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coxy's blog

Posts tagged with "yahoo"

Start Wearing Purple

Wednesday, 5. November 2008, 11:48:08

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Start Wearing Purple

http://www.colourlovers.com/palette/598829/Start_Wearing_Purple

http://www.startwearingpurple.com/

11 comments

September Stats Sampler 2008

Sunday, 19. October 2008, 20:04:31

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SSS

A few months ago, someone on Opera Community (I can't remember who!) posted a blog post about their Hitslink stats. I figured I'd pay for a month's worth of full-on Hitslink stats goodness so I could be as cool as other Opera Community blog posters and do the same. So this is it. Welcome to my September Stats Sampler 2008 (SSS).

First I guess the logical step is to find the most popular search terms for my blog. These are words or key phrases that have been searched for and then my blog found and it's no surprise that the top keyword to find my blog is 'sexy' with 4.16% of total visitors finding coxy the sexiest mutha on the web! Damn right!

It does make me wonder what sort of people click though so many pages of search results as to find my blog from the keyword 'sexy' - I'm not in the first ten pages of results on any search engine - why bother?! Alas, people do, and this apparently makes me sexy - so let's move swiftly on.

SSS

Facebook Phishing / Hacking / Scams

SSS reveals that lots of Facebook users and social network enthusiasts are worried about their Facebook account being hacked, phished or falling victim to any scams. My blog gets a lot of visitors because of a blog post I wrote uncovering a Facebook Phishing page.

If people are worried about Facebook phishing scams you should ensure you're using a browser with built-in fraud protection, and always check the URL of the login page before hitting submit on those precious login details!

SSS

Xbox 360 Towel Trick / Gamertags / Windows Live Passport

Following hot on the heels of Facebook Phishing comes lots of eager gamers trying to find out how to solve problems with their Microsoft Xbox 360 consoles. Right now I could probably adopt my own advice as my second Xbox 360 has just flashed it's red ring of death and refused to be used.

For the addicted gamer, desperate to get their gameplay fix, The Towel Trick is a temporary DIY solution to this problem. The Towel Trick is a method of wrapping a bath towel around your console in an attempt to fix the unit and restore it's gameplay abilities. The idea surfaced on the web and has become a popular resolution method - however, if you are having problems with your 360, it's no way a permanent solution and I recommend getting a replacement console.

The second Xbox 360 related issue that people are searching for is the link between your Xbox Live Gamertag and Windows Live Passport. The problem is that once you've connected a Windows Live Passport to your 360, you cannot change it - which posed problems when Microsoft introduced the Messenger features to Xbox Live - and everyone realised the passport they had tied to their console was not the one they used for their Windows Live Messenger.

The latter of these two problems is described in a long-winded and probably ultimately confusing blog post by myself. If you want a solution; the only option at the time was to delete your gamertag and your Windows Live Passport and start over. This wasn't an ideal solution and so many people complained that Major Nelson posted on his blog that there would be a way around this in future - according to a blog comment, this issue has been resolved.

SSS

Virb 2

SSS shows that social networking is popular. You'd think that for people that spend so much time sitting in front of their computer, not interacting with people face-to-face, that socialising would be so high upon their agenda. But, along with Facebook's popularity, it seems most people are eagerly anticipating the release of Virb 2.

The original build of Virb established itself as a social network for those who have a little more style, class and finesse to be using MySpace - yet retains the same basic features that a social network requires to be social - plus added little extras, like VirbTunes which would track what music you're playing in a Last.fm style. The site comes off the back of PureVolume, which was the original project of the Virb team.

Virb 2 has been in development for possibly far too long. The staff have been working long and hard on it, and it's currently in private beta with a launch imminent. Unfortunately, I'm not part of the private beta and so know nothing about the new version; you can follow progress on the Virb Twitter profile.

SSS

Last.fm Mobile

Following on the trend of social networks, SSS reveals that there are lots of people who want to find Last.fm related stuff; mostly applications for scrobbling tracks from their mobile phone, or streaming tracks from Last.fm to their mobile phones.

