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.

First off there is the revamp of the Facebook profile pages, up until now laid out somewhat uniform, with the profile picture on the left, paragraph of information at the top, stream of tagged photos parallel and the wall below. It seems, however, that this is soon to change; In favor of a timeline approach style! This new style will (probably) conglomerate tagged pictures, status updates and activity on the social networking site, to eliminate (or at least reduce) the amount of content hidden beneath the fold (beyond the view-able screen without scrolling).

Secondly, as discovered a while ago, the iPad Facebook application is “launching soon” according to a 9to5 Mac article. Personally, I wouldn’t be surprised if it launched alongside the Facebook UI updates!

So, this change again will inevitably cause a current of opinions in the world of Social Media… With everyone holding their own thoughts (and most posting/tweeting their feelings) be prepared (Social Sandbags?) for the next wave of “I love/hate the new Facebook layout” status’.

I leave you with this famous quote from Winston Churchill;

To improve is to change; to be perfect is to change often.

FaceTime (by Apple) is good, but seems a little glitchy and disconnects the most of any that we used over the week. Another contender was Skype; This was much better, and I’ve used it before with no problems, but it seemed poor in signal quality and did drop out occasionally. (Although I blame her internet connection, as she could hear me perfectly! – Not sure if that’s how it works?)

Finally, we came onto Viber. Unlike other applications Viber allows a more traditional phone call experience, as the voices aren’t automatically on loud-speaker, meaning you can have more private conversations. There isn’t the feature of video conferencing either, meaning signal strength (for the most part) are stronger. It does drop out occasionally, but again, that’s a poor internet connection rather than the application. To top it off, the audio quality seems BETTER than when talking via actual phone calls!

Moral of the story; Get Viber! It’s free, and it will save you money (and presious contract minutes!).

I’ll start by reiterating; This isn’t a hack. It’s a simple work-around! No coding knowledge is required..

The “Film to Go” app gives users a promotional code which can be redeemed on iTunes (once per week, on a Thursday!) to download a specific film (chosen by Orange).

To get the App, simply download it from the Apple App Store. Next, you’ll need to get an Orange phone number from a friend or family member (Preferably one without an iPhone, so they can’t take advantage of the offer anyway. In my case, my Mom!).

Enter the phone number into the app (More -> Settings -> Mobile Number). A few seconds later your friend/family memeber should receive a four character/digit code. Simply enter that into your app and you’re ready to go.

If you do this on a Thursday you’ll get a promo code right away, and you can go download/watch your film – May I suggest you invite your Orange-phone-number-mate round to watch it with you, you probably owe them one!

In fact, it isn’t JUST a camera (queue the Marks & Spencer voice-over); It’s a Digital Single-Lens Reflective (DSLR) Nikon Camera 18-105VR lens Kit! All in all, a beauty of a thing!

Now, my house-mate and photography enthusiast Jack Hicks assures me it’s the top banana, and, well, I agree! Knowing little about cameras, i’ll try to explain; It’s frame rate and ISO rating (which varies light input, I guess) are at a semi-professional level at least, and the screen atop the camera displays aperture and the size of the hole for the lens, which can be manually set to capture things such as a match being lit!

I’m not going to pretend I know a lot about what I just said, but the camera makes a lovely snapping sound, just like the press! It also produces wonderful images.

Take a look for yourself!

Now though, I’m starting to lean more and more towards them, and not in the traditional sense. After the release of the final Harry Potter film earlier this month, I was persuaded by a housemate to download the full Harry Potter audiobook collection and give it a go. I was doubtful, but to my amazement, I’m actually rather enjoying it.

I started ‘reading’ (or rather, listening) to the audiobooks on Friday, and today is the following Tuesday. I’ve just finished the second book. That’s pretty amazing for someone who’s got really no interest in novels.

As I start on the third book of the series I’m starting to weigh up the advantages and disadvantages of this style of ‘story-telling’ (keeping the terminology brief to include films, traditional books and audiobooks).

One major advantage is that the books, in this case read by Steven Fry, give a good balance of detail (with accents and voices being replicated) whilst still leaving enough to the imagination to maintain the elegance of a traditional book. Furthermore, audiobooks are perfect for long drives, and I tend to find myself staying up for “just one more chapter”, which I don’t think I would personally for a paperback.

On the downside, the books may be read a little slow for those who like to read a book a night (the first two HP books are 8 hours each). I also can’t imagine wanting to listen to the audiobooks again; I know some avid book-readers who like to re-read their books several times.

Overall, however, audiobooks are perfect (for me, at least). Those who already read may not see them as beneficial, but if you’ve not read the Harry Potter books (in particular) then I would definitely recommend giving this medium a chance!

It started off with an innocent update; and then it hit me – Formatted phone. No more apps, no more contacts. Oops! It was my fault really, so I don’t want to blame Apple (too much!). But that was that. One late night later and another lucky turn (most contacts were backed up on my Mac) and I was running almost normally again. Apart from the seemingly laggy camera feature. After a while (say a week) the lag on several applications was unbearable.

So, another format! (At least this time everything was backed up to the cloud, which is a great ‘new’ feature, by the way!). This time everything seemed smoother, and so far it’s been fine! I’ll be glad when Apple officially release to the public though; Hop fully it won’t be ANOTHER format?! (Especially with over-the-air updates!).

One gripe; Bluetooth streaming music seems less high-quality.. It could just be me, but the bass seems a little ‘off’? Also, track syncing (which is now a feature with the iPod functionality of the device) isn’t replicated by Spotify’s application. But I guess that’s down to Spotify!

Moral of the story; Back up your phones kids!

