Spanish Gringo by Michael Freeman

High Contrast Google Analytics is Easier to Read

2012-01-24T12:51:00.001+01:00

I am not a big fan of the design direction Google has been taking lately.... great products (mostly) but supposedly for the sake of consistency they are ugilifing, and more importantly, making less usable various applications of theirs.

The primary manifestations of their misguided UI direction can be seen in:

Terrible contrast (especially the use of small or thin gray fonts on off-white or light gray backgrounds)
Lots of empty / wasted space (vertical space is at a premium on laptops and tablets, yet they are opting for more scrolling and pushing everything down the screen for no better reason than to make the search bar stand out more)

Google Analytics v5 will soon be the standard interface for all GA users. A lot of the functionality is very welcomed (new user flows, better custom reporting), some is a waste of time / fad (real time reporting is the antithesis of web analytics for most purposes), and some is a step backwards (readability, more use of ~~sampling~~, "fast access mode").

I have made a new userscript that addresses the problems with contrast I have found in GAv5. Please give it a try.

Download the Better Contrast Google Analytics Script directly from userscripts.org

Better Contrast GA Script Homepage

Here is an example comparison showing GA without the script and after applying the script

I was blind but now I can see...

Download the Better Contrast Google Analytics Script directly from userscripts.org

Important Note: Google is updating its UI and CSS fairly regularly (seems about every 1 to 2 weeks they upload a change) and there is the chance that the class names or CSS may change. I will try to keep the replacement CSS loaded by the userscript fairly up to date, but there may be times when it is out of sync. If you find something that breaks the CSS at some point, please post a comment to let me know. Thanks!

Bringcast Podcatcher for Mango V3 feature requests

2012-01-04T13:28:00.000+01:00

I just received my Nokia Lumia 800 from Nokia yesterday thanks to their developer program launchpad. I now have the SDK installed and hope to start tackling my first WP7.5 app soon.

In the meantime, I had to get the phone setup with the microSIM (cutting my old SIM down to size did not work I think because my previous SIM was way way too old and had a different chip pattern). Also, I started loading the phone with apps. WP7 may not have as many apps as iOS or Android, but the list so far is much more impressive then I have seen for Symbian, especially considering how short of a time they have been in the market with this platform. Mango is less then 6 months old and WP7 only launched publicly in Oct 2010.

One of the most glaring faults with the OS is the lack of a podcatcher and the need to sync with Zune on a PC. I download podcasts every day and I do not want to have to turn on my PC to get new podcasts. Nor do I ever listen to podcasts on the PC.

The good news is that I found BringCast for WP7. They apparently released a Mango optimized version in December (v2) and I decided to give it a try. Well, after 30 seconds I went ahead and bought it. From what I have seen and read so far it is the best podcatcher for WP7.

I saw that the developers are considering v3 new features so I wanted to give them a list it consider for v3 (and if not v3.5 or v4):

Automatic updates to check for new podcasts in the subscribed feeds that is configurable (every 2 hours, 4 hours, 6 hours, 12 hours, 24 hours, only manually, etc...)
Automatic download of new episodes with configurable general defaults (none, N, all) and also per feed settings (for example, I want all Slate podcasts, but only the newest episode from WTF?, 2 newest from Fresh Air, and none automatically downloaded from the Economist)
Perhaps automatic deletion of old podcasts (x days after 100% completed). I do not like how from the playlist you can delete it but you cannot delete the actual media. You need to go 1 by 1 in BringCast to delete the media
Live Tile integration:

# of new episodes
Now playing
Status (updating, downloading, etc...)

If possible, full podcast integration with Zune player on the device, not just via playlists. For example, from Zune, I cannot delete the downloaded podcast episode, I can only remove it from the playlist. To delete it I need to go back into BringCast to delete media.

While not feature requests, I also found two things that seem like possible bugs:

While trying to do background downloading of podcasts, I received an error saying that the OS policy does not allow non-WiFi downloading of podcasts. However, in my settings I have the checkbox set to allow 3g downloads.
I tried importing an opml file from a public dropbox url and the app just did a refresh of the screen but did not import anything.

So I hope clarkezonesoftware.com will take my requests into consideration.

