Latest Tips from MakeUseOf.com |  |
- Cool Websites and Tools [November 23]
- What To Do When You Get A Copyright Infringement Notice from ISP
- Make Your Own Movie From Photos With Pinnacle Video Spin [Windows]
- 5 More Ways To Get Discounts, Save Cash & Make Money Online
- Become A Multitasking Master With These 6 Exposé Tips [Mac]
- 4 Ways to Integrate The Dropbox File Sharing Program Into Your Life
- Reinvigorate: Real-Time Analytics That Pick Up Where Google Leaves Off
| Cool Websites and Tools [November 23] Posted: 23 Nov 2009 04:00 PM PST
(1) useKit – New web service that can enhance your web surfing by integrating bunch of handy tools to your browser. Using these tools you will be able to add sticky notes to web pages, map addresses, translate and tweet any highlighted text, and bookmark pages to Delicious. Read more: useKit – Makes Web Browsing More Efficient
(2) Crackle – Video entertainment website from Sony Pictures Entertainment Company. It works like the Sony's version of Hulu where you can watch free full length movies, TV shows and original web series straight from your browser. The large library of videos also includes popular films, "minisodes", and many cartoons. Read more: Crackle – Watch Free Full Length Movies & TV shows (3) WhatBlocked – Simple web page where you can quickly find out which popular websites are blocked in China. It presents sites on a dashboard organized in different categories such as News & Information, Social & Communication, Photos & Videos and Tools & Sharing. The status of each site showed in one of following colors: Red, Yellow and Green. Read more: WhatBlocked – See Which Popular Sites Are Blocked in China (4) Theme Park Maps – If you're planning to take your kids to a theme park anytime soon then ThemeParkMaps can come in very handy. As the name suggests, it is a website that hosts over 300 scanned theme park maps. These maps come in handy in planning your park trip in advance. Read more: Theme Park Maps – Download Theme Park Maps Online (5) SimpleText – Dead simple web note taker using which you can easily take notes and store them online. Read more: SimpleText – Take Notes & Store Them Online
These are just half of the websites that we discovered in the last couple of days. If you want us to send you daily round-ups of all cool websites we come across, leave your email here. Or follow us via RSS feed. Did you like the post? Please do share your thoughts in the comments section! New on MakeUseOf ? Get cheat sheets and cool PDF guides @ www.makeuseof.com/makeuseof-downloads/ Related posts
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| What To Do When You Get A Copyright Infringement Notice from ISP Posted: 23 Nov 2009 02:00 PM PST
What I’d like to do for you now is to break down the letter and address important things about it. Then I’d like to explain what precautions you can take to prevent this from happening again in the future.
Yes, this can really be done in cases of copyright infringement. Your ISP should be automatically making logs to track who they’ve assigned IP addresses to, as well as when. There really isn’t any thing that you can do about this. If you want, you could reboot your modem to see if you get a new IP address assigned to you. All that will do is make it harder for a copyright holder to establish a pattern of downloading. But they still can!
That’s pretty decent of them to have that as a corporate policy. However, check the policy for YOUR ISP on this sort of thing. They may want nothing to do with dealing with copyright holders, and will hand over your information upon request if copyright infringement is claimed. If that is the case, you may consider changing ISPs. There’s more in the letter, but it pretty much echoes what you see above. So, here’s where we get into making sure it doesn’t happen again.
Has this article helped you to understand why you got the infringement letter? Has it helped you to understand what you can do to prevent this situation from happening again? I sure hope so. Nobody needs to pay tens of thousands in fines for things they could have bought for a few dollars. Did you like the post? Please do share your thoughts in the comments section! New on Twitter ? Now you can follow MakeUseOf on Twitter too. Related posts
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| Make Your Own Movie From Photos With Pinnacle Video Spin [Windows] Posted: 23 Nov 2009 12:00 PM PST
In this article, I’m going to describe how you can use Pinnacle Video Spin to take those photos that mean so much to you, and convert them into your own movie that really expresses the emotion that the photos represent for you. With special effects, a meaningful audio track and even a voice-over track if you wish, you can transform static photos into a movie that will impress. Using Pinnacle Video Spin to Make Your Own MovieYou don’t have to pick up a video recorder to create a meaningful movie. Even if you only have photos, the Pinnacle Video Spin software has enough features so that you can use voice-over audio, special effects and music to make your movie interesting and fun to watch. In this article I’m going to guide you through the simple process to make your own movie from just the photos you may have buried away on some directory on your hard drive. Go ahead and dig those photos out, choose a cool soundtrack that expresses best how you feel about the people or events in those photos, and let’s get started.
The thing I really like about Pinnacle Video Spin is that everything is organized in areas of the application that are very easy to follow. In this case, the upper left corner of the application contains the area where you insert your media into the movie – including (from the top button downward in the photo above) video, transitions, titles and text, photos, sound effects and music. As you click on each of these items, you can choose from preloaded files (like the titles or sound effects that are included with Pinnacle), or you can bring in your own file. In this case I brought in an MP3 song.
Loading your selected media into your actual movie tracks is as simple as clicking on the file in the upper left of the application and dragging it down into the “My Movie” track area. Once you drag it in, the background music file will show up on the bottom track as shown above.
