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Posted to dev@cayenne.apache.org by Aristedes Maniatis <ar...@ish.com.au> on 2007/05/30 02:04:53 UTC
Google Analytics
The recent conversation on Infra about Google Analytics for Apache
projects is interesting. I should have thought of it earlier since
I've been using their services for a whole bunch of our customers. It
produces really useful reports.
Would anyone object if I added this service to the Cayenne site? It
involves one piece of javascript which causes an extra fetch from a
Google server on every page load. I've not noticed any speed
degradation in even our busiest sites and the personal info shared
with Google is just the typical ones: which page, what IP, is Flash/
Java/etc installed. Nothing to identify individual people beyond
their IP address which is in the Apache logs anyway.
The plus side is that it gives us a better idea of which
documentation pages are most used, how long people spend looking
through the site, where they start looking from (do they all start on
the front page), etc. These things can help tell us how to improve
the site and the profile of Cayenne.
I'd start by giving all committers access to the reports, but they
can also be periodically (eg monthly) emailed to one of the lists if
we like.
Cheers
Ari
-------------------------->
ish
http://www.ish.com.au
Level 1, 30 Wilson Street Newtown 2042 Australia
phone +61 2 9550 5001 fax +61 2 9550 4001
GPG fingerprint CBFB 84B4 738D 4E87 5E5C 5EFA EF6A 7D2E 3E49 102A
Re: Google Analytics
Posted by Jason Dwyer <Ja...@redata.com.au>.
its been a while since i read through the inbox for this list, and at
the risk of getting slightly OT..
i presume most here are firefox empowered?
http://noscript.net/
does double duty in that it keeps a lot of ad scripts being fetched, as
well as keeping my browsing habits mine :)
cheers,
j
( oh and another ambivilent +0 on adding it to the cayenne site... i'd
read the reports, but wouldnt be contributing any data of my own ;) )
On Wed, 2007-05-30 at 10:11 +0300, Andrus Adamchik wrote:
> I am generally impressed with Google tools, but I am also in the
> privacy freak camp. Still I know that the battle for online (or real
> world) privacy is lost and this or that small concession is benign by
> itself and doesn't change much in the big picture. So my vote is +0,
> meaning I won't actively object it and won't pretend that I don't
> care to read the generated reports :-).
>
> Andrus
>
>
> On May 30, 2007, at 3:04 AM, Aristedes Maniatis wrote:
>
> > The recent conversation on Infra about Google Analytics for Apache
> > projects is interesting. I should have thought of it earlier since
> > I've been using their services for a whole bunch of our customers.
> > It produces really useful reports.
> >
> > Would anyone object if I added this service to the Cayenne site? It
> > involves one piece of javascript which causes an extra fetch from a
> > Google server on every page load. I've not noticed any speed
> > degradation in even our busiest sites and the personal info shared
> > with Google is just the typical ones: which page, what IP, is Flash/
> > Java/etc installed. Nothing to identify individual people beyond
> > their IP address which is in the Apache logs anyway.
> >...
> >
> > Cheers
> > Ari
> >
> >
Re: Google Analytics
Posted by Andrus Adamchik <an...@objectstyle.org>.
I am generally impressed with Google tools, but I am also in the
privacy freak camp. Still I know that the battle for online (or real
world) privacy is lost and this or that small concession is benign by
itself and doesn't change much in the big picture. So my vote is +0,
meaning I won't actively object it and won't pretend that I don't
care to read the generated reports :-).
Andrus
On May 30, 2007, at 3:04 AM, Aristedes Maniatis wrote:
> The recent conversation on Infra about Google Analytics for Apache
> projects is interesting. I should have thought of it earlier since
> I've been using their services for a whole bunch of our customers.
> It produces really useful reports.
>
> Would anyone object if I added this service to the Cayenne site? It
> involves one piece of javascript which causes an extra fetch from a
> Google server on every page load. I've not noticed any speed
> degradation in even our busiest sites and the personal info shared
> with Google is just the typical ones: which page, what IP, is Flash/
> Java/etc installed. Nothing to identify individual people beyond
> their IP address which is in the Apache logs anyway.
>
> The plus side is that it gives us a better idea of which
> documentation pages are most used, how long people spend looking
> through the site, where they start looking from (do they all start
> on the front page), etc. These things can help tell us how to
> improve the site and the profile of Cayenne.
>
> I'd start by giving all committers access to the reports, but they
> can also be periodically (eg monthly) emailed to one of the lists
> if we like.
>
> Cheers
> Ari
>
>
>
>
> -------------------------->
> ish
> http://www.ish.com.au
> Level 1, 30 Wilson Street Newtown 2042 Australia
> phone +61 2 9550 5001 fax +61 2 9550 4001
> GPG fingerprint CBFB 84B4 738D 4E87 5E5C 5EFA EF6A 7D2E 3E49 102A
Re: Google Analytics
Posted by Ahmed Mohombe <am...@yahoo.com>.
>> I know of webalizer (and I used it on ObjectStyle). Anything else
>> worth checking?
>
> Providing web hosting to a range of customers now for the last 10 years,
> I've tried most everything. Nothing comes even close to the Google tool.
That's simply not true :). Depending on what you want to achieve (and what's important
in the case of an open source project) there are various tools better suited for the various tasks.
> I too am very protective of my privacy. But what do we think Google is
> going to do with all these IP addresses?
>
> Here is their privacy policy: http://www.google.com/privacypolicy.html
Yeah right :). AOL and others also had privacy policy but user data leak still happened :).
