This is really a good news to wide range of users such as website owners, advertisers, and developers because this web application enables them to evaluate their marketing performance, learn traffic behaviour and tweak their website designs. Unlike Google Analytics, Yahoo! Analytics provides real-time reports and graphs that help them slice and dice metrics like sales, page views, and sources of traffic and ultimately identify ways to improve their visitor satisfaction.

This application is still in Beta and is expected to be available for normal users by 2009.

Technorati Tags: web analytics, Google analytics, yahoo! analytics, indextools

Google Chrome Backup (GCB) is a tool that is meant to create, backup, restore and delete Google Chrome profiles. Profile, as far as Google is concerned includes user personal information like the browsing history and bookmarks. GBC actually is a better alternative to the tedious work of copying all profile data that reside inside the following directory

"Documents and Settings\username\Local Settings\Application Data\Chromium\User"

Latest version of Google Chrome Backup supports Chromium, which a modified version of Google Chrome for portable use. GCB is easy to use. No installation required and everything is done with only one click. You can select and backup profiles or create new ones or even import an already backup up profile.

You can download this small application here.

Technorati Tags: google chrome, create chrome profile, delete chrome profile, back chrome profile, Google Chrome Backup, restore Google Chrome

Amit Agarwal over at Labnol had done some modifications on IE view in order to integrate Google Chrome into Firefox browser. This plugin will effectively enable an option for a Firefox user to open an external link by using Google Chrome from Firefox browser. The only downside is this little hack cannot run together IE View as there are variables conflict. As far as I'm concerned, it's not a problem at all since I use Internet Explorer occasionally and I don't use IE View.

To install this hack, first you need to download opengooglechrome.xpi. Once finish, simply drag and drop it on your Firefox browser. After that there will be a pop-up that requires you to install it and you are required to restart your Firefox browser right after that.

We are not done yet but we are almost there. Next you need to go to Tools -> Add-ons -> Options and browse for the chrome.exe file on your Vista / XP / Windows 2000 machine.

In Windows XP, Google Chrome installs under \Documents and Settings\\Local Settings\Application Data\Google\Chrome\Application\ while in Windows Vista, Google Chrome installs in \Users\\AppData\Local\Google\Chrome\Application\

That's it and you are good to go.

Technorati Tags: Google Chrome, Chrome hacks, extension, plugin, Firefox

As mentioned earlier, the installation is very quick. I went to its webpage, clicked on the download button, downloaded a setup file, and chrome was installed in no time. The install was small (468k) so the download was fast and the install took merely 25 seconds so in well under a minute it's up and running. Simple and straight to the point.

Chrome is well refined and manages the migration process successfully by importing every single bit of data from IE and Firefox. The innovative placement of tab bar, lack of title bar and no full-scale menu bar (minimalist interface). All controls are buried beneath two icons to the right of the Omnibar (as Google refers to its address bar):

a) a page icon for managing tabs and using Google Gears to create application-like shortcuts from your desktop to a Web site
b) a wrench for history, downloads, and other browser options.

Crash Control

Every tab you're using is run independently in the browser, so if one app crashes it won't take anything else down.

While it takes care of the tab indepedently, each tab runs its own process. So, for 3 opened tabs, they already sum up about 30MB of memory usage. You do the math, how is this going to scale for a multiple tab user. The idea of crash protection is brilliant but I hope there are some solutions devised to reduce the memory footprint on each tab process.

Overall it's a superb web browser. Google proved once more to the people; it really studies the market and takes note what users want before jump on the bandwagon. I hope they will put more exciting features in the future release.

More on Google Chrome.

Technorati Tags: google chrome, google, open source, web browser

Here are 2 method that can be used to effectively eliminate the attempt made keyloggers to register our strokes.

1. Neo’s Safekeys

Neo’s Safekeys is a really small program (merely 8kb) yet effective. Simply click on the letters and it types the character into the white box at the bottom. Then you can drag the password into the password field for your email or paypal or whatever form you are trying to access. It's a perfect solution.

Here are few more advantages of using this small program. The utility changes width and height each time, as well as its placement on the screen (to fool mouse-loggers, buttons will always be in different positions each time you use the program) with no data stored and it's completely FREE.

Download

2. Online Keyboard

Alternatively you may use Online Keyboard (javascript) which work the same way as Neo’s Safekeys. Virtual Keyboard is the great thing when you can't install or use additional keyboard layouts bundled with your OS. For example, you're at the internet cafe where only En/US layout is available and you want to write some letters to your Russian, Korean, Japanese or any other friends. Yes, you can just transliterate your writing, but this will take much more time than you ever expect and makes reading boring.

