YouTube goes Google with Insight video analytics and Google Maps integration

Logging into YouTube recently I first became aware of some new features I've had on my personal wishlist for some time.

Probably the most significant is Insight, which provides a Google Analytics type view of who is watching your videos. It has some great statistics including daily view charts, referrals (such as from related videos, YouTube searches or embedding) and even which countries the viewers are from and even some basic demographic information. All this is fantastic and really improves the experience for video uploaders.

The other features I've discovered is that you can now set a date and Google Map location for your videos. While I'm not sure how this benefits the video uploader in terms or exposure or how it will affect the search (I suspect they intend to add a whole range of new end user features around this), it is certainly refreshing and the whole interface now has more of a Web 2.0 feel than ever.

Google Street View - Awesome !

Check out the new Google Street view.

http://maps.google.com/help/maps/streetview/

Scary stuff.

Certainly makes touring the world a lot cheaper.
I think it could revolutionise city planning and community consultation.

Big Brother is watching ...

It also opens a minefield of potential problems. Scratch the surface of privacy issues and you'll find a plethora of potential problems. It could make life a whole lot easier for burglars for a start, and not to mention graffiti vandals and a whole range of other nasties ...

Template Monster Alternative - Open Source Web Design

Template Monster is easily the most popular place to get website templates on the web, but I've often tried to find free alternatives because the quality on Template Monster can often be a mixed bag. Some of the templates have terrible HTML with embedded tables with images used for headings, poor CSS and poor source PSD files or restrictive Flash/swf and a dose of general search engine unfriendliness.

So I recently discovered the whole Open Source Web Design movement, the quality and diversity of site templates is increasing all the time.
And here are some of the better sites I've found so far:

http://www.oswd.org
http://www.openwebdesign.org
http://www.opendesigns.org
http://www.oswt.co.uk

Dashes or Underscores in URL - Google no longer care

After months of re-optimising URLs on various blogs and websites, I discovered today via this announcement that is was all for nothing ...

Once upon a time people thought that search engines like Google recognised underscores. Apparently Google at least now recognises both dashes or hyphens (-) as keywword separators ...

I guess you can't win them all.

Personal Start Pages - iGoogle vs Netvibes vs Protopage

Those who know me well would know that I've always been a big fan of Web 2.0, RSS, the mash-up and its potential and I've been getting into personal start pages recently which are starting to see that potential realised. I've tried iGoogle, Netvibes and Protopage. Some of these things have been around since about 2005, but they were very clunky in the early days. With the widespread adoption of AJAX, they are becoming much faster, more usable and practical. As for my personal preferences, well While Protopage is probably easiest in terms of user interface and adding RSS feeds, I find that Netvibes to be a lot faster and more fully featured. Forgive me, but I just haven't managed to persevere with Google's offering. I think it is still in beta and it looks it. So full of bugs, I couldn't even get the basic weather widget to work. Plainly put, at least at the moment, iGoogle sucks ...

Royalty Free Stock Images - iStockPhoto vs stock.xchng vs Dreamstime

For royalty free stock images, I personally prefer Dreamstime. The prices are great (although not as low as they might appear). I used to use iStockPhoto exclusively, and even contribute photos, until their payments and criteria got too ridiculous and their prices for photos went through the roof after beinb bought out by Getty.

While stock.xchng is also good, it still doesn't offer the range or quality of Dreamstime.

Viewcount returns to YouTube

Looks like they listen afterall. YouTube has apparently overhauled their interace and put the sort by view count back - hooray !