Google AdSense Reports in Analytics - More Screenshots

Source: http://www.labnol.org/internet/google-analytics-adsense-reports-screenshots/4480/

AdSense publishers will soon have access to extremely detailed stats about ads via Google Analytics reports.

You’ll know about web pages that get more clicks, revenue generated per page, CPM rates, top referring sites, etc.  For more, check this story on AdSense and Analytics integration.

The screenshots were inadvertently published on TheGoogleCache.com and were cached by different newsreaders. Here are more screenshots from the same source that give exciting hints about what’s coming next. (click to enlarge)

AdSense Overview

There’s a new AdSense section added to the Analytics Reports that displays complete statistics about how visitors interact with Google Ads on your site and how have the ads performed over time.

Top AdSense Content

This report gives a consolidated view of AdSense earnings made along with information like clicks per page, CTR, CPM and total number of ad impressions.

AdSense Trending

This Analytics report will give an overview of how your AdSense earnings have changed over time (like your site traffic in Google Trends).

AdSense Revenue Per Page

This report is similar to the ‘Top AdSense Content’ report but that was for the entire site and this is on the page level.

Top AdSense Referrers

Let’s say site abc.com and xyz.com have linked to a page on you are website and you are getting referral traffic. With the AdSense Referrer report, you’ll know the exact revenue that you are making from visitors that are coming to you via two different sources.

Great for AdSense Revenue Sharing Sites

All these new AdSense - Analytics reports will also be very useful if you plan to have a site / blog with multiple contributors and their payment is a fixed percentage of AdSense Revenue generated from articles that they have written. No complex Excel sheets required anymore.

Google AdSense Reports in Analytics - More Screenshots - Digital Inspiration

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Free Website Building Tools That Are Good Replacements for Google Page Creator

Source: http://www.labnol.org/internet/free-website-building-hosting-tools/4511/

Google Page Creator is awesome - anyone can build a good looking website in minutes using the built-in templates or they can write pages externally (say in Dreamweaver) and upload them to Creator.

And everything is free - there are no ads on your pages and Google takes care of all the web hosting bills. But as they say, all good things come to an end, and so is Google Page Creator getting replaced by Google Sites.

Compare Google Sites with Google Page Creator

While Google Sites and Google Pages have common feature (like the WYSIWYG AJAX editor), they are still quite different. For instance, you can’t upload HTML pages to Google Sites and are therefore limited to using one of the built-in themes for your site design.

The second issue is that if you make a Google Site public, the associated ’site activity log’ also becomes public - most website publisher will have reservations sharing this data with unknown visitors. Lastly, all external hyperlinks are ‘nofollow’ if that means anything to you.

Free Alternatives to Google Page Creator

Here’s a roundup of some website building services that are free and non-technical.

1. Office Live Small Business - While the name may suggest that the service is only for small business owners, just about anyone can create their website here.

Website Builder inside Office Live Small Business

Office Live is easy and filled with goodies - you have tons of professional web templates and color themes to choose from, there’re ready-made modules for common tasks like web forms, photo galleries, live maps,  email newsletters, etc. plus you can also upload office documents to the website.

Everything is free including web hosting and server space. See a sample site.

2. Weebly - This is powerful but very user friendly and easy web page builder where you start with a blank canvas and build the page by dragging elements that include text, videos, pictures, maps and more.

Geeks can write their own HTML and add them to Weebly pages. There’s support for Google ads as well so you can even monetize sites created inside Weebly. Another advantage - site publishers download their full site with pictures and CSS as a zip file. Free users gets 100 MB of free storage space and there’re no bandwidth limitations. See sample site.

3. Snap Pages - This is Flash based website editor that is very beautiful and may be a perfect place if you looking to create a small website for sharing some photos and your calendar. The options are slightly limited for non-premium users as they can’t create new pages. See sample site.

4. Edicy Pages - It’s a new website creation tool that is just perfect for the techie crowd who wants more control over their site layout.

Start by picking a design from the template gallery and then you may completely change the look and feel of your site by editing the blog template similar to WordPress themes or Blogger template. It also supports JavaScript code and like Google Sites, Edicy tracks all changes made to a site. See example site.

