UPDATE: Experimenting on how to generate fake web traffic…

March 19th, 2013 by norberto

Just a quick update to my previous blog post: “Experimenting on how to generate fake web traffic to artificially increase analytic metrics”

botnet

Obviously, the idea I played with in my quick and dirty experiment can be taken to an extreme if you really want to monetize it and have the right skills, here is a real world example of it -> link.

Basically, a Botnet was massively distributed with the sole purpose of creating fake page impressions on several websites and generate revenue for their owners and the online marketing exchanges involved (the amount paid for faked impressions created by this Botnet network is estimated in $6 Million!)

The Botnet targeted Win 7 and used IE9 as the agent exclusively, most probably because they are massively used and easy to automate (the Windows OS proneness to be infected by Botnets helped for sure..).

I’ve always been suspicious of web traffic authenticity, especially when there is big money involved and this just confirms that if it can be done, it will…

I would also like to presume that the web marketing industry is actively working on improving web traffic metrics’ overall transparency.

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So you think you can code?

February 27th, 2013 by malave

So you think you can code?

Or maybe you just want to begin learning how to and don’t know which editor to use or which is the best for you.

Be lucky you didn’t learn the way I did… I was taught on notepad and told to hand code everything! =(

Well, everyone has there own preferences and beliefs of what the perfect coder should have or be able to do. So I wont go into which one you should use, but rather offer a few choices and feedback from our friends at Tutorialize.

Check out the list and see if your favorite made the cut.

For us, web developers, the choice of a source code editor shouldn’t come lightly. This is where we spend most of our development time and where productivity is gained or lost on a grand scale. No two developers are alike, so there is a plethora of editors that can accommodate any coding style. But this politically-correct statement doesn’t answer the most fundamental question of all – which is the best?
To determine the best editor, we will rate each one on a scale from 1 to 5 stars, consisting of:

Beginner friendliness – how easy it is for a beginner to get up and running when opening it for the first time;
Power – this criteria rates the feature set, text editing capabilities, editing modes etc.
Extensibility – does the editor supports plugins, bundles or extensions;
Aesthetics – we strive for beauty in our work, so it is natural to look for the same in our tools;
Speed – this rates the startup time, performance when opening large files, snappiness of the interface;
Cross-platform – if the editor is available on multiple operating systems.
Price – the lower the cost, the higher the mark.

Editors are presented in groups, giving some context on the typical type of developer that would use them.

For Gurus

Who is a guru you ask? Generally, this is a person who has been using one of the editors below since before you were born. The tools in this section are hardcore and insanely expandable. They can run from a terminal window and according to UNIX traditions all their settings are defined in configuration files. Beginners beware!

Vim

Released in 1991 this versatile and powerful editor gained a massive following in the open source world. What makes it different from any other editor in this article, is its command-based workflow. Instead of simply typing code, you choose between modes for entering or selecting text, running regex-powered searches and using more commands than you can handle on an empty stomach. It can run from both a console window and a GUI. It has also been ported to all major operating systems. Vim is also extendable by using scripts and plugins, which allow you to tailor your experience with the editor. It is open source software and comes preinstalled on most Linux systems.

Links: Website, Wikipedia

Vim Card

Emacs

Development of Emacs started way back in the 1970 and continues to this day. This editor is known for its extensibility, achieved by loading customized libraries. It deserves its place in computing history, as it is one of the first editors to implement syntax highlighting, automatic indentation and support for multiple programming languages. Like Vim, it is perfectly cross-platform and can be used from both a terminal window and through a graphical user interface. The editor comes bundled with a LISP interpreter, which gurus can use to change it to extremes. Emacs is free and open source software.

Links: Website, Wikipedia

Emacs Card

For Professionals

The editors in this category are full blown development environments. They are meant to be easy to use and at the same time expose powerful features so that developers go through writing code, compiling, testing and deploying from a single application.

Eclipse

Eclipse is the goto development environment for writing Java applications. The IDE follows a plugin architecture, which makes it easy to bring support for additional programming languages. There are plugins for C/C++, Ruby, PHP and more. Eclipse offers powerful code hinting, built in documentation and real-time syntax checking. Companies like Google release their development kits for the platform, so you can easily create applications for Android and App Engine. Eclipse is free and open source.

Links: Website, Wikipedia

Eclipse Card

Aptana Studio

Aptana is a development environment targeted at rich AJAX applications. It is based on Eclipse, and bundles powerful new tools that make sense for web developers. It has support for the most popular web programming languages: PHP, JavaScript, HTML, CSS, Ruby, Python and more through plugins. It has Git integration, ability to deploy your application to remote servers and bundles of useful code snippets and actions for every language. Like Eclipse, Aptana is free and open source.