This is the case to have the VirtualKeyboard installed on a site: you just open it and begin typing. Virtual keyboard will do the translation/transliteration job for you on the fly. The same goes to the search engines, forums, webmail systems and much other online and offline applications. It makes a sense, to integrate tiny app there and make life easier for you and your customers.

These two methods will help you in providing more secured environment for you to do your mundane jobs even at new place. Happy surfing!

Technorati Tags: how to, defeat keyloggers, online keyboard, Neo’s Safekeys, virtual keyboard

Only2Clicks really lives up to its name because it's one of the several online services whose name tells exactly what it does. The concept is simple. Set up your favorite Web sites and the service will load them up in a grid with photo thumbnails for single each one of the bookmarks. All bookmarks are placed on a single window with the tabs at the top, categorically arranged. You can definitely add and remove any sites at any times.

This service will be greatly effective if it's set to be the startpage of your browser and I already did change my Firefox's startpage :)

[via]

Technorati Tags: bookmarks management, only2clicks, internet, startpage

Opera 9.5, however, manages to change my perspective and entice me to use it on regular basis. One of the biggest reason is because it's no longer a sluggish browser; it works way much faster than before. See how it compares to Firefox 3.0.

Design-wise, it looks better than Opera 9.26. If you take a closer look, you will notice that Opera has different arrangement as compared to other browsers. Others usually has the address bar on top of the tabs but Opera is the other way round.

You can see more features here and I think the best way to learn more about the latest version of Opera is by installing it in your computer.

Download Opera 9.5

Technorati Tags: Opera 9.5, web browser

Keepm is an online application tool that will definitely help you in reducing your burden. There are several features in Keepm that will entice you into using the service. First and foremost, it's totally free. Secondly, since this is an online application, you don't have to download and install any software in your computer. So, no more additional software inside your computer.

Ok, let's go with the registration first. The registration is simple because it only requires your name, email address and password. No activation link or anything similar that need to be completed and after you hit the "create account" button, you are already in its system.

There are only 5 tabs inside the system to keep it simple and intuitive for everybody to use. The "add new contact" button is where you can any new contact manually. To start adding new contact, you need to fill up your contact's name before you are brought to the next page where you will be asked to add more details such as telephone number, email addres, instant messenger etc. For this feature I prefer to fill in everything in one go without going to the next page but hey, 2-simple-page is not really tedious.

The "import" tab is the most exciting one. This import function will allow you to centralize your online contact lists from several websites such as Gmail, Yahoo, Hotmail, Rediff, LinkedIn and Orkut. A step-by-step guideline is also included to walk you through the whole process. Within a few seconds your important contact list of a particular service is already imported inside Keepm.

Exporting contacts are just as easy as importing them and only take just a few seconds to export them into a .CSV file or a Vcard. You may begin the exporting process by selecting the "export" tab. This feature will come handy if you have large number of contacts and need them in one converted format.

Keepm is an easy to use online contact management service in organizing your contact list. The fetching process from other services is also fast. The interface is very intuitive and user friendly. Take your time to test drive this useful application.

Technorati Tags: keepm, orkut, hotmai, yahoo, linekdin, online contact, outlook

The New Alexa Rankings
We’ve been working hard behind the scenes for several months and are excited to announce that our new Alexa Rankings system is available.

Better Rankings!

When Alexa began displaying rankings in 1998 it was with the goal of showing Alexa Toolbar users how popular any given site was within the Alexa community. We generated the rankings through an analysis of Internet usage by people who use the Alexa Toolbar. Since that time we’ve been delighted to see that the Alexa Rankings have become a yardstick by which website popularity is measured. We are grateful to the thousands of people who come to Alexa.com each day to check the Alexa Rankings.

In recent months we’ve heard from our Alexa users that understanding Internet usage beyond Alexa Toolbar users was increasingly of interest. Ask and you shall receive!

We listened to your suggestions, and we believe that our new rankings system is much closer to what you asked for. We now aggregate data from multiple sources to give you a better indication of website popularity among the entire population of Internet users.

You gave us many other suggestions as well, and we are working hard to implement them. We won’t tell any secrets just yet, but you can expect to see new features rolled out over the coming weeks and months.

Below are a few common questions we anticipate from the Alexa community, along with our answers.

My site’s ranking has changed. Was it wrong before?

Your ranking wasn’t wrong before, but it was different. Alexa toolbar users’ interests and surfing habits could differ from those of the general population in a number of ways, and we described some of those possible differences on our website. While the vast majority of sites’ rankings were unaffected by such differences, we’ve worked hard on our new ranking system to adjust for situations in which they could matter.

The new rankings should better reflect the interests and surfing habits of the broader population of Web users.

Why are the long range graphs gone? I can only get 9 months of historical data.

We are recalculating historic traffic data and will continue to add it over the coming weeks. We apologize for the inconvenience, but should have several years of data back on line shortly.

