Google Analytics support

I love it. It is just great. Fast (and apologizing if it takes some days for them to answer) and accurate.

Trillian Astra and the mobile web

I am enjoying current Trillian Astra windows client a lot. There is some stuff yet for the developers to do and the web client is frozen until they make it work with the latest version of Trillian servers. I could not try the web client yet, because of that, but I expect a lot from it. I hope I can link all my RSS feeds there so this way, the "My Web" part of the Windows client gets activated and I can check them all. This way I'd remove some RSS Yahoo widgets from my desktop (I am using two of them in order to be notified of changes and then read the full version: Informer and Yahoo! My Headlines).

Of course, thinking of a web client made me wonder if I could ever enjoy Trillan Astra web client on a mobile phone. Well, they have quickly made my wishes come true (or, at least, they will). See this post in Cerulean Studios blog and check how wonderful it will look on the iPhone.

It might work in S60 browser too, as people are enjoying iPhone web apps in Nokia browser (although some refinements should be done to use all the screen of some S60 3rd edition, like N80).

Support for newer versions of formats

While trying to play a Powerpoint presentation by Microsoft about Ajax support in Pocket Internet Explorer, Powerpoint (2003) detected that the file was created in a more recent version of Office so it encourages me to download a file format converter so I can enjoy it. Great usability feature!

Trillian Astra

After long time being a Trillian Pro user, and having asked for their new Trillian Astra product as an alpha user (well, no matter how you want to call it, releasing something to the user means beta as alpha is lab testing... or this is what I was taught in Software Engineering), I finally received the email with my user and password and link to download the installer.

I have tried it a little before going to bed. By now, it looks faster and more stable than version 3.x. It has included Google Talk as a new IM protocol (in Trillian Pro 3.x you have to do it via Jabber and you lose some of the features from Google Talk) but no one is online right now. Well, it is Saturday night and only geeks and family men are online at this moment ;-)

The only thing that I am asking to Trillian Astra is to improve support for Jabber. I cannot add a contact in CTIC's internal Jabber server without the whole Trillian crashing, so every single Jabber user in the server means Trillian restart. Besides, if I send a link in a message, the message can only include the link... No other single character or it will crash. I hate this as I have to be very careful and chat with people but send URLs separately.

I'll know how much I love it or hate it next Monday, as I connect to xana.

Yahoo Widgets

I have become more and more fan of widgets lately, thanks to Nokia's Widsets.

After trying some widgets platforms for Windows, this is the Yahoo Widgets is the one that I have chosen. It lets me read my email accounts and RSS feeds on the fly, show meeting and tasks to do in Outlook, see slideshows of pics in my computer or in Flickr, enjoy weather forecasts and lots of other things. The look-and-feel is one of the best I've ever seen in any widget platform and same applies to usability.

Anyway, I wish that some of the widgets were a bit more customizable. The technology, in general, is still in beta but is very useful for forgetting people like me who wants to sneak a peek on lots of interesting things at the same time while you are working without having to push for the information.

Red and white pride

I did not have time to post about this when I read about it some days ago. The Centre for Sociological Research (Centro de Investigaciones Sociologicas -CIS-) revealed the preferences for us Spaniards in what regards to football teams. The news are not that 33.7% prefers Real Madrid or that 25.7% loves FC Barcelona. The fact is that my beloved Real Sporting de Gijón is the 15th in the list. The Spanish League (1st Division) is played by 20 teams and although we have been in 2nd division for almost 10 years, we are still in the heart of people. It seems that we are more loved and/or respected than 5 teams in 1st Division and more than any other team in Second Division.

Well, although the CIS is one of the most respected organizations in Spain in statistical studies, I do not believe very much in this kind of works anyway. And less if I do not know the procedure followed in the study. Statistics is a dangerous friend open to different interpretations and all the details of a statistical work must be known before you state something about it.

Anyway, I loved reading this. Oh, and by the way, I think that the real winner was Racing de Santander. This team was the 3rd one in the rank right after Madrid and Barcelona, with an 8%.

Finally, as I previously said, these works are easily open to different interpretations. I included Celta de Vigo and Real Sociedad, being above Sporting in the rank, among 1st Division teams. They both will play in 2nd Div. next season. On the other hand, Real Valladolid, Almería and Real Murcia (the three best teams in 2nd Div, playing next season in 1st Div) are in worse positions than Sporting.

I hope someday soon I'll be able to stop resigning myself with subjective opinions like these (no matter if the CIS claims this is science) and find my team in the "Liga de las Estrellas" at last.

Safari on Windows!

I have just installed Safari Beta 3 for Windows and the first thing I did was to post it in the blog. It looks great and seems to work really smooth (the charts in Apple's web page seem to be true). It is really fast displaying HTML pages but I did not have time to check its speed running JavaScript.

The worst thing that I found by now is the amount of memory it takes (95 MBs only while writing this and no other tab open; I must say that Opera takes only 50 MBs if I have one single tab open in which I am writing a post in blogger). But hey, who reports the weakness of their own software? :-)

Yoigo

I have signed a contract with Yoigo, the 4th mobile operator in Spain (after Movistar from Telefónica, Vodafone and Orange). They try to do things easily: connection charge, 12 cents + VAT; national call, 12 cents + VAT per minute; text message, 10 cents + VAT; minimum monthly fee, 6 € + VAT. Call fees apply to any mobile or any landline in Spain.

The other operators have great offers in certain conditions but they suck your money when you call out of these conditions. So you have to be using a calculator and read the small print of your contract to be sure of what you'll pay.

Yoigo will still have to improve stuff like roaming (there are countries like USA where do not have any agreement yet), but on the other side they have agreements to call people in the (foreign) country where you are with the same fees as Yoigo national calls. Few countries support this, but I bet they are going to be more and more as time goes by.

Yoigo also promises not to raise fees in the next years (they talk about decreasing them if the amount of customers is bigger and bigger).

I must say that the thing that really made me want to sign with them is that I can connect to the internet with a daily flat rate of 1.2 €.

Yoigo is ruled by Telia Sonera and, in my opinion, this is a guarantee. My workmate Diego Berrueta is happy with them. We'll see.

By the way, I signed the contract with them just by using their web. And the pen I used in order to write it was S60 Web Browser :-)