This upgrade is to further increase the scalability and reliability of Google Analytics to meet the demand of an increasing number of enterprises using Google Analytics.

All Google Analytics data unaffected

According to the post, the upgrade process will not result in any lost statistical data, as Trevor Claiborne goes on to say;

Rest assured your website traffic data will be unaffected and there will be no interruption to data collection or processing. All reports will be available and accessible to users.

However, for some limited hours, users will not be able to perform administrative account actions such as opening new accounts, creating or modifying profiles, setting up filters and goals, managing user access, etc.

It seems that if all goes according to plan, there will be a minimum of disruption for Google Analytics users.  More details will be posted directly to your Google Analytics admin panel (in fact, they should be there already.)

You can check out the Google Analtics blog here.

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The coverage is all about how important it is not to lose these websites, as they are a part of the Internet’s heritage.  They say that we don’t want to lose these sites for ever – Good point.

But – The service already exists!

There’s already internationally respected archives, like The Internet Archive, which have done exactly this, for years!  Right now, you can pull up an old copy of almost any website or copies of deleted websites, simply by entering their URL into The Way Back Machine.

I thought to begin with, that no one at the BBC or The British Library had heard of the other archive providers, but I was wrong.  A long article on the BBC website, which restates the need for this service, ends with the following:

Other informal projects – such as the WayBack Machine – also exist.

Of course, that statement pretty much renders the entire article as pointless and shows why there’s no real need for the service. I LOVE the British Library and what they do, but cannot see why they are selling this idea as something new.

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However, a recent report by the guys at Internet security firm Impervia, suggests that Internet users are still relying on the same kind of predictable passwords that they used a decade ago.

Password strength

Impervia released a list of the top 20 passwords, which were found when RockYou.com was hacked last month.  According to Impervia, these were strikingly similar to the passwords used on Hotmail.com, when that too was breached almost 20 years ago!

Starting with the most commonly used, the 20 most popular passwords were:

1. 123456
2. 12345
3. 123456789
4. Password
5. iloveyou
6. princess
7. rockyou
8. 1234567
9. 12345678
10. abc123
11. Nicole
12. Daniel
13. babygirl
14. monkey
15. Jessica
16. Lovely
17. michael
18. Ashley
19. 654321
20. Qwerty

It’s clear for all to see that many people are still using predictable strings of letters and numbers and names as their passwords.  Obviously, if you are using ANY of these, it’s a good idea to change it for something stronger; to avoid the risk of a brute force attack.

Password tips

A pdf on the Impervia website gives some more detail AND some good advice on how to build strong, memorable, passwords.

Image credit: The English Guy

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This follows on from their declaration last year; that a broadband Internet connection is a human right – and that every home in Finland will have a minimum 1 megabit per second connection.

100 megabit connection by 2015

The plan is for every home or business is to be within 2 kilometres of a super fats, 100 megabits fibre connection.  Whilst some homes will need to face the cost of that last 2 kilometres of fibre, it’s an opportunity that’s a pipe dream (sorry for the pun) for most of us.

When you consider that the population of Finland is under 6 million, yet its population is spread over an area that’s roughly the same size as the UK and Ireland combined, this is quite a project.

Well done Finland

I applaud the Fins for aiming at such a lofty goal.  I also hope it encourages (or shames) other governments to start investing in the kind of broadband infrastructure that people and businesses need.

Photo: Mauroguanandi

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I think you “might” be disappointed!

See, I have a hunch that what we are about to see is essentially a bigger iPod touch; with a few bells and whistles because of the extra space and horsepower.  In other words, a slim, multi-touch tablet, with a beautiful display and some sweet software. Software and user experience is where I believe the magic will be.

Here’s what I think the BIG Apple story will be

I’m expecting the BIG part of the announcement to be less about the actual Apple hardware and MORE about how this new, bigger multi-touch device will encourage people to use computers in a different way.  The form factor ’should’ be about right for a multi-user device, which would be used by the whole family to watch video, read the papers, surf and connect with the whole social media / social networking world.

It’s no secret (any more) that Apple have been speaking with newspaper / magazine publishers.  Equally, Kindle owners seem to love reading on a tablet size device – but are often frustrated at the lack of functionality.  The new Apple device will, I predict, solve that problem and offer a ton of great software features.

It’s a no-brainer that the device will look great and be slim (it’s Apple after all.)  But I genuinely feel that those just looking for the kind of amazing game-changing hardware advances made by the first iPhone will be disappointed. I think the game changing part will be the user experience.