For any WP7 owner who needs a podcatcher app, check out BringCast.

Fixing the bad Google Reader redesign with a userscript

2011-11-03T14:29:00.000+01:00

Updated 16-01-2012: list view preview improvements were added in early December and added fixes in mid January for sometimes improper loading of additional posts due to Google script bug

Updated 08-11-2011: Fixed a regression that was not properly calculating the iframe height for previews. FIXED. thank you to @addadi for pointing this out

New TODO:

~~Add preview to list view~~
~~Add style a couple of style improvements to list view~~

PS: If you like the script please share it with others.

Download the google reader script directly from userscripts.org

Updated 07-11-2011: Now you can toggle open or closed the nav sidebar pressing Shift+W. Hope to add a little icon in the next version. thank you to @magorrias for the suggestion

Updated 04-11-2011: I have made the following improvements to the script since yesterday:

Better layout for search area and fixed search problems (it was a z-index problem)
Reduced whitespace in the nav bar and slightly smaller fonts
Preview Function - Now you can see the full post inside gReader (similar functionality to Google preview enhanced which broke with the gReader redesign). It works by clicking the preview link as well as using the keystroke SHIFT+V. It also manages the number of IFRAMES created to keep memory usage reasonable.

Download the updated google reader script

This will be a short post. I may write something later commenting on the bad design choices I see Google making. I have a hard time believing that they have solid data supporting these changes to the UI of various sites, especially Google Reader. As a daily user this change has been a step backwards in a big way in the name of "unity".

OK, for those who are interested I have made a Greasemonkey, Scriptish, Chrome userscript that vastly improves a lot of the problems with the latest redesign of Google Reader

Greatly shortened the height of the fixed header area....removing the logo, collapsing the search with the other feed/nav buttons
Made the subscribe button a normal color since it is something not used very often and should not scream read by default
Tightened up the nav area to make better use of the vertical space
Added a border separating the nav area from the post/feed area
Added a top and bottom border to better identify the currently active post

Here are the links. Works with scriptish, greasemonkey on firefox as well as Google Chrome.

Download the google reader script directly from userscripts.org

Pimp My gReader Script Homepage

This is Google Reader after using the script....making a bit of lemonade from a lemon of a redesign

This is gReader using the Preview functionality

To Do for the Future:

~~The search is not working completely well with this script. I will need to make some adjustments~~
If no one else does it soon, to fix the script that allows for full post previews in Google Reader that broke with the redesign. It was part of BetterGReader and I hope someone will fix that soon. Otherwise, I'll add it to this script.
~~Add a feature to collaspe / expand the side nav bar - Shift + W~~

Google Analytics Premium - Finally what I have been looking for

2011-09-30T14:07:00.000+02:00

I am very excited about GA Premium announced yesterday. I am hopeful that the pricing is reasonable because it seems like a great leap forward for businesses who find GA today a bit too limited in speed, functionality, and especially "fast-access-mode friendly".

Also I am very curious as to when it will be available outside of the US, Canada & UK. Perhaps we could just signup via the UK and then use it for all of our other sites...?

Great intro commercial for the new service. The only thing is that it seems perhaps a bit too inspired from a 2009 video from Grasshopper communications. There sure seems a be a recent wave of videos/motion graphics pieces that all come from a common ancestor. Mannatecheurope soon after Grasshopper seemed to have done a complete ripoff of Grasshopper the same year it came out. I wonder who was the first to do this type of piece. I think the first video that I can remember with some of this same style-DNA or at least something that could be an ancestor were the end credits from An Inconvenient Truth.

Look at the similarities between these 3 videos and you'll see what I mean. You even get a nice audio effect if you start the first two videos at the same time (or start video 2, let it run 10 seconds and then start video 1). They complement each other quite well.

If you know of any other similar videos with the same DNA, include them in the comments.

