A (Somewhat) Universal Inbox
I’m sure that there’ll be some people reading this who will figure that I’m a bit slow for not having done this sooner, but seeing as how all of my domains use Google Apps to manage the email, I went into the settings for each account and had them all forward on to one specific address, making the daily email run a little simpler.
Once mail starts coming in to the catch-all address, I’ll start applying filters so that the amount of mail that I absolutely *have* to read. I realized that I hadn’t been checking all of them regularly, and I’m a little surprised at the amount of spam that got through Google’s filters. No matter, though, I’ll just mark the stuff as spam and it’ll be gone for good.
Now if I could just find something that would forward voice mail from my cell to this same inbox, I’d be really happy.
Page Rank Is A Weird Thing
This morning Tyler was telling me about his ongoing PR issues with Google, and I decided to check the page rank score for rodtempleton.net for the first time in about 4 months.. Turns out that it’s back up to 4 after sinking as low as 2 not too long ago. This got me to thinking.
Over the last little while, Tyler’s been a lot more active with his posting than I have, and yet my PR goes up, while his goes into the tank. But if you search my name in Google, 8 of the 10 results on the first page relate to me (only #3 and #6 aren’t links to me - gotta get working on that). And it’s been that way for years - good search results in Google, and lousy Page Rank.
It kind of makes me wonder if PR is the thing that bloggers should be chasing. Seriously, if every result on the first page relates to quality content that you’ve provided, does it even matter what the page rank for the site is? The only thing I ever use the Google Toolbar for is to check my own PR, and that’s only 3 or 4 times per year. I don’t use it to check other sites, and a PR of 1 or 2 isn’t going to make me doubt the information on a site if I find it useful.
It’s sort of like the Technorati craze a year or two ago where the only thing that mattered was getting into the top 10,000 and then then the top 1000, and finally the top 100. It doesn’t matter what your score is if you’ve got crap content.
I’m sure that PR plays a part in Google’s search results somehow, but if it does, they’re obviously not going to explain exactly how, and I wouldn’t expect them to.
But I just don’t think that PR is holy grail that bloggers should be chasing.
If you think I’m wrong, please tell me.
Google Analytics Suite for Adobe Air
As I was checking my feeds earlier today, I came across a post on Lifehacker about the Top 10 Apps Worth Installing Adobe AIR For and I had a quick scan of the list to see what all was included. To be honest, the only reason I’ve installed AIR was to use Twhirl as my Twitter client. But maybe this list would give me an idea of what else was available.
I was glad to see that Twhirl was included at number 5, but nothing else really caught my attention, until I saw the top 2: the ReaderAIR Google Reader client, and the Google Analytics Reporting Suite, which I’m going to cover here.
One of the things that I love about the Analytics Reporting Suite (ARS) is that it is *fast*. Stats seem to come up a whole lot quicker than what I’ve found in the web based version. I also find it a little easier to interpret the stats that I get from the ARS, but that might just be me. I’m hardly what you’d call an expert at analyzing web stats.
Unfortunately, my connection has been a little flaky tonight, so I’m not able to download it for my home machine and get screenshots. But I’ll grab some captures tomorrow morning and re-edit this post, adding them in at that time.
If you’re looking for a new way to get your Google Analytics stats presented, you couldn’t really go wrong by downloading the Google Analytics Reporting Suite. If you’ve got AIR installed on your machine, give it a try.
Review: Logiix Optic Alloy Case for 2nd Gen iPod Nano
For the last year and a half or so, I’ve had a black Logiix silicone skin on my 2nd generation iPod Nano, and I’ve been more than impressed with it. iPods have a tendency to scratch fairly easily, although I hadn’t seen much of this with mine, thankfully.
But it was getting to be time for a new skin, as the Nano was starting to slide out the bottom of the skin and I had visions of it bouncing off the floor sometime. Not something that you want to have happen.
So I decided that I’d see what I could do about picking up a new silicone skin, preferably something other than black, as it was time for a change. Headed to the store where I’d purchased my last one, and they didn’t seem to have any for the 2nd generation Nanos. Lots for the 3rd gen, but I didn’t feel like buying a new iPod just to get a skin for it, y’know?
As I was getting ready to leave, I saw that they were on a different rack, kind of out of the way, so I spun the rack around looking for something that caught my eye. That turned out to be the price. Silicone skins were marked down from $12.99 to just 99 cents. Cool. Sometimes obsolescence can be a good thing. I wound up buying three, a Logiix clear silicone, a black iSeal skin, and a Logixx Optic Alloy case, which was the expensive option ($1.99)
I put the clear Logiix skin on after I bought them and it worked out about as well as its black predecessor had. The one complaint that I have about silicone skins is that you lose a fair bit of sensitivity in the click wheel. The center button will be fine, but dragging my finger on the wheel has been sluggish or even non-responsive at times.
So this morning I opened up the Optic Alloy case to see if it was any different. First thing I noticed was that, being a hard case, the screen protector is built in. I don’t have much in the way of scratching on the display of my Nano, and it’s nice to see that I won’t be getting any more in the foreseeable future.
I slid the Nano into the case, and gave it a spin. The whole thing feels a lot more substantial, and not quite as ‘delicate’ as the Nano felt when it wasn’t encased in the silicone skin. The Nano doesn’t slide around inside the case like it did with the metal one that I bought for my holidays last year. The wheel isn’t covered, so it’s as responsive as I would expect it to be if the device wasn’t encased. The edges are rubber coated as well, so I don’t feel like it’s going to slip out of my hand when I’m trying to find something else to listen to.
Had I known about this case a year and a half ago, I’d have picked one up and used it all along. Of course, then it was probably $39.99, but it would have been worth it.
If you’re not ready to be upgrading your 2nd generation Nano to a 3rd gen, or even a Touch, this would be the case I’d recommend picking up for your device, and quickly if at all possible - I wouldn’t imagine that too many retailers are going to be stocking 2nd gen accessories for too much longer.
I’ve emailed Logiix to ask them if they’ll continue to make the cases available for order online, but the response from them was that the case was no longer available, but new designs were being worked on.
If you’re able to pick up an Optic Alloy case from Logiix for your 2nd gen Nano, I highly recommend doing so. This the only case that I’m going to be keeping on mine until it’s time to upgrade it to something newer.
That’s It for iGoogle
In the last couple of days I decided that I’d try using iGoogle as my start page in Firefox, rather than just the plain old Google page. I’d set it up in the past, so it was already populated with some stuff that I’d previously chosen.
This morning I went to add feeds from a couple of other sites that I wanted to follow on the page - Anywired and Zen Habits. But when I went to add the feeds, the app claimed that it couldn’t find those feeds. Excuse me? These are Feedburner feeds, so they’re even owned by Google (not that probably means a whole lot, though).
Then I tried to add my own feed. Nope. Can’t find that either. So, uh, what’s going on Google? I’ve decided to just go back to using the plain old Google page for a day or two to see if it’s a temporary glitch. If it is, I’ll give the iGoogle setup another shot. Otherwise, maybe I’ll look at something else. Netvibes, for example.
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