Links: Website, Wikipedia

Aptana Card

Netbeans

Netbeans is another Java development environment, but like Eclipse, can be extended with bundles for additional languages including PHP, Python, C/C++ and others. It runs on Linux, Windows and OSX. Where this IDE shines though, is in Java development. Netbeans can speed up your development of desktop applications with a drag&drop GUI builder. A negative side effect of all this flexibility is the performance – Netbeans has frequently been reported for being slow on large projects. The IDE is free and open source.

Links: Website, Wikipedia

Netbeans Card

Dreamweaver

Dreamweaver is part of Adobe’s application suite targeted at web designers/developers. It provides support only for the most popular web languages – PHP, ASP.NET, JavaScript, HTML, CSS. It is mainly suitable for beginner developers, with support for WYSIWYG editing, live previews, deployment to remote servers and building apps with jQuery mobile and Phonegap. Dreamweaver is available on OSX and Windows. With a standalone price tag of $399 it is hard to recommend in place of the other editors in the article, but buying it as part of Adobe’s CS suites might make more sense.

Links: Website

Dreamweaver Card

Visual Studio

Visual Studio is the all-in-one development environment for Windows. It supports a large number of languages (C/C++, C#, VB.NET and F# come built-in) and can be used to develop applications for desktop, mobile and web. It has powerful features for code autocompletion, inline documentation, error checking, debugging, form designer, database schema creation and more. The price starts from $500, but an Express version of Visual Studio is available for free, with a limited feature set.

Links: Visual Studio, Visual Studio Express Editions

Visual Studio Card

Xcode

Xcode is Apple’s solution for developing OSX and iOS applications. It supports C, C++, Objective-C, Objective-C++, Java, AppleScript, Python and Ruby. With Xcode, you can write, debug and preview code. It provides a GUI builder and a mobile device emulator for testing iOS apps. The IDE is based on open source utilities like the GNU Debugger and the Apple LLVM compiler. Xcode used to be paid, but now is offered for free to developers.

Links: Website

Xcode Card

Coda 2

Coda is an all-in-one web developer power tool set. It includes support for (s)FTP file transfer, code navigation, sites and groups, code folding, terminal and git integration, MySQL management and much more. With the new Coda 2 release, you can even use an iPad as a dedicated preview screen. The regular price is $99, but you can get it with a discount for around $75.

Link: Website

Coda 2 Card

For Aesthetes

The editors presented here are beautiful, lightweight, easy to use and extensible. There are big communities around them, which produce bundles and plugins, write articles, and offer tips on how to make the best use of the respective editor.

TextMate

TextMate is a general-purpose graphical text editor for OSX. It includes extensive support for macros and bundles, code folding, snippets, shell integration, clipboard history and project management. TextMate 2 is expected to bring long requested features like split views and full screen support, which are currently missing. The editor costs around $50.

Link: Website

TextMate Card

Sublime Text 2

Sublime is a beautiful cross-platform code editor. It is fast and feature rich, with support for practically every programming language. It supports multiple selections, code folding, keyboard bindings, macros, split screen editing and projects. Sublime Text also has a fullscreen and distraction-free modes, which look great on big displays. Like TextMate, it has a vibrant community behind it, which creates bundles and plugins with the help of Sublime’s powerful plugin API. It runs on Linux, Windows and OSX. This editor comes with an unlimited trial period, but you should eventually purchase a license for $59, which can be used on every computer that you own.

Links: Website

Sublime Card

For Pragmatists

This section is for people who just want to get things done. These editors don’t get in your way, but at the same time are fast and very powerful. They may not be as refined as the last group, but rest assured that they can take anything you throw at them.

Notepad++

This powerful and lightweight editor is a must for any programmer running Windows. Although its name might connote that it is merely an improved version of Notepad, this is a mighty tool. It is easy for beginners to get started, but it takes a pro to truly master. Notepad++ supports every popular programming language with plugins available for the rest. The editor also has support for split screen editing, an FTP browser, macros and powerful text editing capabilities. Notepad++ is free as in speech and also as in beer.

Links: Website

Notepad++ Card

TextWrangler

TextWrangler is a free and lightweight OSX-only editor with support of multiple programming languages. It offers a powerful search and replace functionality with multiple file support, text manipulation, file comparison, auto indentation, multiple clipboards, ftp support and more.