Updated Script: Yahoo! Mail Ad Removal plus Better Layout

2011-08-23T18:14:00.000+02:00

As with most user scripts they break from time to time when webmasters introduce changes to their sites. In this case, Yahoo! looks like it implemented some new standardized CSS strategy into its Mail app. In the process the userscript code broke because it was looking for old IDs that no longer exist. The script has been updated to work with the new CSS for Yahoo Mail and works well both in Firefox and Chrome. Please download it again if it has stopped working for you. Original post about the script

Available for Firefox* & Google Chrome
Download the user script directly or from the Userscripts.org script page>

Slate Culturefest Dry T-Shirt Entry

2011-08-11T18:57:00.001+02:00

I had hoped they were going to include my entry in the Slate Culture Gabfest T-Shirt contest. I guess I'll just stick to business, SEO, analytics, and coding....leave the "art" to others...

If you like this one.... you can at least put me in as a write-in candidate.

Modern motivation philosophy: more companies need to understand this

2011-08-10T11:28:00.000+02:00

Today, not enough companies (or more broadly organizations) understand yet the need to adapt the way that they approach talent and intellectual resources. Although so much of our work has moved from the factory to the office, so many firms still maintain an outlook on management and labor relations that reflects the characteristics and aspects of an industrial age, low to semi skilled economy.

Perhaps it was the way I was brought up, the friends that I have been fortunate to have during my life as well as the mentors that have helped me, I have always known inside that the traditional mindset to managing organizations does not fit with the informational economy we live in today and have been moving towards since the explosion in IT and personal computing.

Two years ago, I read Outliers by Malcolm Gladwell, and it struck a nerve because it was one of the first times that I came across something very digestible that focused on the importance of meaningful work. I recommend the book (as well as his other writings) quite often because it is so relevant to everyone, from parents to leaders. We all want some sort of success, however you want to define it, for someone. Understanding the points he makes in that book can give people a clearer sense on how to achieve success (again, however it is defined).

Now I had the fortunate chance to come across this talk about motivating teams. This encapsulates in a short and entertaining way, so much of what I believe is necessary for successful organizations today and tomorrow.

Is this a Reader, Feedburner, or Blogger Error? Webmaster Central really wants to be a photo blog

2011-06-03T10:52:00.000+02:00

The search engines just announced Schema.org to standardize the way the webmasters can enrich their content with structured metadata. I was looking foward to read all about it on the Google Webmaster Central Blog. So, naturally, I logged into Google Reader to look for a post.

The first thing that seemed weird was that all of a sudden the blog had 20+ new items.

That never happens. GWC is a blog that normally posts a 1-2 times per week, not much more than that. After clicking on the feed, I was presented with a large photo of some woman. I thought is this a joke? Anyway, I kept navigating through the posts and they were all large, well taken photos.

Here is an example: (Notice that I am in the GWC Blog and the url is poinging to the atom feed for GWC.)

Clicking on the feed details, you can see that something is amiss:

As you can see, something went terribly wrong here. It turns out that the feed seems come from a photgrapher named Joe Hewes. Looking at his blog, you can see that he uses Blogger as his platform.

My guess is that this was not a hack but a bug/error in Blogger. The actual GWC blog website has only its original (non photog) content. If it were a hack, GWC would likely have had its content changed as well.

Well, hopefully Joe likes getting a bit more exposure of his work to the tech community. As for Google, I hope this is not a sign of more problems with quality to come.

Want iGoogle made for laptop / netbook screens? Use PimpMyiGoogle

2011-05-30T10:37:00.000+02:00

Download updated PimpMyiGoogle (May 2011):
Install Pimp My iGoogle – Userscripts.org

View Pimp My iGoogle – Userscripts.org

Writing userscripts for most sites feels a bit like a game of cat and mouse. Everytime Yahoo! or Google or anyone else who has a site that I write scripts for changes their page the following occurs:

My existing scripts partially or completely break
I go to work on writing an update
I get most of the way there and hit a roadblock
I need to relearn a bit of the differences between script behavior en Firefox and Chrome
Updated script is fixed and posted to userscripts
Make a new post on spanishgringo.blogspot.com

I am pretty much at step 6 again. This time it was PimpMyiGoogle.

Google looks to have completely rewritten its content layout and changed its backend JS functions. I noticed that on 1 computer in Chrome a few weeks back that the script no longer worked. However, it kept working fine in Firefox and on my computer at work. I figured that they might be running a new test. Well, fast forward to last week and all browsers on all of my computers stopped respecting most of the improvements made by the userscript.

