Friday, March 29, 2013

Google Analytics Real Time Reports Get Even Better


Google Analytics Real Time Reports Get Even Better
The real-time feature is probably the best thing Google has done for Google Analytics in a long time, at least for publishers like us. Now the feature is getting even better.
Google announced some improvements to its real-time reports, including the ability to analyze Events in real-time, breakdown real-time by Desktop/Tablet/Mobile traffic, create shortcuts to your favorite real-time segments, and compare real-time filtered data against overall real-time data.
“With the real-time events report, you can now not only see the top events as they occur but also filter on particular event categories (and actions),” the Google Analytics team notes in a blog post. “Additionally, you can see whether particular segments of visitors trigger different events and debug your events deployment in real time.”
“If you are trying to see what events a particular segment of visitors generate, that is easy as well,” Google adds. “Any filters you set up in any part of real-time are preserved in the Events report. For example, in the above screengrab we have set up a filter here to see what events are triggered from visitors coming via organic search.”
The breakdown by Desktop/Tablet/Mobile feature is going to be an interesting one to watch, and will give publishers a better sense of their current audience at any given second.

About Chris Crum
Chris Crum has been a part of the WebProNews team and the iEntry Network of B2B Publications since 2003. Follow Chris on Twitter, on StumbleUpon, on Pinterest and/or on Google: +Chris Crum.

Tuesday, March 26, 2013

Google+ Apps Updated with Photo Filters, Improvements to Profiles & Communities, and More


Google has just launched a major update to Google+ for iOS and Android, bringing photo filters, a brand new profile design, new features for communities, and much more.
First off, the big, flashy new addition Google+ for iOS is photo filtering. It’s part of a photo editing update that also lets you rotate and crop your photos. There are now 9 different filters to choose from, including black & white, warm, cool, and “retrolux.” In this regard, Google+ is catching up to other apps like Facebook and Twitter in capitalizing on the filtering craze spawned by Instagram.
This is the result of Google’s September, 2012 acquisition of Snapseed.
Google says that with the new editing software, you’ll be able to “do basic edits like rotate and crop, as well as select filters like Drama and Retrolux; adjust saturation, contrast, brightness and lots more by sliding your fingers up-and-down, then left-and-right; single tap at any time to compare your creation with the original.”

Google+ photo filters

Other useful improvements include the ability to control the volume of posts from each of your circles or communities and a new search filtering option that lets you sort by best and most recent.
The last feature to get retooled in both the iOS and Android apps is Google+ Communities. Now, you can broadcast specific communities to your connections by sharing it of sending them an invite. You also have to ability to re-share posts with specific communities. Also, Google now shows you counts for unread community messages.
There are also some Android-specific updates for the Google+ app, including some improvements to how you view content in your stream:
  • Posts include more text up front—from the original message, and from comments
  • Tapping video, photo or link attachments takes you directly to a watch page, lightbox or website
  • Image previews are rarely cropped, so you’ll see portrait photos (for instance) in all their glory
  • Key actions like +1, reshare and comment are displayed more prominently in each post
  • You can swipe through photo albums inline
Profiles on Google+ for Android now have location sharing. If you enable it (via desktop or mobile), you can now show where you currently are on your profile.
And on Google+ for iOS, you’ll find redesigned user profiles and the notification tray – both of which are cleaner. If you’re new to Google+ for iOS, Google wants to make it easier to get started with a new set-up flow when you launch the app.

About Josh Wolford
Josh Wolford is a Writer for WebProNews. He likes beer, Sriracha and movies that make him feel weird afterward. Mostly beer. Follow him on Twitter: @joshgwolf Google+: Joshua Wolford StumbleUpon: joshgwolf

