Of This and That
Posted On: 2008-10-23
Well I hope your week is going better than mine is at the moment. Oh it started off quite well but boy did it all go pear-shaped yesterday. My mother has been quite unwell for almost a year now and earlier in the week was sent down to the state capital for some surgery.
From what was said at the hospital here it wasn't going to be easy but it wasn't going to be a major drama either. On Tuesday we found that, yes it was going to be a major drama and she might not survive, so yesterday – the day the surgery was done - we headed down to be with her.
Now we're home but we're still not settled ... we have yet to hear what the surgeons have to say and depending on what they report we could be heading south once again.
Is it just me?
It probably is just me and the mood I'm in right now but somehow I find this comment by one of Google's spokespeople just a little too condescending.
'While working on our mission to organize the world's information and make it universally accessible and useful ...'
Maybe I wouldn't find that little bit of smugness no bad but for the fact that what he said is all just so much propaganda and Google's real mission is to make money for its investors.
As I said, it probably is just me.
How sad for Google's employees
While we're talking about Google perhaps we should spare a thought for those Google employees who opted for stock options over large salaries. It seems that the current economic crisis is really causing some problems for those Google employees. They're broke, they're depressed and they'd love to leave and get a better paying job
Unfortunately for them, no one seems to want them. Many of them were in such a rush to take up the job offer they got from Google that they left their previous employment very quickly and that had an adverse affect on their employers. So now, with burnt bridges everywhere and the price of Google shares going down those Google employees are stuck.
Need some stats?
Lately we've been using Woopra to generate some stats for a couple of our mainstream sites. We've also been using Google Analytics for some other sites but we really like the user interface with Woopra. It seems to tell us more ... or perhaps tell us more easily ... all the information we need to know.
Today I came across another stats program that looks interesting. It's called Clicky and it certainly does seem to have some interesting features that other stats programs ... including Google Analytics and Woopra don't have.
Of course there is a downside to everything and for Clicky it's the fact that you have to pay for it. There is a free version you can use but a lot of the features are disabled but the paid versions are not expensive and if the features that Clicky offers really do work for you then something as low as $11.99 a month is not too much to pay.
Clicky also offers an affiliate program so if it works for you and you provide web services for other people then you can on-sell the program to your clients and so make even more money.
Portable browsers
I'm beginning to see a number of people complaining about the way Firefox seems to becoming more bloated and less useful with every update but there is one recent version of Firefox that you may find very useful. It's the portable edition of Firefox and you can download it from portableapps.com.
Download it; install it on a USB stick and you've got it to take absolutely anywhere and you can even copy your local Firefox settings to the portable version so you don't have the hassle of finding all those add-ons and installing them on the portable version.
It's also claimed that the portable version of Firefox leaves no personal information behind on the machine that you used to run Firefox and that has definitely got to be an advantage. It also updates automatically so it's always going to be up to date ... or it will be just as soon as you plug it in.
Don't give up
Finally let's just take a moment to look at the stock market. It's pretty dismal isn't it? As I write this the Dow has just closed after falling yet another six or seven hundred points and the bank bailouts really don't look as though they're working.
Businesses large, medium and small are hurting everywhere and newspapers and other news media are beginning to show images of derelict shops and closing factories. You might be thinking that things are really grim but I've got news for you.
There are people out there who have money and they want to spend some of it so don't give up. Let others get scared off by the bleak economic news that the media is pumping out and you get down to the serious business of making money.
It's there to be made if you're there to make the effort to earn it.