“You are using Google Latitude and reporting your location”

It is nice to see when a new feature appears that the people behind it is warning you of possibel bad side effects. Like when you have your android device exposing your position (using the build in GPS). Today I recieved such a warning from Google by e-mail:

Hi,

To protect your privacy we would like you to know that Google Latitude is running on your Android-powered device and reporting your location.

If you didn’t enable this or want to stop reporting your location please open the Maps app on your device. Go to ‘Menu’ > ‘Latitude’ > ‘Privacy’ and change your privacy settings.

Thanks,

Google Latitude Team

(c) 2009 Google Inc., 1600 Amphitheatre Parkway, Mountain View, CA 94043, USA. Terms of Service | Privacy Policy

Thank you Google! On the one hand you use the position information of the visitiors (first asking them if it is okay!) and on the other hand you remind people that a potential risc exists! Very cool done!

Appbrain.com – a place to manage your Android Apps

This site will help you find and manage apps for your phone. After you have created an account and have installed the manager app on your phone, you can goto the site and see which apps are installed on your phone! It also shows the status of them – for instance if they have been updated. Very nice!

I tested it by searching for "Goggles" – it found "Google Goggles", I clicked on the link, pressed "Install" on my PC. Went to my phone and pressed "Sync with AppBrain" – it discovered that "Google Goggles" was a pending app. I pressed install – and sadly ended up with an error message saying (in danish) that there was no result in the Android Marked for the search: "pname:com.google.android.apps.unveil".

Conclusion

It seems like a nice place to bookmark, a place where you can manage the apps on your phone. My test with Google Goggles I hope is an exception – I expect other apps to install correctly as it seems that I can’t find Google Goggles anywhere! So thumbs up for appbrain.com!

Update: I now have experienced problem with installing two apps and have written to AppBrain.com – hope to be able to post more information here later.

Finally I bought a smartphone! An Android based HTC Legend.

For a very very long period I have been watching friends and collegues using smartphones like Apple iPhone and HTC Hero. I was never in doubt: Smartphones brought a new meaning to cell phones – a very positive twist! I have had problems however deciding on which way to go – the Apple (iPhone) or the Google (Android) road. The Microsoft road might be interesting, but I have not actually seen one in action amoung my friends – so for me it was never an option.

Yesterday I bought a smartphone: An Android 2.1 based HTC Legend

I will try to write here on my blog about my experiences with it – I will create a page “HTC Legend, pros and cons” and “Developing apps for Android based smartphones”. I am looking forward to doing so and hope to bring usefull information to people who are in doubt about which smartphone to invest in. Also I hope to get response from current users of smartphones here on my blog. Developing apps for Android is an area which I will also look into.

For now I will leave it here – later I will edit this post, activating the links to the pages mentioned above! Oh and finally I would like to show what my 4½ years old daughter “invested” in – just to put in contrast what an IT-nerd at the age of 45 is turned on by!

“Information is beautiful” – if you understand it!

To me it has allways been a joy to deliver information in an understandable form. Being 45 years old I have seen some patterns within my own behaviour (why did it take so long I often ask myself!). Communicating information is a hard task – I prefer to take the piece of information into another form which the reciever will understand. Often transforming the information into something visual make it more likely that the message (information) send will be recieved by the reciever as something close to the original message. Tonight I just found a great website! The website www.informationisbeautiful.net contains several examples of how well information can be consumed if delivered in the correct form!

What is truely healthy for you?

To the right you see an example. This interactive visualiazation will show you what is healty for you. For your eyes, skin or other of the selectable uses and types. It is very convincing and inspiring I think.

So go visit it here: http://bit.ly/aGoeom

“When sea levels attack”

Another example of visualazation – giving you something to think about…

I have a dream…

In Denmark we pay a lot of tax, that is not a problem – I would however like to at least get to know what I am paying to! So my dream is to have some cool visualization of what the tax I pay for now could be said to cover. I know how much I earn per month, which lets me calculate a tax per hour/minute number. So what you should imagine is: You calculate how much tax I pay on say a national level. You then divide the national tax “spenditures” and get end up with a calender showing for instance for how many weeks I work and pay for the danish armed forces. Or if I look at the clock now: Who am I paying to right now? So the dream would let any person in Denmark log on to a portal which would give such information to them.

