Mongoose has created a way to track these offline phone calls within Google Analytics. You can see the phone number called, as well as the duration and date of the call. You can also integrate this with an email alerts system for sales management.

The service works by provisioning a trackable number and assigning that number to a hidden web page on your site containing your Google Analytics tracking code. When a phone call to the tracking number is connected, the technology will place a web browser visit to your hidden tracking web page and in this way insert the phone call event back into your Google Analytics account. Each phone call generates a unique visit which is clearly labeled inside of Analytics.

Tracking live chat with customers
LivePerson allows you to interact with your customers live via chat to offer real-time assistance and advice while a user is engaged with your website, a highly valuable service for helping customers, and also for learning about what their intention is. They created a robust integration with Google Analytics that is definitely worth a look. The integration shows you conversions after chat, and populates chat analytics data into a number of other reports, including

Map Overlay Report which displays volume and quality metrics of live chat interactions by geographic region
Search Engines Report: Reveals the sources and keywords that drive interactive chats (and resulting conversions)
Reverse Goal Path Report: Lists the navigation paths that lead to the most chats

Edit Google Docs spreadsheets from your cell phone

2009-02-17T01:37:00.000-05:00

Google just launched new capabilities to Google Docs for your cell phone that allow you to edit a Google spreadsheet. You can add new rows, edit existing cells, sort by columns, and filter by terms, pretty much all the basic things.

To check out these new features, go to m.google.com/docs in your mobile browser and log in.

Source: Official Google Mobile Blog: Edit Google Docs spreadsheets from your phone

Free Online Storage Space

2009-02-15T12:04:00.017-05:00

Backup your valuable files and data on the Internet where they are safe and easily accessed. With a free online storage service, you can access your files from any computer with an Internet connection.

There are a few things to consider before you sign up:

Ease of Use
Reliability
Storage Space/Max file sizes
Speed
Monthly transfer limit
Security

Mozy (5 stars)

2GB Free space
Allows upload/download multiple files at the same time
Multi-level Security with SSL Encryption
Fast connection

Adrive (5 stars)

50GB Free space, 2GB file size limits
Allows upload/download multiple files at the same time
Multi-level Security with SSL Encryption

idrive (5 stars)

2GB Free space
No limit on the upload/download size
Allows upload/download multiple files at the same time
Multi-level Security with SSL Encryption
Fast connection

Box.net (4.5 stars)

1GB Free space
Doesn't allow upload/download multiple files at the same time (in free version)
Multi-level Security with SSL Encryption
Fast connection

ElephantDrive (4.5 stars)

1GB Free space
Multi-level Security with SSL Encryption
Fast connection

esnips (4.5 stars)

5GB Free space
Allows upload/download multiple files at the same time

Brilliant TV Commercial

2007-11-30T00:24:00.000-05:00

US Thanksgiving Tech Buzz - November 23, 2007

2007-11-23T23:39:00.000-05:00

"I'm feeling lucky button" costs Google $110 million per year: as a matter of fact, it actually represents one percent of the total searches.

Digg the president candidates: Track them, Digg them and Vote for them.

Facebook allow users to vote for news feed: Digg-alike?

Secret behind successful viral video: No, it is more than just spamming

Voices behind the Simpsons

2007-10-24T15:26:00.000-04:00

The Simpsons Voices

Add to My Profile | More Videos

Free Wiimote Jackets

2007-10-06T09:57:00.000-04:00

Nintendo is going to be laying out $18 million to ship Wiimote jackets to all Wii owners. Order your free Wiimote protectors here.

This shouldn't affect the bottom line of Nintendo. In fact, Nintendo has become one of the largest companies in Japan (sorry Honda, Sony).

NYTimes to Stop Charging for Parts of Its Web Site

2007-09-21T11:58:00.000-04:00

Access to articles by columnists and the newspaper archives were formerly only accessible through TimesSelect, but are now available for free for everyone. There will be lingering fees to access certain material from the period of 1923 to 1986, but the public domain portion of the archives from 1851-1922 and all of the archives from 1987 to the present are available without charge.

Looking at the web traffic of NY Times (It drops back to the 2005 level) ... They ought to do it sooner rather than later! With information overflood the Internet and our everyday lives, media might as well start paying us to read their stuff (rather than getting us to pay for it).

Canada's Largest-ever Class Action Against Mobile Carriers

2007-09-19T21:02:00.000-04:00

The Saskatchewan court has certified a class-action lawsuit that accuses Canadian cellphone companies of profiting from charging customers system access fees (CAD$6.95/month) over and above their regular service costs.

The suit, targets an estimated $12 billion (plus interest) in customer charges collected over the years could possibly the country's largest-ever class action. This has affected at least half of the Canadian populations (all cell phone users in Canada).

Rogers Wireless, one of the largest carriers in Canada said it would appeal the certification. With $12B on the line, it doesn't look like the carriers will be back down without a fight. However, we do look forward to getting away from the mobile dark age.

Sunday Apple Tech Buzz - September 16, 2007

2007-09-16T20:32:00.000-04:00

A $200 price cut with the iPhone to boost the sales. All early iPhone owners get $100 Apple store credit.