So, this weekend, I dove in and made the fixes. Basically, the script had to be rewritten from scratch. I decided to clean up a bit and change the old "show sidebar" button to a new CSS3 button.

ToDo for the script:

Get min/max buttons to work in Chome (odd Object does not have click method error although the JS inspector shows that their is a valid click event listener).
Check the module status (expanded/minimized ) to determine which button icon to show.

Any other suggestions for the script? Please let me know. One idea I want to play with is pulling gTalk out of the sidebar and make it a floating menu.

Google Adwords Does not Like Firefox Aurora (5)

2011-05-26T16:02:00.000+02:00

It seems to me that every day Google is taking one further step towards going completely hostile towards Mozilla and Firefox. Either that or they are indifferent to them.

Logging into AdWords today with the latest Firefox Aurora browser (Firefox equivilant to Google Chrome Canary - near-nightly updates, some risk of instability) this is what I saw.

When did a release from 2 days ago become defined as "old"?

I got the alert message up top, which has become quite common when entering many sites with Internet Explorer 6, thanks to the campaign to kill IE6. They must be doing some poor UA sniffing and they have not updated their code to reflect the fact that Mozilla copied Google's own release schedule for their browsers. Being the fans of web standards that they are, Google should be using feature detection anyway.

I hope this is just an oversite. Hopefully it is not in conflict with "don't be evil". You would hope that the AdWords developers would be trying the apps in all types of browsers in advance and only once they have been released.

As recently as 2008, Google was the source of 91-94% of the Mozilla Foundation's (non-profit behind firefox) funding.

When Google decided to launch Chrome instead of further bolstering Firefox, that was the biggest sign that the partnership was going in the wrong direction. Then, when Eric Schmidt had his privacy gaffe, the Mozilla camp used the dreaded M and B words in suggesting a move away from Google. I don't know if a partnership with Google can heal, once that has happened.

This is heading towards a sad end for what was a beautiful partnership responsible for forcing the advancement of web browser technology and web standards. We should leave all of our browsers at half-scroll when the deal finally dies likely later this year.

At least Google does not have a long history of partnerhips turning sour

Angry Birds Web App using Firefox 5

2011-05-12T13:17:00.000+02:00

Yesterday Google announced that it has launched Angry Birds as a web app in collaboration with Rovio and it is available in the Chrome App Store.

Now that I have been using Firefox Aurora a bit more than Chrome Canary these days, I wanted to give it a shot since a web app should work in both HTML 5 enabled (mostly) browsers. Unfortunately, the Chrome store said that my browser does not support this web app and that I should use chrome instead. Well, I installed the app in Chrome to see that it basically is just an app bookmark that points to a specific website chrome.angrybirds.com.

Once I saw the URL, I decided to give it a cut and paste try in Aurora (currently Firefox 5). The rest was bird flying, pig crushing history...

Google Analytics Fast-Access Mode = FAIL-Access Mode

2011-05-09T14:13:00.000+02:00

GA is a great service. Google gives away this great service that other companies charge thousands of dollars. Besides that they have a wonderful API that you can use to write useful data applications. My main complaint over the years, has been the use of Sampling. In general, it may be good enough when looking at high level visitor data, but my experience is that sampling dramatically distorts calculations related to goals, e-commerce data, as well as data related to traffic sources which send relatively small amounts of visitors.

Recently, GA has introduced some new changes to its use of sampling. It appears that they have started using it in more cases. Reports that would never trigger sampling with the amount of visits involved are now using "~~fail~~ fast-access" mode. That is Google's euphemism for "this report was based on sampled data and may be totally wrong". Plus it looks like there may be a bug in the sampling method.

Take a look at this report using normal data for a site I monitor:

Normal graphic (you can see Easter's impact) of Google (Paid/Organic) coming to a site

Everthing above looks fine showing a fairly typical traffic pattern, with the exception of Easter week and an extra holiday in Great Britain (It must have been special hat day in the UK) .

Where did the traffic go?

Now look at the next two images which are the same report as above but with advanced segments applied:

Non-Paid Search Traffic: This should show the Google organic traffic the site received.

Non Paid Search Traffic....I didn't think that I only bought PPC???

Paid Search Traffic: This should show the Google PPC traffic the site received.