Links: Website

TextWrangler Card

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Tell Me a Story

January 17th, 2013 by Linda Hsia

The New York Times recently produced an outstanding interactive piece that you can view on its website titled “Snow Fall.” One of the things I love about “Snow Fall” is how it goes against the conventional wisdom that web content should be kept short—there are menus on top of each page that act like chapters in a novel—and still manages to keep the reader in its grip from start to finish. Interactive features are seamlessly woven in, and more important, they feel like they belong. You do not get the sense that bells and whistles are haphazardly dropped into the story just because they are available but because they are actually intrinsic and add to the story.

“Snow Fall” is a good old-fashioned tale with a beginning, middle and end. This got me thinking that no matter what medium or device or website we use—be it the Web, iPad, Instagram and yes, a book that we actually hold in our hands—the bottom line is that we are all consuming, and telling, a story. In this way, the grand tradition continues. Everything is connected, from the Iliad to Star Wars to the Huffington Post. After all, what is Instagram but a modern version of the Kodak carousel slide projector?

We tell stories big and small, from the trivial to the major and everything in between. Why do we feel so compelled to share our stories and get a glimpse of other people’s lives? I think a main reason is because stories are our way of saying “we were here.” Once upon a time, as all our stories begin, we were born and, like dinosaurs, we roamed the earth. And inevitably there will come a time when we will exit and everyone who knew us will too. What remnants will there left be of us? Our stories.

So go ahead. Tell your story while you can. Post it, blog it, write about it, stick a photo in an album, talk about it. With all the tools available now at our disposal and so many different ways of sharing our lives, there has never been a more interesting time to do so.

Show Me

“Snow Fall” from the New York Times

The Kodak carousel slide projector as featured in “The Carousel” from Mad Men

Tags: kodak carousel slide projector, mad men, new york times, snow fall, story telling, tell me a story
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Commonly Misused (and Abused) Words and Phrases, Part 2

December 6th, 2012 by Linda Hsia

Since I received positive feedback on Part 1 of this soon-to-be series—and there’s certainly more of these examples to go around—here’s Part 2.

“Indispensable,” not “Indispensible”

This one stumps me occasionally as well. Somehow, remembering that there’s a “sable” in “indispensable” helps.

“Continual” vs. “Continuous”

The first means something that last but with breaks or pauses. The second also means something that lasts but without breaks or pauses.

Example 1: He continually annoys her.

Example 2: The noise of the waterfall was continuous.

“Conclude” vs. “Decide”

You conclude after giving something much thought or consideration, but you can decide on a spur of the moment.

“Accident” vs. “Mishap”

Accidents can be good, bad or neither (e.g., “a happy accident”), but a mishap is always bad.

“About” vs. “Approximately”

“About” is more vague while “approximately” suggests an attempt at calculation.

Example 1: About 500 people attended the event

Example 2: I have approximately $15.70 in my account.

“In order to”

This phrase is often superfluous and leads to wordiness. Test it yourself to see if anything would be amiss if you were to delete this phrase.

“In order to proof our point, we conducted an experiment.”

vs.

“To proof our point, we conducted an experiment.”

“We conducted an experiment in order to proof our point.”

vs.

“We conducted an experiment to proof our point.”

Tags: in order to, misused and abused phrases, misused and abused words, misused phrases, misused words
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Why I ♥ Web Analytics

November 14th, 2012 by Linda Hsia

One of the most enjoyable aspects of my job is analyzing our site’s analytics—and tweaking our site based on informed decision making. With analytics on your side, it’s exactly the ammunition you need when people come to you and say that they don’t think they have an effective site or something’s not being viewed enough or utter the sentence that strikes horror in the hearts of every Web team—“we are thinking of revamping our site.”

While such comments are well intended, they may not always be well informed. If you don’t know what types of numbers your site is getting (including what pages are getting viewed the most and have the highest bounce rate, the average number of pages per visit, and what paths and tasks users complete while on your site, etc.), it’s foolhardy to begin making changes based simply on a gut feeling or because a few people came to you voicing concerns.

Event Tracking (It’s a Good Thing!)

Google Analytics (GA) offers a trove of information. One of my favorites is Event Tracking, which is simple to set up. Event Tracking allows you to track how many times a visitor clicks on items on your site such as:

PDFs
Call-to-action buttons (example: “Apply Now”; “Give Now”)
Links to videos or mp3s/podcasts
Link to an external website, and so on

It’s clear how valuable such information can be in the overall strategic objectives of your site, even if your Apply Now or Give Now button takes your users to an outside site to complete the transaction. At the very least, you’d know how many people actually click on a button on your site to start a transaction and can work with your vendors to determine how many people complete the transaction once they’re taken outside of your site.