Last.fm Build, a new section to Last.fm, showcases a whole range of third-party developer applications. There you will find a range of applications that will allow streaming and scrobbling to and from your Windows Mobile device, Blackberry, S60, iPhone and more. I personally used to use Pocket Scrobbler for Windows Mobile devices, but have moved onto Mobbler for my Nokia N95 8GB - the latest build of both apps supports scrobbling from the phone's media player, and also streaming Last.fm Radio to the phone.

Everything Else

Search Engines

The most popular search engine was Google, followed by Google UK, Google Canada, Google Turkey, Google India, Google France, Google Australia, Google Germany and then Yahoo!. Seven more Google countries later we reach Microsoft Live Search and then AOL, but not before another seven Google countries.

You Googlers should be ashamed of yourself! This just backs up my claims of Google knowing too much and being used too much. Granted, they are a bit good; but it would be awesome if people used other search engines like Yahoo!, Clusty or Ask too. I've been using Ask for the past few weeks; it looks good visually, but the results aren't always accurate. Clusty and Yahoo! are generally spot-on however, with Yahoo!'s results being pretty much identical to what you'd see on Google. Give it a try - change the way you search!

Countries

Slightly different to what you'd expect after looking at search engine usage, most visitors were from the USA (23.4%), closely followed by the United Kingdom (19.81%), with Egypt, Russia and India making up the top five. Norway (1.22%) came 14th and Lithuania (0.43%) came 36th.

Time

Whilst most people spent less than 1 minute on the site (84.49%), more people spent 5-10 minutes (1.94%) or 10-15 minutes (1.01%) reading my posts than those that spent 3 or 4 minutes (0.57%) on the site. The less than 1 minute is expected; but it is somewhat comforting to know that people will read my posts, even if they're not leaving comments.

Most Visited Blog Post

Thanks to EspenAO posting the story on the front page of Opera Community, my most popular blog post for the month of September 2008 was the 'Blog This' post, relating to the photo blogging feature on Flickr.

Number of Visitors

For the month of September, my blog received 3,880 unique visitors. With a total of 6,267 page views, this means that each visitor viewed 1.62 pages.

Browser Stats

I'm not entirely sure these browser stats are sampled uniquely from my blog; but possibly more a general overview of Opera Community. Regardless, Internet Explorer still takes hold of the browser market at 32.02%, but closely followed by Mozilla Firefox at 29.58%. Opera Web Browser comes in third place with 14.21%, followed by Opera Mini at 13.71% - a combined result of 27.92%, which still doesn't knock Firefox off the second spot.

Search Terms

Whilst I've already ran through the most popular search terms there were plenty of humorous or interesting queries. I'll close by running through a few of these:

  • love note, post-it, post-it love
    My blog post 'Post-It Love Note' shows a cool little note that I found about a year ago.
  • watch porno cinema in manchester
    You will be looking for Big In Amsterdam. Trust me.
  • wengo or skype?, wengo vs skype, WengoPhone, wengo, skype alternatives
    I wrote a blog post about Wengo being an alternative to Skype. I was wrong; use Skype.
  • grundon, girls sexy pictures, emily grundon, oneyearwithoutlight
    Emily Grundon is a girl who takes sexy pictures. She's also in a sexy band called Encyclopedia.
  • the old romantic killer band, lovers pass, old romantic, killer band, you don't know how to love
    The Old Romantic Killer Band are one of my new favourite bands for 2007/2008 - they have a new single coming out soon called 'Lovers Pass' from their debut album 'The Swan With Two Necks'. Find out more at their official MySpace.
  • konica auto s2, konica s2
    I got a film camera for Christmas - it's hot. For more info about the camera, visit Camerapedia. To can see all my photos with the camera, visit my Flickr photostream.
  • remembering house chores statistics
    If you searched for this; I remember that house chores need doing 90% of the time. I do the house chores 5% of the time.
  • pop bubble rock, bubble rock, pbr
    Yes! Pop, Bubble, Rock! One of Manchester's finest club nights. Get to it!
  • letter from pixar
    I got one of those!! It was thoroughly disappointing.
  • are there any hairdressers open on sunday in ellesmere port?
    Ummm. Maybe?
  • i want to download my fucking flickr sets mac
    There's nothing quite like swearing at a search engine to get your answer!
  • i hate matt cox
    Oh. Was this you Ramunas? :frown:

2 comments

Disenchanted.

