Yesterday, I spoke at the vendor-agnostic Web Development SIG. They've started the Google Chronicles series by covering four Google products:

• Google Analytics/Urchin


• Google Chrome


• Google Calendar


• Google Maps

You can see my slides here:


I'd encourage you to download the presentation though and check out the speaker notes for more information on the screenshots.

Google Analytics and Chrome

I walked the group through getting started with setting up an account for Google Analytics and getting the tracking code on their sites. You'll notice that my screenshots show 0 data -- this is intentional. When Stuart had asked me to speak at the SIG on these topics, I figured I'd add the Analytics code to Cleveland Tech Events specifically for this. He has also scheduled a full meeting in December on web site statistics packages and how we can benefit from them. So if you're curious about my traffic on Cleveland Tech Events, come on out to the December Web Dev SIG meeting to get an in-depth view of the statistics.

I was also asked to cover Google Chrome, from a web developer's perspective. I have to admit - the more I looked into Chrome for this presentation, the more I was excited about it. I remember that when it was launched, there was quite a bit of negative feedback. It wasn't until I saw one of my co-workers with it on his desktop that I started considering it. Now, it's one of the many browsers that I test for my websites. Everything in my slides on Google Chrome comes with the default installation - I did not have anything extra installed for those features to work. The Web Inspector, Resource Tracker, Script Debugger, and Task Manager are all part of the Google Chrome base. (And yes, I did change my default search engine in Chrome to bing, and I did get a little teasing for it. It just goes to show that you can set your default search engine in Chrome to your choice of search engine - Google, Yahoo, bing, Dogpile, Metacrawler, or {insert your favorite search engine I didn't list here}.)

Google Calendar

After my talks, Bill Cohen-Kiraly talked to us about Google Calendar. He walked us through the example of setting up a calendar for the Solon band and orchestra practices. He had one calendar for each group, and he showed us how to embed a calendar on our own sites with multiple calendars showing on one calendar. He showed how simple it was to add an appointment to the calendar and how it immediately shows up on the site.

I love Google Calendar! I use Google Calendar for Cleveland Tech Events and even have a calendar for my own personal tracking. My husband and I share the personal calendar, making it easier for him to see when I have presentations and trips scheduled and making it easier for us to make plans with friends and family by checking one calendar rather than having to carry around a paper calendar or maintaining individual calendars. And yes, for those who are curious, I am using Joomla extensions that tie to the Google Calendar for my "Upcoming Events" on Cleveland Tech Events. If you have a Joomla site and need help adding a Google calendar to it, I can help with that!

Google Maps

Finally, Stuart ended the meeting by covering Google Maps. He showed us how to use their Link feature to embed the maps on our sites. Then, he showed us how he customized the maps for Notre Dame College.

For those who are interested, there is a Google Maps mobile app available, if you want to access their maps from your mobile device.

Code Playground

The last thing Stuart showed us was the Code Playground. If you want to work with any of the Google APIs, this is the interactive area to see how it works and tweak the code to your liking.

Conclusion

Being International Talk Like a Pirate Day, we told our hecklers at the beginning that if they heckled, they'd have to walk the plank at the end. Oddly enough, no one had to walk the plank. However, there were some questions and feedback. I really enjoyed meeting them, and I look forward to attending their upcoming meetings.

The upcoming meetings for the Web Development SIG include:

• October: Color Theory


• November: Accessibility


• December: Web Analytics


• January: Google Chronicles

For more details on the Web Dev SIG, check out their website at: http://www.websigcleveland.org/.

Labels: Google Analytics, Google Calendar, Google Chrome, Google Chronicles, Google Maps, Web Dev SIG, web development

Last week, as I looked at some sites, I kept noticing links to their RSS feeds. Being back in the public-facing web development arena, I figured that I should probably understand the technologies that are out there for me to use. So I contacted my friend Nivex, who I knew had dealt with RSS feeds in the past, as he had mentioned them to me in passing. He was able to explain it to me so that I could understand it.

RSS stands for Really Simple Syndication. They work on subscriptions, and whenever you subscribe to a site's RSS "feed", you can read the site's updates automatically without having to go to the site. If you don't want to see a site's updates anymore, you can simply delete your subscription to the feed, without having to go to the site to unsubscribe.

RSS feeds are read through RSS readers. There are various types of software packages and websites out there to read RSS feeds. Here at home, I use Google Reader, and I use Mobipocket at work. Other readers can be found by searching for the terms "rss reader" or "rss aggregator" or "feed reader".

When I wake up in the morning, there are a few sites that I visit consistently. Since I found the RSS feeds for them, I no longer open each site to see if they've updated or what they've changed to. I can just go to my RSS reader of choice and read the updates there. Granted, some RSS feeds are smaller than others, so I do have to go to the sites when the message is longer than the feed.

The night after I had the RSS conversation with Nivex, Jeff Blankenburg had messaged me, after realizing I had mentioned him here. He had some neat tools to show me, and so I checked them out. A couple tools he had me check out include Google Analytics and Google Alerts. I'll save the details behind them for another entry. But the tool I'm going to focus on is Feedburner.

Whether you've got a blog, podcast, or commercial site, Feedburner can work for you. Feedburner can take your RSS feed and make it work for you. From statistics on how many people read your feed to what kind of reader they use to various statistics found in other web packages (site traffic, referrers, etc.), you can find out all sorts of details about your feed. You can see what search terms people are using to find your site. These are just site statistics and feed statistics.

But wait, there's more! Feedburner can make sure that your feed is accessible to any feed reader application, using their SmartFeed feature. Whether you have mobile readers or people who just read from their desktop or laptop, SmartFeed makes sure their reader can read your feed.

There are various things that can be spliced into your feed - including pictures from Flickr, links to share the data on a variety of social networking sites, and links that are shared from a variety of social networking sites. There are also specialized feed handlers for feeds that deal with events and financial symbols.

Feedburner can work with the Google AdSense program, so if you're making money from AdSense Ads, you can inject those into your feeds as well.

Getting the word out via Feedburner is fairly easy. Burn your feed, and then they have instructions on how to advertise your burned feed on your site, with instructions geared specifically for some common browser packages (including WordPress, Blogger, and TextPad).

My feed for this blog can now be accessed at http://feeds.feedburner.com/CodingGeekette.

Thanks to the talk of RSS and really neat tools with Nivex and Jeff, I've got some ideas as to how I can use them not only for my own advantage but for the company I work for as well. There are a few parts of our site that I can build feeds for that I could easily see as being beneficial. I have to pitch the idea to the company, but I think I could sell them on it.

Check it out - you may have a use for it too!

Labels: Feedburner, feeds, Google Alerts, Google Analytics, Jeff Blankenburg, Nivex, RSS