Data Dave is sad and confused. If Google the search engine is sending me this traffic, what is it if not PPC or Non-Paid

What happened here?

OK, wait. What if I just looked at the same report showing all three segments at the same time. Perhaps, it will start to make sense (or not):

Nope. If anything, the results look even weirder and more distorted than when looking at the data individually. There sure seems to be a big time bug in the sampling trigging and calculation system of GA.

In conclusion:

With no segments applied, the site data looks normal....however:
With segments applied, 1 month of relatively little data triggered sampling ("fast-access"). This never used to happen for relatvively little traffic in GA.
In both cases of sampling, Google sent the site 0 visits during the month of April.
Where GA showed visits, it was very incorrect (multiple stand.devs apart from the actual observed data)

With sampling applied, in the first week of May, GA reports that Google PPC sent more way traffic than all of Google combined.
Non-Paid alone surpassed All Visits traffic for a coupld of days as well.

Data integrity is the foundation for any analytics / decision support tool. We cannot improve our websites if we cannot rely and believe the data upon which we will be basing our decisions. Luckily, I am not alone in seeing this latest turn for the worse with GA and sampling.

Hopefully, they will fix it soon.

Updated App engine project GA Evolution

2011-05-06T18:48:00.000+02:00

Despite the lack of posts.... this blog has not been forgotten. Just wicked busy at work and home for the last few months.

I have updated gaevolution.appspot.com with a few improvements:

Fixed bug in Weekly reporting that caused weird placment of data when the weeks in included the middle-end of Februrary (parseInt bug in most browsers was to blame)
Updated jQuery to 1.6, Flot to 0.7 and fancyBox to 1.3.4 - it really flies now
Using the latest SDK for appengine

Next up I will need to change how the app handles sampling. The CI value has been ~~marked for death~~ deprecated by Google, so I'll switch to another parameter they have that indicates if sampling was triggered in the report or not.

Any requests out there? Please let me know through the feedback form or as a comment here on the blog.

Soon, I hope to write a post too about how I won my Nokia E7 in February while in London.

Black Friday Kodak Bait & Switch.... Its Scent Stinks!

2010-11-26T11:48:00.001+01:00

Black Friday. Living in Spain, I don't get to take advantage of much of the shopping opportunities available the day after Thanksgiving. Cyber Monday is a bit better, but usually intl shipping pretty much makes the offer often times not worth it. Perhaps if someone I know is coming to Spain soon, I'll order something to be shipped to them and they'll just do me the favor of bringing it over during the next visit.

There is one category though, that is quite useful and applicable for buying online from Spain - photo gifts for family still in the USA. Over the last few years, my mom has been invaded by so many photo mugs, puzzles, calendars from all of her kids (mostly with pictures of grandkids) that you think it would be time to move on to something else. Well, no... She loves every single one of them!

So today I received a Kodak promotional e-mail about their Black Friday sale. It is up to 65% off! I was excited to see the e-mail and the offer so I clicked to shop. It was so easy too since the whole e-mail was pretty much one giant link.

Whohoo! Promised savings! Great!

The problem I have is that the landing page does not really reflect the value of the promotion.

The savings are inversely related to the volume given in the promo for the sale. The sale promo screams 65% and all they have on sale at that rate is 1 product. Most other things are 25% off or buy 1 get 1 free,etc... To me this landing page stinks because it lacks scent (OK, that is a contradiction I know, but it makes sense if you read Brian Eisenberg's artcle on scent). You would think that they central banner would be clicable since in the e-mail it is the same graphic and it is clicable. Why not take me to another sale page with all of the items on sale? Bad design and on Black Friday they should not be using a Bait and Switch on a previous customer.

They also know from my purchase history that I normally buy photo mugs from them. Why not include a photo mug promo for me?

Oh well, let's see what Snapfish has on sale...

Better Y! Mail Beta - Less ads, More mail (Oct-2010)

2010-10-28T16:43:00.000+02:00

Yahoo! just released a new beta of their Mail web application. Overall, it looks a bit more modern and promises much faster performance (I have not seen any improvement yet...in fact sometimes it is slower than before).

However, it needed a bit of spit and polish. I decided to write a user script (works on chrome and firefox with greasemonkey or scriptish) that tightens up the wasted space in the header and removes the main ads that take up space on the mail home page as well as in the inbox.