Monday, 17. September 2007, 21:46:30

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I was hoping to return home and be able to post an exciting new blog post about two of my favourite companies around; Pixar and Yahoo!, but as the title suggests, the tone is a little different.

Pixar Logo

For those that don't know already, I was really excited all day today - right from the moment Vikki told me that I had mail from Pixar. Being at work, I couldn't wait to get home, and all day the excitement was building as to what they could've sent me. I was expecting a response to a letter that I'd sent to them, you see. I wrote it little under a month ago and had only sent it off around two weeks back. I don't really want to detail of what was in the letter, because it was quite lengthy and I can't remember, to be honest.

Anyway, so today I got the response. It was described to me as an A4-sized envelope which read 'Please Do Not Bend' on the front. Oh, how I was excited to hear that... which made it all worse when it was a total disappointment. I opened it up as soon as I got home to find a letter inside. Rather than quote it, here's a scan of the letter:

Letter from Pixar

As you can see, it's just a really generic auto-response; this is so offensive and impersonal that it makes me want to get in touch with them and have a rant at them some more. I understand that such a big company like Pixar must receive so much mail each day; but I'd prefer someone to read it and respond with something relevant ten years down the line than be just another crappy letter that's probably just tossed to one side.

Thank you for your letter to Pixar! We apologise for the delayed response, but we have been very busy working on our next feature animation film, "Wall.e", due out next summer.

First of all, I doubt the people in the mail room have been working hard on making the film. If someone's hired to do the mail, they're obviously sat replying to letters like mine all day, not just printing off auto-responders whilst waiting for their 3D model to render! Plus, one of the things I'd queried was why movie releases in the UK are months and months after US releases; and since they could clearly see from my address that I'm not from the US - this means their next feature animation film won't be released Summer 2008, but more like Winter 2008.

We love hearing all the great things you had to say, and we always appreciate any support and feedback we get from our fans.

As a simple token of our appreciation, we hope you like the enclosed photo of "The Incredibles".

What? I said one sentence of praise - the rest was questions I wanted answering about release dates, hi-definition movie releases and other matters I wanted to discuss. And your photo print is alright - I guess it's better than nothing - but I would've preferred a proper response and no silly print-out!! Maybe Pixar should save money in printing out all these photos and use the money they save to hire someone who will write back to fans properly!

Bah, it makes me sick. I took the time to write them a letter, hand-written on decent paper and everything; and their response made me dislike the company's way of handling things like this?! I would've preferred no response and then could pretend that someone has read my letter and taken in what I'd said, but is actually too busy to reply because they're busy on improving the product.

Yahoo! Mash Logo Yahoo! Mash Profile

Anyway, rant over - on my blog, at least.

Today I got invited to Yahoo! Mash - this is the new social network from Yahoo! - who previously maintained Yahoo! 360 (nobody seems to really know what's happening with 360 at the minute; whether it's to be scrapped, merged or to be continued). Y! Mash is currently in it's beta stages and somewhat closed off to the general public (an invite-only beta) and I didn't quite know what to expect after hearing very mixed feedback from sources on the web.

Signing up is easy; getting an invite doesn't just send you an invite, it creates a profile page for you to 'claim' should you want to join. Of course, if you decline, you don't get your page and it's deleted - but I think it's nice that it's done this way because you feel that you're already part of the network and it would be rude not to claim and start editing (or 'Mashing').

Editing your profile is also simple, and within seconds I had my page looking different from the default theme by changing a few colours and adding background images in the 'basic' mode of the Profile Editor and whilst I've not looked into more advanced CSS editing, I'm sure the profiles are quite easy to transform should you know CSS.

Your profile consists of modules which are also easy to add, move around (click and drag), edit, remove and steal (add to your profile, from a friends page). Unfortunately, most of the modules are very basic, rss-based modules, or silly 'fun' activities. Upon installing the Last.fm module I admit that I was expecting a bit more than it just to fetch the information and display it as an uninteresting and unformatted list. It would've been nice to see some colour, or even the flash music player available in the Facebook app. However, Yahoo! are set to release a developer API to allow people to create their own modules (akin to that of Facebook's Applications) in future.