Will you change the rankings again?

We are constantly working to ensure that we provide the most useful data that we can. We will continue to fine tune our algorithms but don’t foresee any additional big changes. If you think something is amiss please let us know.

I liked the old rankings better. Are they still available somewhere?

We liked the old rankings as well. However, we developed the new system in response to the huge number of requests we got from users like you, and now that it’s done we like it even better. We hope you will too.

We think that having more than one ranking system at a time would be confusing, so we have removed the old rankings.

Do you want to know what I think about this?

Definitely. We’ve been collecting suggestions and ideas for months now, and would love to hear more. If you have thoughts on what we’ve done so far, or ideas on what we should do next, please share them with us

I like this improvement because it reflects my traffic more precisely. In term of traffic fluctuation, I don't notice any significant changes, it neither improve nor soar a lot.

Congratulation to websites that skyrocket sky high under this new ranking system but for those who just drop their ranking, don't be sad, it's not the end of the world and I'm sure it doesn't hurt your online income except your pride, perhaps. Just focus on producing quality articles.

Technorati Tags: alexa ranking, new ranking systems, internet

As you can see above, it has got everything needed by photo editors such as pixel controls, layers, blends, filters, brushes, webcam effects, text editing and sharing. On the left hand side is the set of standard frawing and image manipulating tools whlist on the right there's a color scale along with layer box on the bottom right to keep everything under your control. After tinkering with Splashup you definitely want to save it. Several options provided such as saving right into your computer or you might connect directly to Splashup, Flickr, Picasa or Facebook as well. It also works smoothly even when you handling multiple photos at the same time. As I'm writing this post, Splashup is still free for public use.

Technorati Tags: photo online editor, image editor, picture, splashup, adobe photoshop, edit picture

File Dropper is like every other file sharing website. However the space offered to online users makes it stands out among the rest. File Dropper allows you to upload as many files as possible and they can sum up to 5GB (you can upload up to 5GB on a single file too; if you have one).

The process of uploading and sharing is REALLY simple. Find a file, upload it and share the links. That's it. No registration required. The only drawback is it doesn't have progress indicator. If you upload 1 GB of file you will never know when it is going to complete. I can see Adsense ads after a file is successfully uploaded but I doubt how it is going to cover the server expenses in the long run. So, make full use of it while it's still free!

Technorati Tags: File dropper, rapidshare, file sharing, rapidshare, megaupload

1. Surf with an anonymizer

Normally we will send the receivers (other websites) packet of data to initiate the communication and this will them a wide open opportunity to get directly in contact with you. A web proxy, acts as your internet agent which will pass make the request information from websites on your behalf. The website in turn will communicate with the proxy, which passes the information to you. This will essentially make your online activities go completely under the radar.

The easiest way to run with a proxy is through one of the many free websites offering anonymous web surfing. There's no hassle involved; just visit the proxy websites and key in the website address you intended to surf. But be careful, some of the websites might do the opposite, instead of concealing your information, they are the ones who try to steal your valuable information. All proxy websites carry this risk but Proxify ( http://proxify.com ) has good reputation and its registration information matches a Whois Lookup, providing a level of assurance.

2. Manually configure a proxy

Using a free online anonymizer can be advantageous when you to surf stealthily without any setup hassles but you need to trade off the speed and functionality. To get a list of available proxies, navigate to free proxy list. In this website you can sort out the proxies according to various criterion.

With the IP address and port in hand, Internet Explorer users should click Tools and select Internet Options. In the connections tabs, click the LAN settings button. Check both boxes under the proxy server heading, key in the IP address and port you just recorded and save your settings.

For firefox users, click Tools and select Options. Click the advanced icon, select the Network tab, and click Settings. Highlight the manual Proxy Configuration radio button and input the IP address and port. Before exiting be sure to check the box that reads "Use this proxy server for all protocols."

3. Cover your tracks

It's not just online stalkers you need to be worried about, but offline ones too. Now you have secured your surfing habits, it's time to take care of your housekeeping habits. Get yourself used to the routine of clearing your browser's cache and cookies. If you are running IE7, select Delete Browsing History from the Tools menu and click Delete All. In Firefox, click Tools, select Clear Private Data, and check each box.

Personally, I do practice the third method but not on regular basis as deleting cache will somehow slow down your internet navigation especially on the websites you visit regularly and deleting cookies will require you to re-login to a certain websites. Anyway, the choice is yours :)

Technorati Tags: internet explorer, proxy, firefox, security

To see the trick in action, visit the URL stumbleupon.com/demo/#url=http://blog.eches.net in any web browser (even on unsupported browsers) - you will immediately notice a virtual toolbar floating over the web page. All you need to do when you stumble upon new page is to change the URL (i.e http://blog.eches.net to http://www.yourfavouritepages.com) to the site or page discovered. Cool!