Flame – an online painting experiment

I love to see the creativity flourish on the internet. Back in the early days when I started using computers I had a Acorn Archimedes computer. An british computer developed by Acorn computers (who by the way developed the StrongARM processor for use in Acorn Archimedes) for use in schools – in the days before PC became the only choice in the area of computers. In those days people all could do some basic programming, and users of BBC computers were blessed with BBC Basic. That program allowed you to do serious, speedy programming in Basic without having to do peeking and poking like on say Commodore 64. Anyway I almost lost track there – sorry – my point is that on that platform many creative small programs were created. In magazines, like Acorn User, people developed “one-liners”. Simple programs which did not fill more than one line! Believe me – it was amazing what could be crammed into one line of BBC Basic code! Flame could have been such a program. Amazing and inspiring!

What you can do is to draw in some funny style using only your mouse and changing the style by adjusting one or more of the many settings. You can save the result – and here are two of my “results”. Let me say that it is not really the result but the experience – the process which is the actually goal in my humble opinion. So go an try it here: http://www.escapemotions.com/experiments/flame/index.html

Et kig på Google Analytics avanceret segmentering muligheder

Jeg kommer til at gentage mig selv: Man skal aldrig undervurdere Google og deres evner. Jeg kigger her kort på nogle interessante muligheder med Google Analytics – jeg træder ind i et universe som er avanceret og dog på vanlig Google vis bliver gjort overskueligt gennem deres dygtighed!

Når man først har fået sat tracking koder på ens website så begynder opsamlingen af de data som kommer igennem den trafik som går gennem din hjemmeside. Efter kort tid kan man begynde at kigge på analyser af denne trafik – Hvormange kommer der? Hvorfra kommer de? Hvilke sider kan de lide? og så videre… Hvis man ikke lever af trafikken/de besøgende på ens hjemmeside er det jo ikke livsnødvendigt at have styr på det, men man kan ikke lade være med at blive lidt pirret af sådanne tal!

Avanceret segmentering – hvad er det?

Da jeg idag åbnede min Google Analytics konto faldt mit blik på noget der hedder “avanceret segmentering”. Her er hvad jeg fandt ud af:

Regler bygget på en eller flere filtre – filtre som baserer sig på forskellige parametre.

Når man opretter Avanceret Segmentering definerer man et segment udfra et filter – en "måling" eller en "dimension". Her en nogle eksempler:

Dimension baseret
Besøgende	Besøgsvarighed
	Antal besøg
	By
	Antal besøg
	Dage siden sidste besøg
Trafikkilder	Søgeord
Indhold	Side
	Destinationsside
	Afslutningsside
E-handel	Faktureringsby
	Produkt
Systemer	Browser
	Browserversion
Målinger baseret
Brug af webstedet	Nye besøg
	Sidevisninger
E-handel	Mængden
Indhold	Unikke sidevisninger
Mål	Målkonverteringer i alt

Opsætning af “Ugentlig besøg” segment

Det er kun et udsnit af hvad der findes “filtre”. De kan kombineres med “eller” og “og”. Jeg har sat et segment op som er ret simpelt: Segmentet skal indeholde de besøgende som kommer på mit site med en frekvens på 7 dage. Her er opsætningen fra Google Analytics:

Man trækker simpelthen det filter man ønsker at anvende ind fra venstre side af skærmen. Det er hvad man kan se på det screenshoot der er ovenfor (derfor “fantom” blokken – jeg er ved at dragge “Dage siden sidste besøg” ind). Når det er kommet ind kan man sætte indstillinger for filteret! Jeg har valgt “Dage siden sidste besøg” og sat den til at være “Mindre end” 8 (dage). Tryk Gem segment – og voila! Segmentet kan anvendes!

Anvendelse af segment

Når man har gemt sit segment kræver det egentlig bare at man klikker på det! Så er det straks i brug og man ser resultatet her og nu! Lad mig komme med konkrete tal fra mit eget site:

Før: Jeg kunne se at jeg i en periode på ca. 1 månede havde 965 besøg. Hvad siger det?
Efter: Jeg aktiverede mit filter for “ugentlig besøg” og nu havde jeg i samme periode 933 besøg… Men disse besøg var alle besøgende der kom forbi på ugentlig basis! Er det stamkunder? Eller er jeg bare dårlig til statistik!?

En gradbøjning af løgn!

Alt sammen meget spændende, krævende og “farligt” – for som gamle matematiklærer fra folkeskolen sagde:

“Statistik er en gradbøjning af løgn”

Men sjovt er det – og Google har jo også banket en lille geschæft op omkring Business Intelligense, så helt ved siden af kan det ikke være at investere lidt engergi i at forstå tal!

www.netsi.dk

"The internet is just a layer on the real world" (don't forget that!)

Monthly Archives: March 2010