Don’t Be Hasty

As informative as analytics are, it’s important to sit tight and monitor them for a while before making any sweeping changes to your site. Certain sections of your site can trend upward or downward depending on events such as open house, the admissions season, Commencement and so forth. Watch for unusual spikes in traffic and consider what occurred during that time period that might have accounted for the anomaly. It could be something as simple as an email that went out asking everyone to visit a site for more information.

For more on how to make the most out of your site’s analytics, check out “A Web Analytics Framework for Content Analysis.” After all, numbers are just numbers—you have to have a plan to know what to do with the numbers you have.

Tags: analytics, event tracking, google analytics, google tracking, site analytics, web analytics
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How Long Will It Take to Build My Website?

September 27th, 2012 by Linda Hsia

Psst, you there. Yeah, you. I’d like to share a secret with you: most websites can’t be built in 1-2 days or even 1-2 weeks, given all the other projects that a typical Web team is working on. Not only that, but there’s a lot of strategizing behind the scenes that many don’t see. In other words, a truly good Web team doesn’t just copy and paste your content into a CMS without giving it a second thought, pushes a magic button, and then say to you, voilà, you have a website!

A Content Scrubbing
When we receive your content (and please note—building a site starts with having content to work with), it first goes through a scrubbing. It’s edited for grammar, consistency, spelling, adherence to branding standards and our university’s Web policies, and so forth. Quite often, content needs to be edited down and for the Web. That’s a major point to consider, because many content providers are not familiar with good Web content practices (nor is it necessary their job to become a Web content expert). Also, many content providers think that content for a print publication will translate perfectly for a website, when in actuality, this doesn’t always work. For one, content for a print publication is not optimized for search engines. For another, it’s not optimized for grabbing your Web readers’ attention immediately—and if it doesn’t, you run the risk of losing them pretty early in the game.

A good Web content editor also needs to balance how you think your content should be divided among pages, and how it really should be divided. Think of the pages or menus or navigations that comprise a website as chapters in a book. They need to flow logically from one to another. They need to be in the correct order. They need to be properly titled so your users know what to expect when they select a navigation. The titles should not be too long, but nor should they be so short as to render them meaningless. And is it really necessary to have 3 pages devoted to saying pretty much the same thing when all it really takes is 1 page?

Let’s Insert an Image of a Girl Under a Tree!
Then there are images to consider. Images should be relevant to your site. However, many content providers don’t have images at their disposal or appropriate images. This is when a design and/or photo department gets involved and starts designing images or setting up photo shoots for your site. Obviously, all this will add time to your site creation.

Hey, How About a Twitter Feed (Oh, Wait, Do I Still Owe You Content?)!
Let’s not even get into when coders and developers enter the fold (that’s a whole separate post in and of itself!), or when a client gets excited about other assets and bells and whistles: for example, creating and embedding a Twitter feed or a Flickr slideshow for their site and other widgets and gewgaws. It never ceases to amaze me when people start talking about doing all these “fun” and “interesting” things yet haven’t created the meat of any website: content. I’m not putting down the relevance of Twitter and Flickr, etc.—far from it. In fact, I think they can add a lot to a site when done appropriately.

But take my word for it: start with the content, and the rest of your site will naturally fall in place. Start with the content, and you’ll actually see if the other assets and ideas you have in mind make sense. You’ll save yourself lots of time and agita.

I hope this gives you an idea of all the thoughts and efforts that go into creating a website. And keep in mind: these are just the basics. Web teams often hear, “I gave you only 3 pages of copy. Surely, you can turn around a site for me in 2-3 days.” As should be clear from reading this post, there is a lot of strategizing behind building a site. Anyone can copy and paste content into a CMS without giving it a second thought. It is the exceptional Web team that takes a step back and reviews your content and site from all angles and think, would this make sense from the perspective of someone coming to your site? Would the site resonate with your target audience?

Which Web team would you rather have?

Tags: building a website, creating websites, how long does it take to build a website, Web content, Web content practices
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UPDATE: Experimenting on how to generate fake web traffic…

So you think you can code?

For Gurus

Vim

Emacs

For Professionals

Eclipse

Aptana Studio

Netbeans

Dreamweaver

Visual Studio

Xcode

Coda 2

For Aesthetes

TextMate

Sublime Text 2

For Pragmatists

Notepad++

TextWrangler

Tell Me a Story

Commonly Misused (and Abused) Words and Phrases, Part 2

Why I ♥ Web Analytics

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