Dennis Pallett’s Tech Blog

It’s been fun while it lasted, but I’m quiting this blog. It’s over. I have no passion to blog anymore.

I’ll still be around doing stuff, and you can always contact me at dennis@nocertainty.com.

Good bye.

I just received a press release from Google. They’re going to buy up Urchin. I’m not sure what they would want with Urchin.

It is the best traffic analyzer, and I love using it, but what does Google want to do with it? I’m hoping they’re going to give it away for free, but I doubt it.

Anyway, here is the full press release:

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

GOOGLE AGREES TO ACQUIRE URCHIN

MOUNTAIN VIEW, Calif. - March 28, 2005 - Google Inc. today announced it
has agreed to acquire Urchin Software Corporation, a San Diego,
California based web analytics company.

Financial terms of the deal were not disclosed.

Urchin is a web site analytics solution used by web site owners and
marketers to better understand their users’ experiences, optimize
content and track marketing performance. Urchin tools are available as
a hosted service, a software product and through large web hosting
providers. These products are used by thousands of popular sites on the
Internet.

Google plans to make these tools available to web site owners and
marketers to better enable them to increase their advertising return on
investment and make their web sites more effective.

“We want to provide web site owners and marketers with the
information they need to optimize their users’ experience and
generate a higher return-on-investment from their advertising
spending,” said Jonathan Rosenberg, vice president of product
management, Google. “This technology will be a valuable addition to
Google’s suite of advertising and publishing products.”

The acquisition is subject to customary closing conditions. Google
anticipates that the acquisition will close before the end of April.

I just had to do some research for a school paper, and I had about 20 tabs open. Can you imagine if I was using IE? I’d have 20 windows + other stuff (Word, MSN, etc) on my taskbar. Crazy. Thank god for FireFox.

I’ve switched to WordPress. I didn’t want to use my own custom blogging tool anymore, as it lacked a lot of features that I wanted, and I couldn’t be bothered writing those features myself.

A short recap of the switch:

• Importing entries was a piece of cake. I wrote a short script that exported all the entries from my custom tool, using the MovableType format. This meant all the comments have also been imported. The only thing that I didn’t import were trackbacks, due to a bug in WP’s import script. It’s an easy fix, but I noticed too late, and I only had a few trackbacks, so it’s not worth doing it again.
• Installing WordPress was extremely easy and fast as well. It took about 2 seconds
• Unfortunately, I got stuck with a weird cookie problem, which caused my WP install to not work. I spent several hours trying to get it to work, to no avail. I posted the WP Support Forums, where I got quick help. It seemed everyone else *could* view my blog, so it had to be something on my part. I quickly figured out cookies were to blame. I solved the problem within 2 minutes, and got everything up and running.
• So far I’m loving WordPress all the way. There’s a few things that annoy me (e.g. why is there PHP in the templates?) but it’s 10x better than my custom tool
• I’m stick with this default style for a while, at least until I find a new one that looks better. I can’t be bothered creating my own one.
• I’m going to be downloading a few plugins in the next few weeks, and hopefully create some neat hacks for myself. I’ve already got one great idea.

I just came across BlogMarks, a bookmark service, like del.icio.us. Except it’s a lot better.

It has a slick interface, the URL’s have a thumbnail (how the hell is that done??), and it has a bit of a social-linking aspect to it. Very neat, and you should definitely try it.

Christmas is over, January nearly passed as well, it’s time I get back to this blogging thing.

I’ve had plenty of rest lately, and I’ve got a few great entries lined up to be posted. Expect them later this week.

I’m also going to give this blog a re-design. It looks too ‘corporate’ at the moment, and I can’t do a lot with it. Basically, I’ve started to hate the design, so a re-design is necessary. I’ll get around to that in a week or two. It takes time.

I’ve got some ‘wild’ future plans for this space here, which I will slowly roll out in the coming months. Stay tuned!

Merry Christmas

New tutorial up on PHPit: PHP On-The-Fly!.

In this tutorial I explain the XML HTTP Request Object and its usefulness. There are some examples in the tutorial.

The XML HTTP Request Object is pretty cool. If you’re building a PHP application (or any other web application for that matter), then you can really do some funky stuff. You can build interfaces which are 10x better than GMail’s GUI.

I’m not impressed with Link-Monkeys so far. It’s been over a month now since I bought their Copper package, and I still haven’t seen any results. Very disappointing.

I e-mailed my personal rep a few days ago, and I still haven’t gotten a reply back either. I hope I get something soon. Either a reply, with a damn good apology, or some link exchanges, because at the moment I’m not pleased at all.

Update: I received a reply back from my rep. They recently changed servers, and had some issues, so it should be solved now. He even offered me 10 extra links as compensation.

Jeremy has launched something new again: Blogger Jobs.

Blogger Jobs is a special ‘blog’ dedicated to posting job openings that specifically ask for bloggers to apply. Often, it isn’t a mandatory thing, but it is a very much appreciated quality.

I think this is absolutely great. It shows that companies, ranging from start-ups to BigCo’s, are taking blogs seriously now, and in some cases even want bloggers. If you haven’t got a blog yet, it’s probably time to look into start one. Even it’ll just help you get a job

It’s of course obvious why companies would want bloggers. Bloggers can really promote your product or service. Hell, a blogger you hire, could very well be the next ‘Scoble’. Who knows? And that’s just it. If you have interesting stuff to say, then your blog will most definitely get popular.