According to Washington Post, OpenOffice, a free open-source competitor to Microsoft Office, can do just about anything that Microsoft Office can at home, and can also read and write to Microsoft’s closed, proprietary formats. You can set OpenOffice to use either OpenDocument or Microsoft formats as its default. And yet, OpenOffice is free and Microsoft is not. 
Unlike Microsoft Office, however, OpenOffice can also save your work as a Portable Document Format file that preserves every pixel of your creativity — whether it’s read in Windows, on a Mac or even on a handheld organizer.
But if you need to run Outlook or you regularly work on complicated Excel or PowerPoint files with other people, OpenOffice may not work for you — at least for now. OpenOffice isn’t always as accurate at saving files in Microsoft formats, especially as they get more complicated.
After years of ignoring complaints about the overgrown nature of Office’s interface, Microsoft is giving its own suite a radical rewrite for next year’s revision. OpenOffice could look old a year from now.
Read: Office Suite Software Without the Sticker Shock
Monday, November 14, 2005
OpenOffice.org Vs Microsoft Office
Prevent Google Analytics from tracking your visit
Webmasters will increasingly use Google Analytics (formerly, Urchin) to determine how many people are visiting their sites, where they are coming from and what they’re clicking on. There are certainly good times for the website owners.
The UTM is the Google Analytics Traffic Monitor - proprietary Google Analytics Tracking Code (urchin.js), which is installed on a web page for the purpose of collecting Customer Data, whereby unique visitors can be accurately tracked using a combination of server and client-side technology including cookies.
# [Google Inc]
127.0.0.1 www.google-analytics.com
How this works: Google Analytics downloads a small javascript urchin.js (Google Analytics Urchin Module) on the client’s computer which reports the all the tracking and analyzing data about the visitor back to Google. By adding the above line, we have effectively blocked our browser from downloading the urchin.js file.
If you don’t like changing the the hosts file manually, download a free Hosts File Manager utility to manage the hosts file for you.
If you are using Firefox, CustomizeGoogle extension lets you block all Google Analytics cookies, on any website. Using this feature makes you more anonymous. But your visit on a single webpage can still be logged. This way, both Google and the owner of the website knows that someone visited a webpage, but it’s difficult to track all pages you’re visiting.
Adobe Creative Suite 2 at 80% discount
Adobe China has slashed 80 per cent from the cost of Adobe Creative Suite 2 to encourage the use of authentic legal software as opposed to pirated goods. Adobe’s price cut is part of the Sunshine Copyright Program which was launched in early November. Under this program, Chinese users that buy two or more licenses for Simplified Chinese language editions of Adobe Creative Suites 2 products will be eligible for the 80% price cut.
Adobe actually cut the price of its products by 50% in another anti-piracy program called “Adobe China Storm" launched in August of this year. While China is one of the world’s fastest-growing markets it is also among the world’s leading country’s for pirate goods.
In addition to Adobe, Microsoft has also introduced price cuts for its products on the Chinese market to increase sales of copyrighted software and discourage use of pirated software.
Meanwhile, you can request Adobe for a Adobe Creative Suite 2 Trial DVD by snail mail.
Good Blog Titles are short, still descriptive
When writing titles for Blogs, forget search engines and write 3-8 word long titles that describe your post and attract clicks.
Keep it short:
A title that’s too long is just as bad as a non-descriptive title.
Eye Grabbers
If you’re writing about a hot topic, or a contraversial topic, or even just a relatively plain topic, you need to get your eye-grabber in those magic first 3 words. 4 at most.
And if you write a blog, Be Bold!
It’s all about the click, and after the click, it’s all about trust, and reputation. Source: Blog Titles are Ads
Sunday, November 13, 2005
Track visitor clicks on Banners, Files, Javascript and Flash objects
Google Analytics provides a sophisticated visitor-click tracking system based on Urchin. You can track visitor clicks on any object of the webpage including Javascript, Flash elements, Banners, Graphics and even downloadable files like PDF.