Let’s see!

What do you think?

Get your prediction in before the big announcement and show what a total smart-ass you are!

Image: The Pug Father

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TWiT – This week in tech

Top of the pile by a mile is The TWiT network. TWiT is a collection of over a dozen tech related podcasts; from the daddy of tech podcasting: Leo Laporte.

Leo is probably the most respected (and copied) podcaster / broadcaster in the business and has won every award worth winning.  His wide range of tech knowledge and his broadcasting style are, in my opinion, unsurpassed anywhere.

Leo’s podcasts (which he often refers to as netcasts) pull in huge international audiences and because of his reputation, Leo attracts top people from the world of technology and tech news on his shows.  Regulars on his shows include; Patrick Norton, John C Dvorak, Jason Calacanis, Steve Gibson, Paul Thurrott, Roger Chang, Molly Wood and Tom Merritt – Plus many, many more.

The TWiT network is easily the best collection of tech related podcasts available anywhere and I can’t recommend it highly enough.  By the way, you can also watch Leo’s shows being streamed live, which is always well worth watching if you get the chance!

Side note: Leo Laporte is also one of the inspirations behind me starting this tech blog (Thanks Leo.)

Crave

Crave is cnet.com’s UK gadget blog and the quality of writing there is consistently excellent. Written in a slightly different style to cnet.com, Crave offers news and reviews of the latest gadgets and also gives expert opinion on tech related news.

Bloggers include Nate Laxnon (their senior editor), Rory Reid, Rich Trenholm, Flora Graham and Ian Morris.

I highly recommend you subscribe to the cnet.uk podcast – especially if you already love Buzz Out Loud from Cnet.com.

The BBC website technology pages

The technology section of the bbc.co.uk website is essential tech reading for one extremely good reason: It’s fully independent!

Respected worldwide for its journalistic independence, this is perhaps the best place to find out what’s going on – without wondering if what you are reading is being written or altered, to keep a sponsor happy.  For those who don’t know, the site carries no sponsorships or advertising, so is free to say what it believes, without having to spin anything out.

Whilst I would like to see it updated more regularly, the quality of the writing makes up for the lack of content.

There’s also a tech news blog called dot.life, which is worth checking out.  My favourite writer there’s Rory Cellen-Jones.

I hope you find these recommendations useful.  If you do, please share them!

Image credits: Leo Laporte, CNET & The BBC

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By following that one list on Twitter, you can keep up with Twitter updates from the tech news providers, who I trust for their opinions (and entertainment value in a few cases too.) By the way, if you look at the Twitter widget on the sidebar of this blog, it’s a live feed of all the people on that list.

If you want to add the Twitter List widget to your blog, you can get it here.

So, is there anyone missing from this list that you think I should add?  If so, let me know!

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Originally, the blog was on the Thesis theme; which is one of the cleanest looking Wordpress themes on the planet. However, I found Thesis way too hard to adapt and modify myself.

For a few months, I tried using a glossy looking theme, but it looked way too glossy; like a technology website (CNET / ZDNET) – rather than a tech news blog (Scobleizer / LouisGray.Com)

Whilst I wanted the clean simplicity of Thesis, I needed a theme that gave me 100% freedom to design, tweak and modify the blog myself – without having to learn HTML/CSS or hire a expert.  So, I decided to use Headway (I’m now an affiliate) instead.

On Thursday, I added the Headway theme to the blog and in less than 30 minutes, everything was ready!

You know what?  I’ve often spent twice that long looking for how to make one change to a blog, than it took me to configure this whole blog using Headway.  The design you see right now may not be what you personally like, but I assure you it’s exactly the way I want it to look – with zero compromise.

Quick overview of Headway

I am not going to bore you with an insane list of what this theme can do, so here’s a tiny example of things that I was able to do in less than 60 seconds.  Nothing I have done here required me touching the code – it’s all drag and drop baby!

