For years, I’ve used the same free website counter. I discovered it early on in the history of websites and never thought about switching – “if it ain’t broke, don’t fix it” — right? But last week I discovered another counter program (for FREE of course!) that’s is much more powerful. Now I’ve switched all my sites (and blogs!) over to www.statcounter.com. The initial reason for my switch was the ability to manage as many site counters as needed under one account name. The bonus was discovering the in-depth reports I get without having to pay extra as I did with the old service. In less than 1 week, I’ve already discovered valuable information about the visitors to my site – where they come from, what pages they visit, how long they stay and what resolution they’re using. Now I’m addicted to checking the statistics so I can wonder just who that visitor is…

Cheers!

Take a look at the new Beta version of Google’s blog search. Here’s the search I did for “virtual assistant”!

There’s an excellent article by Bonnie Boots, posted on the Creativity Portal, about making your way in the creative world. Check it out!

PCMag.com Shareware Library: MessengerLog 5 Pro 5.10

Ever had an IM conversation and wished you could save it for future reference? Here’s an inexpensive program to do that!

The next version of Internet Explorer isn’t here yet, but it’s on the horizon. Since I’ve never made the transition over to Firefox, I’m excited to see IE incorporating some of the features that make Firefox stand out. Most importantly, the new IE will include an RSS Feed reader, hopefully eliminating the need for yet another program or website to monitor feeds (I’m currently using http://www.bloglines.com). Check out the forthcoming update information & features in PC Magazines’s article: http://www.pcmag.com/article2/0,1895,1840714,00.asp.

Cheers!
~ Cindy

A few months ago, I was introduced to “widgets” on a Mac system and was intrigued. Widgets are small programs that don’t need a web browser or other application to open them and they can remain open yet in the background on your desktop. I found a favorite game on a Mac widget and was disappointed to come back to my widget-less Windows system (okay, only partially disappointed!). Now Yahoo! is offering a similar program allowing widgets to work on Windows machines! I downloaded the first ones today – my favorites so far are the weather station and the comic strip reader. Check out PC Magazine’s article and download the program at Yahoo!

Happy Weekend-ing!
~Cindy