Leveraging Google to build your business

I read a nice post this morning about building business with Google by Eric at 過労死 Death by Overcoding.

It covers many aspects that may be involved in administering your business needs, such as:

• Domain registration/host/email/office apps
• Phone Management
• Blog
• The Application
• Payments
• AdWords
• Analytics
• Integration/Optimization

I recommend reading it to anyone who is starting up a web business. Following the steps mentioned in that blog post can be a real timesaver. And you do not need to hire an admin to do it all.

Gmail Themes

I'm loving new Gmail Themes!

The big question has been finally answered.

Official Gmail Blog announced addition of themes today. Users of Gmail can choose from around 30 themes. No need for styling Gmail with Firefox plugins like Stylish and a theme from John Hicks (although I liked it quite a lot for some time - until I had to change machine and re-install everything, again).

My favorite: Shiny! Just like my laptop.

Track 404 with Google Analytics

For many of us it is important as well as interesting to see where our customers go, which pages they visit. Tracking the pages is quite simple with Google Analytics. However the question is: "How do you track the pages that do not exist?"

If you configure your server or web application to handle 404 error - page not found (I strongly recommend you do) you will have a template page that is displayed every time the user navigates to an invalid URL - a page that does not exist.

So, how do we do this? How do we track our customers that somehow got lost and landed in a location that does not exists, at least not as a valid location that would provide them with the information that they expected.

It's quite easy. If you search for more information you may come across Google Analytics blog post Tracking 404 Pages, which is now outdated as the new ga script is recommended instead of old urchin. The best source for the answer is Google documentation itself. Simply follow these instructions.

<script type="text/javascript">
    var pageTracker = _gat._getTracker("UA-xxxxx-x");
    pageTracker._trackPageview("/404.html?page=" + document.location.pathname + document.location.search + "&from=" + document.referrer);
</script>

This code sends a virtual pageview of "/404.html?page=[pagename.html?queryparameter]&from=[referrer]" to your account, where [pagename.html?queryparameters] is the missing page name and referrer is the page URL from where the user reached the 404 page.

Then simply look for /404.html in your Top Content report.

Firefox 3

I, like many others, downloaded Firefox 3 yesterday. It was an attempt for a Guinness World Record titled Spread Firefox. The result was more than 8 million downloads in a single day. Quite impressive!

I did not have time to install it yesterday as I was on a holiday, busy attending Google Developer Day 2008. See my photos on Flickr. I met there with few fellow developers, like Dmitry Baranovskiy, who you can see speaking at Web Directions South soon and Carlos Mari, Director of Carlos Labs.

So I installed Firefox 3 today. I must say that I am quite impressed with the browser itself and with the ease of upgrading. I expected few hiccups on the way but it was all smooth.

Out of my 31 add-ons installed on Firefox 2 only six do not work. The six that no longer work are:

• AutoCopy
• ColorZilla
• EROnline (Exit Reality)
• Firebug
• Google Browser Sync
• Link Alert

I am going to miss AutoCopy and ColorZilla dearly. I am sure that Exit Reality will release a new plug-in real soon.

And for Google Browser Sync - it's a real shame that this is discontinued. But I knew this in advance, therefore I backed up my bookmarks and returned back to my favorite Foxmarks

In case you wondered what add-ons I use and currently have installed, here is a list:

• Download Statusbar
• Dummy Lipsum
• Dictionary English (AU)
• Dictionary English (US)
• FlashGot
• Forecastfox
• Google Earth
• Google Gears
• Google Notebook
• Greasemonkey
• Html Validator
• IE Tab
• Live HTTP Headers
• MeasureIt
• meebo
• Mouse Gestures
• Operator
• PDF Download
• Personas for Firefox
• Quick Locale Switcher
• Redirect Remover
• Total Validator
• User Agent Switcher
• Web Developer
• YSlow

Happy browsing, everyone!

PS: I also installed Skype 4.0 and it is very sleek!

Java Puzzlers, Episode 6

I am a big fan of Java Puzzlers.

Another part of the Java Puzzler series appeared on Google Video couple days ago. This is one named Advanced Topics in Programming Languages: Java Puzzlers, Episode VI and is a repeat of a talk given at Google in May and at JavaOne 2007.

Josh Bloch and special guest star Bill Pugh present yet another installment in the continuing saga of Java Puzzlers, consisting of eight more programming puzzles for your entertainment and enlightenment.

I really enjoyed watching it and also learnt a thing or two.

Funny thing was when Bill Pugh said in the conclusion:

Use FindBugs: it finds all 8 bugs in this talk!

