logging

Earlier today Google unveiled some new and upcoming features being added to their Analytics service at the eMetrics Summit in Washington, D.C. Site owners will soon be getting a way to see what their users are searching for within the site, potentially making it easier for them to reorganize, or prioritize the what's on the page. Users will also have their choice of several third-party search tools that work with the new search analytics, along with Google Custom Search, Google Mini, and Google's enterprise search appliance.

The service is also rolling out a new "Events Tracking&… Read more

Just about every technology under the sun--from your cell phone to the biggest baddest core router or multi-processor server--tracks its activities by maintaining log data files. Most people rarely pay attention to this stuff, but it is a big deal when it comes to enterprise IT.

Want proof? According to ESG Research, 44 percent of large organizations (i.e., 1,000 employees or more) collect at least 1 terabyte of log file per month. Heck, 11 percent say that they capture more than 10 terabytes a month. That's a lot of logs from a lot of devices.

Just what … Read more

We reported on Thursday that MTV Networks was close to announcing plans for a new social network; later that night, Fortune unveiled more details of the project. This is a new Viacom (MTV Networks parent company) endeavor called Flux, which is growing out of what once was Tagworld. Rather than being a "destination" social network, Flux is a distributed platform of social-media features that will be installed on select Viacom niche sites (like the Subterranean Blog, which we pointed out in our original post). It's powered by Social Project, the company formerly known as Tagworld, which Viacom … Read more

Featured on this week's Real Deal podcast: Synchronizing two computers. If you want to know how to keep yourself sane if you regularly use more than one PC, tune into this show for a rundown of my tips on how to keep files, bookmarks, and e-mail synchronized over the Web.

Products mentioned:

If you want to join the ongoing discussion, come on over to the Real Deal forums.

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LogMeIn. GoToMyPC. Radmin. CrossLoop. MyIVO. Envision, if you will, a fierce battle waged by these multiple armies, a mad melee of digital pikes, longbows, broadswords, dotanuki and, oh, an anachronistic Sherman tank for fun, and you've got a very vivid imagination.

It's also not a bad metaphor for the remote access wars, which are currently roiling in a frothy boil. LogMeIn Ignition is upping their ante. It's a nifty little self-contained program that you install on your desktop, then copy the EXE onto a portable device such as an iPod, flash drive or a BlackBerry. Connect that device to any PC, double-click on Ignition and you've got instant access to any of the machines saved in your LogMeIn account.

… Read more

Anton Chuvakin, Chief Logging Evangelist for LogLogic, gave me a call today. LogLogic is funded by Sequoia and does log management and intelligence. I wanted to learn more about LogLogic's foray into open source and, frankly, I wanted to learn about logs. What the heck is a log? And why is LogLogic's open-source hook...Windows?… Read more

It's time for a confession: Although I write about Web 2.0 applications all the time, I use very few of these apps for more than a day or two. In most cases, once I've poked around in a product and written up my thoughts, I don't come back to it.

There are, however, wonderful exceptions, and I want to make it a practice to give a second look at the services that are more than interesting, they're so useful that you can rely on them day-to-day.

First up in this category: WuFoo, the online forms … Read more

Wait, we've heard this before, haven't we? MyBlogLog (recently acquired by Yahoo) shows you who is viewing a Web page when you visit it. It's a really interesting app, but can be quite creepy.

A similar idea: Me.dium, which is launching its new "semi-public beta" at Demo 07 (which means it's an open beta, but new signups could be shut down at any time). Like MyBlogLog, Me.dium shows you who else is on the site you're on. It also shows you where your friends are hanging out online. And it shows … Read more

The untrained eye may find some resemblance to Spongebob Squarepants, but this underwater lumberjack is far more useful and probably nowhere near as irritating. As surface dwellers continue to ravage the planet, we may need help increasingly from technologies like "the Sawfish," a 7,000-pound "underwater harvesting specialist"--or, as we would call it, a submarine that cuts down trees.

Proving once again our desperate ignorance on many subjects, we were surprised to learn that underwater forests are routinely created when hydroelectric dams are constructed and flood terrestrial timber that can still be harvested for decades … Read more