Interviews, Productivity, Random, Tools »

I am quite busy right now, but I decided to take 15 minutes and update this blog. I don’t even know what to write here, as everything that I know has already been posted on other blogs. Is it worth rewriting that stuff and increasing the duplicate content on the net (of course it’ll have a few of my unique ideas, but still…)? I think I’d better post a few links.

First, if you started to get paranoid about Google Analytics (did you know that they can insert ANY Javascript code on your site, even a redirect or links to other sites? Of course Google won’t do that, but this can make some people really nervous :-), here is the second best option, which is self-hosted:

Piwik Analytics

Coupled with the MaxMind GeoIp Database (the Lite version is more than enough), it has almost all the functions that GA has, except for SERPS ranking reports and beautiful maps & charts. It’s also a little faster than Google Analytics.

Second, if you ever needed to convert a video or audio file and after paying $25 for a Converter software found out that you also need a mugload of codecs which most of the times don’t work with each other, I recommend you check out SUPER, a, well… super convertor that converts everything and has all the necessary codecs integrated. You can choose the format, size, compression and anything else you desire. I mentioned it in my first post and I’m doing it again, as a new, better version is out. One thing I’d recommend is denying the program access to it’s servers, as the address it tries to access looks kinda weird. It never caused me any trouble, but it’s better to be safe than sorry.

SUPER - The download procedure is not as super as it may be: you need to go to the linked page, scroll to the bottom of the page, click “Start downloading SUPER”, then on the next page click “Download and Use”, then on the last page scroll to the bottom again and click “Download SUPER Setup file”. Yeah, kinda hard… I gues it’s because they monetize the software with ads on those pages, although I would gladly pay $25 for it after seeing how cool it is.

And for the last, a link to a very nice interview I read last week with Lee Dodd, who makes money from a network of forums and is the COO of Escalate Media. I personally never had any success with forums (especially monetizing them) and I dropped them off my “To Try” list, but after seeing his forums and this interview, I think I’ll try launching a forum, again.

Interview with Lee Dodd - Making money running forums

P.S. I’m thinking of switching to Joomla!, especially after seeing the amazing extensions and themes available for it. I tried Drupal, and it’s very good, but only if you want to build your site from almost absolute scratch. Wordpress is perfect for blogging but not so good for a community site where people vote, submit stuff and communicate (which is exactly what I need now). Joomla seems like the LEGO of the site building: Get the pieces, force them together :-) and have a multi-functional site up and running in less than 2 days. The drawback is that all those good plugins and themes are not free (but they’re no that expensive either) and everyone says Joomla is a resource hog.

P.P.S. I love LEGO.