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 February 4, 2009 by Bryant Zadegan
(Update: official statement appended to the end of the post)
I’m going to open this post by kindly asking you, the user, to go into the Windows 7 Action Center (Control Panel, System and Security, Action Center), clicking “Change User Account Control settings” and setting it to the maximum setting (“Always notify me when…”).
The reason for why I’m asking you to do this shouldn’t be a surprise. You may have seen the UAC posts by Rafael Rivera and Long Zheng (I’m giving more of the credit to Rafael since he actually brewed the proof of concept code). People saw their posts and immediately assumed that this issue is only relevant for users who download malware. Thus, you hear lots of users saying out loud with no apparent fear of embarrassment:
“La di da, so long as I’m not stupid with what I download, I should be fine!”
Right. Well, Microsoft basically recommends for users to install an antivirus because they don’t actually consider User Account Control to be a security feature. Anyone who knows the purpose of privilege management knows that any system which actively manages privileges is a security feature.
With this in mind, let’s take a look at why the UAC security flaw actually is a security flaw.
Update 2: Steven and Jon posted a second post about UAC today specifically addressing this flaw. Catch their response below the break.
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posted on October 31, 2008 by Bryant Zadegan
This is the segment where I talk about how PDC went and what I thought of everything tied to it, including but not limited to such factors as my flight here, my hotel stay, the conference itself, the quality of the sessions, etc. in order to give people a feel of what to expect should said people ever decide to come to PDC, for example, next year.
I’m doing this because many people have contacted me during the course of PDC to find out what I would recommend doing in order to get the most out of PDC and other similar events, so I’ll almost definitely put up posts like this after every single major event which I attend.
You can catch the list after the break, though here’s the quick summary:
Virgin America: Overrated.
The Omni Hotel in Downtown Los Angeles: Amazing.
AMD: Awesome, even if afflicted by some minor foibles.
Microsoft: Wonderful with most everything this time around.
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posted on September 24, 2008 by Bryant Zadegan
Don’t invest money in flimsy Zune holsters or belt clips. If your jeans have snug belt loops, you can just use those. Your Zune probably won’t slip out of it, but that depends entirely on how snug the fit is. Don’t try this with a 30, 80, or 120GB Zune.
(Image from my utterly ingenious friend, Matt Boehm.)
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