Blue Chi’s

You can’t be serious about making a blog if you have no intention of tracking the readership of your blog. You cannot measure your blog success solely on the number of comments you get because the majority of people are too shy to comment. Page views and site visits are the most essential metrics for assessing your blogs success.

My favourite tracking tool, and probably the best one out there currently, is the free Google Analytics. Unlike the dodgey SiteMeter used by many in the Omani blogosphere, Google Analytics does not require you to put a graphic on your blog and does not publish those statistics to the public. For example, you can Muscati’s traffic summary here.

Unlike the messy and confusing SiteMeter, Google Analytics is a fine tracking solution that provides many detailed tracking metrics – Those are divided into the following categories:

1. Visitor Metrics (number of visits, pages views, geographical location, etc.)
2. Traffic Sources Metrics (what websites link to you, what keywords were people searching for when they found you, etc.)
3. Content Metrics (what is your most popular content, traffic pathway, etc.)

All of these are displayed in an easy to use rich interface powered by Flash and Ajax, which is easy to use and very interactive. My favourite feature of Analytics is the comparison tools for comparing progress over a month or any other period of time which shows numbers and percentages of growth.

Installing Analytics is dead easy, you simply copy the code and paste it at the bottom or you template, I think that you can even just paste it as a code widget in the Blogger and place it in the bottom of the page.

Analytics is totally free, there is no reason for you not to try it.

The year is about to end and now is the time when people post their ‘best of’s and that sort of posts. I’ll share with you new websites I discovered/got launched in 2007.

1. WebbAlert
   This is a daily 5-minute video show on the latest in tech news. Though only a one-woman show, it is very professionally produced, and that woman is the hostess is Morgan Webb, TV presenter of G4 and columnist of FHM magazine. This is the only video blog I am subscribed to. (BTW, today was a slow news days, so the episode was not the greatest).

2. Web Worker Daily (WWD)
   The ultimate blog for the web warrior. This blog offers loads of advices for those who work online, latest relevant industry news, and they recently started a feature where they interview web worries to share their alternative online lifestyle with other web worriers. The authors of the blog recently also released a book.
3. Adams Drafting
   The blog of Ken Adams, author of my favourite book A Manual of Style for Contract Drafting. His blog is a continuation of his book as it offers practical examples and new tips on how to write effective contracts.
4. Daily Writing Tips
   Whether you are a lawyer or a blogger (I know people who are both) you need to master the art of writing in order to succeed. DWT publishes daily consumable posts on various aspects of this field to help you achieve your goal.

I read all my news through Google Reader, I like its rich yet simple interface and the keyboard shortcuts. But the BEST thing about it is its mobile interface, which I use all the time to read the blogs I listed above from my mobile phone (using Opera Mini).

Just posted some photographs on Facebook of my recent visit to Cardiff. Check them out here.

I had loads of fun at yesterday’s seminar. I have never done any sort of public speaking in my life before, so I was naturally terrified at the start of it. But it did get better when we sat down, it was also so much easier because it was a discussion panel and not a presentation or speech-giving kind of thing.

The Omani Cuisine got a lot of attention, barely anybody asked me anything about Oman3D, I got the impression that people thought I work at a place called Oman3D, and that I was at the event because I blogged at the Omani Cuisine? Well, I was glad to hear that people liked the OC that much.

Blogger Abdulla from Be In Oman also attended, had a very short chat with him. A very nice young person.

And for those of you curious to know what snacks were served afterwards, it was little nibbles, sandwiches, pocket-size-pizza, and juice.

On a different but related note, PEIE is going to hold its final Oman Manufacturing Group Seminar next week on Sunday the 16th of December at 7.30 at the Crowne Plaza. The title of the seminar is “Lean Manufacturing: Value Stream Mapping” and free dinner WILL be served. Hopefully I will see some of you there.

I’ll be speaking at KOM’s next Digital Nation seminar titled iGeneration: Embracing the Digital World next week. I’ll be sharing the panel with people from Cisco, Ericsson, Nawras, and Netsolo. The event is going to be held at KOM (and not the Crowne Plaza as previously announced!), this could also mean that free dinner might NOT be included, which is, I know, a real bummer for many, but you should still try to make it nonetheless if you are free at 7:30pm on Sunday the 9th of December next week, they might serve juice and biscuits.