Capturing the direct links for google analytics.

There are many occasions where one wants to know how many clicks were attracted by a direct link . It could be a link to download some app or pdf or any other direct link. It is general assumption that we need to have a page with google analytics code for google to capture the visit to the page.

Often to achieve this, a page with google analytics code is created for all direct links and then that page redirects to the actual target. However, there is a simpler way to achieve this, using javascript.

If the page having the link already has google’s analytics code embedded, then all you have to do is to use onclick event on <a> tag to call pagetracker function, for example,

<a href=”http:\\www.yoursite.com\docs\help.pdf” onclick=”javascript: pageTracker._trackPageview(‘help_pdf’);” >Help</a>

In the snippet above, help_pdf will be your reference to search for when looking over reports in the google analytics admin page.

If you want to do more than just track the link, then you can have a javascript function in the page with your logic and a call to above function, for example,

function trackDirectLinks(linkName) {

	//your logic here

	//if analytics code is not embedded in the page, then paste it here.

	var pageTracker=_gat._getTracker("UA-xxxxx-x");
    	pageTracker._trackPageview(page);
}

And call this function in your links,

<a href=”http:\\www.yoursite.com\docs\help.pdf” onclick=”javascript: trackDirectLinks(‘help_pdf’);” >Help</a>

Check in the analytics if the link is getting captured. The results are almost realtime, for me, I had to wait for 15-20 mins before the results in the analytics got updated.

If you don’t see them, then one probable reason apart from hundred other syntax related errors could be that you are using the older version of google analytics code. Copy the latest version (its been around for quite a while now) of analytics code from analytics page and replace all your old code. The advantage of using newer code is you can place it anywhere in your page not necessarily at the bottom, as it uses asynchronous calls which does not block loading of your page content until the call is finished. All browsers support these calls.

PDF generation was an old request by one of our client. Our team struggled a lot to solve this.
The root problem was font. We were in need of such font which can support UTF-8 characters. But none of the PHP libraries were having such support by default. Finally we selected TCPDF as the PDF generation library because it has Unicode supports and able to generate UTF-8 PDF in the presence of suitable font.

Here are the steps by which we solved this issue.

1. Searched the font supported by UTF-8 encoding and selected “osaka.unicode.ttf” as it was best matching to our requirement. Copied it into the TCPDF’s utils folder.
2. Converted it to the font’s metrics file.
- Changed the font file name to lower case.
- Used a PHP script “makeallttffonts.php” to convert the ttf file to font’s metrics file. This script comes by default with TCPDF.
- Copied generated font map files (only osaka.unicode.ctg.z, osaka.unicode.z, osaka.unicode.php)to the font’s directory.
3. Used the font name during PDF generation.

Problem: You have a symfony project with 2 applications ‘customers’ and ‘resellers’. You want www.myretail.com to use ‘customer’ application and www.myresellers.com to use ‘resellers’ application.

here customers app is your default ‘frontend’ app with index.php and resellers app has say ‘reseller.php’ and ‘reseller_dev.php’ controller files.

Solution:
Separate the web folder for each domain you want handle.

so customers content is in /project/web folder and resellers content is in /project/web-reseller/ folder. Move your reseller.php to web-reseller folder and rename it to index.php

You will need to create two virtual host for each domain with document root pointing to their respective folders.

Another solution is to have different .htaccess files. In case you do not want to create separate web folder you can create another .htaccess_reseller file in the web/ folder and redirect all request to reseller.php instead of index.php

A recent law suit against Dell by the attorney general of New York, says a lot about how important customer service has become. Its interesting to observe that having a good product line alone does not guarantee company’s success, rather what makes a difference is how well you are serving your customers. Innovating on how to service your customers has become as important as innovating on technology and your product.

Innovating in any field is very challenging and when it comes to customer satisfaction it becomes even more difficult because of the diverse and dynamic nature of your customer base. One way of doing this is by involving your customers in the process. Co-create. Taking help of your customers in letting you innovate on your offering, let them tell you what they need and what they don’t. Make them feel as if they belong. This instills a strong sense of loyalty. This is the focus of our new product ValueJini.

With a few free days on hand and the ICC Cricket World Cup around the corner, we here at TechJini thought why not make use of the time and create something for the World Cup. Thus CheerMyTeam was born. The features were driven by two factors, 1. We are cricket fans and 2. We wanted to use some libraries/technologies. So after deciding the features, we spent about 4 days creating it. Here is what you can do on the site:

• Get a widget that you can place on your site/blog to show support for your country (See the widget in action below at the end of this post)
• Vote for and cheer your favourite team
• Vote for and cheer your favourite players
• View latest World Cup public photos from flickr and videos from youtube
• Take part in discussions
• View live score (thanks to vcricket)

Thats all we had time for although we wanted to do much much more. After all you cannot do much on a diet of beers and pizzas

The widget (for India) is below. You can get the widget for your country.

If you have any feedback/suggestions/brickbats about the site, please leave a comment.

As more and more companies bring out great products in the web 2.0 arena, it becomes evident that innovation is all around. Except here at home. I was looking at this cool mashup of Google Maps with the physical locations of all web 2.0 companies, and one hting to notice is that there is not a single company from India.

India has more than 50% of global market share for IT sourcing and more than 30% in the ITES sector. Give that fact it is indeed surprising and disappointing that there are very few innovations happening from India, and probably none in the web application area.

Leave a comment if you happen to know any web 2.0 startup from India.

Web 2.0 is the center of all internet activity nowadays. More and more people are joining the race to get a share of the pie by launching a web 2.0 service. And social networking is the theme most of these services revolve around. Apart from a few services like flickr that have a strong revenue model by offering paid services, most of the other services are free. And that has to be the case since most people would not pay for these services. So the wealth they generate is mostly in terms of the number of unique visitors they get.

Now, how do they monetize and capitalize on the traffic that they accumulate? The immediate thought that comes to mind is that they generate revenues by advertisements. True, that can make money, but I doubt it would make enough money to cover all their investments and ongoing costs. I was talking about this with a friend, and he casually mentioned that having a large existing and loyal user base instantly makes them eligible for acquisition by one of the GYM gang members. Does it? Do most of the web 2.0 startups that do not have a strong revenue model hope to be acquired by one of the bigger players who has the muscle to buy them out?

But does it make sense to create a service whose only hope of survival is to get acquired by someone who has enough cash reserves to keep it rolling? No, it doesn’t. I don’t think these bright people out there providing great services start out on the premise of selling their companies at some point of time, or do they?

Phil suggets there are 3 models of generating revenue for the web 2.0 companies. But do all the services qualify for them? Most of the social networking sites cannot afford to ask their users for subscriptions or commisions. So while I myself am a user of these services, it really puzzles me if and how they are making any money.