 

5. Synthasite - This is again an easy yet very powerful tool for building websites but unlike competition, Syntasite is completely free. Images uploaded to Synthasite can be diretly edited in Picnik just like you have in Flickr. The tool also lets you embed Google AdSense ads in web pages much like Weebly. See example site.

Some more site builders worth checking out are WebOn, WebSketch, Viviti, Wix and Webs.

• Know Everything about Websites
• How to Completely Test a Website

Free Website Building Tools That Are Good Replacements for Google Page Creator - Digital Inspiration

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Build a Web Page Monitor with Google Docs and Track Changes Automatically

Source: http://www.labnol.org/internet/monitor-web-pages-changes-with-google-docs/4536/

RSS feeds have completely changed the way we consume information on the web. You no longer have to visit The New York Times or CNN every hour of the day to check news headlines because the feed reader is doing that for you behind the scenes.

The only problem is that not all web content is available via feeds. For instance, Amazon, eBay and Google Product Search (Froggle) are good places to find discount deals on books and electronic gadgets but unfortunately, none of these shopping sites publish feeds.

Monitor Web Pages with Google Docs

Problem: Let’s say you are looking for some discount deals on iPod Nano. An option here is that you open Google Products page and search for iPod Nano. If you don’t find the right price, repeat the same cycle next day. This may sound easy but imagine doing this for ten other products on five different shopping sites. Tedious, right?

Solution: What we can do here is build a simple spreadsheet in Google Docs that will monitor prices across all these search pages and will present them in a table so you don’t just track prices but also compare them at the same time.

To get started, you need access to Google Docs and some basic knowledge of XPath. Don’t let this scare you - XPath is a simple way to access information contained inside HTML web pages. For instance, if you want to know about all URLs that are mentioned on any web page, the XPath expression would be //a[@href]. Some more examples:

//strong means all the items in the web page with strong html tags

//@href means all the items in the web page with href element, i.e., the URLs in that page.

If you feel that writing XPath expressions is a tricky job, get the XPath checker add-on for Firefox that will help you easily determine the XPath of any element on a web page.

Import Data from Websites into Google Docs using XPath

This is the search page for ‘ipod nano’ inside Google Products. As you may noticed already, the result title is formatted with CSS class "ps-large-t" while the the product price using the class "ps-larger-t" - you can easily find these class names via Firebug or  from the HTML source.

 

Now we’ll create a table inside Google spreadsheet that will have the name, price and URL that will link to that product listing in Google Docs. You can use the same approach to get product data from other sites like Amazon, eBay, Buy.com, etc.

Here’s how the final spreadsheet looks like - all this is live data and will update automatically if the corresponding information is updated on Google Products.

Get External Data in Google Docs with ImportXML

As you may have seen in the previous tutorial on Google Docs, there’re built-in spreadsheet functions to help you easily import external data into Google Docs. One such useful function is ImportXML that, like ImportHTML, can be used for screen-scrapping.

The syntax is =ImportXML("web page URL", "XPath Expression")

Coming back to the spreadsheet, in order to fetch the price of ‘ipod nano’, we type the following formula:

=ImportXML("www.google.com/products?q=ipod+nano","//b[@class='ps-larger-t']")

You may replace ‘ipod nano’ with any other product name like ‘harry+potter’, ‘nikon+d60′, etc.

To enter this function into Google Docs, click an empty cell, press F2 and paste. See this Google Docs movie:

Similarly, for the product name, we use this formula:

=ImportXML("www.google.com/products?q=ipod+nano","//a[@class='ps-large-t']")

And for the URL (product hyperlink), the formula is:

=ImportXML("http://www.google.com/products?q=ipod+nano","//a[@class='ps-large-t']//@href")

You need to concatenate this with ‘http://www.google.com’ since Google Products uses relative URLs. This can be easily fixed by adding another column with the formula

=HYPERLINK("http://www.google.com/"&B3,"click here")

Related: Import data from HTML Web Pages into Excel

Subscribe to Web Page Changes via Feeds

You don’t have to check this Google Docs Spreadsheet manually to see if prices have since yesterday - just select publish   followed by "Automatically re-publish when changes are made" and subscribe to the document in your favorite RSS reader.