Apple also released the new iPod nano, the "Fat iPod" and iPhone II ... I mean the iPod touch.

iPhone is unlockable

2007-09-16T20:21:00.000-04:00

[via Gizmodo]

Where did all these coins come from?

2007-09-14T21:31:00.000-04:00

Simpsons meeting Star Wars

2007-09-10T23:53:00.000-04:00

Opensource Photoshop

2007-09-04T00:07:00.000-04:00

GIMP is an opensource image manipulation program (Photoshop-like). It works on different operating systems, which included Windows, Unix, Mac. It also support all the major languages in the world. It is a very nice piece of software for users who don't want to shell out $600 to get Photoshop but yet good enough to do all the photo editing and image composition.

There are many free tutorials to walk you through all the "how-to" step by step. The help files come with different languages and it is pretty easy to start learning how to use GIMP from scratch.

Click here to download and try it out.

Brilliant Digg Comments

2007-08-17T13:57:00.000-04:00

Click on image to enlarge.

Sunday Tech Buzz - July 22, 2007

2007-07-22T22:00:00.001-04:00

Facebook's Fake Revenues: If Facebook goes public, they would have to disclose all their revenues (which probably is not a good idea...)

17 years old spammer pulled in 15k a week: He is retired from spamming and going to publish a book.

Samsung becomes the #2 cell phone maker: Motorola lost the #2 spot and expected to turn a loss year.

Google's cookies expire in two years: The default setting was 38 years...

Happy iPhone Owners: 90% iPhone owners are very satisfied.

MySpace blocks out the letter "i" and replaced by "..": Th..s ..s r..d..culous.

Firefox has 30% in web browsers population in Europe: Watch out IE.

The Coolest and Dullest Wii Gears

2007-07-11T22:54:00.000-04:00

1) Wii Balance Board

Get this step pad along with the game "Wii Fit" and you can cancel your gym membership. It will monitor your heart rate while you doing sit up and aerobic exercise in front of your tv.

2) Wii Guitar

Become a Rockstar or super geek when you play Wii's Guitar Hero with this peripheral.

3) Wii Zapper

The design is really cool, now let's see if Nintendo could get some good shooting games out.

4) Wii Wheel

This Wii Wheel addon gives you a good feel of handling in any Wii driving games.

Nintendo just announced the Mario Kart edition at E3.

5) Wii Sports Pack

This set just make the classic Wii Sports more fun.

6) Wii Combat Pack

Don't really like the design of this combat set but it can be worse.

7) Wii Cue Stick

Not a big fan of pool and I don't think this short cue stick helps the game at all.

8) Wii Fishing Rod

This fishing rod is too real; pretty sure it will hit the ceiling if you fish with this.

9) Wii Kitchen Knife for Cooking Mama

The design is not too impressive; it looks like a blade more than a knife. Since it should compliment with the game Cooking Mama, what about the frying pan?

Wednesday Tech Buzz - July 11, 2007

2007-07-11T00:15:00.000-04:00

Apple bought iPhone.com: Apple finally bought the domain from the previous owner for $1 million.

eBay's Kijiji competes with Craigslist: Interestingly enough, the only part of Craigslist that isn't under Craig Newmark's ownership belongs to eBay.

eBay and Yahoo get together and build a toolbar: On another note, Mozilla and eBay just launched a new addon.

Access Pay Sites for Free: Disguise as a GoogleBot?

Line Up Days in Advance for iPhone

2007-06-28T10:20:00.000-04:00

Apple's iPhone would be officially go on sale tomorrow. Not surprisingly, we are already seeing people in the big cities lining up outside the Apple Stores trying to get their hands on the iPhone.

People are getting used to pay the big bucks and wait in line for days to get their hands on latest gadgets (e.g. PS3, Wii, etc...) I'm not sure how many of them are actually looking to resale it for profits.

In order to feed the crowd, all the Apple stores would be open until midnight on Friday and each customer can buy up to two iPhone (if available).

Quick facts about the iPhone:

$499 for 4GB model, $599 for 8GB model
Touch screen and iPod compatible
HTML web browser with WiFi
NO GPS and MMS support for pictures (not in this version)
2.0 megapixels Camera
AT&T data plans $60, $80, $100 (details)

Tuesday Tech Buzz - June 19, 2007

2007-06-19T23:50:00.000-04:00

Google ranks lowest for privacy protection practices: People will just continue using it until it hits us one day.

In search of the Fake Steve Jobs: More hints on who is the Fake Steve Jobs.

comScore Widget Matrix: We need to track these Web2.0 hotcakes.

How to take yourself out of Google Map: Need a photoID and a sworn statement.

Mobile YouTube: Mini mobile YouTube launched, "YouTube To GO".

Semel out, Yang in at Yahoo: Yahoo co-founder take over as CEO. Can he do something for Yahoo like Steve Job for the Apple?

Hottest Web Office Suite: Google, MSN Live, Zoho, ThinkFree...

Blogger in Draft: Blogger launched its new lab to test out new features.