Measuring site performance is somewhat of a black art - from the dubious numbers lauded by some sites to the notoriously skewed and untrustworthy figures from Alexa, Compete, and other metric & analytics folk - there simply isn't any single great method of gauging a site's performance. [read more...]
I've recently acquired the RØDE Podcaster USB microphone - a beautiful piece of kit, by the way - and I'm currently mulling over any potential ideas for audio content for Modern Life. [read more...]
Followers of Wisdump may be familiar with the saga over the new ownership. The once-mighty Web 2.0 blog changed hands twice in a very short space of time, and has fallen from grace in some respect as a result. Indeed, the FeedBurner subscriber statistics tell a grim tale - once standing at around the 7,500 mark, the total number of RSS subscribers now languishes at around little more than 3,000. Where did it all go wrong? [read more...]
Google was recently touted as 'worst on privacy' out of a sample of online organisations, according to a study by Privacy International. Whether you agree with the verdict or not, there's no doubting that Google is in a powerful position as far as sensitive user information is concerned. [read more...]
Followers of fellow weblog Wisdump (née Whitespace) probably already know this, but with owner / 9ruler Scrivs selling the site to Manchester-based Maxafi there was an opportunity for a new batch of writers to write for Wisdump. [read more...]
You may have heard of the phenomenon that is 'The Long Tail'. The term refers to the potentially untapped marketing areas in the elongated low-volume segment of a market. Amazon employs this thinking very effectively - their huge stock catalogue ensures that if there's an obscure book or item you're thinking of purchasing, they'll most likely offer it. [read more...]
The internet is changing the way we read information. No longer are we constrained by a physical medium - we don't have a fixed number of pages to fill, nor a certain column inch quotient to meet. [read more...]
Talk about a quiet rollout – the Google Analytics team must have been working a lot of late nights recently, as this evening they’ve released a completely overhauled interface for their analytics. Quite the surprise! (In fact, as I write this the announcement has just popped up on Bloglines) [read more...]
I've been spending some time recently optimising the advertising here on Modern Life, and I've been trying a number of approaches to increase earnings while maximising user experience. It's a tricky balancing act, as effective ads are generally more obtrusive ones. Is there an effective way to keep both effective adverts and happy users? [read more...]
For a fortunate few, working with hexadecimal colours comes naturally - my experience stems from working with colour palettes whilst programming in BASIC some 15 years ago. Thankfully, hex colour codes persist today in CSS, so my early experience means working with hex colour is second nature. But what about those less versed in hexadecimal? Perhaps a mnemonical system could be employed... [read more...]