Available for Firefox* & Google Chrome
Download the user script directly or from the Userscripts.org script page

* Firefox (You need Greasemonkey or Scriptish already installed)

Yahoo Mail Beta Oct 2010 Homepage Before:

Yahoo Mail Beta Oct 2010 Homepage After:

Yahoo Mail Beta Oct 2010 Inbox Before:

Yahoo Mail Beta Oct 2010 Homepage After:

More mail for YOU

Available for Firefox* & Google Chrome
Download the user script directly or from the Userscripts.org script page

* Firefox (You need Greasemonkey or Scriptish already installed)

Updated GA Evolution - Now with Weekly Data, Goals, Optional Metrics

2010-09-27T18:09:00.000+02:00

Over the last few weeks, I have made some improvements to GA Evolution. The functional changes were pushed last Friday and this morning I added a quick YouTube Video to the login page to better help show users what the app is all about.

Here are the highlights of the changes:

Improved performance and session handling (faster is better with less errors)
I have included Goal Data which can be reported as either Goal Completions or Goal Conversion Rates
The metrics columns are now optional so users can build the report that they really want
Report data can now be broken out by week besides by month

As always, enjoy and please pass along feedback on the app.

Link to original GA Evolution post

Link to GAEvolution web app

Google Instant Makes Insights + Suggest Extension even more Valuable

2010-09-13T15:30:00.000+02:00

Now that Google has turned on Google Instant (I am not a fan yet, but I could perhaps get used to it), the importance of Google Suggest has increased greatly because now they do not only give you a suggest search, but now give users suggested results.

In making this change, it is even more important that SEOs and other interested users understand and analyze the most popular searches that will be ~~forced on~~ suggested to users of Google Search.

The Google Suggest 4 Google Insights for Search Extension makes it easy to quickly compare and view the popularity (as well as rising/popular related searches, and regional interest) of the searches that Google is most likely to execute in the process of writing a normal query.

See the original post to learn more and download the extension (for Chrome and Firefox)

Goal Funnel Exit Values in Percentages - New Userscript

2010-07-16T15:57:00.000+02:00

In the Goal Funnel Visualization report of GA, it paints very nicely all of the users who flow in and out of the typical conversion path. One thing that I thought it was missing, however, was to show the exit numbers in percentage terms.

It has always shown the top 5 locations to where a user "abandons" a certain step of the conversion funnel, but I am someone who really likes looking at data in % values, not only in absolute values.

So, here is a simple little script that calculates the % value for each of those top 5 exit pages for each step. The % is the number of exits to a specific location divided by the total # of visits to that specific goal funnel step. Enjoy.

I like % values

Instructions for installing the script in Firefox

You need Greasemonkey already installed
Download the user script directly or from the Userscripts.org script page

Check Page Layout w/ the Horizontally Optimized Layout Tool

2010-06-03T16:50:00.001+02:00

I read a very good post on grokdotcom recently that discussed looking out page layout in terms of horizontal optimization. It turns out that users have a "sweet spot" where they tend to fixate their eyes. Using eye tracking software, researchers can follow this eye movement on the page and create a heat map showing where users focus their attention. The post was based on research done by Jakob Nielsen, a recognized usability and UI design expert.

While the post included a link to a graphic overlay (created by Conversion Voodoo) that you can use to place over screenshots on your desktop (using Photoshop or Paint.Net, etc...), it seemed to me that you could pretty easily turn this concept into an online tool to more easily test many sites and pages in a browser.

So, with a modified version of the layout overlay graphic, a little bit of HTML, jQuery, and using Blogger's pages feature, I created an Online Heat Map Test for Horizontal Layout.

Logismarket is looking fairly optimized on the home page. Perhaps it needs a nudge to the right...

It is pretty easy to use & it's free:

Enter the URL of a page that you want to test & click Go (or press enter)
Drag the overlay graphic if you need to align it with your site (depending on screen resolution)
Adjust the Overlay transparency, if needed
Now look at the part of the site in red zone of the overlay. That is where users are naturally going to spend the most time focusing.

There is a link additionally in the sidebar navigation of this blog.

