Sessions, Queries, and Galaxies – the Monday August 15th Roundup

A late Roundup? Yes, sorry folks. It’s busy times around Cardinal Path right now. We have places to go, people to see, and lots and lots and lots and lots to write.

This week we have some neat jquery/html animations, the pros and cons of facebook pages, testing during traffic spikes, and the change to sessions that just came out in Google Analytics.

Create

We start the week with a guide to constructing a galaxy within a website. Actually, it’s how Arthur van ‘t Hoog created a fairly interesting animation out of a series of sprites and layers. Not real complex, but there are some neat tricks being done here.
More techy, Rob Larson (of IBM) has a jquery function for building CSS selectors dynamically.

Attract

E-nor has a post on the pro’s and con’s of Facebook pages. I can’t say I agree with them entirely. Their pro’s list is good, but their cons are kinda silly. Wall updates don’t reach fans? Can you imagine if they did? If Facebook updated your fans whenever you posted on your wall, or let you message fans en masse, then you’d have fans “unliking” you left right and center in order to avoid all the spam you’re putting on their wall (because, lets face it, everyone updates their Facebook pages a LOT).
Ever noticed how there are a lot of infographic posts these days? Well linkbuilder has an infographic post on using infographic posts as linkbait… oy vey…

Analyze

The big news on the GA front this week comes with the updating of the definition of sessions within Google Analytics. No longer is a session ended when a visitor closes a browser, instead it is ended when the visitors traffic source changes. It’s an interesting change, and makes sense, but I don’t like the idea of comparing two metrics (old and new visits) that have different definitions…
L3Analytics looks at this issue a little more closely, trying to help people figure out how this will affect their own understanding of data.

Optimize

Get Elastic asks if we should be wary of testing during a traffic spike. They generally agree, but comment that there are lots of tests that won’t be particularly biased by results from a traffic spike (such as back to school shoppers, etc.). They also point out that the added traffic will make tests complete more quickly. Perhaps test on a spike, then confirm during normal traffic? I should ask Michael about that…
A List Apart has an interesting post on designing fun. Really this is more about the design process and how to task out the study of a je ne sais quoi like “fun”. Still, they give some interesting examples and cases of going through the process.

Kent Clark

Some have compared him to the Dalai Lama, others to Kublai Kahn. When he isn't teaching third world children how to purify water with nothing more than a plastic bottle and a garden hose, he is creating mad waves for surfers off the west coast with little more than a paddle. Some say there is a boat involved, others that he walks on water. Little is known about his background. he appeared from nowhere 15 years ago and claims heritage from a land with neither want not need. He makes little comment, stating only that it was a pretty cool place. Fire does not burn him, cold does not hurt him. Words could... but they don't. When he passes, pedals fall off branches. When he speaks, hair tugs at skin, pulling just slightly in his direction. He does not sleep but he does dream. He has muscled his way into the lives of the famous and whispered his way into their hearts. And in the wee hours he plays oboe softly, as if to sooth the night to sleep.