AdWords Auction in Plain EnglishThis is a great video and well worth the 9 mins of your time it’ll take to watch. It’s all about the Google AdWords Auction presented by Hal Varian, Google’s Chief Economist.
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Google Analytics App On iPhone

Google Analytics App On iPhone

If, like me, you log into Google Analytics and check your stats for today knowing full well Google has yet to update all the data, then Google Analytics App for the iPhone might be for you. Group therapy to deal with your (my) obsession should also be sought. So is Analytics App from InBlosam worth the £3.49?
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The chaos on the rail network due to the ‘arctic’ weather conditions has taken its toll on Kizoom MyRail.  There has been so much demand by mobile users for its live feed of train-timetable updates that the strain has started to show.

The feed began struggling yesterday as the die-hards tried to make sense of the disruptions and find their way into their warm offices; it looks as if it gave up today with even higher demand resulting in some users being denied access. The ‘engineers are working on it’ (cue: mission impossible theme tune)

Not an issue in Oxford where I live: hardly enough of the white stuff to stop the runners on my sledge from sparking like an iron foundry at full tilt.

I was chatting to a colleague about Internet info I’d picked up – the usual (interesting!) stuff one gets from various web sources – and he asked me if I ever did any real work… It seems that every day (hour!) brings a slew of information about new technologies, new apps and new functionality for existing apps. The latest, cool, must-have Internet thingy appears almost as fast as the ‘old’ favourites disappear. So how can you keep your water-cooler king/queen reputation and get your work done? We only have tap water (!) but here’s how I do it: with Google Reader and Google Alerts. Shush, it’ll be our secret…
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Not only have the 1911 UK census records gone online three years earlier than expected, the fiasco that plagued the 1901 census project when the National Archives website crashed on the first day of release, not to be seen again for some months, has been avoided. According to the Guardian website, 26 servers, 5 times more than last time, are supporting the anticipated demand for the search for long-lost relatives.
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Funny how a quick post can take on a life of its own.

Back in November I blogged on a great, new (and free) iPhone application Kizoom MyRail Lite.

Nothing to do with how I make a living, just an interesting (to me) bit of info. Not only did that post bring in quite a bit of traffic, I started to get asked why it had been ‘dropped’ from iTunes. News to me…
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Since my post on the impact of the IE security flaw on the take-up of Firefox, I was asked if I had any data on International Internet browser statistics. I didn’t but, always one to please (?), I dug through Google Analytics data on some regional websites…
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Following on from the report about the latest Internet Explorer 7 exploit, Microsoft has issued an ‘out-of-band’ (unscheduled to you and me…) security update for IE: MS08-078. This update is classified as critical for Internet Explorer 5.01, Internet Explorer 6, Internet Explorer 6 Service Pack 1 and Internet Explorer 7 as well as Internet Explorer 8 Beta 2.

So what impact has this vulnerability had on the take-up of other browsers?
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Hacking attacks on the most popular applications are inevitable but what makes the latest Internet Explorer 7 exploit interesting is that it’s left Microsoft floundering to get a fix – and the problem is snowballing.

MS reckons some 0.2% of worldwide users may have been exposed to the dodgy websites that exploit the IE vulnerability but the trend is not good: they received a 50% increase in the number of reports in just one day over last weekend.
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Coming to an AdWords account near you soon is Google’s latest matching option: automatic matching.

Currently in beta, automatic matching will allow Google (with your ‘permission’) to show your ads on the Google network for any search queries it believes to be relevant but that aren’t already being captured with your current keywords.
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