In a perfect example of, ‘that’s so obvious, why didn’t I think of that’, RedRouble have released a quick and dirty stats package available through RSS.
Pulse is a hosted web app that gives you the basic of statistics for your website available as a RSS feed or through their site. Simply sign up and add the JavaScript to the footer of your site’s (x)html to start tracking visits, incoming links and search keywords. Then log in and subscribe to the RSS feed using your favourite reader and check out the stats while reading the headlines and drinking your morning coffee.
Virb, the latest breed of social network officially launched yesterday. With clean lines and a certain amount of hype could Virb be the future of social networking?
I have been looking at Virb in some more depth through the beta phase recently. I am a sucka for well designed sites, and Virb fits nicely into this criteria. Certainly Virb offers an awful lot for the designer in us all and has been developed from the ground up with this in mind. Complete customization of the front and backend like this, has not been seen before in popular social network and should encourage many people originally put off by the blinding customizations popular in MySpace. Structured ‘Modules’ incorporating content from third partied like YouTube and Odeo can be created and placed in your profile and as a user you have control over the html and CSS – heaven! No more div overlays!
Box.net came onto the online storage scene in early 2005 but a few months back revamped their design and pretty much re-launched with justified fanfare.
For those that don’t know, Box.net offers 1GB of free online storage or for just $4.99 per month you can have up to 5GB. Seriously cheap storage so where’s they catch? Well there doesn’t seem to be one. I have used the service now for a fair few months both in professional capacity upgrading and troubleshooting systems (it’s much handier than a USB key when working remotely!) and from a personal point of view sharing files with friends and family. In this time I have only found the site to be unavailable once which was for pre-planned maintenance and both download and upload speeds have generally been good.
Well while not quite a public release, coincidentally I did get an invite to Riya arrive in my mail box today. Much to my delight, after months of waiting, I finally get the chance to try out this new service. I have got to say that this is one of the new ‘Web 2.0′ services (for want of a much better expression) I have been most excited about, one service that could potentially be worthy of all the hype. Riya’s USP is in the facial and text recognition of photos and the ability to auto-tag what you upload.
I got invited by Dan Dukeson to take a look at the Ebuyer beta site that is open to the public and though a work in progress its interesting to see where they are pushing and improving the ‘public face’ of the company. Ebuyer is an international online retailer specialising in computer and consumer electronics whose products could be considered amongst the most competitively priced. In the last few years they have also vastly improved the customer service regarding returns and should be among the first places to look when upgrading your PC or setting up that home cinema.
