Statcounter...One Successful Irish site on the Net

My rendezvous with Statcounter.com started off with a Google(uh!) search for 'website visitors'.Well, this was the first non-Sponsored search result that showed up :).And so it began.A visit to the homepage which looked little different from what it is now.



The description on the first page is no-nonsense and lucid.

What is STATCOUNTER?
A free yet reliable invisible web tracker, highly configurable hit counter and real-time detailed web stats. Insert a simple piece of our code on your web page and you will be able to analyse and monitor all the visitors to your website in real-time!


Free, Fast, Responsive, Quick loading and Reliable Service.

Invisible Tracking - no ads on your website.

Accurate real-time website statistics with detailed visitor tracking and analysis.

The neat interface did appeal to me and I immediately registered.More interesting was that this did not have that too irritating cross-links all over the place.

Registering was all too easy.The free account had only one disadvantage that really matters now.Your visitor detail log is limited to 100 visitors.Once your visitor count crossed 100, the records get pushed out at the bottom of the stack, so to say.

Then came addition of a 'project'.Thats the term used at Statcounter.

A nice page showing up the available options which are quite new!There are two features 'In Development' and the one that is being used by me at present is the 'Standard Statcounter Project'.



Fast Forward some pages and there appears the code as you please.The best part is that you can choose a code which is designed to your constraints.For example, Blogger allows only strict XHTML compliant code to be inserted in the template.

Then the regular Web-master's work:
Copy,paste and save.

Back to Statcounter, and goto My Projects and a page appears displaying the Project Name,icon links to various pages realting to each project,the type of the project,no. of recent visitors,total no. of visitors.

A couple of days and your stats begin building up,assuming ,ofcourse, that your website is doing well.And well ,a beautiful(assuming you love such things) bar-chart appears on the Real-Time stats page.



Now, the extras and the power within...

1.Came From

Shows all the links from which your blog was reached.So thank the links and leave your traces ;)

2.Visitor Paths

This is one amazing page.But too large to put up an image :)

3.Visit Lengths

Are your Visitors really interested in your blog.Are they reading what has been written?Here are your answers.

4.Visitor Geographic Locations

This must be classified under one of the coolest features provided.
Check it out!

5.Recent Pageload Activity

Keep an eye on who is visiting your blog.

6.Recent Visitor Activity

Yo,here is the most checked out page after The Barchart. :)



Wanna have more fun???The detective in you wants more details about that odd guy who visited your page?Just click on the little 'magnifying glass' beside the visitor.Here's a sample.


Apart from this,Statcounter offers features like Keyword Analysis,System Stats,and the browser from which your visitors browse your site,most popular pages in your site,the entry pages,exit pages.No explanations on these, it has been a long post already and I'm not into(as of now) writing pages of reviews about a site.

Well,lemme conclude sayin that this review of Statcounter covers up most of the features provided by the site to Free Account holders and I intend this post dedicated to the people behind it.

I also use Google Analytics ,however that has been a recent thing or habit,so to say,and the simplicity of Statcounter can't be beaten even by The Goliath.

PS:This is a small riddle:Can someone take the trouble and find out what Statcounter records Windows Vista as?The answer is in the post :P

PS2:Did you think this post was too lengthy or did it contain too many pics or even was simply plain boring? Gimme feedback!!!

Back with some weird news :P

Sorry for all the delay in coming up with this humorous(!?) post.Well, I had my exams and then ...laziness ;)

This is nothing original...just a rip-off from Slashdot...well...if u dont find it humorous,I can't help.After all ,it is c/o Slashdot. As far as I am concerned,I jus broke out laughing at the post and the comments that followed it.

Here is the post as it is...

swehack writes
"The guys over at winhistory.de managed to get their Windows XP Professional running on a very minimal box: an Intel Pentium clocked down to 8 MHz with 20 MB of RAM. (The installer won't work with less than 64 MB, but after installing you can remove memory.) The link has plenty of pictures of their progress in achieving this dubious milestone. They deserve a Golden Hourglass award for 'extreme waste of time.' What obscure hardware configurations have you managed to get Windows running on?"

And then, the comments follow...lolz

"....a Beowulf cluster of these!"

"AMD Athlon 3000+ with 1 GB of RAM. A miracle... I know... and STILL I have to reinstall it every couple of months!!"

"So they win an award for biggest waste of time... and somehow I read about it on the front page of Slashdot. Methinks the award was right."

"That's nothing. I got Vista to run on a quad core, state of the art SLI system with only 4GB of ram.

OK, so it only sort of runs, the SLI doesn't actually work and a lot of the positional audio effects on my sound card have disappeared... but I'm hopeful that, with enough time for them to upgrade drivers, I may one day get it fully functional. Until then, Minesweeper is screamingly fast." ....now thats Microsoft.

"
"They deserve a Golden Hourglass award for 'extreme waste of time.'"

Uh... I don't think they'd appreciate that - they probably see plenty of hourglasses already.
"

And the best of it all...

"20 Megs of RAM? I thought 640K was supposed to be enough for anyone!!!"

lolz...now where is Bill!!!They ought to have some changes in the guys who decide the Minimum Requirements...or they have to follow that standard with 'to boot up in 5 minutes...or in that order of time' ;)

Well...the next original post will take time and if you have any nice controversial issues ...gimme...I'm as always outta ideas. Guyz,help!

What says thou...

PS:Hey, my visitor count has crossed 1000 ...yippee ;)

Just some fun

How do you differentiate between programmers and non-programmers?

A non-programmer thinks there are 1000 bytes in a kilobyte.

A programmer is convinced that there are 1024 meters in a kilometer.


********************************************************************
Ramu : I've just become a member of Rotract Club.

Somu : public member or private?