First up, Spotify! Iv’e gone for the 16Gb WiFi model, largely due to already owning an iPhone (with constant internet connection). The Spotify app is actually the iPhone version, but why re-make the wheel? Creating a playlist (‘for the iPad‘) allows me to control and constantly update which songs are synced to the device from my phone, computer or directly. Jump onto a wireless connection and hay presto, instant music library updates! In my opinion Spotify is one of the best (if not THE best) application on the iPhone, and it works well on the iPad. I just wish they’d make an iPad specific application.

Next is DropBox. There are a load of reviews about the magic of DropBox, so I’ll keep it brief; If you haven’t got DropBox yet, go and sign up. Then download the DropBox app for your iPhone and iPad and never be without your much needed documents again! It’s also a great way of wirelessly transferring content from/to your devices.

CoolPapers: It’s basically what it says on the tin: An archive of beautiful wallpapers to really customise your iPad experience!

BBC iPlayer: Wonderful! Watch all the BBC iPlayer content on your beautiful device. Perfect for bed-time catch-up! Really nice interface too, very 2.0, and looks amazing on the iPad’s shiny screen! My only gripe here is that some of the programs don’t quite fill the screen (due to aspect differences) and an over-scanning option would be nice.

Friendly. Until Facebook get’s on-board the iPad specific Application revolution, Friendly will be your best bet. It works and interacts well (after a little getting used to). That said, it did have some time-out issues this morning. However, it’s generally been quite reliable (according to a couple of friends).

mBox Mail. This is only really going to be of much use if you have a Hotmail E-mail account. Unfortunately the native ‘Mail’ app doesn’t sync all the folders (due to POP3 / Push / etc) of a Hotmail account. Something Mbox Mail overcomes seamlessly. Dear Apple, please add this functionality to iOS5. Regards.

Skype. I’ll be honest, I haven’t used this yet. But I have used the application on the iPhone. Seeing as how it’s ported directly from the iPhone to the iPad, I can recommend it. Although FaceTime put’s up a good fight against this. I guess it depends on personal preference, and weather your contacts are Apple-esk or not?

Twitter. Facebook should definately take a leaf (preferably one without bird poo!) out of Twitter’s book! A beautiful app, full of features and perfectly laid out! This is how the iPad expereince should be! Even if you don’t have a Twitter account, download this app! 10/10!

Flipboard. A very good, intuitive and modern approach to news reading. With the ability to customise the ‘contents’ page, you read the iPad like a book, with articles appearing in a digital 2.0 magazine style. (Page flipping transitions included!).

WordPress. Much like Twitter, this is a beautiful application. Purpose built for the iPad, in addition to the easy-to-use keyboard, this will soon become my preferred way of blogging. Look, I’m even using it to write this blog (with addition of my wireless keyboard, just to test out the bluetooth connectivity!).

Bonus Application: Google. I decided to add Google as a bonus application for two reasons. 1: I miscounted the number of non-native apps on the homescreen! and more importantly 2: It can often be overlooked, by default going to Safari and using the search bar. However, the Google App does much more than searching the net (as if that wasn’t enough). Google Goggles (search via images) and really good voice recognition make for a truly rich-media searching experience!

So there we go! The top 10, ahem, 11, applications to download for your iPad!

Apps, IMO, transform the iPad 2 from shiny white (or black) tablet device into a personalised multi-use device for reading, writing, gaming, painting, socialising and much more!

I spent a while downloading a huge array of applications from the AppStore, so here they are;

spotify, myO2, DropBox, weather, clock, liveprofile, skype, vouchercloud, shazam, nectar, sainsburys, twitter, calcuylator, sky sports, sky mobile TV, sky+, sky news, iLoaderHD, bigoven, coolpapers, winmdowshop, ebay, photosynth, imovie, photoshop express, wordpress, marvel, IMDb, DC Comics, Flixster, Rightmove, Yelp, GarageBand, Big top 40, Engadget, BBC News, IGN, Mashable, Google Earth, Google, Fisher Scientific, QI, Banner, bbc iplayer, good food, TV Guide, 4OD, stumbleupon, flipboard, facebook, friendly, airvideo, instapaper, tunein radio, penultimate, world of goo, pages, keynote, numbers, bloomberg, CNBC RT, RealRacing2HD, Angry Birds, Next, Wired, T3, Telegrtaph, The Times, Qwiki, betfair, convert units, mBox Mail, GoodReader, and a couple of web based apps.

Amongst the jungle of apps (helpfully found via iPad alternatives to those installed on my iPhone), the following made it onto the first page of the home screen, and are probably worth a look yourself;

It’s very much a case of installing apps that you want, in order to utilise the personal benefits of having an iPad. I’ll review the iPad 2 and corresponding applications in more detail after a couple of days playing with it!

Insidious is a much-acclaimed horror; Adverts show screaming audiences, reports detail people crying and there are numerous accounts of people leaving mid-film. My question after the film was this: “How did modern technology contribute to the making of one of the proclaimed scariest films in recent year?”

So, I watched a couple of ‘Behind-the-scenes’ clips from YouTube, only to discover a laughing, joking and smiling cast. Much different from the reported cast during the filming of ‘Poltergeist’. So, the cutting room and editing must have played some part in making the film as jumpy and scary as it is?!

Again, I don’t know enough about film production to comment on individual aspects, and the process in which a film goes from relatively placid film recordings (with laughing in the background) to feature film… But I suspect that A. The music and B. added special effects go some way towards achieving this.

Insidious is a pretty decent film; It’s got a plot dissimilar to many modern ‘run of the mill’ haunted house films, and keeps viewers entertained, scared and on edge throughout. Comparatively, I think the hype surrounding it (granted via very good marketing) has built the movie up to be scarier than it actually is. Either way, go and watch it, it’s definitely worth it. Unless you have a heart condition! Or your demon companion tells you not too!?