Month: July 2006
Mint counts page views as visits?
I’m a big fan of the web-stats package, Mint. But after a little conversation over in the Mint forums with Shaun Inman (creator of Mint), I realized that I’ve been misreading it this whole time, and I thought I would pass this on incase someone else was reading it the same way I was.
The “Visits” pane in Mint gives two numbers… Total, and Unique. I had thought that Total referred to the total number of visitors in a given timeframe, and that you could subtract the Unique number to determine how many repeat visitors you have. I was wrong.
Shaun Inman said:
“In Mint, Visits are page views, and Uniques are unique visitors.”
As it turns out, Mint doesn’t really track visitors… it only tracks unique visitors. The Total number is page views (how many pages were viewed), which is totally different. For instance, if 1 person comes to your site, and they look at 10 pages… what would you call that? I would call it 1 visit, or I would call it 10 page views… but Mint calls it 10 visits.
I personally think that this language is confusing, and misleading. Why does Mint refer to page views as visits? Why doesn’t it just call them page views, so there is no confusion?
I’m still a big fan of Mint, but I am a little disappointed that there is apparently no way to actually know how many visitors you have. Knowing how many unique visitors you have is great, but I want to know how many people come back after they find my site. It would be great if future versions of Mint could either track total visits, or at very least rename the current visits column to “Page Views” to avoid confusion.
UPDATE: Apparently I was wrong about the definition of unique also. When you visit this site, Mint leaves a cookie in your browser so it knows that you’ve been here before, the next time you come by. I thought a Unique visitor was someone with no cookie at all… a completely new visitor. While that is true, a visitor with a cookie (repeat visitor) may also be counted as unique… because there are levels of unique… hourly, daily, weekly, and monthly. If you have an interest in this, check out davidjaymz’s comment on the original Mint forum thread for more information.
WordCamp
If you’re a fan of WordPress (the best blogging system ever), and you live in the Bay Area, mark your calendar for August 5th, 2006… It’s WordCamp, a 1-day conference for WordPress users and developers. WordCamp will be held in San Francisco, but the exact location is yet to be determined. You can sign up on the site to receive updates. Oh, and did I mention, it’s FREE!
Can it fly?
Is this a convention center in Hong Kong, or a cleverly disguised intergalactic starship? You decide.
Found via Hedonistica
Rocket go Boom?
I’m a regular viewer of RocketBoom, and the big news in the Vlogosphere yesterday was Amanda Congdon will no longer be hosting the show.
There is some confusion on who initiated the split. RocketBoom has temporarily posted this on their homepage:
“Amanda Congdon has decided to move to L.A. to pursue opportunities that have arisen for her in Hollywood.
We wanted to meet her demands to move production out to L.A., however, we are a small company and have not been able to figure out a way to make it work, financially and in many other ways at this time. While we continue to remain with open arms, Amanda has in fact quit and left Rocketboom. So sadly, we bid Amanda adieu and wish her all the best.
Rocketboom goes on.
Andrew Baron, the founder and creator of Rocketboom, will stay with the company in New York and will continue to produce and direct the show. We are in the daunting process of recruiting a replacement for Amanda.
While Amanda will be sorely missed, we have big plans for Rocketboom and are determined to make the show better than ever.
After Field Week and a week on hiatus, we know that you are hungry for the news! Rocketboom will be back with a news episode and an interim host this MONDAY, JULY 10.”
Amanda has a video farewell, and a followup letter telling her side of the story (too long to be quoted here, so go check them out).
It looks like a fairly messy split, and unfortunately, we the viewers are caught in the middle. I’m sad to see Amanda go, and I hope everything works out for both sides.
UPDATE: Not to poke too much fun at an uncomfortable situation, but apparently Rocketboom has found a replacement. Found via Steve Garfield
Flash-based slideshows from iPhoto
If you’re not familiar with Simple Viewer or Postcard Viewer, they are great little Flash-based image gallery applications made by Airtight Interactive. They’ve always been pretty easy to use, but they did require you to make your own Thumbnails, and edit the XML files for the shows you want to make, or to install certain server-side scripts.
Fortunately, thanks to this great tip over at MacOSXHints.com, I discovered a great iPhoto plugin called Custom HTML Export. It allows you to export these two great flash galleries (among others), directly from iPhoto… No coding required. Best of all, it’s free!
Pleix
Want to see some great short films? Head on over to Pleix.
“Pleix is a virtual community of digital artists based in Paris. Some of us are 3D artists, some others are musicians or graphic designers. This website is the perfect place to share our latest creations.”
I personally really like the “Birds” Movie. I can’t tell you what it means, but it sure is fun to watch.
Found via Advertising / Design Goodness
Did Sony cross the line?
Sony’s new ad campaign for the white PSP is drawing a lot of attention, and I can see why. Sony has come out and said that they didn’t mean any racial implications, but I can’t really see how it didn’t cross their minds that people would interpret them that way.
Was someone asleep at the wheel when they approved these ads, or does sony follow the old saying, “There’s no such thing as bad publicity”?
Personally, I think these are in bad taste.
Found via Engadget | Additional photos here
UPDATE (7.13.06): Apparently Sony has seen the error of their ways. The ads have been pulled.
New posts coming…
Wow, it’s been a week since I’ve posted anything. That doesn’t happen very often. Between work, Maggie Moo, and the new Photoblog, I’ve been a little busy… but I didn’t mean to neglect one digital life. I should have some new posts up a little later today.