********************************************************************

Ramu : Hey.. My submarine is not sinking into the water!! What could
be wrong?

Somu : may be u have used float instead of double in the software.


********************************************************************


THIS ONE IS TOO GOOD!!!

PS : Hey Bull, Can you do me a favor? Can you pass on these 500 rupees
to Suthi..?

Bull : Sure.. Why not? But tell me one thing. Tell me whether its pass
by value or pass by reference.


********************************************************************


Ramu : I am very very sure that the guy who just talked to me is a
Software engineer...

Somu : how do you say that?

Ramu : he asked my physical address instead of my home address!


********************************************************************


Ramu : why people are beating that SW engineer black and blue?

Somu : it seems, he asked one of them that whether "vande mataram"
is new kind of RAM in the market!


********************************************************************


Ramu : Hey.. I think that SW engineer is very very naive..

Somu : How do you say that?

Ramu : He believes that there is an Arabian Sea++ next to Arabin Sea.


********************************************************************


Ramu : Hey.... whats time now?

Somu : System time or local time.

********************************************************************
And some signatures:

"Some people say that I must be a horrible person, but that's not true. I have the heart of a young boy - in a jar on my desk.
We are each our own devil, and we make this world our hell "

"The primary aim for developing AI is to make computers realise how frustrating it is to program them"

"If you always do, what you've always done,
You'll always get what you've always got. "

"Reality bites like a mad Dog,
and bitten Person acts like a mad Dog"






Taken from the local IIT Kharagpur forum (lovingly called Mutter Index)

PS: As of now,blog visitor counter hit 100 for the month. It is 2:40 AM,February 7,2007 IST.Preety good going I guess.

Forget Vista...Say hello to the next Windows.

Yeah guyz...u read it right.The next version of Windows is already been worked upon.

Well,to remember the events a few years back, this next version of Windows was announced in February 2000 to be the next in line after Windows XP (codenamed 'Whistler').The new OS was codenamed 'Blackcomb'.However the bar was set too high and Microsoft knew too well that it would be long before the concepts that formed the backbone of Blackcomb would be realised.

Soon, Blackcomb was pushed back and Vista(codenamed 'Longhorn') was announced as the release that would follow Windows XP.

Internal sources from Microsoft say Blackcomb as being not just a major revision of Windows, but a complete departure from the way users today typically think about interacting with a computer.While Windows Vista is intended to be an evolutionary release, Vienna is targeted directly at revolutionizing the way users of the product interact with their PCs.The Explorer shell will completely be replaced by new concepts based on the previous 10 years of research at Microsoft's VIBE.Projects such as GroupBar and LayoutBar will make their way in which would allow users to handle tasks,documents and windows much more easily.

Blackcomb was renamed 'Vienna' in January 2006 and in February 2007 again as 'Windows 7', as official sources say.This accompanied the naming of the successor of Office 2007 as Office 14

Vienna will feature the Sandbox feature partially implemented in Vista as with the Internet Explorer 7 which increases the security of the computer by running in a restricted environment.Also present in Vista,the 'complete as you type' search (ala Google Predict) will be present in Vienna,or now,Windows 7.

Vienna will, supposedly be able to handle tasks as complex as receiving speech commands from the user.

According to Microsoft, Vienna will be available in both 32-bit and 64-bit Client editions but Vienna Server will be available only as a 64-bit version.However,32-bit compatibility will be retained and 16-bit Windows and MS-DOS applications will not be supported any longer.

The Server and the Client versions have a current release estimate of 2009 to 2012 although Microsoft has said nothing about it.

---

The Fun behind Codenames

Here is some trivia that would make things interesting.

Both Windows XP and Vienna are codenamed Whistler and Blackcomb respectively after the Whistler-Blackcomb ski resort located in Whistler, British Columbia, Canada.

And the codename for the intermediate release ,Vista, was taken from a bar in the resort ,Longhorn.

External Links

A July 2006 update on Windows Vienna by Gerard Boyers on VistaSector.
Mr. Bill Gates speaks about Blackcomb...archive July 12,2006

Piracy Built the Romanian IT Industry...any different here?

Here is a post inspired by an article on Slashdot commenting on a report in Washington Post about a weird incident.



Romanian President Traian Basescu in front of a important audience and more importantly sharing the stage with Bill Gates himself, admitted that piracy of Microsoft products helped Romania come this far in the IT industry.The event was the opening of a technical centre in Bucharest.Bill Gates,however ,refused to comment on the President's words.The President said that piracy helped the younger generation discover computers.

It is well known that Romania is a IT powerhouse in Europe. And it made me wonder if India was any different.Romania ,though having enforced its anti-piracy laws 10 years ago,still loses 70% of its revenue from software sales due to piracy. Same case here...

Probably this is a what-point-did-you-make post but I just wanted everyone to reassess the situation in India. Do we really need to have pirated software. As a entrepreneur rightly said, a country with so many programmers and genii doesn't have an ingenious OS from the bigwigs Infosys and Wipro ,to name some of them. It is a shame that we proudly say that we 'serve' by providing customized solutions to some customer i some country. And feel more great by having more customers from various countries, apparently concentrated in US and North Europe. I dont expect the companies not to do this but what have the heavy weights done for the software industry in terms of finished products. Do you use one software that says ©Infosys ?
When there are small groups of individuals(it is what I mean "groups of individuals"), trying hard to compile code through the nite with limited resources, why the hell do these companies come forward to support them. The government has made its effort in the form of establishing C-DAC but that is barely enough to pull out a large country like India.

A better effort from the biggies should help...check out all the projects on Slashdot,Sourceforge and freshmeat ,they tell a lot about the determination that programmers show in burning their midnite oil.

This post,dedicated to all Indians who put in great effort in making computers more accessible to the masses of India.

[NpoWEr] signing off...