I’ve been meaning to do a more complete post on this subject but time is simply not allowing, so here is just a quick few links to some excellent Silverlight Blogs and recently published training videos:
Blogs
50 Training Videos
Sunday, June 29, 2008
Podcasting Kit for SharePoint: Technical Preview
As Podcasting becomes a more and more normal way of communicating with an audience some corporations are moving into using this technology for internal broadcasts.
For those companies using SharePoint the process of publishing content is about to get much easier with the release of the Podcasting Kit for Sharepoint. For anyone interested in this technology checkout the Technical Preview found at this URL on CodePlex:
adCenter Analytics (Beta) – My Experiences
As anyone who reads this blog regularly knows I recently said Goodbye Google Analytics, and hello AdCenter.
AdCenter Analytics is Microsoft's web analytics projects formerly codenamed Gatineau. The basic concept is the service allows you to embed a small amount of JavaScript into your webpages and it will track all traffic to the site. This technique has been used for many years now by various providers of website traffic analytics and im very excited to see us get into the same product offering.
Now lets talk about some of the details on my experience getting started with AdCenter Analytics.
Getting Started
After getting my account activated I entered the website and registered by blog by creating a profile:
Once my blog was registered a small customized javascript snippet was provided and I installed it into my master blog HTML template that would ensure it appears on every page.
By the next day my profile Status showed GREEN as traffic was being recorded and I was ready to look at the reports, which is really the heart of this system.
Reports
The interface is very clean, for a complete demo checkout the official website but here are some snippets:
The above image shows the various statistics AdCenter Analytics is able to track, very useful information such as:
- Number of Unique visitors
- Referrals (where traffic is coming from, search engines or direct links)
- Visitor Information such as the browser, operating system, screen resolution and even the language of my visitors
- And many more as you can see above
Within the first full day of tracking my site had already hit 165 unique visitors: 
and I was able to see such things like most people had at least 1024x768 as their screen resolution:
I am also able to analyze where people are coming from and if they are new or returning visitors. This is great to gauge the kind of traffic and audience that comes to my blog.
Interface
I really cannot say enough nice things about the interface, its clean and intuitive as this example can show:
Clicking on the various duration bars above such as the week in the first screenshot (marked goldish/yellow) or month in the second resets all the statistics below it to show the data for this period.
Also almost all the graphical representations in reports can be highlighted with the mouse for the full detail, again a very helpful feature:
Still Beta
As i continued to explore the system I did find that features such as Print, Email and Exporting of reports was not still implemented:
This is understandable as this is a relatively new (and complex) product that will take time to development and bring into its first release, this is a BETA after all.
My Impression
Now that I got to fully play with the product I must say I am very impressed. Two advantages already stand out for me over Google’s product:
- Cleaner sleek looking interface
- Relatively “real time” statistics (see the word “Live data” below)
I’ve confirmed with the product group that this data is in fact being made available to reporting within hours of it being gathered. For me is a clear winning feature and my hope is it will continue to be this way. (As anyone who’s designed such systems knows, this is not an easy feature to pull off)
Closing
For more information and to signup for the service visit their office website at:
http://advertising.microsoft.com/advertising/adcenter-analytics
or check out their team blog which has a very good collection of informational posts and resources:
Friday, June 27, 2008
Thursday, June 26, 2008
Goodbye Google Analytics, and hello AdCenter
As of today I am finally done with Google Analytics and am instead starting to use Microsoft AdCenter Analytics Beta to track my blog traffic.
Even though I just started using adCenter Analytics I am already liking it. AdCenter seems like a complete package and the design of the sign-up process is very clean and simple.
As always I want to say thank you to Google Analytics team for providing me a great service that worked without issue. I really have nothing against the product but simply eat my own dogfood. For my purposes both products are way more advanced then I need them to be anyway, but I am glad that we as consumers have choices and the competition will be healthy for both sides.
I will probably post more details about AdCenter later as I start using it more often and experience the full breath of reports available.
Want AdCenter for your site?
Currently the Beta is invite for non-Microsoft employees and additional people are allowed in as capacity becomes available. I highly recommend everyone interested though sign-up on the site to get into the queue: http://advertising.microsoft.com/advertising/adcenter-analytics
Exploiting Security Holes Automatically
I heard about this story the other day and finally found a web version of it to share with all of you. The articles titled Exploiting Security Holes Automatically does a good job at describing what I heard about: An automated system for generating patches from Microsoft Windows Update.
The Idea, prepare for the worst IT Pros!
The idea is brilliant and terrifying. As most people can imagine if they think about it once a patch is released its probably possible to look at it, generate a hack for it and exploit it before everyone patches their systems around the world. Now imagine if someone could automated that process and simply wait for Windows Update to create patches that these “bad guys” would immediately use against vulnerable yet unpatched machines.