One thing that is instantly noticeable (and also very annoying from both a Yahoo! supporter and a Yahoo! user's point of view) is that there is little integration with current Yahoo! services, and what is there is poorly implemented. Bearing in mind that login to Mash is accomplished via your standard Yahoo! ID, a good example of this is the Flickr photos module. Once you add the Flickr photos module, you see a box to enter the URL of your Flickr Photostream appear on your profile. My immediate reaction to this was "hang on, I log into my Flickr account using my Yahoo! ID too; why isn't this automatically linked up?!" I guess in the case of the Flickr module, this is for if you wanted to add the photostream of a particular tag, or a friend's photostream instead? But if that is the case why isn't there a nicely implemented user interface, as if it were a Yahoo! Widget?!

Other good examples of bad (or non-existent) implementation is MyBlogLog which has been dubbed MyMashLog and only shows recent visitors from within the Mash Community as a list of profile names, as opposed to any MyBlogLog member (no account linking, again) regardless of Mash membership and a nice profile picture thumbnail, an absence of an Upcoming or del.icio.us module and also the presence of Google-owned YouTube video modules as opposed to Yahoo! Video or Jumpcut.

Personally, I'd be quite happy to use it as my primary social networking site if they can give me greater and accurate localisation options, it became fully integrated with relevant Yahoo! services (sometimes I wonder if Yahoo! even know what services they own) and also that I can convince a good circle of friends to join. As a social network, I think it has potential - it's also relatively ad-free, which is a bonus. However, it does seem to be missing any sense of evolution over what we've witnessed from sites like MySpace, Facebook and Bebo - the ability to customise a friend's profile for them isn't enough; and then there's also the question of whether the time's right for yet another social networking site.

http://mash.yahoo.com/mattcoxonline

5 comments

You've Got (Yahoo!) Mail!

Saturday, 16. June 2007, 10:55:09

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Upcoming Tee (on me)

Upcoming Tee (yay!) Upcoming Tee (attn to dtl) Upcoming Tee (close up)

Thanks Upcoming!

3 comments

Like Hot Cakes...

Wednesday, 23. May 2007, 20:31:16

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It's just all too much! Cease this madness at once!

Google
the stats and ads company

...buy Feedburner for $100 Million.
...team up and discuss alliance with SalesForce.
...ink long-term deal with ClearChannel.
...to acquire DoubleClick for $3.1B.
...acquires California startup 'JotSpot'.

Yahoo!
the social networking company

...eyes deal for social network Bebo.
...snaps up Right Media for $680M.

Microsoft
the 'pay attention to us' company

...pays $6B for Online Ad Company.
...attempting to buy Yahoo!


No comments

Microsoft & Yahoo! have joined forces.

Thursday, 13. July 2006, 11:29:03

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I couldn't have put it better myself than when Yahoo! said it:

It's a great day for the world of instant messaging. Working hand-in-hand with our friends at Windows Live™ (MSN) Messenger, we've connected our IM communities, making it even easier for you to stay in touch.

From [today], using the new Yahoo! Messenger, you can see when your Windows Live™ (MSN) Messenger contacts are online and send
them instant messages. Keep all your friends in one place and IM with them anytime!



What a brilliant time to switch to Yahoo! Messenger.

Join The Beta

3 comments

'Coming Along Nicely

Tuesday, 11. July 2006, 14:07:08

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A while back I posted some stuff about Upcoming.org and how good it was. Well, it's still good - and now has been made even better! Redesigning some stuff really helps; not just the way it looks, but the way it works. You can find a list of new improved stuff here, or the better option to just jump straight in.

Check out my events; and let me know if you can come to Munkyfest 2006 - it'll be great!

Following the general theme of redesigning things; may I introduce fred. Whilst 'fred' isn't the coolest of names on the planet, he sure has a cool blog. You can see a picture here, or the real thing here.

And, as fred explains... what you see there can be created from a standard Opera Community templete; much like what you and I use. Impressive, eh?

NOTE: The comments on this post may be NSFW

10 comments

LOL-OMFG-ROFLMFAO, BBL

Monday, 10. July 2006, 11:46:12

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Well, I've noticed my blog posts have become most random and quite inconsistant - but nevermind - it's all in the name of informing the public (should anyone other than my girlfriend read my posts).