Getting Google Rankings Back After Site Downtime

The latest Google Webmaster Help video deals with getting your site’s rankings back after experiencing some downtime.
Google’s Matt Cutts will often provides answers to his own questions in these videos. This time the question comes from Googler Pierre Far, a Webmaster Trends analyst at Google UK. The question is:
My website was down for a couple of days and now has lost all of its Google rankings. What can I do to get them back?
Basically, Cutts’ answer is just to put the site back up, make sure it’s reliable, and make sure the pages that were there before are still there.
“There’s a tension at Google where if a page goes away (maybe there’s a 404), we don’t know if it’s really gone away or whether that page will be back,” he says. “Sometimes there’s a server time out, you know, the server is kind of slow. And so, on one hand, you don’t want to keep showing a page that would be a bad user experience, like it’s really gone away. On the other hand, it’s very common for websites to go down for an hour, two hours, a day, two days…and so you also want to give the benefit of the doubt, so you can revisit those pages and see whether they’ve gone up.”
“So we do have different varying time periods where we basically allow, if a domain looks like it’s gone away, but it comes back – you know, it’s back online, then we just sort of say, ‘Okay, it was a transient error,’ so the short and simple advice is just make sure you put the website back up the way it was, and hopefully things should recover relatively quickly,” says Cutts.
This may not be quite the answer you were looking for, but that’s the one Google is giving. It would certainly be interesting to know more about these “varying periods of time”.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jMxCOV99Umo&feature=player_embedded


About Chris Crum
Chris Crum has been a part of the WebProNews team and the iEntry Network of B2B Publications since 2003. Follow Chris on Twitter, on StumbleUpon, on Pinterest and/or on Google: +Chris Crum.


Tuesday, March 12, 2013

How to Get the New Facebook News Feed Faster Than Your Friends

How to Get the New Facebook News Feed Faster Than Your Friends

As you may have heard, big changes are coming to your Facebook news feed. At an event today in Menlo Park, Mark Zuckerberg and crew unveiled the new news feed, which they describe as a closer step towards a “personalized newspaper.”
Old metaphors aside, Facebook’s new news feed is a big improvement, at least visually. It’s also shaping up to be a total timesuck (in a good way), but we’ll have to play around with it a little more to make that determination.
So you want it, right? Well, you can’t have it. Not yet. But you can put yourself on a waiting list and maybe get it faster than your friends.
Simply head on over to facebook.com/about/newsfeed, scroll all the way to the bottom, and click the big, green button that says to join the waiting list.
And there you go, you’re on the list!

And now you play the waiting game. Facebook says that this rollout will be slow and deliberate so that they can make sure that it’s all optimal when it finally goes live to everyone. This shouldn’t surprise anyone, as Facebook did the same thing with Graph Search earlier this year.
Facebook’s new news feed features large visuals with more impact across all fronts – friends’ photo uploads, albums, maps, news articles, and yes, ads. It also features content-specific feeds so you can sort what you see by categories like photos, games, music, and “all friends.” The new design is more fluid across all devices – both mobile and web, with the two borrowing elements from each other.

About Josh Wolford
Josh Wolford is a Writer for WebProNews. He likes beer, Sriracha and movies that make him feel weird afterward. Mostly beer. Follow him on Twitter: @joshgwolf Google+: Joshua Wolford StumbleUpon: joshgwolf

Study Finds That Facebook Users Are Starting To Share More Personal Data

Study Finds That Facebook Users Are Starting To Share More Personal Data

A common rebuttal to proponents of online privacy is to just not share personal information with services like Facebook, Twitter and the like. It’s a solid argument, but one that’s not practiced, even by those with privacy concerns.
A new study out of Carnegie Mellon University followed over 5,000 Facebook users for six years to observe how much information they shared with others. Those with privacy concerns were able to limit what they shared for the first four years, but the privacy policy changes of the past few years have actually encouraged these same users to share more personal information with others.
Wait, how does that work? Facebook said that the new privacy controls would help limit what information is viewed by others. That’s absolutely true, and the new privacy controls may led to an increase in sharing information as users felt more secure. There may have been a Trojan Horse hidden in the new privacy policy, however, that has led to an increase in sharing.
The researchers point out that Facebook’s relatively new sharing system that allows “friends of friends” to see posts may be leading to this increase in sharing. Some users obviously don’t like that, but it seems that most don’t even notice. Most of us would like to think “friends of friends” would overlap with our own personal friend list. That’s usually the case, but it can sometimes lead to awkward situations where people you don’t like suddenly being able to comment on statuses that have a mutual friend tagged in it.
It’s these situations where Facebook’s privacy controls could be more refined to prevent accidental shares with unwanted parties. That being said, the social network’s privacy controls are apparently sufficient enough for the average user. Why would they share so much of their lives if it wasn’t?

