What?

For those of you that don’t know, Google Analytics lets you track traffic, keywords, campaigns and other interesting stuff that basically makes a successful website (page hits, visitors, demographics, traffic… The list goes on!). So, you used to have a 24 hour wait to see useful results, but now you can track website traffic down to the second (or minute, or hour). It’s a great dashboard layout (as is all of the Analytics pages… AdWords should take a leaf!) and is simple to understand. Wondering why you need to know who’s on your website at any specific time? Well you’ll have to wait until the ‘Why?’ paragraph, I’m afraid!

Where?

To get there is easy! Just log into your Google Analytics account (If you don’t have one, why not!) and make sure you’re using the new version. (You can switch to the new layout in the top right). Done that? Good! Now, go to the Home tab (top left) and then select “Real-Time” from the left most column! Hay presto, you’re done!

Why?

For some, knowing who’s on your site at a specific time is well useful! For example, say you just sent out a new email campaign. Gone are the days of waiting 24 hours to see conversion rates via Google Analytics, now you can see your page views increase as it happens. You can also get a better idea of how web behaviour changes throughout the day (for example peeking / dropping at lunch?) and lots of other cool stuff, too! I could watch it all day!

So there you have it

So there you have it, a very (very!) brief overview of Google Analytics Real-Time! It (could) change everything. At the very least, it’s a cool, and long awaited for some, feature from Google.

Now, I’m not going to go into Social Media (such as Facebook) because that special someone might not have it!

However! Skype, for starters, allows a face to face conversation. The next best thing to an actual chat. Sure, it misses a couple of the main aspects, but it’s a pretty decent substitute. For the camera shy, there is a voice only option (VOIP) which is free and can even be downloaded on mobile devices, meaning you can chat long into the night! Save money and hear her voice! Two birds!

Another great app for the iPhone (and I think Blackberry now too!) is WhatsApp, a text, audio note and image/video p2p application which allows free text and media messages between people free of charge. Yes, you need the internet, but it’s a great way to share your costa coffee, digitally, with someone else!

So, moral of the (rather short) story: Long distance relationships (if you want to call them ‘relationships’) are feesable – You just need technology on your side!

If it gets too much, you can always download the “national Rail” app, and see when the next cheap train is!

The solution?

Navigate to the following page;

• Go to “edit my profile” of your Facebook home page.
• Click “Profile Picture” in the left hand menu.

And then;
Beneath your profile picture, “Edit Thumbnail” and “Remove your Picture” links there is a “Row of photos at top of profile” and an “Unhide All” button. Hit that. Not much happens to confirm the process is complete, but go check out your profile page. All the tagged photos of you will now be accessible, with the most recent 5 appearing in the image stream on your page!

Now, after a little digging, it became apparent that WordPress Dashboards are notorious for having slow loading times. The hunt began to resolve this issue, if possible with a WP-Plugin (after all, it was WordPress’ fault to begin with!).

Along came a cheeky little plugin called WP-Cache is;

an extremely efficient WordPress page caching system to make you site much faster and responsive. It works by caching Worpress pages and storing them in a static file for serving future requests directly from the file rather than loading and compiling the whole PHP code and the building the page from the database.

It works quite well. It’s made the dashboard a lot more responsive, and I’m starting to cut down on the amount of hair-pulling!

Just a quick one folks; Need a beautiful word based tag cloud? Want to customise the colours, direction, font and make your personal cloud look gorgeous? Want to generate the contents of the cloud via website content or entering custom values? Give ‘Wordle‘ a go!

Take the characters;

• Ross vs Ted – Both overly enthusiastic (nerdy) about their field of expertise (history & architecture, respectively) and both also tell usually awful ’dad’ jokes.
• Chandler & Monica vs Marshall & Lily – The married couple, with their little quirks & shared personalities.
• Rachel vs Robin – The ‘eye candy’ of the two sitcoms, each has had a major fling / storyline plot with their geeky co-character (Ross / Ted).
• Joey vs Barney – Both womanizers, and both have had a ‘fling’ with the ‘eye candy’ – naturally!

Just a quick thought… But which is better?

Frankly, that’s something I can’t answer! All I know is that Barney is one of my favorite characters of all time! Ledgend-ary!

If you’ve not watched ‘How I Met Your Mother’ yet, give it a go! It’ll be amongst the best things that you’ve ever done!

WordPress changes the .htaccess file depending on the permalink style you choose. There are two ways to solve the 404 error problem;

Option A – Change your permalink style to the default, and then back again.

Option B - For the more webDev savy, go to your .htacess and add the following code;

# BEGIN WordPress
<IfModule mod_rewrite.c>
RewriteEngine On
RewriteBase /
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} !-f
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} !-d
RewriteRule . /index.php [L]
</IfModule>
# END WordPress

That should fix it!

I’m talking (obviously!) about the Navigation Pane, New and Improved for Word 2010. The navigation pane can be found by going to ‘View’ and checking ‘Navigation Page’ (obviously, again!). It sorts chapters, headings, sub headings and even sub-sub headings (providing they have been set up correctly via the ‘Styles’ feature in Word).

This indexes all the headings and sub-headings down the left hand side of the page, allowing for quick access to any section. Furthermore, using the format which allows the navigation pane to work correctly also allows automatic contents page generation, by clicking Insert > Reference > Index and Tables > Table of Contents.

In fact, here is a perfect example; The best sandwich bar / cafe in Nottingham.

Hopefully articles like this will give readers (and possibly prospective employers) an insight into my life beyond computing; A feat which many computing students find hard to portray on a curriculum Vitae!

Enjoy!

P.s. I won’t REALLY be blogging about the best Apple. Because everyone knows it’s “Pink Lady”.

It gives a really smooth shave, and is a delight to use! The blades are as ever quite expensive, but it’s worth every penny for the effortless and perfect shaving results which I seem to get time after time!

Please give it a go! I did, and now I’m raving about it to all my friends, family and anyone who doesn’t think I’m crazy taking about this revolutionary new piece of bathroom technology!

Normal service will now be resumed.