So it’s a month since I wrote my first blog post and I’ve got to say I’m surprised at several things I’ve encountered.

Firstly shock of shocks is that I’ve managed to post a decent amount of entries. 34 actually which is quite a few more than I actually thought would be possible. The only way I can really describe how I’m doing this is simple posting whatever is on my mind at any point in a day. The informality of it certainly helps.

It’s also made me much more aware of other blogs (particularly in the Birmingham area) and the different writing styles and subjects - which reminds me I must update my Blogroll accordingly to give credit where it is due.

But the thing that has really amazed me is how quickly a brand new blog on a brand new domain has actually been found by people so quickly. I was ready to be posting for several months before getting any traffic at all. But I’ve had a regular readership it seems which has only encouraged me to spout forth even more! Blog on…

I love Google Analytics and can always be found looking through all the pretty reports it generates for various websites I am involved with. I never cease to be amazed at the various routes people find a website.

One major downside of Google Analytics however is its reliance on JavaScript which makes some things on a website difficult to track. One example of a figure I would love to know is the true number of subscriptions to an RSS feed.

I’ve found a half way house solution to this posted by Hamlet Batista which tracks people clicking on RSS links on a website using the same code I use to track conversions on dynamic pages. For your reference this is:

<a href=http://www.digital-rant.co.uk/feed/ title=”Subscribe to my feed” rel=”alternate” onclick=”javascript:urchinTracker(’/tracking/feed’);”>

Or if you are using the latest Google Analytics code:

<a href=http://www.digital-rant.co.uk/feed/ title=”Subscribe to my feed” rel=”alternate” onclick=”javascript:pageTracker._trackPageview(‘/tracking/feed’);”>

Where “/tracking/feed” is your goal URL setup in Google Analytics.

 However this code makes the following assumptions:

1. Everyone subscribes using the RSS links within the page and not the RSS details in the page header (picked up by various browsers).
2. Everyone that follows an RSS link actually subscribes to the feed.

If anyone has any other suggestions to overcome these problems give me a shout - I’d love to know! In the meantime I’ll have to survive on these approximate figures.

Of course if I had the cash I’d upgrade to Google Analytics’ big brother Urchin 6 which recently came out of beta which sorts these issues but as I don’t have $2995 I’ll have to carry on as I am.

There has been news lately about Microsoft and GMail Captchas being broken and with figures of 60-80% success rates by spambots is certainly looks like the current method of blocking automated access is going to need a replacement soon.

Now this security image technology has long been the bane of visually impaired users with captchas effectively denying access to large areas of the web. It’s just a small part of the whole accessibility debate.

A new service called IMAGINATION adds another level to the captcha idea and is being touted as captcha 2. IMAGINATION uses a picture of a distorted image and radio button list of options describing the image, these options are also in an image. This would require the recognition of the image and then the text options available which makes things a lot harder for the spambot and unfortunately still keeps the visually impaired out.

I wish I could come up with a solution to this issue but the honest truth is I can’t. Even the odd site that provides an alternative audio captcha isn’t a perfect solution and as voice recognition software is very mature I’m sure that this could be an alternative way in for the spambots.

The only option I can see that satisfies both blocking automated processes and follows accessibility guidelines is the kind of question and response architecture. In it’s simplest form this could be “What is the colour of the sky?” - most users of course will be able to answer “Blue” and be let through. However this does leave the door open to bots being able to lean on the power of the net to answer the questions.

So where to go from here? Well this entire problem stems from the anonymity of the net so the obvious solution is to provide an independently authenticated identification system that could be used in a similar fashion to OpenID.

Being identified on the net solves a wide range of issues being talked about at the moment but are people willing to lose their anonymity though?

Twitter Japan has launched and it has one thing that we don’t see over here - adverts!

So Twitter are trying the old tried and tested advertising model to bring in some cash. Lets just hope it brings in enough for them advertising on the site and they don’t need to spam everyone with advertisements to their mobile phones! That would kill Twitter dead in no time at all!

UPDATE: Gary Andrews has posted with more details about the current media attention Twitter is receiving and also has some wise words about how companies should approach what may be a new media for them.