I signed on to the Microsoft Bizspark programme a number of weeks ago and I’ve been trying out some of the Microsoft applications that I’ve never had access to before without forking out a lot of money.

I’m planning a lot of projects right now so I installed Microsoft Project 2007 to try it out. I have to say, I like it a lot so far. I got a couple of lessons on using MS Project from my brother in law who uses it as part of his own work for a large Engineering company in the UK.  I imagine I’m barely using 2% of its abilities but it’s working out very well for me already in planning the time and costs for a project.

As well as Ms Project I’ve begun using MS Word 2007 too in place of Open Office which I’ve been using for years. Open Office gives problems when using bullet points and when copy & pasting from OO to other applications so I installed MS Word. I can open the odd .docx file that people send me now too.

For emails I use Thunderbird,I’ve used this for years and I’m very happy with it. Recently though I’ve been a little frustrated with its ability to connect to other apps. Several addons are needed to sync Thunderbird with anything.

I use a Thunderbird extension called Lightening to provide an interface to my calendars.

I use Provider for Google Calendar“  to sync Lightning to a Google Calendar, this has been failing recently.

On my Nokia e61i phone I use CalSyncS60 to connect the phone calendar with Google Calendar. CalSyncS60 used to be free but now its proprietary and called Googasync.

MS Outlook provides a calendar facility built in without any addons. It syncs with my phone using the Nokia PC Suite via cable or Bluetooth.  It has an added bonus of syncing the contacts and notes on my phone too. I’m a big note taker.  I’m thinking of getting the cradle for the Nokia e61i since I’ll be syncing more often.

Outlook can also be linked to the projects in MS Project. Emails in my inbox can be drag and dropped into tasks which can then be imported into a project.

There is a Journal section too in Outlook 2007 that can record the time spent on documents which is great at accounting for time but I’m not too familiar with this yet. Maybe it could track time spent on Twitter

I moved my emails from Thunderbird to Outlook over the weekend and I’m planning on using Outlook/Word/Project for a few weeks to see how I get on. I may eventually go back to Thunderbird, I know Thunderbird 3 is on the way promising more facilities.

Moving from Thunderbird 2 to Outlook 2007

I followed a guide to  move from Thunderbird to Outlook. Thunderbird emails are stored in MBOX format. This cannot be imported into Outlook 2007 directly so a couple of steps are needed.

I used ImapSize to convert the MBOX files from Thunder bird to .eml files.

Then Drap and drop those eml files into Outlook Express, recreating any custom folders.

Use Outlook Express to Export to Outlook to Outlook 2007.

For the address book, export the address book from Thunderbird as an ldap file. Import into address book in Outlook Express, Export to Outlook 2007.

I’ve upped my backup routine too. I picked up a Seagate 1 TB external USB drive which is on offer in Eason’s at the moment for only €89 and started backing up my documents, projects, downloads incrementally to the drive each day instead of each month to a 320 GB drive as before.

For backing up the folders I’m using Second Copy. Thank you @lecraic for the recommendation on Twitter.

It’s a great app and easy to set up. It automatically backs up several folders on my hard drive and compressed a couple of them and provides email notifications when complete or if errors occur. I highly recommend it.

So overall, starting this Monday morning, Im a little more organised and connected thanks mainly to the Microsoft software available through the Microsoft Bizspark programme. If you’re an SME, check it out.

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Google just recently opened up their next-generation infrastructure for their Google Search. Currently being called ‘Caffeine’, Its faster, more accurate and more comprehensive. You can try it out at http://www2.sandbox.google.com/

I noticed that the referrer string from Google is different in new version; it appeared to pass the position of the search result in the string so I tested it out in a couple of browsers to research it a bit more and see fully what information is passed in the referrer string.

