Time Magazine just had a decent article summarizing the history of the weblog phenomenon. This may of course be seen as yet another credible argument that blogging has gained significant influence in the media universe, but more importantly the article presented two new tools that makes it easier for readers to identify the good and most read or linked stories, and to create a personal digest of up to 50,000 blogs.
Kinja.com: sample and subscribe to 50,000 blogs, ad to your personal digest and read them like a personalized online newspaper.
Blogdex.net: presents the most contagious, or fastest spreading ideas in the Web-log community. It is like a top 10 list of the most popular entries.
Filed under: Internet and Technology
Check out VisitorVille: Web Site Intelligence for Creative Thinkers. It may look a lot like SimCity, but it is actually a powerful tool, measuring up with the industry leaders like WebTrends and the like.
VisitorVille is described in this Wired article:
VisitorVille employs a graphical, urban metaphor to present information about customers’ real-time Web-traffic flow. A company’s entire Web presence is seen as an urban or suburban neighborhood, with each individual Web page presented as a building. The more visitors on a site, the taller the buildings, and the brighter the lights on each floor.
Continuing the metaphor, visitors who have found a site using popular search engines arrive in the “city” on virtual buses emblazoned with their logos. And each visitor is represented by a small avatar that, when clicked, presents a passport that offers several pieces of information about the user, such as her or his IP address, where that person came from and more. Avatars from dot-com domains wear a suit. Those from dot-edu domains dress as students.
They have a pretty low entrace fee of only 30$ per month for smaller sites. Be sure to check out VisitorVille before you buy in to one of the more expensive options. VisitorVille may have exactly what you need, and it’s probably more fun as well.
Other web site analysis tools with a visual approach are for example ClickTracks.
Filed under: Internet and Technology
Even though this may have been stated in a world quite different from today, this quote probalby holds more merit in today’s media and information society, than during the WWII Nazi-era.
The empires of the future are the empires of the mind.
Winston Churchill, September 5th, 1943
Filed under: Research and Readings