The problem is enormous. With millions of machines around the world even if patches were somehow forced it would still take days or weeks to push them out. But forcing is not even an option, it simply would not be accepted in the real world.
The solution? oh this won’t be easy
So how does Microsoft and other companies hope to fight this new potential threat? I honestly cannot think of any good way at the moment. To me this threat is as scary and large as spam has become. Unfortunately for us though this would be a lot worse then annoying email message.
Monday, June 23, 2008
Goodbye Bill, its been a pleasure
As Bill Gates steps down from his full time job at Microsoft I have only one thing to say, Thank you. Your vision, your software and your company changed the world and helped make my life what it is today. My hobbies and career revolved around Microsoft well before I started here and I have enjoyed the ride.
But don't worry Bill, Microsoft will do well. I am sure you will still have your hand in it and the people you are leaving behind at all levels (including myself) are ready to continue and make the company a strong player in this field.
If anyone wants to read some more insight into this moment check out this MSNBC article, its fairly descent. The best quote for me from the article is: "Beyond the halls of academia, Gates is renowned for another reason: He has made it socially acceptable, if not actually desirable, to be a geek. ". How true indeed.
Saturday, June 21, 2008
Kindle Review
For the last few months I have been testing the Amazon Kindle e-book reader and must admit I am fairly impressed.
The device is not perfect, but if you stopped reading this (fairly late in the game) review now the one main point id like you to remember is that its a great device for reading books, as long as they are not technical books.
But if you want to know more of my impression, read on:
Features
Why reproduce something Amazon has already done, so here is their official feature list (some some minor adjustments):
The Good
I am no writer (as most of you know) so lets do this as a quick and dirty bulleted list:
- Its convenience, having large amount of books in one, small, lightweight device that can be held by one hand even on a crowded train
- Its screen, just a pleasure to read ink instead of a bright display. My eyes hurt enough from the light bulb we call a monitor so this is perfect after work. The glare is minimum no worse then a magazine printed on bright paper.
- Its ability to search, store bookmarks, and take page clipping of books
- The font selector that lets you make text as small or large as you could reasonably expect
- The integration with Amazon bookstore and relatively low priced books is a big deal. You will definitely not find it hard to download a sample chapter, decide to buy the book and go through the transaction right from your Kindle without breaking a sweat. (assuming your credit card info is stored on Amazon of course)
- The battery life, its very impressive with wireless turned off. The ink does not draw any power once drawn on the screen so its very efficient.
- Its ability to wireless synchronized new books purchased on Amazon, I am so sick and tired of hooking things up to a computer via USB, aren’t you? With this device you’ll mostly only use the charger
The Bad
- The slow screen refreshes and scroll wheel interface makes getting around the devices menus an unpleasant experience. Simply put this device is great to load a book, load the first page, chapter or bookmark, and read forward. Scrolling around or simply interacting with the device will probably make you as annoyed as I am
- The point above directly reflects on this one, stick to reading books and not technical material such as computer books with this device. Its simply not a great experience to try and read code or pictures from the device, its not designed for it. You will really love reading normal books though, but code books or technical reference need a level of scanability you simply wont find here
- Blogs delivered to the device cost money, that to me is just not reasonable
- Its not the hottest looking device on the market, but to be fair it is just an e-book reader
Conclusion
If people get this device with all the right expectations they will love it. Simply put, Amazon gets credit for this one in my book
So bottom line, how much will this cost you? $359.00 & includes FREE Two-Day Shipping. (as of 6/20/2008)
Related Links
Fortune Magazine – Photos narrated by Bill Gates
Fortune Magazine has posted up a series of 15 photos narrated by Bill Gates himself. These photos look back at past events and is an interesting thing to see if your a fan. Check it out here:
http://money.cnn.com/magazines/fortune/storysupplement/gates_microsoft/index.html
Wednesday, June 18, 2008
Google Application Engine: Outage
Seems the Google App Engine suffered an outage the other day:
http://news.cnet.com/8301-10784_3-9971025-7.html
I guess this proves it, they are also human and prone to error.
Okay Okay…
Okay so I am taking a cheap shot but one cannot resist to point out problems with a competitor when most people I meet casually talk of Google as “perfect” or “g-d like”. Every software product at some point sooner or later will have an issue, this cannot be avoided and once again today I am forced to come back to the concept of an Image problem. People simply like Google better most of the time without justifiable facts, its really sad to me.
At the end of the day though I wish Google engineers well and hope they keep all their software running smoothly, its all in good fun. Besides, we will beat them through better products anyway!
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