G1 Apps: Google Analytics on Android

Even on the go, I need to get a detailed overview of my traffic at any time. I am a Getclicky user (with a g analytics account as a backup), but the Clicky site is not really optimized for a mobile experience. I turned to the Android app market to see what was available to explore my traffic, and two free apps (I have that free lunch philosophy) popped up that offer to track your traffic through Google Analytics: Droid Analytics and mAnalytics. I tested how both perform, and here is the result of the battle:

Droid Analytics vs mAnalytics

mAnalytics
mAnalytics has a very simple and intuitive user interface. You start with the list of your site; after selecting one, select your date/date range; see your traffic in terms of visits/pageviews/pages-visit/bounce rate/average-time-on-site/%new-visits.
Unfortunately, that’s about it for mAnalytics. Maybe online marketing beginners will find a benefit to such a simple application, but the app isn’t attractive enough to compete with a browser-based experience.

Droid Analytics
Droid Analytics also starts with the list of your sites. Once inside a site’s analytics, you can press the ‘view as graph’ button to see your page views, visitors, visits, bounce rate, average time on site or page views per visits on a graph. You can see hourly stats, weekly, monthly, yearly, or use the date range selector.
The visual experience that Droid Analytics offers takes the analytics experience up a notch. mAnalytics is already down, but Droid Analytics keeps kicking its opponent with this feature:
For each Website tracked, you can also view their top keywords, top countries, top sources of traffic, top search engines, top referring sites, and top browsers. I personally really like the top keywords option. It’s a nice way to remind you how people find your site while you are waiting at the bus stop, and reflecting upon your online marketing strategy.
Droid Analytics also has a paid version (0.99 euro). Eventually, if you like the app, you will have to pay as the free version is only a 24-hour trial. The app has a 5-star average rating, and the comments are all very enthusiastic.

The alternative is Mobile GA for Android, but the app is $2.99, it only has 3 stars, and the comments are not really positive, so I didn’t even bother to try it out. If you know of any other app for Google Analytics on Android, please share.


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Gizapage: Bundle, Brand And Promote Your Social Profiles

Today, Gizapage is launching a set of new features to optimize your Gizapage's profile visibility and design. Gizapage offers users to gather all their online profiles in one page and make them more discoverable. I posted a video interview with the CEO Amit Jaipuria last month.

So what's new with Gizapage?

First you can add your own background image Twitter-style! I actually encountered an error while uploading my image - a 1K Gif, no biggie - so I could not see if you could repeat the image or not.

More interesting, you can apply your own URL to your Gizapage profile. With Facebook releasing vanity urls a few weeks ago, Gizapage blows it all up (it was on their roadmap) by dropping the gizapage.com. Users pay $4.95 per month for this privilege, but it is free if you apply your own URL before July 31st ! I think this is pretty cool.

"With the introduction of premium customization features, GizaPage is helping users take control of their Web 2.0 social identity, “ said GizaPage founder and CEO, Amit Jaipuria. "From having a personal URL to customizing your GizaPage profile, we’re letting you shape the social networking persona you want to present to others.”

Even if it is free for a year, redirecting the URL that contains your name to your Gizapage page is quite an important move in your online branding strategy. How will people find your Gizapage page?

A personalized URL usually looks good on a business card. Gizapage also added a link to submit your profile directly to the Google Base, which helps to make yourself more discoverable on search results. Also, the team is launching a profile widget, to promote your profile anywhere on the Web:

xavier vespa Active on the Social Web http://xavier.gizapage.com

(The embed code is a little messy :)

With those tools, you should be able to get clicks and visits to your Gizapage profile. Now how will you know if a Gizapage profile is worth your dollar? (will this grow your connections across social platforms?) How many Gizapage friends you will make is an indicator of how well it works. This data is a weak indicator, but this is unfortunately all you have, and my guess would be that Gizapage's next features will offer a Mybloglog-style analytics tool to make the service more engaging (wild guess, high stakes!).

