posted on March 12, 2009 by Bryant Zadegan
Before Google Analytics, most content publishers relied on effective-but-obscure third-party analytics tools for measuring web traffic. AWStats, still used by many, is one of the best tools for this purpose since it tracks hits server-side instead of through JavaScript (which some browsers actively strip, thus reducing the quality of information provided by Google Analytics).
Google Analytics came along, and (thanks to the assumption that Google is great at everything) singlehandedly convinced many publishers to rely on Google Analytics instead of tools available to most publishers on their web servers. Granted, Google Analytics was easier to access and read, but it still didn’t provide as much raw data as most web developers and content pushers needed.
Then came Microsoft’s own analytics tool, tied to its beta advertising program, titled “AdCenter Analytics.” If you take a look at the html source for this page and look at the bottom, you’ll see that we’ve got both Google Analytics and AdCenter Analytics running, which provides us with a unique insight into how they both work. Keeping it brief, Microsoft’s tools provided far more usable information and was generally easier to navigate than Google Analytics, and while I use both, I’m likely going to keep using AdCenter for as long as possible, which brings me to the subject of its closure.
Microsoft put out this email to all AdCenter Analytics testers, which you can catch after the jump.
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posted on March 4, 2009 by Bryant Zadegan
For those of you visiting from the recent Associated Press article, feel free to follow me on Twitter and stick around on the forums as well. In addition, for those of you looking for where this article falls on the grand timeline of things (most people miss the date published at the bottom of the article), this post was posted on the 4th of March at 12:03 AM Eastern Time, coinciding with Chris’s post just over one hour prior.
Thanks for stopping by, and welcome to AeroXperience. ~Bryant
Thanks exclusively and entirely to efforts between Chris Holmes and me, we discovered that Internet Explorer 8 can be removed from at least Windows 7 build 7048, which is a good sign for regulatory overlords in the EU and in the States. Given that this change doesn’t exist in Beta 1, the odds that this change will persist through to RC are quite high. Don’t believe this can be done? Well, how about a Windows Features dialog below for proof?
There is a catch: For now, this only seems to wipe the actual executable running Internet Explorer 8 (iexplore.exe), but given that many of the most vocal proponents of choice were just looking for an option to functionally remove IE8, this might’ve been the only way to do it without killing the rest of Windows. In addition, this actually takes two reboots and a configuration step to complete, so there’s definitely something going on behind the scenes (likely a remapping of where IE-related functions can be found for other elements in Windows so that Windows doesn’t complain about IE’s nonexistence).
You can catch the steps, as well as final screenshots of the somewhat-obliterated product, after the break.
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