• With 2 clicks of a mouse, I can change where the top navigation menu sits; either above the header, below the header or turn it off and have it some place else completely.
• I can also add drop down menus to the navigation bar.
• Oh, and I can drag the navigation buttons into whatever order I want.
• I can change the size / dimensions of the blog in seconds.
• In seconds, I can resize any content area, simply by dragging it across the screen with my mouse.
• The same is true of the sidebars.
• Plus, I can make sidebars look totally different on each page. For example:
  • Imagine you have a page on your blog, which sells your services. The sidebar for that page could be an animated list of testimonials.
• I can change the header image in seconds. No FTP access required and as with everything else in this list, no need to touch the CSS either.
• As far as I can see, I can change the colour of everything / anything in seconds.
• Simply by pointing and clicking, I can change the font, font size and font colour of text.
• I can also change the colour of hyper-links to anything, in just 2 clicks.
• I can add a new header image in seconds, without even using FTP!
• I can set the blog to automatically send each new post to Twitter, as soon as it’s published.
• There’s stacks more things I could add here.

If you are a blogger and want full control over your blog, using drag and drop – you need to check out Headway(affiliate link.)

Full disclosure

Headway is the first theme I have ever been an affiliate of and the first product I have ever promoted on this blog as an affiliate. It’s simply amazing and has transformed the way I blog.  It’s also saved me hundreds, by being able to do everything, in minutes, myself.  As you will have seen, I give full disclosure when I link to an affiliate site. It may look weird, but I believe in total transparency.

If you want to take control of your blog and get great, professional results (without having to wait for or pay for professional help), I strongly recommend you take a good look at Headway.

Check the video’s out by clicking the banner below!

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Twitter business model to include advertising?

This got me thinking.  In recent weeks, Twitter has made a number of significant improvements to the functionality of the main Twitter website.  Most recently we saw the addition of the superb Twitter Lists feature, but Twitter are ALSO working on a new retweet feature too.  These improvements have one thing in common; they render web-based apps like Tweetdeck and (my favourite) Seesmic Desktop less and less essential.

Both Tweetdeck & Seesmic Desktop are superb apps, but they are also a lot more resource hungry, than simply using a browser to access the Twitter website. Now that users are able to get all the core functionality direct from Twitter.com, using their favourite lightweight browser – There’s less motivation for NEW Twitter users to bother installing the aforementioned Twitter apps.

The Twitter team are actively, suddenly doing everything they can to make Twitter.com stickier.  Obviously, this keeps MORE new users on Twitter.com.

Here’s why I think these recent moves by Twitter are so interesting, from a business model point of view.

Twitter’s business model puzzle

One of the biggest challenges Twitter has had to deal with, is how to turn the popularity of the service into an effective business model.  A big reason that this has been such a challenge, is that only a small percentage of tweets are sent via Twitter.com.  As a result, Twitter gets just a small percentage of the ‘eyeballs’ it could have; rendering Twitter.com far less attractive for potential advertisers.

I believe the recent introduction of Twitter Lists, project retweet and now the new ‘updates’ feature,  show that Twitter is focusing hard on developing a key part of their business model around advertising on Twitter.com.  As I mentioned some time ago, Twitter users in some Asian countries already see small banner ads on Twitter.com.

Conclusion

Whilst many longer term users will want to stick with their favourite Twitter desktop apps, there’s less and less reason for new desk-based users to want to use them.  This should see a significant increase in the number of people using Twitter.com and as a result, transform the site into a more attractive platform for future advertisers.

Very few users of Twitter are likely to object to ads, particularly if they are somehow targeted around the user’s tweets, so they are relevant.  Maybe Twitter users with an objection, could opt to pay a fee to have these ads removed; like wordpress.com do for their users.

What do you think?

BTW: You can follow me on Twitter here @thetechnewsblog

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DSGi, one of the UK’s biggest computer retailers, said that they have had more pre-orders for Windows 7 in the past 3 weeks than they had for Windows Vista in a year!

Windows 7 free upgrade from Vista – The argument

As long time readers will know, I believe Windows 7 should be given to Windows Vista users, as a free upgrade.

Many Windows Vista users feel they were unpaid beta testers and that Microsoft has used their time and their error reporting with Vista, to help them produce Windows 7.  I agree!  In fact, many people have suggested that Windows 7 should have been rolled out as a Service pack for Vista.

These users should either get a free copy of Windows 7 OR AT LEAST a massively discounted copy.

Microsoft’s Windows 7 PR blunder

Microsoft’s latest OS is superb and if you are a Widows user, you will almost certainly love it.  It’s just a pity that Microsoft didn’t use the launch of Windows 7, to win back some good faith from millions of angry Vista users.  These people are now using an inferior OS and have to cough-up if they want to use an OS, which I believe they deserve for free.  I blogged about this here.

What do you think?

Should you have to pay for Windows 7, if you already own Vista?

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