If not, inserting our own URL for the background image would be a nice way to let us track page impressions...

I didn't apply xaviervespa.com to my profile. It's not about Gizapage though: There isn't a social network that has convinced me yet to re-direct my personalize URL to my social profile. For Gizapage, I have created the subdomain http://gizapage.hyveup.tv, just to test how it works. I will admit that I was not really convinced by the concept the first time it was pitched to me, but I am slowly starting to see how brands could utilize this new service.

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A Review Of Youtube's Beta Channels

It's been known for a couple of months now that Youtube was slowly launching its Beta channels to the public. When I created the Screencast pro channel last month, I was invited to try out the new Beta channel. I accepted the invitation, and here is what I think of the new channels:

For visitors, I don't see a big difference. We find the same modules, and those were easy to understand in the old version. The innovation comes from the video player and the playlist in the sidebar: Visitors can watch all videos without refreshing the whole page. Only the video element refreshes. There is also a unique URL string for each event on the page.

The huge change is for channel owners. No more do we have to toggle the editing interface and the channel page to make a change and see how it looks. The edits are operable from the channel page, and changes are applied immediately. Also, no more transparent modules which colors were dependent of the background color. Yay!

I personally like that the channel's tags are editable from the channel page as well. My video content keeps evolving and transforming over the months. Channel's tags are very important to make your video discoverable, so it is crucial to be constantly reminded that they can be easily updated.



In terms of look'n'feel, it is a big change, but nothing that will make most Youtube channels more beautiful (it's like Myspace pages, they let users customize it, and it's a mess). What changes is the modules' management system: Now, the modules can be handled almost like widgets on an iGoogle page (hint). When I see Youtube's Beta channels, I see: a lighter and widgetizable interface, which for me can only mean two things: mobile-compatible channels, and portability-ready through widgets. When you consider their last feature integration, the autoshare function, it is understandable that they now have to make their platform more mobile-ready.

Finally, there is one last addition to those channels that is worth noticing: Our profiles are also editable from the channel page. Before, if you filled in an info about yourself, it would automatically display it on your channel page. I wanted to let Youtube know who I was, but for my professional channels, I didn't want to say "HyveUp, male', for example. With the Beta channels, you can fill in all the info you wish, and select which one you want to be displayed on your channel.



Overall, I really like the new channels. Youtube is following the right direction there. Again, for all of those who say that Youtube is just slurping Google's money, pay close attention: For more than a year, Youtube has been innovating like it's nobody's business, making it a breeze to communicate through video while on the go.

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Top 10 G1 Apps

Back in January, I wrote about the best g1 apps that could be found in the market. Since that date, a lot of new apps came up, and the Cupcakes update also changed a few rules. So what are the essential apps you need on your Android phone to get the most out of it ?

App Manager
The first app you want to install from the market is the App Manager. From this app, you can launch, uninstall, copy to SD or search the app in the market. You can also backup all of your applications to the SD card in a few clicks. Most importantly, you can easily install apps from your SD card, which is the gateway to downloading any app you want online and putting it on your phone.

Scoreboard
The simple app was developed by Google. This app allows you to keep track of all of your favorite sports team through your phone's notifications system. It takes about half an hour to set it up, but then you don't have to worry about it ever again, and sports results come to you live automatically.

Babble
Babble is the only Facebook app I know for the g1 that runs smoothly. From Babble, you can easily access your friends' feeds, and drop comments on your friends' updates. Uploading photos and videos to your profile are also part of the experience. The developer also added a quick 'log out/log in as a different user' button, which is quite smart !

MyTracks
I just love this application. Through your phone's GPS, MyTracks will record your position while you are on the go. I personally use it to compare how I perform when I rollerblade to work. I think most people use it for their biking or walking hikes. Once you are done recording, MyTracks creates an KML file and a map on your Google's MyMaps account. You can then easily share this map's URL or embed it anywhere you want.