About Zach Walton
Zach Walton is a Writer for WebProNews. He specializes in gaming and technology. Follow him on Twitter, StumbleUpon, Pinterest, and Google+ +Zach Walton

Gmail on the Mobile Web Gets an iOS-Inspired Update

Gmail on the Mobile Web Gets an iOS-Inspired Update

Apparently, people likes the Gmail for iOS UI revamp os much that Google wanted to expand the new look to its mobile web app.
“Since launching the rebooted Gmail app for iPhone and iPad in December, we’ve heard from many of you that you like the redesigned UI, along with new features such as improved search and integration with Google Calendar. Today we’re rolling out a similar refreshed look to the Gmail mobile web app as well as Gmail Offline that includes many of these same changes,” says Google’s Gmail team in a Google+ post.
Basically, your mobile web experience inside Gmail is going to look and feel a lot like the new iOS app. And that UI change affects quite a few Gmail users (as plenty of device rely on the mobile web experience).
Google launched v.2.0 of its Gmail iOS app back in December. It features an entirely updated look, plus improvements like Gmail profile pics in messages, new animations, and infinite scrolling.
It also added some new features to search within the client, like better automcplete and Google+ commenting.
Google added Google Calendar data to Gmail search results late last month inside the Gmail Search Field Trial.


About Josh Wolford
Josh Wolford is a Writer for WebProNews. He likes beer, Sriracha and movies that make him feel weird afterward. Mostly beer. Follow him on Twitter: @joshgwolf Google+: Joshua Wolford StumbleUpon: joshgwolf

Monday, March 4, 2013

Will the “Six Strikes” Copyright Alert System Hurt Consumers And Small Businesses?