Using Firefox version 3.5.2, Internet Explorer 8.0.6001.18702 and Google Chrome Beta version 3.0.195.6 I performed searches for ‘murrion’ and ‘gordon murray’ on the existing Google search at http://www.google.ie and compared the referral string to the new search at http://www2.sandbox.google.com/

Searching for “murrion” in Firefox

Using Google.ie (Firefox 3.5.2 ) Searching for “murrion” (Position 3)

http://www.google.ie/search?q=murrion&ie=utf-8&oe=utf-8&aq=t&rls=org.mozilla:en-GB:official&client=firefox-a

Using Google Caffeine (Firefox 3.5.2 ) Searching for “murrion” (Position 3)

http://www2.sandbox.google.com/url?sa=t&source=web&ct=res&cd=3&url=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.murrion.ie%2F&ei=w4KBSoqyCoqEMfXEwPwH&rct=j&q=murrion&usg=AFQjCNETdpvRK9baXAConZ5g397IO8c7vA

Searching for “murrion” in Internet Explorer

Using Google.ie (Internet Explorer 8.0.6001) Searching for “murrion” (Position 3)

http://www.google.ie/search?hl=en&q=murrion&meta=&aq=f&oq=&rlz=1W1GGLD_en

Using Google Caffeine (Internet Explorer 8.0.6001) Searching for “murrion” (Position 3)

http://www2.sandbox.google.com/search?hl=en&q=murrion&aq=f&oq=&aqi=g2

Searching for “murrion” in Google Chrome Beta

Using Google.ie (Google Chrome 3.0.195.6 ) Searching for “murrion” (position 2)

http://www.google.ie/search?hl=en&q=murrion&btnG=Google+Search&meta=&aq=f&oq=

Using Google Caffeine (Google Chrome 3.0.195.6) Searching for “murrion” (position 3)

http://www2.sandbox.google.com/search?hl=en&q=murrion&aq=f&oq=&aqi=g10

Searching for “gordon murray” in Firefox

Using Google.ie (Firefox 3.5.2) Searching for “gordon murray” (Position 3)

http://www.google.ie/search?hl=en&q=gordon+murray&btnG=Google+Search&meta=&aq=f&oq=

Using Google Caffeine (Firefox 3.5.2) Searching for “gordon murray” (position 7)

http://www2.sandbox.google.com/url?sa=t&source=web&ct=res&cd=7&url=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.gordonmurray.com%2F&ei=yoSBSra5NpLkMMyZxPwH&rct=j&q=gordon+murray&usg=AFQjCNFhaAyOWDVyTm76fNTNkIs4GNmnbw

Searching for “gordon murray” in Internet Explorer

Using Google.ie (Internet Explorer 8.0.6001) Searching for “gordon murray” (Position 3)

http://www.google.ie/search?hl=en&q=gordon+murray&meta=&rlz=1W1GGLD_en&aq=f&oq=

Using Google Caffeine (Internet Explorer 8.0.6001) Searching for “gordon murray” (Position 7)

http://www2.sandbox.google.com/search?hl=en&q=gordon+murray&aq=f&oq=&aqi=

Searching for “gordon murray” in Google Chrome Beta

Using Google.ie (Google Chrome 3.0.195.6) Searching for “gordon murray” (position 3)

http://www.google.ie/search?hl=en&q=gordon+murray&btnG=Google+Search&meta=&aq=f&oq=

Using Google Caffeine (Google Chrome 3.0.195.6) Searching for “gordon murray” (position 7)

http://www2.sandbox.google.com/search?hl=en&q=gordon+murray&aq=f&oq=&aqi=g10

Using Google Caffeine with Mozilla Firefox gave the most information passed in the referral string. There are some new parameters I haven’t seen before.

The parameter q= continues to show the search term but there are a couple of new parameters. “cd=” is the main one I was interested in, it appears to show the position of the search result for that search.

The ‘cd=’ parameter shows ‘3’ when searching for ‘murrion’ and ‘7’ when searching for ‘gordon murray’, both are the current positions for those searches in the search results.

The ‘ei’ parameter changed every time I searched.