Technorati Tags: stumbleupon, social bookmarking, tips and tricks, internet

According to its letter to Yahoo, Microsoft attempted to enter talks about a deal a year ago, but was rebuffed because Yahoo was confident about the "potential upside" presented by the reorganisation and operational activities that were being put in place at the time.

"To me, the premium seems exorbitant, for what is a dwindling business," said Tim Smalls from the brokerage firm Execution LLC. "I personally don't see how the synergies of Microsoft-Yahoo is going to take on Google." Other analysts were more enthusiastic about the offer.

"It is a fantastic offer. It is game on," said Colin Gillis from Canaccord Adams. "This consolidates the marketplace down to Google versus Microsoft. These two companies will be going head to head."

"A year has gone by, and the competitive situation has not improved," Microsoft's letter said.

With Yahoo! total return in 2007 drops 32% and with Yahoo chief executive, Jerry Yang himself announced recently that he intended to lay off 1,000 staff as part of a restructuring plan, the bid seems to be on the right time and place. However, with the aggressive overture by Microsoft which required Yahoo! execs to respond in 2 days or Microsoft will go public, made a turning point to Yahoo! to seek all other options but Microsoft.

I still hope the the acquisition will go on even the chance seems to be slim (according to the latest update). I'm wondering what changes would be on the net.

References:

- Two days to response or else
- Microsoft wants to purchase Yahoo!
- Microsoft wants to buy Yahoo!

Technorati Tags: microsoft overture, Yahoo!, search engine, Microsoft acquisition

People Sidebar

The sidebar of Flock 1.0 is the heart of social networking integration. There are nine buttons at the top of the collapsible sidebar that make your favourite websites easily accessible. Each of those will help in speeding up tasks such as sending out message, drag and drop pictures or subscribing feeds.

The People button keeps track all your social networking accounts. Currently, it supports Youtube, Facebook, Flickr and Twitter. Facebook addicts will definitely fall in love with this feature because it gives users the ability to manage their Facebook from their sidebar such as uploading pictures and handling friend requests.

Photo Uploader which is available at the top right corner of the sidebar is a common tool, not only limited to Facebook but also available to other web applications such as Flickr, Photobucket and blogging editor. With this tool becomes the integral of this browser, it really comes handy to users in managing multiple web 2.o applications.

Favourite site button (3 stars icon), next to the feed icon manages your bookmarks. If you are a big fan of Firefox or Internet Explorer and about to switch to the FLock, worry not about your data. You can transfer all the data associated to your previous browser including the bookmarks and history during the installation.

News Reader

“Feeds Sidebar” is a fully featured news reader based on the sage aggregator and it supports the feeds and feed reading. Basically it has the sidebar which contains your subscriptions and the main window which displays the news articles. There are 5 viewing formats. You may choose to opt to view the news by full articles, excerpts or by headlines only and they can be displayed in single or double column. “Feeds Sidebar” let the users to save interesting posts which will be available later in “Saved Articles” collection and like many normal feed readers, ‘flag’ is an essential feature available in this tool.

The integration really does a wonderful job because while you are surfing, you will be alerted if there is an update in your feeds.

Blog Editor

Currently the blog editor supports WordPress, Blogger, Movable Type, MetaWeblog, LiveJournal, Drupal, TypePad and self hosted blogs. If you choose to configure it for your own self-published blog, Flock walks you through the process.I had tried to write up something on my blog using this editor and I can say it has everything needed except I could not upload my picture to my own server. The picture must be either uploaded to hosting image such Photobucket or worst of all stealing from other websites.

This editor comes with the WYSIWYG editor and the source code editor and I prefer to use both, switching back and forth. While WYSIWYG speeds up the task, the source code editor will act as a complement which gives me a better control over the post I’m writing. You might wonder where the list of categories to choose from for your post. By clicking on the publish button, a small popup will appear and you would be able, by now, to choose at which category will your post reside.

Media Streams Integration

The top bar is dedicated to media streaming which includes Truveo, Youtube, Flickr, Photobucket and Facebook It lets user to browse through the millions of videos and pictures. Wandering in the abundance of them would be a true challenge without some sort of filters. Each of those web applications is associated with its own filter to help users to sort out the media.

Sharing videos and photos is made easier with the option to copy in the websites and share with your friends. Under the share menu, you can send it to you friend's email or blog about it. If you don't want to go directly to video sharing websites, you may prefer to use the mini view to watch the video within a small popup window.

This browser is stunning, and it has excellent features. Give it a try and let me know what you think.

Visit | Download

Technorati Tags: sage, flickr, youtube, truveo, facebook, twitter, photobucket, flock, web 2.0, browser, internet, video streaming, photo sharing