So, I'm in work right now and trying to get my head around a new project to lift it off the ground (that was a sutble hint as to who the client is). Meanwhile, I've been invited to trial the new beta of Yahoo! Instant Messenger. I messed with the link that they gave me, and have the direct link to the installer.

So, enjoy. Play. Invite your mates and chat.


I like Yahoo! Messenger much more than MSN Messenger. Not because it's a Yahoo! product (though that does play a part), but because I think it's nicer to look at, and more technologically advanced. In this version there's some sort of support for adding MSN contacts too. I've yet to get it working, mind... but that's all part of beta fun.

If anyone wants me, I'll be on Yahoo! Instant Messenger (beta). (msgme: mattcoxonline)

Edit: Aw, wicked!! And a new mac version!

Listed on Digg.

4 comments

International Remixer

Friday, 28. April 2006, 11:26:32

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Its interesting to see new things on the web; and its more interesting to see them come from Yahoo! I should think that soon, I'll have to post about something else - either that or rename my blog so it has Yahoo! in the title.

Well, today I show you the 'International Remixer'. Some of you may be aware that the 49th annual San Francisco International Film Festival, which shines a spotlight on great independent film projects from all over the world, is currently ongoing. This year, on their website, they have the 'International Remixer' which has been created by Yahoo! Research Berkeley and San Francisco State University.

So, what is this thing? International Remixer enables you to create your very own movie mashups. Go crazy with creativity and re-edit, remix and mash-up film selections from this year's festival into 1-minute remixes. You can then post your remixes to the site gallery for others to view and enjoy.

Its a great little web-based tool that looks the part and works superbly well. If you have any ideas, complaints, comments, feedback or just want to chat about the remixer, Yahoo! want to hear it.

Can't wait to try it out? I've registered a generic account for you all to toy about with:
Click through to the Remixer and login using the username blogreader and password password.

Related Links:
Ryan Shaw's blog of Yahoo! Research Berkeley
Yahoo! Search Blog 'Remixer' entry

2 comments

Let Yourself Go!

Wednesday, 26. April 2006, 10:39:28

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Today is a big day for the team here at Meedio; we have sold most of our technology to Yahoo!


Meedio make software that turns your existing PC into a complete system for the ultimate home entertainment experience, and have sold this to Yahoo! - which has been turned into Yahoo! Go

Now you can take everything off your computer and put it in your living room for everyone to see. View photos, search for video clips and watch movie trailers on your TV. Plus, your own digital video recorder (DVR) lets you record and watch your favorite shows anytime for free.

The capability of viewing photos comes from your flickr, Yahoo! Photos account, or your local PC hard drive. This will be some great news for flickr - because now they can be on everyone's TV too.

Video wise; you can watch featured and most popular searched video content from Yahoo! on the TV and find more videos to watch using Yahoo!’s video search technology. Not only that, but you can pick and choose to watch the latest movie trailers anytime.

Speaking of movies; Yahoo! are incorporating Yahoo! Movies services into your TV. Aside from being able to watch trailers, you can retreive movie info, recommendations and ratings on any movie. Find listings for local cinemas and showing times, and play DVD movies or video stored on your hard drive.

For you music fans; as well as listening to CDs and other MP3s stored on your local hard drive, LAUNCHcast radio stations will be broadcastable through your TV. And its not just sound; you will get access to tons of music videos - essentially enabling you to create your own on-demand music TV channel.

Finally, we come to the TV features. You can use your Digital Video Recorder (DVR) to record and managing TV shows and movies. Checking TV listings to find what you want to watch is easy, where you're able to browse by channel or time, customize guides to preferred channels and search station listings for TV shows, movies, or sports.

All-in-all, it's pretty much a totally free version of Windows Media Center, which I wanted to set up a few years back. However, since I prefer Yahoo! and this is looking fairly nice - I'm eagerly waiting a UK version.

If you want to check it out; download it now. There's also a version of Yahoo! Go for your Nokia mobile phone, and a PC alternative coming soon.

Related Links: Techcrunch, Engadget, beta amanzi

3 comments

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