Posts Tagged ‘iphone’

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App of the Week: Anaytics Pro by Thomas Blackburn

Saturday, August 14th, 2010
Analytics Pro by Thomas Blackburn

Analytics Pro by Thomas Blackburn, is this the best analytics app on the iPhone?

My app of the week is a very useful analytics client by Thomas Blackburn. I have used a number of analytics apps over the last 12 months and I would say that this is not only the best but also the one that is nearest to Google Analytics itself.

You sign in with your Google Analytics account and you are presented with the profiles that you have set up for your various sites. Pick a profile and then you are able to start to drill down into your chosen sites data. You can start with a summary of visitors for today, yesterday or the last 28 days. There is, of course, the option to set your own date range.

I find with most of the analytics packages that they are OK if you need to check some basic info quickly when you are away from my PC or laptop. You know the sort of thing, you are out shopping when a client calls and asks why they have suddenly had twice the number of enquiries in the last three days. Normally I can check the visitor stats and advise them that in the last three days I have registered their Blog with Feedburner and since then the traffic to the site has doubled, with the bulk of the new visitors coming through Feedburner.

With AnalyticsPro I have a whole raft of information at my finger tips including:

  • Countries
  • Location
  • Language
  • Visitor Loyalty
  • Browser
  • Operating System
  • Traffic Sources
  • Search Keywords
  • AdWords campaigns
  • Plus many more

The app loads quickly and gives you the data you request rapidly, suggesting that the code has been really well optimised. It is a very secure app and uses Google’s API to transmit and receive data.

I think the best endorsement I can give is that during this week I was speaking to a client and we were discussing her AdWords campaign, as a result of information that I gleaned from AnalyticsPro relating to which pages are the most popular on their site we have been able to tweak the AdWords campaign and are looking forward to gaining extra leverage from the clients budget.

I admit I could have reached the same conclusion if I had been at my desk. What surprised me was that we were able to reach the decision while I was sitting on a park bench with my dogs.

The UI is excellent with items nicely spaced out and the app is intuitive to use. This is not an app that I just recommend, this is an app that I have been using all week and will continue to use for the foreseeable future.

You can download Analytics Pro from the Apple App Store. At £3.99 you may think that it is a little pricey for an app, but what price do you put on having information at your fingertips? In my opinion this is the best analytics package for the iPhone.

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Ibiza Sonica App for Iphone

Tuesday, July 27th, 2010

There’s an app for Ibiza Sonica in the iPhone App Store. Download it now and listen to the amazing Dan Tait on Monday evenings!

There is now a new radio button in the app store that gives you access to all sorts of music from all over the world. So check it out, it’ll make a change from Last.fm.

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Finger Physics

Monday, July 26th, 2010

Although I’m supposed to be using my Nexus One exclusively this week I just have to tell you about Finger Physics for the iPhone.

Finger physics is a free game available in the App Store. The game is made up of a couple of hundred levels. Each level is a puzzle that requires you to either build a structure out of shapes or land an egg in a basket.

Sounds simple? Try it. The physics comes in the form of how different objects move or their specific gravity. Some pieces are magnetic and can either attract or repel objects depending on the polarity of the two objects in question.

If you try it leave a comment and let me know what you think of it.

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iOS4 Tip

Tuesday, July 13th, 2010

Here’s a little tip for you iPhone users with iOS4. When you double click your home button you get a list of all the apps that are open. “Yeah, I know that already” I hear you say, but did you know if you slide your finger to the right you get a nifty little iPod controller?

Anybody else got any iOS4 tips?

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Is Developer Discontent Growing With Apple?

Wednesday, June 23rd, 2010

Is discontent among developers growing at Apples rules for iPhone app development http://ow.ly/1qCXz4

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Iphone IOS4 First Impressions

Monday, June 21st, 2010

I downloaded the new operating system for the iPhone, IOS4, about 30 minutes ago. All I can say is it’s amazing, and I’m not even using the iPhone 4. There are a whole host of new features and so far I’ve only tried a few of them.

When you are selling a house they say it needs a “wow” factor. With IOS4 the wow factor begins when you go to your homepage and find that your wallpaper is visible with all your apps on top of it.

Speaking of apps, you can arrange them into folders, so for instance you can put all your games in one folder and all your utilities in another. I used to have 9 screens of apps, I have now got it down to three, with all my apps organised into distinct, ordered groups. People with OCD will amuse and bemuse themselves for hours working out the correct taxonomy for their apps.

Another new feature is a five time optical zoom on the camera and as if that wasn’t enough there is geo tagging of pictures too!

There are many other features such as access to the iBooks store and the much vaunted multitasking ability. I have not had a chance to try these out yet due to the excitement induced by what I have already seen.

It does take a while to download, it took me over two hours, though I have very slow connection speeds here in this quiet backwater. It was, however, well worth the wait.