Please let me know what you think about it.

Suggest 4 Google Insights - Firefox Script & Chrome Extension

2010-04-30T11:46:00.005+02:00

I have written a little greasemonkey script & Google Chrome extension that integrates Google Suggest with Google Insights for Search.

Why do this?
I wanted to speed up some keyword research that I was doing in Google Insights.

There are various research sources I use when doing KW research (such as Google Analytics data, competitor keywords, anchor text keywords, etc...), but sometimes I find that Google itself is a helpful resource for identifying other keyword candidates through its suggest feature. Its suggestions sometimes are terrible but on other occasions it provides insight (no pun intended) into similar phrases that users are using to search Google. After all, suggestions from Google Suggest are based on actual queries from users.

Highlights

Suggest results vary by language and country, so I took advantage of the existing country SELECT value from Google Insights to use that as the basis for the country parameter in Google Suggest
Since Insights has no language field other than for the whole interface, I decided to add my own SELECT with the available languages (I use the same list as is available for the UI, so it may not be complete for all suggest possibilities)
Suggest results are cached for improved performance in the browser
Arrow keys on the keyboard work the same as the mouse

Available for Firefox & Google Chrome

Firefox

You need Greasemonkey already installed
Download the user script directly or from the Userscripts.org script page

Chrome

Download the chrome extension directly (you will need to click accept to install the extension) or from the Chrome Extensions gallery page

Enjoy. As always, please leave feedback in the comments and link to this post instead of directly to the extension and/or userscript. Thanks!

Google Analytics Evolution - Time Series GA Data using the API & App Engine

2010-03-15T17:51:00.002+01:00

This project started with 3 main ideas:

Need to quickly pull visits, bounces, transactions by month for many sites? Check.
Want to rapidly chart sites' performance against each other? Check.
Need a simple interface to allow for getting data into Excel that any marketing person could use? Check.

I am happy to introduce Google Analytics Evolution. A new app hosted on Google's App Engine (for Java) using the Google Analytics API and Flot., a powerful jQuery plug-in for charting.

GA Evolution in Action

Reason for the app
I often have the task of slicing and dicing data for the many sites I oversee. at logismarket we operate our 16 sites in 15 countries. Using Google Analytics, the process of pulling data for reports across all of these sites, was a time-consuming and tedious task. Custom reports, advanced segments, and the great greasemonkey script, cleanerGAProfileSwitching, made things much easier, but I wanted to be able to work even faster. Additionally, any time that I wanted to see data over a longer period of time, my biggest pet peeve with GA, sampling, would rear its ugly head. Given the size of our sites and depending on the dimension or segment used, we can trigger sampling with only a few months of data. That makes using GA for measuring trends quite unreliable, especially for transactions, since the margin of error is much larger on the transactions than it is for visits (the basis of sampling in GA).

So when my boss asked me for a review of the last 18 months for all of our sites and to further segment the data into 3 different slices, I decided to start coding instead of pulling data right away. A little investment now in coding to get a big payback over time for me and anyone else who has the same kind of needs with GA.

Enjoy.

Examples of Usage

Site comparison: Pull data for the same period for 2 or more sites and click a column header to see the results in the chart
Segment comparison: Pull data from the same site (or more) and choose various segments for the same period and click to see the difference in the chart without the distortion caused by being forced to include All Visits (as it does in the GA UI). Also less likely to trigger sampling.
Quick data pull for multiple sites: Select all (or most) of your site profiles, get the data, copy and paste to Excel. Only minimal manipulation needed to get the data ready for Pivot Table usage :-D

Check out the free app today

Ideas for Future Expansion
While this app currently meets my needs I have identified some areas that I want to expand and improve the app. I am also open to suggestions. Please add a comment to this post or report an issue on the Google Code project page for GA Evoluation.

Add export to CSV feature. I am thinking to do this along similar lines as the charting... where you export the data that is already pulled and you select the tables. That way you know what you are going to get (eg, you can check Confidence Interval to make sure sampling was not triggered).
Make the metric selection dynamic with a set of default metrics. You can greatly expand the reporting capabilities, but I need to make sure that the reporting stays correct (keep apples to apples in charting of the data).
Add some calculated metrics not in API. Bounce Rate, eCommerce Conversion Rate are not available via the API because that info can be calculated after pulling the data. No need to burn free Google cycles when we can just calculate it ourselves. However, it would be more user friendly to have the option to get the data as we want it, not just as it is given to us by Google.
Other enhancements to flot charts. These are not fully defined yet, but I am thinking toward making the charts a bit more dynamic... still need some thought here.

