Jeremy Flint’s Blog

I am not really actively posting to this blog anymore, so head on over to Red Hot & Daily.

So it looks like Google is getting into the stats business now. They have just launched a new service called Google Analytics. It seems to be getting hammered by traffic right now, so it is a little hard to get in. I signed in with my Gmail account and have plugged the stats package into my main blog at www.jeremyflint.com.

Basically, you drop a chunk of Javascript in the head of your site template (or on any page you want to track stats for), and Google does the rest. I should have some stats within the next twelve hours, so it will be interesting to see how they display them.

While we are on the subject of web-based stats, I also got an invite to try out MeasureMap, the new web app from the fine folks at Adaptive Path. I am running it on my Mississippi State Sports Blog, and it seems to be doing well. The difference between MeasureMap and other stat packages is that MeasureMap is geared towards blogs, measuring not only visitors and links, but the number of comments and direct hits on posts.

Yahoo has published a report on RSS that has some interesting numbers in it. I would try to post them here, but Steve Rubel has already done a great job so I will just quote him.

• Awareness of RSS is quite low among Internet users. 12% of users are aware of
RSS, and 4% have knowingly used RSS.

• 27% of Internet users consume RSS syndicated content on personalized start
pages (e.g., My Yahoo!, My MSN) without knowing that RSS is the enabling
technology.

• 28% of Internet users are aware of podcasting, but only 2% currently subscribe
to podcasts.

• Even tech-savvy “Aware RSS Users� prefer to access RSS feeds via user-friendly,
browser-based experiences (e.g., My Yahoo!, Firefox, My MSN).

• My Yahoo! has the highest awareness and use of any RSS-enabled product.

I know when I spoke at a PR conference back in August, I got some really strange looks from the audience when I started to mention RSS. For mainstream adaptation to occur, I agree with Steve and others that RSS needs to become a seamless experience.

I think we are heading in the right direction with browsers such as Firefox and Safari introducing RSS, as well as the upcoming IE7.

It has finally launched into public beta, so I guess that means I can post about it. Rollyo is a site that lets you “roll your own” search engines, but selecting sites that you want included in it.

From the horse’s mouth:

Rollyo puts the power of Yahoo! Search in your hands, by giving you the tools to create your own personal search engines - with no programming required. All you have to do is pick the sites you want to search, and we’ll create a custom search engine for you.

So basically you are building your own index of sites that you want to search through. Say you are always looking for news on your favorite sports team. You could roll your own search engine that consists of all the major sports sites out there, and ignore the ones that are irrelevant or outdated.

I am still exploring the uses of Rollyo myself, but have already been impressed by the application.

The site template and logo were designed by Dan Cedarholm of SimpleBits. Great job all around. 

Local blogger and programmer Tony Summerville has redesigned his site, moving it to a new domain in the process.

Visit Summerville, just off Exit 404. 

This is a bit of old news, but ABCNews has launched some blogs, allowing many of its correspondentst to expand on any stories they are reporting on.

I also noticed during the Hurrican Katrina aftermath that Miles O’Brien of CNN was “blogging” from New Orleans while he was there reporting. 

So I received a golden ticket for the new WordPress.com hosting blogging service (think blogger).

So far it is nice. I definitely like the backend better than blogger. It seems to offer more options for managing your content…or it could be that I am just that much more familiar with the WordPress interface from my personal blog.

Anyway, here goes nothing. Let’s see how this goes.