And it's not just about the IP address, but because their services are almost in every page
it's almost like a "live session" upon everything users do: so it's the "connection" of that
information that is problematic, not the list of IP addresses.
Common sense, logic and a little bit of history tells a totally different story than the current
hype and zealotry :).
> Ahmed, I assume this means you don't use Google for searching in order
> to avoid having your IP logged by them - I am curious what search engine
> you use.
I'm using more than one search engine, and as I said, it's not just about the IP address.
Personally I don't like monopoly (of any kind).
Ahmed.
Re: Google Analytics
Posted by Aristedes Maniatis <ar...@maniatis.org>.
On 30/05/2007, at 5:13 PM, Andrus Adamchik wrote:
> I know of webalizer (and I used it on ObjectStyle). Anything else
> worth checking?
Providing web hosting to a range of customers now for the last 10
years, I've tried most everything. Nothing comes even close to the
Google tool.
I too am very protective of my privacy. But what do we think Google
is going to do with all these IP addresses?
Here is their privacy policy: http://www.google.com/privacypolicy.html
Ahmed, I assume this means you don't use Google for searching in
order to avoid having your IP logged by them - I am curious what
search engine you use.
Ari
-------------------------->
Aristedes Maniatis
phone +61 2 9660 9700
PGP fingerprint 08 57 20 4B 80 69 59 E2 A9 BF 2D 48 C2 20 0C C8
Re: Google Analytics
Posted by Ahmed Mohombe <am...@yahoo.com>.
>> There are many good weblog analyzers that don't require to "give away
>> your data", so I don't get why are you so keen on selling yourself to
>> Google.
>
> I know of webalizer (and I used it on ObjectStyle).
Webalizer is pretty primitive and "old style". AWStats falls in the same category
but it's more polished and not abandonware.
http://awstats.sourceforge.net/
A comparison with other very similar tools:
http://awstats.sourceforge.net/docs/awstats_compare.html
AWStats does a pretty good job and it's more than enough for most common use cases.
> Anything else worth
> checking?
The only free Java based web analyzer that is very easy to integrate into existing webapplications
(e.g. for admin/provider view) is Polliwog:
http://polliwog.sourceforge.net/
http://polliwog.sourceforge.net/livedemo/Dec-05/index.html.gz
Deciding upon a weblog tool/framework depends allot on what you are trying to achieve, thus one
tool might be better than the other.
Many of the commercial tools also have free license for open source projects (e.g. same like JIRA),
but many of these tools are more "data mining" oriented and better suited for marketing purposes.
Ahmed.
Re: Google Analytics
Posted by Andrus Adamchik <an...@objectstyle.org>.
On May 30, 2007, at 9:56 AM, Ahmed Mohombe wrote:
> There are many good weblog analyzers that don't require to "give
> away your data", so I don't get why are you so keen on selling
> yourself to Google.
I know of webalizer (and I used it on ObjectStyle). Anything else
worth checking?
Andrus
Re: Google Analytics
Posted by Ahmed Mohombe <am...@yahoo.com>.
>>> Would anyone object if I added this service to the Cayenne site?
>> Yes, me, even I have no vote (but I would vote -1 if I would have one)
>> :) .
>>
>> IMHO already a too big part of the Internet is "covered" by Google
>> /(Analytics).
>> I have a really bad feeling that on most pages I click these days I
>> see in the status bar "loading google-analytics", and than with the
>> same IP address I might read my email and than everything gets connected.
>
> It's an https connection if that helps you feel safer.
No it doesn't. I totally dislike the idea that private companies know about
me or what I did (e.g. last month for each minute) much more than I do (since I already forgot the
most).
> The thing about statistics is that you need volumes of it to do any
> decent data mining... thus I'd say google is a decent choice if any are
> to be used at all. Their tools for analysing the data are also brilliant.
Yes, especially for them since they have *all* the data and "hype blinded" users have only a small
fragment of it to keep them happy.
There are many good weblog analyzers that don't require to "give away your data", so I don't get why
are you so keen on selling yourself to Google.
Ahmed.
P.S. I suppose next you will proposed to insert google ads all over the Cayenne documentation and
site, won't you.
Re: Google Analytics
Posted by Lachlan Deck <la...@gmail.com>.
On 30/05/2007, at 4:34 PM, Ahmed Mohombe wrote:
>> Would anyone object if I added this service to the Cayenne site?
> Yes, me, even I have no vote (but I would vote -1 if I would have
> one) :) .
>
> IMHO already a too big part of the Internet is "covered" by Google /
> (Analytics).
> I have a really bad feeling that on most pages I click these days I
> see in the status bar "loading google-analytics", and than with the
> same IP address I might read my email and than everything gets
> connected.
It's an https connection if that helps you feel safer.
The thing about statistics is that you need volumes of it to do any
decent data mining... thus I'd say google is a decent choice if any
are to be used at all. Their tools for analysing the data are also
brilliant.
with regards,
--
Lachlan Deck
Re: Google Analytics
Posted by Ahmed Mohombe <am...@yahoo.com>.
> Would anyone object if I added this service to the Cayenne site?
Yes, me, even I have no vote (but I would vote -1 if I would have one) :) .
IMHO already a too big part of the Internet is "covered" by Google /(Analytics).
I have a really bad feeling that on most pages I click these days I see in the status bar "loading
google-analytics", and than with the same IP address I might read my email and than everything gets
connected.
Ahmed.