Showing posts with label Services. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Services. Show all posts

Thursday, 8 November 2012

LucidChart.com looks like a pretty good Visio online replacement

Although this visualisation of TeamMentor's GitHub dev workflow is pretty good, it was created using Visio, and I really don't want to use Visio again (I'm done using large desktop apps with no web integration/publishing).

The good news is that :

  • Roman found LucidChart.com
  • he was able to import that complex Visio diagram into it, and 
  • the end-result looked good enough (after a couple import fixes). 

So I went to LucidChart.com to try it out :)

I have done a LOT of Visio diagrams (in the past), and I have to say that I found Lucid Chart's web interface really easy to use (and learn).

As a test, I imported an image from this blog, and was able to quickly create this:


Not bad for a couple minutes work :)

Monday, 5 November 2012

Why I stopped using Gaug.es (and the problem of being a feature)

As you can see by Gaug.es is Amazing - Just added RealTime website tracking to TeamMentor I was pretty excited about Gaug.es, and since I'm now looking for Website Monitoring Services, a good question is 'Are you still using Gaug.es and can it be used for WebSite monitoring?'

The short answer for the 'Are you still using Gauges' part is that Google Analysis killed it

The short answer for the 'can it be used for WebSite monitoring' part is: NO

Gaug.es had one feature that was really powerful: the real-time visualisation of web traffic (which was really good and I even got for a while a paid subscription)

But once I was able to get the same data from Google Analytics, the value of Gaug.es plummeted.



Since I had such a good experience with Gaug.es (via their customer service and presentation), I did made a bit of an effort to get more value from it, but:
  • the data analysis that they provided on their GUI was very limited, 
  • there was no power-user analysis and 
  • their API support (and language support) was quite limited.
One area that Gaug.es could had entered was the data/website monitoring and analysis (which is what I need now).

For example, they have enough data to identify problems with a particular website. But that would change their current model and I understand why they want to keep providing a simple (and easy to use) service.

The problem is that when you are a feature not a product (as Steve said to Dropbox) you have to make sure you are better than the equivalent features in the products out there (Dropbox will need to keep innovating if they want to stay relevant)

In a way Gaug.es failed to innovate. They were able to get a head start on Google Analytics and should had continued adding features. I think they are owned by github, so maybe the key Gaug.es devs are the ones making GitHub.com even better.

And if I have to choose between a better GitHub vs a better Gaug.es, GitHub will win every time :)

Sunday, 4 November 2012

Website monitoring services?

I'm looking for a website monitoring service (for a couple TeamMentor live sites) that provides the following:
  • Uptime (site is up/down)
  • Performance stats (page loads)
  • Broken pages/links
  • GUI still looks the same (this is a visual check, not a code one)
  • Transaction checks (for example 'login sequence' and 'article viewing')
  • Content changes (ideally with detection of injected malicious code)
  • Web/SaaS based solution
  • API to trigger and consume results
  • Solution based on Unit tests (where the checks are scripted and easily modified/customized) - but I don't think such service exists today :)
Any recommendations or personal accounts/horror-stories?

A quick google search found:



and http://www.alertra.com





Tuesday, 9 October 2012

Trying UserEcho on O2 Platform

Just found UserEcho.com and I really liked their interface to ask questions (driven by a search first).

So to see how it works in action, I just created an Free account for the O2 Platform: http://o2plaform.userecho.com/

Here is what it looks like:



It looks like you can add ideas, questions, bugs and praises.

So if you have one of these related to the O2 Platform, please post them at http://o2plaform.userecho.com/

Using 99Designs for Design services

Just saw http://99designs.co.uk/ in action on the logo commissioned by Mark for the Seconauts community : http://99designs.co.uk/logo-design/contests/create-next-logo-seconauts-152818

Look like a pretty sweet and slick service. We should use it more at OWASP

I have been using elance.com for a while which is also pretty powerful