Here’s a quick primer on enabling tracking mechanism in Google Analytics. [source: Google Analytics Help]
Track clicks on links that lead to file downloads (such as PDF, AVI, or WMV)
You’ll need to tag the link itself with the urchinTracker JavaScript if you would like to track these downloads. This piece of JavaScript assigns a pageview to any click on a link. For example, to log every click on a particular link to www.example.com/files/map.pdf as a pageview for /downloads/map you would add the following attribute to the link’s tag:
To track outbound clicks on an animated GIF or other type of static banner ad, add the following code within the tag (You may use any folder/filename structure that you desire)
The equivalent code for a Flash banner is provided below:
on(release) {
getURL(“javascript:urchinTracker(‘/bannerads/adname/bannername’);”);
getURL(“http://www.advertisersite.com”);
}
Track clicks on outbound links that lead visitors away from your site.
You will need to tag the link itself with the urchinTracker JavaScript. For example, to log every click on a particular link to www.example.com as a pageview for “/outgoing/example_com” you would add the following attribute to the link’s tag:
Track JavaScript events like RollOver or OnMouseOver
To track an event, use the urchinTracker JavaScript function to specify a name for the event. The following illustrates how to log an onClick event:
Or, to log a rollover event:
Related Reading:
10 Things about Google Analytics you may not know
Screenshots of Google Analytics system
The circle of analytics
Google Analytics FAQ - 10 Interesting Things
10 interesting facts and tricks about the Google Analytics program.
1. You can change the length of time that Google Analytics waits before timing out a visitor by adding a _utimeout variable to your tracking code.
2. There is no Google Analytics API to access reporting data. You can however exports reports to XML, CSV (Microsoft Excel) or Tab-Separated text format.
4. Google Analytics will track and analyze as many websites as you own but you are limited to 5 million pageviews per month.
5. After you first install the tracking code, it may take several hours for report data to appear in your account. Google Analytics generally updates your reports every hour, but data can take up to 6 hours to appear in your account.
6. You can make use of the _utmLinker JavaScript function when the links on your site require users to change root domain names - for example, from www.example.com to www.shoppingcart.com.
7. Google Analytics’ urchinTracker allows you to track events on your site that do not generate a pageview. Using the urchinTracker JavaScript, you can assign a specific page filename to Flash events, JavaScript events, file downloads, outbound links, and more. [Using the urchinTracker]
9. Even though www.example.com/ may be the same page as www.example.com/index.html, they show up as two separate entries in your logs. You can tell Google Analytics to treat them as the same page by defining the Default page for your profile.
10. Google Analytics tracks referrals from 20 search engines as listed in the urchin.js JavaScript file. You can also configure Analytics to identify referrals from additional search engines by adding the following line to your tracking code:
_uOsr[20]=”search_engine_name”; _uOkw[20]=”query_variable”;
Google Analytics - Urchin on Demand Tools for free
Google is offering webmasters a full-featured, powerful analytics package from Urchin to determine how many people are visiting their sites, to view the source of referrals to your site and what they’re clicking on. Google Analytics is the latest version of Urchin On Demand that can also track user clicks in Flash objects and Javascript code.A Google Account is required to login into Google Analytics. If you’re an AdWords advertiser, you can also sign up for Analytics from within your AdWords account. Analytics’ free version is limited to 5 million pageviews a month but the limit is is removed if you’re also an active AdWords publisher.
The urchin.com website is now redirecting to google.com/analytics/. Google Analytics is a hosted web analytics service, and is not currently available as a software application. The Google Analytics software product is currently in development and a release date has not yet been set.Once you submit your website details, Google Analytics will provide a small Javascript code snippet (like Google Adsense javascipt code) that you can insert anywhere in the webpages that you want to track after the and tags and before the tag.
XXXX is the Urching tracking account number.
Google Analytics will itself check to see that the tracking code has been installed correctly on the home page of your site - once you’ve created a new profile, the Tracking Status will display a warning, “Tracking status unknown,” until the system detects the code. Google Analytics uses a first-party cookie and JavaScript code to collect information about visitors and to track your advertising campaign data.
Google Analytics will also put significant pricing pressure on vendors. Google Analytics could hurt companies like Statcounter, Tracksy, Web Trends, Web Side Story and Click Tracks, and others focusing on the small to medium-size business market. These vendors will only be able to compete with Google Analytics (Urchin) if they provide better professional services and consulting units.
Google Analytics is not just for Adwords advertisers, it is a complete website traffic monitoring tool. But it is painfully slow at the moment. Google Analytics reporting is currently undergoing maintenance and will be available shortly. Your site traffic is being logged and you will be able to see the data after system maintenance has concluded.