Where do I start from?

First, go to http://www.google.com/analytics.

In the top bar, you can choose to either sign in to the service or create a new account.

• If you have a Google-enabled email account already, choose “Sign in”. This will be the email address associated with your Google Analytics activities.
• If you do not have a Google-enabled email account, choose “Create an account” and follow the wizard there. You can set any email address you have to be enabled as a Google account – you are not limited to just a gmail address. Simply configure your account (you will need to validate the email account – Google will send you a validation link) and you can now log in to the system.

OK, I’m logged in. Now what?

Next post, we will focus on actually setting up and configuring your account. You may already have some websites set up to be reviewed under Google Analytics so the next section may not help you any, but with the recent interface it may assist too. I`ll make that posting within the next few days.

Basically, this system will allow developers on iOS, Android and BlackBerry devices (no Windows Phone 7 yet – I asked) extend their applications to be able to communicate with the in-vehicle system. The newer system has 10,000+ commands that can be spoken by the driver so they don’t have to take their hands off of the wheel and can keep their eyes on the road, which is what Ford is striving for.

The presentation included the team lead from the Ford offices in Michigan for the technology who answered a number of questions, including mentioning that WP7 is on the radar but not currently available. As well, not every product will be approved to communicate with the system – Ford will curate all requests and determine which ones will be permitted to integrate. They do focus on quality (no fart apps while driving on voice command!) and will also focus on applications that make sense for a driver – in other words, nothing video is permitted as that would be distracting to a driver, but applications that focus on audio or communication that can be performed hands-free would be likely candidates.

On-hand for the event were a few local media outlets, and I was interviewed for both. The newest daily newspaper in Winnipeg – the Metro – was around for the entire presentation and spoke to myself and others about the event. As well, the local CTV affiliate showed up and interviewed myself and Kevin Knatiuk, the director of New Media Manitoba, about possible application development for the system. Winnipeg is a relatively unknown technical hub, and we have tons of potential and great talent here. We have probably one of the largest independent game and mobile application developer communities in Canada. Never mind the fact that the company I work for, DMT Development Systems Group, focuses exclusively on the automotive industry which made this event a perfect connection for me to attend.

This was an exciting event to attend as, to my understanding, it is the only one in North America at this time where a community of developers was invited to get some first-hand information. Exciting times for Winnipeg, indeed!

So what is it?

Simply, Google Analytics is a library you can include within your website in order to get information on how people are using your website. It’s history is long…

Google Analytics was originally known as Urchin, which was a piece of software created by a company of the same name. Some years back, Urchin was purchased by Google and then there were 2 services offered: Urchin, which you could purchase and license but you had to host everything on your own infrastructure; or, Google Analytics, where the hosting and service components are managed in their entirety on Google’s server farm. Since that time, there have been iterations of both pieces of software. Google Analytics (or GA) has since upgraded its service to Version 5 to be asynchronous with its tracking code, which permits you to track visits and information in real time (this is actually pretty cool!). Urchin, however, seems to have reached the end of its life cycle. As I write this on March 31, Google will no longer be selling the tool after today (so if you really want it, you better get it now!). To replace Urchin, Google has recently launched a premium service, which is a paid system, that replaces Urchin but is hosted on Google’s environment. It provides you a better SLA for uptime and support, but also provides you more information that you can track (more on that later…).

How do I use it?

GA is added to your site by a block of JavaScript code that is added to every page within your site. The JavaScript code sets a first-party cookie on your machine that identifies you and the site you are looking at. Wait, it identifies me? Anonymously. There is no personally identifiable information stored about you in the cookie – it simply says that you are a user and these are the pages you visited. I, as a website manager, will never know that Bobby or Sally visited the site – only that a few people visited the site and these are the most viewed pages and actions. It is a way for a website manager to be able to understand the most important elements of your site to your visitors and understand how people are using it, but conversely to also understand what they are NOT looking at.

Why JavaScript?

Google needed a way to place the tracking system on your website without touching your infrastructure. JavaScript was the simplest way to integrate without impacting how website developers built their sites. With the sheer number of technologies available – .NET, Java, Ruby on Rails, PHP, even static HTML – there needed to be a way to utilize this with all of the site, and a scripting language that gets executed within the confines of the browser made the most sense. It can hit the largest amount of sites with no impact to an individual’s or company’s methodology of implementing their site.

OK, you’ve sold me that it sounds like I need it. How do I get started?

First, go to the Google Analytics home page and you get started by creating an account. All you need is an email address to get started.

I need more! That’s not enough information!

I’m going to begin a small series on setting up and working with Google Analytics to get your sites set up for monitoring. This is as the title implies – an introduction. I’ll be adding a few posts a week on this topic to start filling in the gaps. If there are specific questions, post a comment and I’ll do what I can to respond.
]]> http://mindfulsanity.com/blog/2012/03/google-analytics-introduction/feed/ 2 http://mindfulsanity.com/blog/2012/03/prairie-dev-con-west-2012-responsive-web-design/ http://mindfulsanity.com/blog/2012/03/prairie-dev-con-west-2012-responsive-web-design/#comments Tue, 27 Mar 2012 17:12:00 +0000 kelly http://mindfulsanity.com/?p=10 Continue reading →]]> A couple of weeks back, I was again honoured to be a presenter at the Prairie Developer Conference, but this time in Calgary, Alberta. It was a great week, lots of interesting conversations, and a lot of fun.

While there, I did my first presentation on the topic of Responsive Web Design. What is that?

The practice of Responsive Web Design stems from having only one site that delivers to content to a screen of any size – phone, tablet, laptop, monitor, TV. By designing with a responsive practice in mind, the user will be able to consume the same content (more or less) wherever they are. This is not for all sites, mind you, but it can help a number of sites in terms of content management as you only ever need to manage a single site. The layout of the site needs to be flexible, though, and needs to be designed with this in mind from the ground up. There are a number of practices devoted to “mobile first” practices; basically, determine what you need for your smallest screen as that will be your baseline. Then, as needs require, add functionality as you scale upwards. Although this is a valid practice, it should not be taken as gospel for all sites – some sites may explicitly require a different version for a phone device due to functionality as well as considering performance and bandwidth usage for your end user.

The presentation materials are available here for download. I’ll be posting additional information on responsive design as time goes on as I do feel it is a valid practice, with the implementation in mind from the get-go.

• Loading the library from a CDN versus local hosting
• Basic and advanced selectors and DOM manipulation
• Ajax integration
• jQuery Mobile
• jQuery UI
• Basics of plugins

Some of the feedback I had was that the plugin technology and how to build your plugins would be a nice topic to have seen. I think maybe I’ll prepare that one for a future conference and maybe a series of blog posts.

For those that attended, thank you again for attending and I hope you got something out of it! As mentioned, here are the presentation materials.

Cheers!

To those who are looking for the files and examples I posted from the Prairie Developer Conference West 2012, I will be creating a new post with those files tonight (March 26). The files will be back up shortly.

I am hoping that this site will be updated much more frequently but it will all depend on work, personal life, and the sheer amount of caffeine I will have ingested on any given day.

But… here goes nothing! Starting fresh. Again. Hopefully for the last time!