Google analytics and accidently generating yourself some traffic

Google Analytics is this great service that gives you all sorts of stats on your website. Its easy to set up - all I had to do was paste a bit of javascript into my template. Here's an example screenshot I took a couple of weeks ago when I was first considering writing a post on Analytics: It shows me getting a couple of visits a day, with most coming from Australia. A few days ago, something new happened. I got some random comments on my post about gmail addresses (I say random because they weren't from people that know me). This is what was waiting for me when I checked analytics: Hmmm.. what the hell? Where did all these people come from? Well, Analytics is more than happy to tell me: That referring page was the original post (on the official gmail blog) I linked to about the gmail addresses. It turns out that at the bottom of the post, there is a list of links, and my blog post is listed. All automatic of course, but phew, what a way to generate yourself some traffic!

My way cooler email addresses

So it turns out I have an extremely large number of cool email addresses that I didn't even know about. Here is an email I just sent: And wheeee, here it is! For the full details go read the post on the official gmail blog. While coming up with crazy variants on your email address and giving them to people is funny, the linked post points out the real advantage of this behaviour: you can set up filters to label and process your email based on the address it was sent to. I often end up setting filters to hide or simply label certain email that isn't ACTUALLY spam - but now instead of having multiple filters I can just use paul.batum+spam@gmail.com to register for stuff and use a single filter. So what are you waiting for, send me an email at paul.batum+gmail=happy.geek@gmail.com to celebrate this discovery!

Thoughts on Android Code Day London

I spent today at Google London participating in an Android Code Day. The structure of the event was pretty simple. Roughly, it was:

• 2 1/2 hours: presentation and questions.
• 2 1/2 hours: "hacking".
• 1 hour: networking (no, the OTHER type of networking, you know, the one that involves humans communicating - not machines).

I don't intend to report on the details of the day - but I have some observations. I attended the event in a non-professional capacity and in that regard I was definitely in the minority. Many of the attendees were there to assess the platform, rather than code against it. Many of the questions boiled down to "how are you going to stop the manufacturer/network operator from screwing this up for everyone by doing X?". I think working in the mobile development industry must make you jaded. Our host, Jason Chen, was great. He had an excellent blend of technical and presentation skills and also a great deal of patience. I suppose its given for a developer advocate to have these traits but there was one other thing I liked about Jason: he was genuine. A developer advocate is supposed to be enthusiastic about the product - its a fundamental part of their job! But sometimes this can be taken too far and results in a credibility drain. With Jason this was certainly not the case. Unfortunately, there was not enough Jason to go around. For an event advertised with a focus on coding, I was disappointed that there wasn't more Google staff attending to assist developers. Somehow I managed to break the debugger bridge between Eclipse and the Android emulator on my laptop and it wasted a lot of my time. It would have been nice if there was a group I could join that was discussing how the integration between Eclipse and the emulator works, perhaps it would have helped me solve my problem. Instead the groups that formed were oriented on different types of apps: locational, multimedia based, etc. I'm sure this was great for some, perhaps the majority - it just didn't work out so great for me. On a related note, I think the general lack of focus for the coding portion of the day was a problem. There are probably lots of different ways you can run an effective session aimed at developers but simply letting them loose for 2.5 hours isn't one of them. A live tutorial that you can code along with would have been cool. Perhaps something that picked up where the online notepad tutorial left off. Another idea would have been to prepare some sort of incomplete application the developers could download over the wifi and amend. Couple it with a list of small features that the developers can attempt to implement within the session and I think you have a much more compelling activity. But hey, this is the first time I've been to a "code day" so what do I know? I don't really fit the target profile. It was fun to see some of the Google offices. They are quite colourful. I enjoyed the opportunity to speak briefly with a couple of Googlers, especially Jason. Although I had a few negative things to say about the event in this post, I still enjoyed it and am glad I went. You can be sure that there will be plenty of Android related posts appearing here in the coming months but before that happens I will be returning to my parsing project. I have to be careful about letting myself get spread across too many different things at once. This is another good example of how maintaining this blog is beneficial - it greatly increases my chances of finishing the projects I start.

Android Code Day: London

In November last year, Google announced an open source operating system for mobile phones called Android. This is a big deal for me because I have wanted a "gPhone" for a while now and a phone that runs Android will be the closest I can get any time soon. I expect the mobile applications market will grow significantly over the next few years and so this is one of the fields I want to start spending time on. I was expecting to start posting about Android in a week or two, after I finished the series of articles on the parsing/calculator exercise. The reason why I'm posting about Android today is because last night I managed to register for the Android Code Day running next week at Google London. I found out about it via one of Google's official blogs and I'm quite glad I was subscribed - I checked a few minutes ago and registration has already closed. These things are popular! I'm still working on the parsing exercise. I can be kinda slow when it comes to this sort of stuff (hey that's part of why I'm doing it!) and I'm struggling to come up with the algorithm for building the binary tree while ensuring I follow order of operations. I could probably Google/Wiki it but its become a personal challenge now - I know I can do this bit without help, its just about getting my brain to shift into the right gear. "You are SUCH a geek – you know that don’t you?" - My boss's reply when I asked for the day off so I could go to the Android Code Day :)