Will the “Six Strikes” Copyright Alert System Hurt Consumers And Small Businesses?
Piracy is a problem that needs to be dealt with. I don’t think anybody is going to refute that. Where people are divided is how we actually deal with this problem. After years of reputation destroying legal battles against dead people and little girls, copyright owners think they have an answer.
On Monday, the Copyright Alert System, or “Six Strikes”, went into affect across the five biggest ISPs in the U.S. The system hopes to catch those pirating content over P2P networks, and send them a notice detailing their infringement. The hope is that those who are caught will start using legal alternatives.
Do you think the Copyright Alert System will work? Will people truly stop pirating content after receiving an alert? Let us know in the comments.
To better understand the CAS, we have to look at what the Center for Copyright Information is doing with it. First, there are three tiers to the CAS that consumers should be aware of with each tier having two levels within it. The three tiers are as follows – educational alerts, acknowledgement alerts and mitigation measures.
The first two warnings – “educational alerts” – tell consumers they’ve been caught. The email will then direct them to legitimate sources of content with the hopes that the early warnings are enough to scare people into buying content.
The next two warnings step it up a notch with what’s called “acknowledgement alerts.” The first two alerts were simply emails, but these next two will actually hijack your browser. You will be hit with a message telling you that you’ve been caught yet again, and must acknowledge that you’ve been caught before you can start browsing.
The next two tiers, and presumably every alert afterwards, will be “mitigation measures.” In essence, the ISPs will begin throttling your bandwidth or blocking Web sites you frequently visit. The ISPs will not be able to cut off your Internet connection under the plan.
For a visual explanation, here’s the CCI’s soothing jazz version:
The actual specifics of these tiers will be different across the five ISPs participating in the CAS. We don’t know what every alert will look like, but Ars Technica did manage to get a hold of what Comcast’s alerts would look like.
As you would expect, the CAS hasn’t exactly garnered many fans. New Jersey Gubernatorial candidate Carl Bergmanson recently spoke out against it by saying ISPs have no right to monitor what you download:
“The internet has become an essential part of living in the 21st century, it uses public infrastructure and it is time we treat it as a public utility. The electric company has no say over what you power with their service, the ISPs have no right to decide what you can and can not download”.
The EFF has also come out swinging against CAS. The group says the system presents a number of troubling statements that don’t just hurt Internet users but the Internet for itself. For instance, the group points out that the CCI Web site tells people to lock down their Wi-Fi connections so others don’t pirate on your connection. The EFF sees this as an attack on the open Wi-Fi movement and it would be especially troublesome for those who do share their Internet connections with others, like small businesses.
Small businesses are where we run into the biggest problems. The CCI says that rights holders won’t target open Wi-Fi networks run by businesses. Your local Starbucks or Panera Bread are safe as they run off of a business network. The problem comes in the form of small businesses like a local coffee shop or bakery that runs free Wi-Fi off of a residential network. These businesses will be held liable for the actions of its consumers.
The CCI argues that it won’t hurt small businesses running residential networks because the CAS will never terminate an Internet connection. That’s entirely true, and it’s good that copyright owners didn’t go as far to request that ISPs terminate connections. The problem, however, lies in the fact that the fifth warning and afterwards will either block popular Web sites or throttle connections. For a small business that has multiple customers all on the same network, that’s just as good as shutting off the connection. People who want to use the Internet at these places will find it too much of a pain and take their business elsewhere.
Do you think the CAS will hurt small businesses? Or do you think the EFF and other groups are just exaggerating? Let us know in the comments.
This all brings us to the question of whether or not the CAS will even stop piracy. That’s obviously the goal, but it doesn’t look like an attainable one at the moment. In fact, the CAS is its own biggest enemy in the war on piracy.
The alerts obtained from Comcast all have one troubling thing in common. They don’t list any of the alternative, legal sources for content. The main point of the program is to educate consumers on legal alternatives, and it can’t even do that. Consumers receiving the alert with no prior knowledge of the system will most likely see it as a scam email and won’t act upon it. Later tiers require consumers to watch an educational video on copyright, but it doesn’t say whether these videos will present legal alternatives.
Fortunately, legal alternatives are doing a good enough job stopping piracy themselves. A recent report from the NPD found that legal alternatives like Spotify were driving music piracy down. It proves once again that easy access at a fair price can beat out piracy any day. Heck, the proliferation of streaming services even gave the music industry its first raise in revenue since 1999.
So why do copyright owners think the CAS will work? Do they really expect piracy rates to magically drop once the alerts start flying out? Past examples would suggest that no such thing would happen. In fact, previous efforts on the part of copyright owners to curtail piracy have had the opposite effect. Just look at the shutdown of Megaupload or the blocking of The Pirate Bay in the UK. Both cases actually saw an increase in piracy.
At this point, it’s still too early to tell how much the CAS will actually accomplish. At best, copyright owners will be able to proclaim that piracy rates are down as more people either use VPNs or move off of P2P and onto Usenet or Mega. At worst, consumers revolt and ISPs drop it after seeing that it’s costing them customers. Either way, piracy isn’t going anywhere.

About Zach Walton
Zach Walton is a Writer for WebProNews. He specializes in gaming and technology. Follow him on Twitter, StumbleUpon, Pinterest, and Google+ +Zach Walton

Google Adds Sign Language Interpreter, Keyboard Shortcuts To Google+ Hangouts

Google has started rolling out two new accessibility improvements in Google+ Hangouts: a sign language interpreter app, and more keyboard shortcuts.
Google’s Anna Cavender announced the features in a Google+ post Thursday evening, saying that both are rolling out gradually.
“Using the Sign Language Interpreter app, deaf or hard of hearing users who prefer sign language can invite interpreters to speak and sign for them during a Hangout,” she says. “They’ll always see their interpreter at the top right of the window, and they’ll become the focus of the Hangout whenever their interpreter speaks for them.”
Google+ Hangout Google Hangout
The app can be installed from here.
Keyboard shortcuts, she says, are great for those who can’t or don’t want to use a mouse during video chat. “For example: muting your microphone is now as simple as Ctrl+D (PC) or Command+D (Mac), and you can start chatting with Ctrl+B (PC) or Command+B (Mac),” she explains.
The full list of shortcuts can be found here.
Earlier this week, Google also announced some new keyboard navigation for Gmail.


About Chris Crum
Chris Crum has been a part of the WebProNews team and the iEntry Network of B2B Publications since 2003. Follow Chris on Twitter, on StumbleUpon, on Pinterest and/or on Google: +Chris Crum.