The author is an Excel whiz kid and blogs at Pointy Haired Dilbert, a virtual gold mine of tips related to data manipulation & visualization through Excel and other spreadsheet programs.

Build a Web Page Monitor with Google Docs and Track Changes Automatically - Digital Inspiration

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Peugeot Concept Cars of Tomorrow Have Propellers, Joysticks [Future Cars]

Source: http://feeds.gawker.com/~r/gizmodo/full/~3/391703946/peugeot-concept-cars-of-tomorrow-have-propellers-joysticks

If Gundam mated with Will Smith's Audi in I, Robot, the offspring would resemble these futuristic concept cars from European brand Peugeot. The cars car-like vehicles were all entries in the 2008 Peugeot Design Contest. Designers were asked by organizers to create vehicles for that ambiguous but tantalizing "city of the future." Areas of focus included environmental awareness, "social harmony," interactive mobility and efficiency. As you can see in the "Blade" vehicle above, efficiency is improved with the wind turbine that designer Ying Hui Choo added to charge an on-board electric battery.

The 888, designed by Oskar Johansen, pivots at the center and reduces its size for "easier parking, maneuverability and increased visibility."

Emre Yazici's "EGO" has two wheels and is controlled Atari-style with a joystick. The windshield doubles as the door. [Telegraph]

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iPhone Modem App Promises 10 Second iPhone Tethering [Jailbreak Apps]

Source: http://feeds.gawker.com/~r/gizmodo/full/~3/391814937/iphone-modem-app-promises-10-second-iphone-tethering

Just released yesterday, iPhone Modem for the Cydia jailbreak application repository promises tethering your laptop to your iPhone in just ten seconds. We haven't gotten around to jailbreaking our own yet, but this one is supposedly even easier than the official NetShare tethering app in the official App Store. ModMyiPhone forum says it works just fine on both MacBook and MacBook Pro. Careful using this on AT&T, since too much tethering data usage you're not actively "paying" for will get you neutered. [modmyiphone]

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3M reveals MPro110 pocket projector: ships this month

Source: http://feeds.engadget.com/~r/weblogsinc/engadget/~3/391384947/

Filed under: Displays

It's official: the age of the pico projector has arrived. And we're not talking the age of pico projector announcements, we're talking about launches. Just after Toshiba came clean with its LED Pico Projector, along comes 3M (of all companies) with one of its own. The MPro110 pocket beamer got handled by PopSci, and the results were pretty much as we'd expect. Decently bright, extraordinarily novel, but not exactly world-class. Brightness (the lack thereof, actually) was an issue, and a few movie scenes were deemed "indecipherable." Additionally, it has no built-in speaker, but for just $359, we suppose that's an omission we can live with. Best of all, this one's set to ship on September 30th. To America. Woo!

[Via AboutProjectors]

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Dell's Mini 9 netbook gets unboxed on video

Source: http://feeds.engadget.com/~r/weblogsinc/engadget/~3/391721719/

Filed under: Laptops

We already found that Dell was shipping out the first wave of Mini 9s to eager consumers, so it's perfectly logical to see that at least one particular owner was able to stifle his excitement long enough to video the unboxing process and upload it to the intartubez. Not like there's anything there you'll be shocked about, but the comparison shots with a much beefier sibling really puts things in perspective. Check it out in the read link.

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SSD shootout, round II: OCZ, Super Talent and Mtron do battle

Source: http://feeds.engadget.com/~r/weblogsinc/engadget/~3/391805488/

Filed under: Storage

If you'll recall, a slew of prohibitively expensive SSDs were pit against one another last summer in a battle royale of pricey HDD replacements. Fast forward a year and change, and the barrier to entry for one of these heralded devices has dropped significantly. That being the case, we've a feeling HotHardware's latest shootout will be a whole lot more relevant for the average joe / jane. The aforementioned test simultaneously reviews the OCZ Core Series 64GB MLC, OCZ 64GB Standard SLC, Super Talent MasterDrive MX 64GB MLC and the Mtron MSP 7500 32GB SLC. Interestingly, the writeup didn't conclude with a medal ceremony, but rather, it elaborated on the merits of each and where it would likely fit best. You know what that means -- time to bust out the spectacles and get to readin'. Chop chop!

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