Jamas

33rd America’s Cup

Well if you are a sailing fan then you probably already know that the 33rd America’s Cup regatta begins this Monday, Feb 8th, 2010.  For those of you that aren’t sailing fans let me see if I can convince you that this deserves some attention.

A Brief History

It is called the America’s Cup after the boat America, which in 1851 obliterated the 14 fastest British boats in a race around the Isle of Wight, winning the trophy that would be come the America’s Cup.  Since then the America’s Cup has featured some of the most famous races in sailing history. It is the oldest trophy in international sport, too much history for me to cover here.  If you want more America’s Cup History.

Race Format

The America’s Cup is raced in a format called match racing.  There are only two boats on the course, racing only against each other and not the clock.  The tactics employed are very different from traditional fleet racing.  The format produces some amazing close races that make great TV viewing.  The format even has its own set of match racing rules, which if you are knew to this racing  format are good to know.

The Boats

The America’s Cup races have been sailed in an eclectic style of boats.  In my mind the most famous match up being the first America’s Cup held in San Diego, of a 18 metre catamaran Stars and Stripes against the massive 27 metre monohull New Zealand.   This bizarre match up marked the end of the 12-metre era of racing and would see the era of the America’s Cup class arrive.  For the 33rd America’s Cup the boats again are going to be a wild match up, the size of boat set to be 30 X 30 metres, with both teams choosing multi-hull designs.  Expect some very fast racing.

How to Watch

It sadly looks like there will be no live TV coverage of the race in North America, but live streaming via the official site will be available for free.  Racing is in Europe so you will have to be up early to see them.  So here are a list of other places to get some information, video and photos of the racing.

I hope you will take the time to check out what shaping up to be the fastest America’s Cup ever.

And now a little video trailer as my final plug.

Google Analytics Dashboard

Google Analytics is an amazingly useful tool for website owners. The information and insight into your website that can be gleaned from the loads of data gathered is stunning. The problem can be how to get a quick snapshot of how a site is doing without clicking on the many sub pages. The dashboard is the ideal location for this but by default the dashboard is setup with to much repetitive information, that misses what you really are interested in. So here is my suggest list of dashboard items.

  • Site Usage Overview (default dashboard item) – this gives a quick overview of the site
  • New vs Returning – shows the number of new vs returning visitors to the site, good for quickly determining if you are developing a following
  • Map Overlay – quick visual guide of where visitors are surfing from
  • Content Overview (default dashboard item) – this shows you which pages by URL that are most popular
  • Content by Title – this gives similar information to the one above but give you the page title
  • Traffic Sources Overview (default dashboard item) – this shows you how people are getting to your site
  • Referring Sites – gives a breakdown of visitors from top referring sites
  • Keywords – list of top keywords visitors searched on to find your site
  • AdSense Overview – only available if you have linked your adsense account, give total income per day

You can add them to your dashboard by going to each corresponding page and clicking on the Add to Dashboard button. Do this for each dashboard item I listed and you will now have a quick overview of your site.

TeamViewer to the Rescue

I get a fair number of requests from friends and family to help with computer issues. Doing this over the phone can be a long exercise in frustration. If only you could just reach through the phone, grab the mouse and show the person how. Sure there are lots of choices for remote access, but none are as easy to get installed on a remote machine as TeamViewer.

Here is the process. Get the person you are trying to help to the TeamViewer site. Get them to click on the Join Session button. This will download to their machine a .exe file that runs the basic version of TeamViewer. Now have them run the program. The program will bring up a window with a session ID code listed. Now on your machine download and run the full version of TeamViewer. Enter the remote users code into your machine and you will now be able to view or control their machine. The beauty is that this works across different OSs and even through firewalls and home networks. But that is still not the best part, what is the cost for all this wonderful technology? FREE

Quick tip, if you are setting up a machine for someone, and expect a few support calls, then why not go ahead an install the TeamViewer basic. Just remember to put the shortcut to launch it somewhere you will remember. (Right on the middle of the desktop?)

Thanks to the TeamViewer makers for putting out an easy to use product, that will save volunteer (voluntold) computer support people hours of hair pulling frustration.

Jamas.net now running WordPress 2.9

The WordPress has done another fantastic job with version 2.9 of WordPress. You can check out the list of features added but let me highlight the two that I am most excited about.

The first is the ability to batch update plugins. I am running 10+ WordPress sites at the moment which means keeping the those sites updated is a fair amount of work. This should make updating plugins a snap!

The second change is the ability to embed video directly in a post without the use of a plugin. I have been having a hard time finding a plugin that does this really well.

So again to the WordPress team thanks again for an amazing update.

2009 Jamas Software Awards

What are the Jamas Software Awards? Well it’s my somewhat lame attempt at showing some appreciation to the developers of software that makes my life easier. My goal for 2009 was to give out $100 is $10 chunks. Not much but a token. The sad part is that this year I only got around to doing this twice. I will try harder in 2010. So here are the recipients for 2009.

The Bank Show – Pitch Dark Theme – Tim is the designer behind the Pith Dark themes for Firefox and Thunderbird. He has done a great job of creating a dark theme that is easy to read. I work all day in front of a computer and a few hours in the evening, which makes for some tired eyes. One thing that helps me is reducing the amount of white space on the screen, I think it is the equivalent to snow blindness.

DD-WRT – This project replaces the firmware on your home router with an open source version that has new features. I discovered it late one night as I desperately tried to recover my Linksys WRT54G router that suddenly refused to connect to the internet. After trying every trick I could think of I called Linksys support line. They wanted $30 dollars to help, which is not much under the cost of a new router. The DR-WRT firmware has been running for several months now without any the same issues I was having with the default Linksys firmware. I have yet to really use the advanced features.