I use FindBugs everyday and I have to tell you, our codebase (JIRA) is quite clean and FindBugs helps us to keep it that way.

Alright! Enough said. Go on! Watch it!

Related posts: Java Puzzlers

JIRA Issues Gadget 1.2 Released

I am proud to announce the release of JIRA Issues Gadget 1.2. This point release includes two bug fixes and an improvement in the way summary information is displayed.

Try it now

New Features

• Overall improvement of the way summary information is displayed and well as truncation of long summaries. Changed CSS in order to auto-hide part of the summary that overflows.
• Added a pop-up tooltip that displays more information about the issue. The information displayed is: issue key, type, status, resolution and full length summary.

Bug Fixes

• Removed 'maxSummaryLength' user preference as it is no longer required.
• Links on summaries did not work properly on Firefox with Redirect Remover add-on. With the summary improvements this is no longer an issue.

Links

• JIRA Issues Gadget Homepage
• JIRA Issues Gadget Project Home
• Personalized Google Homepage
• Atlassian JIRA

Related posts

• JIRA Issues Gadget 1.1 Released
• JIRA Issues Google Gadget

JIRA Issues Gadget 1.1 Released

I am proud to announce the release of JIRA Issues Gadget 1.1. This point release includes two bug fixes and two improvements.

Try it now

New Features

• Added content refresh. The frequency of refresh is customizable. This enables the gadget to poll for updates in Google Desktop, which does not automatically refresh as Google homepage does.
• Increased the number of displayable issues to 30. This enables to see more issues if the user chooses to.

Bug Fixes

• Added a message to display in case if no matching issues are found.
• Fixed a typo in CSS text alignment.

Links

• JIRA Issues Gadget Homepage
• JIRA Issues Gadget Project Home
• Personalized Google Homepage
• Atlassian JIRA

Related posts

• JIRA Issues Google Gadget

Google Developer Day 2007 in Sydney

I attended Google Developer Day in Sydney this week. The main page describes the content of the sessions in Sydney. It also links to related video records that can be viewed at YouTube.

The event was well organized. Originally, this was meant to be a 100 people event. However due to its popularity, the event was fully booked within 20 minutes after the registration opened. Later Google decided to change the venue to Australia Technology Park and were able to accommodate all people from the waiting list.

One of the biggest announcements was Google Gears (BETA). It is available for Windows, Mac and Linux. Google Gears is an open source technology for creating offline web applications. As published in Sydney Morning Herald:

The Gears technology promises to give Google a better platform from which to go after Microsoft's very lucrative Office franchise.

Here is a blog post that will get you started with Gears.

Another announcement of the day was Google's purchase of Panoramio, a website that links millions of photos with the exact location where they were taken.

Google Web Toolkit (GWT) got an upgrade as well. GTW 1.4 Release Candidate is a major upgrade to the Google’s open-source framework for writing AJAX web applications in the Java programming language. Read more about its features at ZDNet blog post by Ed Burnette: Google Web Toolkit 1.4: "Have to see it to believe it".

Google Web Toolkit had brought Google's AJAX development out of the dark ages and into the 21st century.

said Lars Rasmussen in his AJAX is painful, painful, painful talk.

Also announced was Google Mashup Editor - experimental product, online application to create mashups. It is currently in beta and access is limited to small number of developers during this testing period.

A great combination of Google's APIs are Google Mapplets. They are mini-applications that you can embed within the Google Maps site. Then they can manipulate the map using Javascript calls that are derived from the Google Maps API. The preview maps site also has Street View, which is very cool and was enabled just few days before Google Dev Day.

When we arrived we received a "speedgeeking" card, which listed six URLs of Google mashups. These six sites were presented live on big screens in the lunch area where everybody had a chance to see the products, talk to the authors and cast one's vote. At the end of the day, Property Guru took the prize home.

And if it was not Google, there would be no search. I was strongly reminded that Google is the company behind the most popular search engine when I saw this card on the tables.

So there you go Google! I blogged and published my photos with GDD07 tag. Go and find me!

Google Gears released today

Google released Gears (Beta) today. This news was brought to the world audience at Google Developer Day 2007 in Sydney.

More news coming later...

Related post: Google Developer Day 2007 in Sydney

JIRA Issues Google Gadget

It's been a while since my last post. You may have been wondering what I've been up to. Well, I was busy spending my free time developing my first Google Gadget.

I must say that the Google Gadgets documentation, especially the Developer Guide are well written and easy to follow. Development itself was a smooth ride. The only hiccup I had on the way was at the beginning when I realized that my gadget was being cached and I had to figure out hot to switch caching off.

