SoFla Web Studio Blog

Is Google personalized search really necessary?

Last week, Google announced Personalized Search for everyone. Personalized search has been previously available, but only to individuals signed in with a Google account. They are now making it available to anyone via an anonymous cookie.

Privacy concerns aside, is this really necessary for relevance? Or is this just another way of aggregating data and producing a more focused demographic profile to advertisers.

When I am searching on Google I want the most relevant results, not based on my previous searches, just the most relevant results. Period! Now the option to turn this off is available but I assume the majority of users wont know or care.

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Drupal's Future: CMS or Framework... or Both?

With the announcement of Drupal being used to power WhiteHouse.gov, Drupal has been thrust into the spotlight even more. Its merits of a content management system have already been heralded, but as Drupal matures, people are starting to understand its power even more, and use it for non-CMS uses, such as the recently featured site on Drupal.org, GoTwitr.com. This begs the questions: is Drupal turning into a framework? Is it one already? Should it be?

Drupal as a CMS

Drupal was born as a CMS, and it would be a sad day if it gave up on those roots. This isn't predicted to happen, at least anytime soon. In fact, there has been plenty of work on the user interface in Drupal 7, including extensive UI testing and bringing in UI designers from outside the community to revamp and simplify the administration and content editing experience in Drupal 7. And while there's still an amount of configuration needed to get Drupal running well and tuned to be fast, it's still an out of the box solution that has near-immediate usability as a CMS.

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Google Analytics - Better, stronger, smarter

While the 6 million dollar man may have been "Better, stronger, faster", Google Analytics appears to have gotten "Better, stronger, smarter." Back on October 20th Google released a blog post notifying the world of their enterprise class improvements to the excellent Google Analytics software that has become the standard web analytics tool (at least in our office). The 3 main new features they are rolling out are:

  1. Expanded Reporting and Analysis Features
  2. Enhancements to their API
  3. Analytics Intelligence and Custom Alerts

While the expanded reporting and analysis features are good, I am not looking to jump in on that right away. Although the expansion of mobile website analysis is going to be awesome once it is implemented properly. Enhancements to the API are not relevant for us at the current moment either so we are not to excited about those improvements. However the Analytics Intelligence and Custom Alerts looks to be absolutely awesome. Check out their video of how it works:

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Drupal is the right choice!

drupal-logoWhen in need of Content Management System (CMS) for your website you can't go wrong with Drupal.  Several years ago our company was evaluating different options for  (CMS) software for our clients. As with any software selection in today's time there are generally 3 options to pursue:

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Is Your Website Ready for the Mobile Revolution?

mobile-phoneThis Christmas season is turning into the season of Android, with the mobile operating system reaching nearly 20 devices currently, and another half dozen expected to be released in the next few weeks. With Android now on all US mobile providers excluding AT&T, which has the iPhone, and Blackberry still as strong as ever in the business market, more and more websites need to consider their website on a mobile scale.

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