Glympse
At first sight, Glympse is very similar to MyTracks (or Latitude, Google geolocation-based social network). Glympse is different because it lets you easily share your location live with the person(s) you want, during the amount of time you want. The persons who receive the Glympse can see your location in real-time on a map, from a computer or on a phone.

Twidroid
I am not a super active Twitter user, but anytime I want to interact with the Twitter platform only, Twidroid has been the best app to let me easily tweet and read tweets. From my friends' feeds page, I can 'reply', 'show profile', 'favorite', 'retweet' or 'send direct message' to any item displayed. You can also search Twitter for fresh content about a specific subject, see what's hot on Twitterverse.com and access your favorite items. In the settings (and this is what I like), you can enable notifications for different kinds of events, chose your photo hosting provider, chose your url shortener, and much much more...

Androzip
Androzip is the best and easiest way to bundle documents in a ZIP file (ZIP, GZIP, TAR). From within the app, you can easily select several documents, ZIP'em, and send it to whoever you want. Must-have if you want to manage a lot of documents through your phone.

S3Anywhere
If you have an S3 Amazon account, you will love this app. It lets you easily access any bucket of your account, and provides the upload/download functions to share files between your cloud hard disk and your phone. It becomes interesting when you consider that you can access your documents on S3, ZIP them with Androzip, and send them from your gmail app to anyone you want.

MyAccount
It's the app from T-Mobile to keep track of your account's balance. It's very simple, but I think it is the first time you can access your account balance info from your phone in one click. Must-have!

Metal Detector
The metal detector... detects metal. It acts like a magnet and guides you to the closest source of metal around you. From the settings, you can define the sensitivity of the detector (more sensitive also means more battery used). This is not an essential app to have, but the technology it is built on is pretty interesting. By putting a magnet in a phone, it is the first time that we have a phone that can directly interact with your surrounding environment. It is the cornerstone to a generation of smarter phones (yep, even smarter than what we already have today).

if you have any essential app to share, please do so in the comments, and don't forget to explain why you think it is essential!

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Youtube Adds Autoshare, Pings Twitter, Facebook... And Google Reader?

Youtube's agility and pertinence keep stunning me. Today, I noticed this when opening the upload page :

For starters, Friendfeed just lost one unique feature: Linking Youtube to Twitter.

Also, I can't help but link this new addition to the Android's recent release of video uploads to Youtube through the Android app. This means that anyone can upload videos to Youtube while on the go, share it automatically, and receive feedbacks through Twitter. Well, anyone could do this if Twitter offered @myname email alerts: Then it would be easily accessible and widely used.

I love that Facebook is there too! I have a personal Youtube channel, so hooking this channel up to my Facebook stream is going to spare me the effort of sharing the link on Facebook after it's done uploading.

I think this is a small step for the dev team, but a big one towards networks' interconnectedness. The thing with video is that you start the upload, and then you have time to write a post about a new autosharing feature before it is done uploading and transcoding. Now, Youtube pings you and your friends (unless you set the video on private) when the video is ready to watch.

To optimize your video visibility on Twitter, write the video title as if it was a tweet to someone. Or use a hashtag to index your video directly in a category. So much to be done !

On the other end, I have yet to see what Google Reader sharing is. I imagine it appears as a shared item in my friends' feeds, but I don't see the point of that. My friends don't accept to follow my content on Google Reader, they accept to follow the content I share. I like this though because it is a little hint on how Google is trying to make people connect around items on the Web (aka build a Google social network): through Google Reader (and iGoogle by extension, I imagine).

A little research on the Web did not pulled back any explanation for Google Reader:
ReelSEO
Inside Facebook
...

Update: The Google Reader autoshare feature places your latest videos in your shared items:



Again, I don't find this really relevant, but maybe it will be when Friendconnect will centralize the social structure around Google products...

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