2004-01-16

Mozilla 1.6 released

Yesterday Mozilla.org released version 1.6 of their browser suite.

This release brings a lot of improvements to the Mail component, cross-platform NTLM authentication, a lot of security bug fixes and other bug fixes.

More details here:
Mozilla 1.6 Release Notes
MozillaNews
and probably MozillaZine as well, but their site was down at the moment of writing.

This means that Mozilla Firebird 0.8 will be released shortly, but a few bugs are still open.

Eolas talks with Open Source Community about patent

Eolas Technologies (no link here, the don't deserve it :b) has started to talk with the Linux and Open Source Community about their browser patent according to this article in eWeek.

Eolas Technologies successfully sued Microsoft and was awarded more than $521 for patent infringements. At that time it was unclear what this would mean to other browsers like Mozilla, Mozilla Firebird, Opera and many others.

Little details were given about the topics being discussed and the people involved but Eolas Founder Michael Doyle told that "the solution will be supportive of the open-source community."
Does this mean that Open Source products can use the technology for free or that Eolas will participate in the Open Source community in some way?

Kicking off AnthoroStats v2

I first started to look at other counters that are either successful by functionality or have a good looking layout or navigation. In other words: learn from your competitors, don't imitate them, just do it better!.

I signed up for a bunch of them and created a testpage. It's about the same page as what Tellertest.com (Dutch) has to offer
I set up a test page. A also evaluated them on different points and pointed out what I could use of them, how I would improve it or what I should definitely not do.

I started by signing up for the counters that scored best in this test
Here's the testpage: http://stats.anthoro.be/testpage.php.

Here are some of the counters I signed up for (more will be added later to the page):

CQ Counter
OneStat.com Lite
OneStat.com Basic
StatCounter.com
eXTReMe
CheckStat.nl
Stealth Lite
BelStat
NedStat
LetsStat
TopStat
Site Meter
GheoStats
StatsBox
RealTracker Free
GoStats
Counted!
eStat Perso
ServuStats

I signed up for each of them and reviewed their homepage, signup page, conditions, emails, etc... Later on I will summarize that whit the pros and the cons of each of them and translate them to do's and don'ts :)

While signing up and reviewing these counters, I sometimes thought: "How can it be that this counter has a much higher score than mine? Is my counter really that bad?" And then again: "Yes, mine IS that bad. And that is not how I intended it to be."

Conclusion: There's a lot of work that needs to be done.
Now I'll continue with the reviews and start putting together a Functional Analysis.

2004-01-12

Back again... (not that I was away but...)

It's been a while since I last posted something here because of several reasons. I had some projects going on that consumed a lot of my time, I went on a holiday, I had a long weekend away, etc...

Now that the internet connection with Telenet (the internet provider where I work) is down, I take the opportunity to clean up my mailbox and tell you what interesting stuff was in it, starting with the oldest first.
Some things might seem a little out-dated, but that's because they're in my inbox for a long time and I think I need to tell something about it anyway.
In the mean time I will start to follow the blogs and newsfeeds again and give my comments and opinions about them and try to keep up-to-date with what's coming in new, so I won't be chasing my own tail.

Another reason why I'm starting to post to the blog again is that I'm re-designing and re-making one of my websites: AnthoroStats. This website was developped about 4 years ago and hasn't changed a lot since then. As the functionality is OK, the layout really sucks, it always did, a (almost) complete re-make of the site could be the spark that turns it in a successful website. If possible I can start to make money out of it :)
Here I will tell you on how this all works out. Hopefully this will be some sort of "Diary Of The Creation Of A Successful Website Business". Ahum, we'll see :)

Oh yeah: Happy New Year!