New Google Analytics

Google Analytics, a free tool for measuring website statistics, has been redesigned and the result is one of the best looking and easy to use data-heavy applications I have seen in a while. It’s a pleasure to use.

Google Analytics logo

Jeffrey Veen and his team (Greg Veen, Ryan Carver, and Douglas Vander Molen) have made a wonderful job. I would say that Google Analytics is for website statistics as Blogger is for blogs, simple to use yet powerful enough for most users.Analytics is a good example of how powerful using a user-centered design approach can have in building an extremely data-heavy web application. Information hierarchy is also beautiful designed / implemented making very easy to navigate your way around each page.Here’s a screenshot (taken from Jeffrey’s blog)
Google Analytics screenshot
I must confess I was tracking a couple of websites with Analytics but didn’t go there to check statistics, I could hardly find what I was looking for. I was using a much simpler service (statcounter) to get some basic data (pageviews, visitors and referrers).Not anymore. Google Analytics is serving me much better now.Some useful related links
Google’s official announcement
Google Analytics Is Re-Launched: Do These Five Things First In V2
What I’ve been working on: The New Google Analytics

May 18, 2007 | Tags: | 1 Comment 

Olive tree

A friend came for dinner yesterday and offered us an original gift. An olive tree.

olive tree

I knew that having chicken eglus at home is a trendy thing these days (In the UK at least) but having a big tree is something new to me. Growing an olive tree in an apartment is going to be a real challenge.

ps: I also got a 2001 Brunello di Montalcino

May 18, 2007 | Tags: | 2 Comments 

Opportunities for European Web Companies

Nicole Simon’s presentation A European View on Web 2.0 is a very though-provoking view on some of the opportunities that European companies can have over their US competitors when building similar services but tailoring them better to the local markets.

For a lot of companies going international means translating the software. Nicole points out that translation is just one of the steps that will make a service more adapted to a foreign market because it’s not just a language problem.

51% (355 million) people in Europe speak English as a second language but things like dates, numbers and addresses (zip codes?) are usually US centric making other users confused and possibly making them go away.

As another example Nicole says that it’s normally forgotten that

your downtime at night is in the middle of the day for me

and that

bonus options and special offerings only available for eligible (US) people

really mean I don’t care about you as a customer.

This is why some local European alternatives can be much more attractive that their international versions. Building a good quality local version of an international service, even if it can be considered copying, it might as well have much more success that it’s original model.

May 18, 2007 | | Leave a Comment 

Take Off 2007

Take Off logo

I was in Coimbra (2 weeks ago) for the Take Off event. More than 100 people attended the event that was bootstrapped by Alcides Fonseca and Sérgio Santos, two Computer Science students from the first year.

Some of the presentations were very interesting.

Like in other conferences, Take Off’s coffee breaks turned into interesting conversations, ideas sharing and projects discussions.

There’s a promise to repeat next year. I’m looking forward.

May 8, 2007 | | Leave a Comment 

April’s activity

Books used in adegga

Developing at adegga has taken most of my time during April. But it has been very productive. We have an alpha-version and we’re preparing the (cool) invites for the closed beta we’ll be launching soon.

May 8, 2007 | Tags: | 3 Comments 

Birthday gifts

In April, it was also my birthday. I love birthday gifts with a personal touch so this year I was delighted when she decided to make a set of moo cards with pictures from our last 6 years. 100 pictures with 100 memories. Thank you!

moo cards birthday gift

Two good friends know that I’m an animation fan and offered me Aardman latest creation Flushed away DVD (trailer here). It lacks the authenticity of Wallace & Gromit but it made me laugh for the whole movie and it came with its own plasticine kit so I can now make my own slugs…

May 8, 2007 | Tags: , | Leave a Comment 

  • about

    andre_ribeirinho_t.jpg My name is André Ribeirinho, I'm an entrepreneur who lives in Portugal
    More about me. Contact me.

  • my startup

    Adegga - Social Wine Discovery


    Adegga is a social wine discovery service. The idea is to take the complexity out of wine and allow people to discover wines based other people's choices.