The ‘usg’ parameter stayed the same if I did multiple searches for the same phrase. It was also the same if I searched on another computer for the same phrase

The referral string searching for ‘murrion’ in Firefox using Google Caffeine

http://www2.sandbox.google.com/

url? (changed from ‘search?’ to ‘url?’)

sa=t (stayed showing ‘t’ all the time)

source=web (new)

ct=res (stayed showing ‘res’ all the time)

cd=3 (appears to be the position of the search result)

url=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.murrion.ie%2F (the url I was going to)

ei=w4KBSoqyCoqEMfXEwPwH (Changed every time)

rct=j (stayed showing ‘j’ al l the time)

q=murrion (The search term, same as before)

usg=AFQjCNETdpvRK9baXAConZ5g397IO8c7vA (Stayed the same if I searched for the same term again even on a different computer)

It’ll be good to keep an eye on this to see if the referral string stays this way then Googles updated infrastructure becomes the norm.

If it does, I’ll be able to update my Whats Google Up to wordpress plugin which shows the search terms that a user used to find your blog on Google. I’ll be able to add search result number to it too withut scraping Google.

At the start of June, I began collecting email newsletters together to collect information from them. My main interest was in finding answers such as the most common day and time for sending email newsletters, how many links and images do businesses include in their newsletters?

So far, I have collected over 300 emails newsletters from over 50 sources with an average of 9 new email newsletters coming in per day. A summary of all the information collected is on the email newsletter information page.

At first, I wrote a simple PHP script to gather together the information and show it on the page. After receiving a few dozen large newsletters the script began timing out as it took too long for the information to be worked out and displayed. I rewrote the system for collecting the newsletter information and displaying it using CodeIgniter, a PHP framework using the MVC approach.

I used CodeIgniters Active Record class in a Model to retrieve and calculate the summary information to display in a View. Its performance is amazing, the same information that originally took too long to display, resulting in a time-out now displays in a second or more, without Caching. CodeIgniter has fantastic performance.

If you are developing any apps using PHP, I highly recommend taking a look at CodeIgniter, there is a fantastic User guide, Wiki and forum.

One of the ideas I had for my own software offerings was to create a email newsletter testing or validation service. A service which would allow people to send a copy of their email newsletter to a specific email address and receive a reply showing how their email newsletter worked in several of the popular email clients and desktop apps.

I did a little searching using Google for email newsletter testing / validation and I didn’t find anything similar to what I was aiming to develop. It seemed to be a promising idea.

Unfortunately, a couple of days later while searching for email statistics, I came across litmusapp.com which offers browser testing and email testing too.

Its a great service, I’ve signed up to their free account to see how well it works. The free offering tests a newsletter in Outlook 2003 and Gmail. The paid accounts offer a lot more.

You can send your email to a specific address and in a few seconds you get a reply. You can view your newsletter in Outlook and Gmail and also view how your newsletter looks by default, in text mode or html mode.

Its a great service, if you’re sending out newsletters I highly recommend it.

There is a heavy emphasis placed on market research on the Genesis Enterprise programme and rightly so. I am developing software relating to email marketing and for this I am currently learning everything I can about email marketing, software applications, competitors, usages stats, support, trends etc.

I want to learn what other businesses are doing with their newsletters, do businesses include a lot of images or links in their newsletter? how often do they send their newsletters? Are there particular days or times that are more suitable for sending out an email marketing campaign?

As I talk to more people and read any material on email marketing, I wanted to get some information directly from newsletters too. I’ve signed up to dozens of newsletters ( and continue to do so if you know of any good ones?). Thank you to those on Twitter that recommended a few over the past few days.

I’ve written an application to analyse these email newsletters that I receive. The app is online, checking for new emails every day and updating its summary information, its open for all to see, email newsletter statistics.

The information thats visible so far might be a little top heavy, a lot of the information reflects the date and time I signed up to a newsletter. As I sign up for new newsletters I expect the information to even out over the coming days and weeks.

The information on the left is summary information showing averages from all emails received over the past 30 days. On the right it shows some information from the latest 10 emails received. The lines are coloured according to the recipient so I can see if there are particular prolific email senders each day.

I will be adding more information over the next few days such as average size of emails, popular words or phrases seen in emails, how many emails include some unsubscribe links and some other information I’d like to see. One piece of information Im looking forward to seeing is the average time between sending for an organisation.

Hopefully this information will be of use to others too.

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