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Mon, 19 Jul 2010 21:25:15 +0200

The Holy Grail Of Ubiquitous Plain-Text Capture | Lifehacker Australia

Fri, 16 Jul 2010 16:07:39 +0200

The Holy Grail Of Ubiquitous Plain-Text Capture | Lifehacker Australia:

Ubiquitous capture — that is, the ability to snag any thought or idea any time and anywhere it happens to crop up — is a key component to nearly every productivity philosophy. You want to capture those fleeting ideas before they’re gone, and you don’t want to waste brain power obsessing over remembering it until you can write it down somewhere. Below, I’ll walk you through the best ubiquitous capture system I’ve ever encountered.

Great writeup on how to use Simplenote as a hub to get your plain-text files available to you anywhere. This is pretty much the setup I roll with but, as you may have read in a recent interview, I take the added step of storing my .txt database in Dropbox. This gives me the added bonuses of deletion protection and versioning.

Also using the same system, and it’s working flawlessly for me. Highly recommended!

Great read on UI problems faced by touchscreen gesture UIs

Tue, 01 Jun 2010 08:51:30 +0200

Great read on UI problems faced by touchscreen gesture UIs:

via Daring Fireball

More choices regarding privacy and Google Analytics

Wed, 26 May 2010 17:59:00 +0200

Google Analytics Opt-out Browser Add-on

To provide more freedom of choice to Internet users regarding the collection of data by Google Analytics Google released the Google Analytics Opt-out Browser Add-on. This Add-on provides users with the ability to stop websites using Google Analytics tracking from collection data about their visit to the website.

The Add-on stops data (regarding your website visit) from being sent when you visit websites that use Google Analytics Javascript (ga.js) to track usage.

This Add-on (extension / plug-in) is available for Internet Explorer (version 7 and 8), Firefox (from 3.5 and higher) and Google’s own Chrome browser (4.x and higher).

The Add-on van be downloaded here: tools.google.com/dlpage/gaoptout

Geographic reporting and anonymize IP address

To provide an insight in the geographic location of visitors (e.g. map overlay report within GA) Google Analytics uses the IP address of visitors.

Although this information could be useful (within the Netherlands it isn’t accurate due to the way the IP address distribution has been set up over here), Google provides Webmasters with a new tool to stop Google Analytics tracking scripts sending real/full visitor IP adresses to the Google servers.

With the function _gat._anonymizeIp(); webmasters are able to change te ga.js slightly so that the last octet of the visitor IP address won’t be send to Google. As a result of removing the last octet of the visitor IP address Google won’t be able to pin point any individual user by IP address, hench providing an addition to privatizing data of the visitors.

Removing the last octet of the visitor IP before sending the information to Google Analytics comes at a price though, it could make the act of determining the location of a visitor less accurate.

Please refer to the Google Analytics Tracking Reference to read more about the _gat.anonymizeIp();

What do the points mentioned above mean for websites using Google Analytics?

Personally I doubt many people would use the browser Add-on. Installing a plug-in or extension just to stop website using Google Analytics from tracking you as a visitor isn’t something I see many regular computer users do.

Although in some areas and specific niche markets this could well pose a problem. If you feel your in such market, check the Google Analytics stats regularly for a week or two and compare the trends to for instance Google trends or raw server logs.

Feel free to get in touch if you have any doubts regarding your Google Analytics data.

You could question if the Google Analytics Opt-out Browser Add-on is only window dressing.. But in my opinion this isn’t the case either, Google (and therefore Google Analytics) is moving forward which means more (and more reliable) methods for tracking and collecting data. Providing regular website visitors with an option to opt-out on Google Analytics tracking provides an additional layer for users to keep their Internet uses private, which is a good thing if you ask me.

The IP address anonymization is a whole other ball game for Google and website owners. In some countries the collection of IP addresses by third party vendors of Web Analytics solutions is restricted by law. By allowing webmasters to send anonymize IP addresses could well mean using Google Analytics isn’t restricted by law anymore. Although I’m not a lawyer (and certainly not on top of international or country specific privacy laws) but it could be a smart step by Google.

Repost of: mnmal: “Paradox of Choice” by Barry Schwartz Great...

Sat, 22 May 2010 10:00:00 +0200

Repost of: mnmal:

“Paradox of Choice” by Barry Schwartz

Great TED talk, and if you haven’t read the book you should!

Lorem Ipsum vanuit het OSx dashboard

Mon, 10 May 2010 12:12:03 +0200

Lorem Ipsum vanuit het OSx dashboard

Starting lifestreaming my thoughts and projects to tumblr

Fri, 22 Jan 2010 00:00:00 +0100

After deciding my roelwillems.com domain should be an business/project only domain (not to self: recover after the server hacking a few months ago) I needed some place to get my thoughts and projects placed.

So starting today I will be blogging on roelwillems.com over at tumblr on all personal and work related stuff.