Google Analytics: Flash?!

Google's Web Analytics service seems very nice. It's a well-done AJAX application. Except that...

1. Some parts of it use Flash instead of JavaScript. This is strange, and doesn't fit the current trend (across the Web and in Google's sites).
2. One of the features is a map - you can see where in the world your visitors come from. The big surprise here, is that it doesn't use the Google Maps API. Instead it uses... A FLASH map!

I'm almost certain this is just because they bought the software (from Urchin), and that they're going to "fix" it to be a regular AJAX app that uses Google Maps.

- Noam.

Google Analytics

Google has just launched Google Analytics a web site traffic analysis service. They offer it for free. It is based on software from their recent acquisition, Urchin.

I just installed it on this blog, to check how good it is.

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Tag: Software

Google has launched a blog-search tool

Here.

Is that the end of Technorati? I hope not, I kind of like it.

I guess now Yahoo/AOL/MSN will buy them.


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Tag: Google

Google Suggest for Firefox

This is really cool. If you use Firefox (which you should) and Google - and you like Google Suggest - you'll love this new Firefox extension from Google. Google Suggest for Firefox integrates Suggest into the Firefox search box. The result is really nice.

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Tag: Google, Firefox

Music: Live8, AOL, Yahoo!

If You like music...

1. AOL has the entire Live8 show online, on-demand. The quality of the streaming video is pretty good. You can select any played song, and just view it within seconds. I couldn't get it to work with Firefox though - only IE.
   
2. Yahoo!'s LAUNCHcast service is very nice. Basically, you select your favorite artists and genres, and let the system play songs that much your taste. And when you hear new content, you can rate it - and the system learns your taste better. The best thing about this service - it's free. The second best thing: you get to know new artists.
   

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Tag: Music, Live8, AOL, Yahoo!

Enum Code Generation

Once you start playing with code generation, you can't stop. At least, I can't.

One of the new features in J2SE 5.0 (or 1.5) is enums. I've missed enums for a long time, and I usually used the unsafe "static int" enums when I had to use them. The new version of Java provides real, type-safe, enums - but unfortunately, I can't use it, because I code for an old version of the language.
So I developed my own type-safe enums, based on Joshua Bloch's suggestion from the Effective Java book.

My idea is to describe the enum using XML, and then use XSLT to translate it to Java. The XSLT stylesheet adds all the boilerplate code required by type-safe enums.

One advantage of using XML+XSLT is portability between languages: at work, I build a Java component of a mostly-C++ project. The other engineers in my group have defined their enums in C++, and currently, to communicate with their code, I have to manually update my enum with theirs. If the enum is defined by using XML, we can write another XSLT that translates it to "regular" C++ enums.

I will publish my XML format + XSLT translator here, after I clean it a bit.

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Tag: Software