I remember the joy when I first got an iPhone and virtually everyday I found something new and exciting that I could do with it. I have a feeling that IOS4 is going to elicit a similar response.

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Best of The Web This Week

Thursday, May 27th, 2010

Here are my top three stories from the web this last week:

Use Your iPhone Like a Credit Card
In this article from walletpop.com is news that Visa and DeviceFidelity have teamed up to produce a case for an iPhone that also acts as a credit card. This looks like a very exciting development not only for the iPhone but also in terms of payment technology. Full details are available via the title link but in a nutshell you open an app, click pay and wave your phone near the terminal. If this sort of technology takes off, and I think over time that it will then it will be one less item for you to need to carry around in your pocket. It seems to me that as each month comes round we see a greater convergence of technology that make our smart phones more and more indispensible.

Is This The Coolest Place For An IT Person To Work?
This article comes from pigdom.com and gives us a sneak peek inside a new data centre in Sweden. It really is like something out of a James Bond movie. The building itself was originally a nuclear shelter and among the many things that it contains are a pair of German submarine engines to act as a back up power supply. It can allegedly survive a near hit by an atomic bomb, I question how they are able to quantify this. During the height of the Cold War in the 1980′s you would often see adverts for “Nuclear Shelters” in Sunday newspaper colour supplements, these always claimed to be 100% guaranteed to work though I often wondered who you would complain to if, after a nuclear attack, you discovered that your shelter was as much use as jokebook at a funeral. I digress, going back to this data centre I am sure that there are many Swedes who will rest more easily knowing that in the event of a nuclear attack they will still be able to Tweet about it.

Facebook Issues New Privacy Policy
This is an article taken from BBC News concerning the new simplified privacy policy from Facebook. Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg says that the new policy is to help simplify things for Facebook users. Many Facebook users do not seem to be too bothered about how their data is processed but there is a growing minority who do object to their personal data being used in personalised ads without either their knowldege or consent. It will be interesting to see what happens next Monday 31st May 2010 that has been dubbed Quit Facebook Day when people are being asked to delete their Facebook profiles as a mark of protest to what the founders of the site see as Facebooks over complication of privacy settings. While writing this I checked the page and found that 23, 003 people had taken the pledge. This is dwarfed by the estimated 400 million active users that Facebook has.

I will be giving another round up of my Best of the Web next Thursday. If you want to keep up to date with other Internet news why not follow me on Twitter for “three from me” every day.

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My Top 5 iPhone Apps

Wednesday, May 19th, 2010

Like a lot of people I have a smart phone, in my case an iPhone. Over the two years that I have been using the iPhone I have tried hundreds of apps, some are good, some are great others are useless. Here, in no particular order, are my top five iPhone apps:

  1. Analytics Agent Pro: I tried the free version and upgraded almost immediately. It is based on the Google Analytics API and gives you access to your analytics account. The app gives you access  to most of the information that you get through Google itself. I find it very useful to get a quick overview on what is happening with particular sites. I can see the number of visitors, whether they are new or returning visitors, the bounce rate, traffic source such as direct visitors, referrals and where they came from and perhaps most useful which search engines people have used and the keywords they have used to find the site. All of this can help me to identify what is working and what is not working within a site even when I am away from my PC.
  2. Serps: This is a great free app for checking your ranking with Google. You start by adding a domain and then add the keywords that you want to check for that domain. The app then gives you a listing of the top 100 sites for the search term and your place within it. The app was recently updated and now tells you your ranking at the top of the results page so you do not have to scroll down to find your chosen site. It also stores the position that your site has for each term so you can quickly see if you are moving up or down the rankings.
  3. FTP On The Go: This is another app that I find really useful when I am away from my desk. It allows me to FTP in to any of my sites and upload or download files. I can edit text files with the built in editor and then upload them again. It even has a built in browser so you can view your changes without leaving the app.
  4. HootSuite: I am currently using the free version of this but will be upgrading to the pay version later today. HootSuite allows you to update your Twitter and Facebook accounts from the same location as well as seeing info from your own news feeds. If you are reading this because you saw a link to it on either my Facebook or Twitter pages then you are here because of HootSuite.
  5. WordPress: Only downloaded the WordPress app yesterday and so far I have used it once, but I know it will become a favourite with me. I can now post to my blog from just about anywhere, which will be priceless when I get a flash of inspiration and cannot  get to my PC or laptop.

So these are my five favourite apps, what about yours?

Oh and one final thing, if by some strange miracle you are reading this Mr Jobs, how about making a phone that works really well as a phone? The iPhone is fabulous in so many ways, but the number of times that a call drops is just infuriating. I might have to try the Nexus-1 for a comparison.

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Iphone Update

Tuesday, May 18th, 2010

Just a quick test of the WordPress iPhone app, and it looks like it works a treat.

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