Let it snow let it snow let it snow

2010-03-08T15:00:00.006+01:00

I woke up this morning and this is what I saw.

The access to the freeway was closed off so that meant work from home ;) I realize that in other countries and parts of the states, this would just be any other Monday in Winter, but here... they are not prepared (much like when it rains in LA).

The snow has not stopped all day. Sometimes light. Sometimes heavy, but it has not stopped. Too bad that it is so cold because the sea forecast predicts some big big waves (up to 7 meters), which are not too common for the western med.

Schools here are closed and even the city hall is handing out letters to justify people's absences from work.

Luckily we still have our power, internet connection and especially natural gas to keep the house toasty.

Here are a few more photos and a video of the snow. Tomorrow should be spectacular since the skies are supposed to be clear and hopefully we get a great show of Montserrat.

Try Piped TechCrunch Feed: More TC, Less MG

2010-01-25T12:10:00.000+01:00

I am a big TechCrunch fan and I read it pretty much every day. It is one of the best ways to stay in touch with the world of Tech and the Internet. In general, its posts are well-written, informative and seemingly unbiased. That is, with the notorious exception of MG Siegler. His posts, besides being boringly formulaic, give the sense that he majored in Apple Fanboyism at college with a minor in Google studies.

So, I decided to take action and go back to reading TechCrunch as it was before MG came on board.

One of my favorite sites is Yahoo! Pipes. It lets you remix the web in as sense as you want it. I went there with a simple goal: More TC, less MG.

Thanks to Pipes, I now have made a TechCrunch feed that filters out all posts written by MG Siegler.

Here is the link.
http://pipes.yahoo.com/spanishgringo/techcrunch_no_mg_siegler

Just add it to Google Reader (or your reader of choice) and enjoy!

Evernote Widget for S60 Updated

2010-01-22T19:08:00.001+01:00

I have updated the Evernote widget for S60v5 that I wrote back in Sept with some minor improvements.

Updated jQuery version to 1.4 with jQueryUI 1.8b
Cleaned up the code a bit to make it a little faster (not much more improvement will come until Nokia updates the browser engine... (it is so old that webkit-border-radius is not even suported by WRT)
The Nokia soft keys only appear at launch and in Portrait mode. This way when viewing a note from Evernote you can use a lot more real estate on the screen.

Enjoy.

Get the code/links from the original post:
Evernote for S60v5

5800 FW Available with limited Kinetic Scrolling

2010-01-13T17:11:00.002+01:00

Nokia just made a new firmware available for the Nokia 5800 XM. A lot of the existing users have been waiting for this for a long long time. Nokia has taken a lot of flack, justified in my opinion, for dragging their feet to fix a lot of the things missing/broken in their first mainstream touch device. Apple and Android are eating Nokia's lunch in smart phones because they have been more innovative and faster at bringing meaningful updates to market.

I sure hope that Nokia starts changing its ways, although I do have to say that I am overall quite pleased with the phone.

Firmware 40 brings a few things to the phone so far that I have seen:

Kinetic Scrolling (move around the page by flicking your finger) in many of the apps although it is sorely lacking the the normal device menus
New Home screen similar to the 5530 with a music player widget, 4 shortcuts and a contact carousel
Better input option to allow one preferred method for portrait and other for landscape
Camera seems a bit quicker to me
Hopefully many many bug fixes (alarm bug, downloaded videos from feeds, corrupted podcast database, etc...)

Not included and disappointing:

Updated webkit browser (still stuck at webkit 413 whereas Chrome uses 532.8). This will be needed to greatly improve the somtimes shoddy WRT experience.
True Kinetic Scrolling in the device (eg, menus, better implemented in browser)
More flexible input options for portrait and landscape (why can't I choose mini querty for portrait and full querty for landscape?)
More shortcuts in Homescreen
Landscape Homescreen