Jeroen Sangers

I have switched my RSS reader from the web-based Bloglines to the PC based RSS Bandit.

I have always used Bloglines, since I wanted to access my feeds from anywhere, but recently came to the conclusion that I only read feeds from exactly two PC's.

Whenever I am traveling, I hardly have the time or possibilities to connect to the Internet, and usually only read my e-mail.

Bloglines has many features, but misses one: the ability to work off-line. One of my wishes was to be able to search through feeds while being off-line, which by nature is something Bloglines cannot offer.

Another, less important, feature I missed in Bloglines is a three-pane view: folder-headline-text. A three-panel view saves time when going through a big list of headlines.

While I am still tweaking RSS Bandit to my wishes, I am quite satisfied with it. I get through my feeds faster and can spend my off-line time reading as well. RSS Bandit has a nice little feature that lets me upload the feed list and the read status to a FTP server, so I can continue where I left off on another PC.

[Via Buzznovation]

Squidoo is open for public. Squidoo is a community where members, lensmasters, built Lenses. A lens is simply a page with information about a certain topic.

I joined the beta some weeks ago after reading the e-book by Seth Godin, and have created some lenses:

• Point Of Sale technology;
• The tech-life of Jeroen Sangers;
• Apple iBook;
• Apple Powerbook;Types of web hosting.

So far the tools to built lenses, and the time I had available to use them, are limited, but it looks like a viable initiative. Squidoo is still considered a beta, but they already earned some real money:

5,241 Lenses Made    $148.88 Earned

I will continue playing with Squidoo, and will post more about it in the future.

I have two address lists, which I synchronize daily. One copy resides on my Palm Zire 31 which I always take with me, and the other list is my Outlook contacts folder on my Office PC. My address list is growing every day, and each time it costs me more to maintain it.

Looking up addresses is fast. The search function on my Palm and the excellent LookOut plug-in for Outlook are very fast. But updating information cost more. I regularly receive address changes from companies of friends. And if it is a big company I might have dozens of entries for it in my address list, which I have to update one by one. The same happens for friends and family. I usually have two entries for each ‘couple’, so I can store birth dates and mobile phone numbers. But they share the same address and home phone.

My ideal PIM application would store ‘contacts’ in two separate but linked tables: an address and a person. If I change the address, it will change for all persons within that address. Yes, that would be great!

Here is something not many people know: an open application window consumes more memory than a minimized window. You can use that in your benefit: if you have a lot of memory in your PC, you might want to keep all windows open to be able to switch faster between applications. On the other hand, if you work on a PC with little memory, it is better to keep as many windows minimized as possible to free memory for the current application.

Firefox 1.5 has been released, and I have already installed it on my PC. Why is this news? My PC runs the Spanish version of Windows, and I like my applications to be in Spanish as well. When previous versions were released, I had to wait a few days or even weeks until a Spanish version was available. This time I found the download button shown above on the Firefox site. Great job!

Recently there has been a lot of attention for web statistics: first Mint was launched, introducing design and AJAX to web statistics. Soon after that, old-timer NedStat got bought by WebStats4U, which lost most of its clients by adding unwanted advertising to sites using the NedStat counter. And last week Google re-launched Google Analytics, previously known as Urchin. There is a lot going on in a market just as old as the Internet.

As long as people have created web pages, they have been interested in knowing who is visiting their pages. Most web statistics packages already exist for years, and the only changes they have made to their products are the inclusion of new browser detection and more advanced bot filtering. And the inclusion of RSS readers of course.

The first statistics I ever used was the NedStat counter. I only had to place an image on my home page, and NedStat would tell me the referrer pages, countries, and browsers. Ver neat!

Then I moved to another hosting provider, which gave me access to the server logs. I installed AWStats and got incredible statistics. Now I can see which search bots spidered my site, which file types are more popular, and which files are missing (404 errors). It is all in the server logs!

And now I am playing with Google Analytics. Google's application does not use my server logs, but require me to add a piece of JavaScript to each page. The results are once again a step up from what I had: Google does not only show technical reports, but also has views for marketers and executives, showing things like ROI and tracking your goals.

As a technology-oriented person, I first set the webmaster view as my default view. But Google's webmaster view gives me less information than AWStats. It does not tell me about 404 errors, it does not show me bandwidth numbers, it does not show me login names.… The other views in Analyze are great, and very useful when managing my sites, but I do miss webmaster information.

I wish it would be possible to ‘enrich’ the data Google collects with my server log files, FeedBurner reports, etc. With Google Base they laid the foundation for adding content, they only have to implement in into analyze.

We all heard about the problems Google Analytics is having at the moment: after the launch they experienced extremely strong demand, and as a result, have temporarily limited the number of new signups. Not only have they stopped accepting new signups, but they also don't allow existing users to add new website profiles.

After the launch I managed to get signed up, and submitted one of my sites to evaluate Google Analytics. Today, about a week after my signup, Google Analytics finally shows me the results. And I like it a lot! So I want to add Google Analytics to my other sites.

In the Website Profiles screen I read: To track another website with Analytics, click the 'Add Website Profile' link, but there is no such link in that screen. The help function directs me to the signup screen with the message that they do not accept new signups. What to do?

I loaded the Website Profiles page in my favourite HTML editor, and find the following code:

They simply commented out the ‘Add Website Profile’ button! I open the page linked in the code, and Google adds my new website profile without any problem! So to add another website profile, you only have to log-in at Google Analytics and go to the following URL, replacing the XXXXXX by your own user number:

https://www.google.com/analytics/home/admin?vid=1151&scid=XXXXXX

Robert Scoble discovered purple numbers, the usually purple coloured permalinks for paragraphs. I was too fast commenting:

The idea is very good, but as you say, nobody is going to do this manually, and in all those months (years?) since the original idea, nobody implemented it in any CMS.

I got corrected immediately by David Winer, who’s site has a very good implementation of purple numbers, using the edit time as an anchor to make sure each permalink is unique.

Another comment pointed me to a WordPress plug-in, which of course brings the question: Did anybody make a plugin for Movable Type?

Citizenspeak is the talk of the day. It is a free, easy-to-use service that allows grassroots organizations and activists to launch email campaigns. The only problem is… it does not work! Whenever I try to access the site, I get the following error:

Fatal error: Call to undefined function: drupal_goto() in /smail_cluster/home/sites/citizenspeak.org/web/modules/i18n/i18n.module on line 33

It looks like the application noticed that I am connecting from Spain, and is trying to serve me a localized page, but fails to do so. I tried to change the ‘accept languages’ string of my browser, but that did not make any difference. I also switched from Firefox to Internet Explorer, but without results. I really like to have a look at the new Citizenspeak!!!