Have I read the docs from the beginning, I would have discovered the Developer Gadget (developer.xml) that let's you control gadget caching.

I work with JIRA on a daily basis. I work with it in order to keep track of issues: bugs / tasks / new features. I also work on it - meaning the source code of JIRA as I am one of the developers on JIRA team at Atlassian.

Last week on Thursday and Friday we had out traditional Fedex days. We were let loose to develop anything we wanted. There were no boundaries for creativity. For the results (useful and/or cool stuff) see our developer blog.

I decided to create a gadget that would display limited number of JIRA issues. So I finally got to finish JIRA Issues Gadget 1.0 as well as develop the Add To Google JIRA plugin that would allow integration as painless as possible. I already blogged about it at Atlassian Developer blog.

Google Gadgets can take user preferences and persist them. My idea was to pass these in the "Add To Google" link in order to allow JIRA users to place JIRA Issues gadget on Google Homepage pre-set with current search filter in JIRA.

But them I hit the wall. Passing user preferences in the "Add To Google" link was not implemented yet.

Anyway, I managed to ease the pain a bit. With Add To Google (JIRA plugin) you won't be able to add Google Gadget with one-click operation, but you will have the URL you can copy and paste into the user preferences of the gadget.

At 4pm on Friday all Atlassian developers presented their hot creations to each other.

For more information read JIRA Issues Gadget page. Add To Google plugin source code can be found at Atlassian's public SVN.

BTW: If you want to work on JIRA or other Atlassian products, let us know. We are hiring.

Google Reader just got better

I use Google Reader for reading blogs. It has become my daily chore as I need to keep track on things happening around our office (we blog internally and externally) as well as other things of my interest.

It was brought to my attention that Jon Hicks created new skin for Google Reader. I thought I would have a look.

I had to install Stylish extension for Firefox first. Then I added a new style that I downloaded from Jon's website. And the result?

Before:

After:

I absolutely love it!

It has made reading blogs so much better. Why don't you give it a try?

Have you Googled Yourself?

As John DellaContrada an UB Internet-Culture Expert says in his "Self-Googling" Isn't Just Vanity; It's a Shrewd Form of Personal "Brand Management"

"Self-Googling" -- searching for your own name on the popular Google search engine -- may seem like an innocuous act of vanity, but a University at Buffalo communications professor recommends it as a shrewd form of "personal brand management" in the digital age.

I don't do this much, but how can I resist? I write this blog and few other things in other places so I wondered what people find when they search my name. So I googled my surname... I got 7 out of 10 results on the first page.

And as John DellaContrada consludes

"Starting your own Weblog or Web site can help you to shape your public image, and make sure that it accurately reflects your abilities and interests."

So what are you waiting for? Go out there and start writing!

Programmable Web and GoogleMaps Fligh Simulator

Today I came across an iteresting website: ProgrammableWeb - because the world's is your programmable oyster. In their words:

ProgrammableWeb is where you can keep-up with the latest mashups, what's new and interesting with Web 2.0 APIs, and the Web as Platform in general. The core of the site is the blog and the 3 dashboards: Home, Mashups and APIs. All dashboards are updated daily.

It's worthwhile having a look at API part. And this is how I found

Quite nice app, good fun exploring the world without being scared of terrorism! And as you can see I had a few successful flights over the Sydney Opera House. But be careful! Do not fly too low, you can crash!

GWT Studio Plugin for IntelliJ IDEA

Alex Tkachman of Jetbrains announced on Friday that he had developed a plugin that adds support for Google Web Toolkit (GWT) to IntelliJ IDEA.

More information and a watchable demo

Google Spreadsheets

Google announced a web-based spreadsheet: Google Spreadsheets. I don't know who would use that. I certainly wouldn't. But there might be some one who would. Opinions in the public are divided.

Read more here, here or here.

Google Maps

These days I hardly find some one who would not know what Google Maps or Google Earth is.

I came across an article How to add a Google Map to any web page in less than 10 minutes. I thought that was pretty cool and decided to try it out. After all, it is quite cool to have my own Google Map on my blog page.

Well it took me well more than 10 minutes. Mostly due to my curiosity. I just had to try some other features that Google Maps API offers and which were not cover in the above mentioned article.

The only "real" problem I had was that I tried to set the latitude and longtitude for Australia and it just did not work. No matter waht I did the map refused to display Australia and defaulted to location (0,0). Reversing the Lat and Long coordinates did the trick.

You can see the result - a fully interactive Google map - on the left side of this page. Notice the links below the map. Click on the to see the maps of Sydney or Melbourne.