One reason I prefer loading the music first is because it gives you a timeline that you can use to determine how long your movie needs to be if you want it to end when the song ends. In this case the movie consists of a picture slideshow, so you click on the photo icon and the application will present you with a series of preview thumbnails when you’ve selected any folder that contains pictures.
The upper right side of the application is where you’ll find the preview window. Click on a photo thumbnail, and this shows you a larger view. Click on an audio file, this is where you can play it. Click on a video file, and this is where you’ll preview it.
To create a photo slideshow alongside the music track, you just grab the photos that you want with your mouse, and drag them down into the movie timeline wherever you want them to show up. As you can see above, the width of each image as it appears in the timeline represents how long that image will appear on the screen. If you want to know exactly how long, just look at the time scale above it. Keep in mind that when you’ve selected the “My Movie” area at the bottom of the application, the preview window displays your entire movie, so if you want to preview what you’ve already created, even before you’re done, just press the play button.
If you just throw a bunch of photos in the timeline with background music, you’ll have a decent movie, but it won’t seem very professional. The images will switch abruptly from one to the other with very little grace. Instead, click on the transitions button and drag your preferred scene transition into the timeline. In the case of pictures, the transition will give you a nice flow from photo to photo. If you chose fade (my favorite), as one photo dissipates, the other one appears. There are 5 pages of cool transitions to choose from. These apply to videos as well, and good transition from one scene to another is the sign of a good movie maker – so choose and place your transitions carefully!
Finally, when you’ve finished with your movie timeline and you like how it plays out in the preview window, you’re ready to “produce” your final movie. Pinnacle Video Spin provides you with a lot of options. When you click on the “Make Movie” tab, you can either export your movie to a file, or to the web. The file formats depend on whether you run the free version of the software or not, as many advanced codecs are not included in the free version. However, if you are just creating movies for the web, then go ahead and click on the “Web” button and you’ll find that you can easily export your new movie to either Yahoo! Video or YouTube. Do you use Pinnacle Video Spin to make your own movies – if so, what do you like or dislike about it? Do you have some other favorite free movie creation software? Share your insight in the comments section below! Did you like the post? Please do share your thoughts in the comments section! New on MakeUseOf ? Get cheat sheets and cool PDF guides @ www.makeuseof.com/makeuseof-downloads/ Related posts
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| 5 More Ways To Get Discounts, Save Cash & Make Money Online Posted: 23 Nov 2009 11:01 AM PST
Say for instance you’re buying a new iPod for almost 200 Euros. I’m always amazed by the amount of people (almost all) who’ll just pay it even through they could have put in 20 minutes work and saved themselves 30 Euros. That’s an extra thirty Euros you could have in your pocket for basically doing nothing. As a younger person (although I know most people are affected by the recession) I’m kind of expected to be somewhat up to date with ‘fashion’ and of course technology. And that means expensive purchases. Many young people just bite the bullet not realising that they could easily save (and make) money by following even a couple of the steps I’ll outline below. I’ve compiled the following list of 5 ways to save money that you might not have considered before. Go Open SourceUntil a few days ago when I did a post about this subject on my blog I had no idea how much Microsoft Office cost. Not a clue. To be honest, I was a little shocked that Microsoft were charging a whopping $399 for the full version and $149 for students.
It’s completely unnecessary expenditure. As somebody who writes and blogs for a living, I check e-mails, type up articles, use spreadsheets and run the business aspect of things without expensive software. All those shiny features in Office won’t be used by over 90% of us. I think we just buy Office because that’s all there is on the shelf at the PC store. Programs such as Open Office, Thunderbird, Gimp and Windows Live Writer easily manages all of my documents, e-mail, Photoshop and blogging needs so why not yours? I estimate that by switching to Open Source the average power-user could save themselves in excess of $500. Check out our directory for all the apps and open source programs you could ever need. Buy Small Items In Bulk OnlineThere is a certain myth about online shopping and that is "Shopping online is always much cheaper". And it is – if you use it right. For example, a big burden on many students are textbooks and other such school supplies. So we head online in search of these in the hope of saving a few dollars. But are we really? Postage on massive textbooks is expensive so it’s important you make sure you’re actually saving money. For small items such as books, second-hand book stores often trump the internet. Some items that are cheap online when you buy in bulk (from the same seller to save on postage on sites such as Amazon and the products own site) include DVDs, CDs, stationary, magazine subscriptions and the likes. More expensive items such as iPhones and laptops will always be cheaper and cost little for postage so it’s best to shop for these online too. Online will always be cheaper if you buy the right products in the right quantities. Coupons & PromotionsIf there was ever a place to find bargains it is the Internet. Everyday thousands of promotions are listed but few actually use them. Sites such as Coupons.com and Ask Deals list thousands of new promotions everyday. Each time before you buy something (either online or in store) do a quick promotion search on these sites.
I can’t remember the last time I bought a domain on GoDaddy without searching for a promotional code – each time I’ve saved a few dollars which adds up, let me tell you. If, at every checkout on sites such as Amazon and Play.com, when you see a promotional code entry box you ran a quick search you could save yourself hundreds of dollars per year just for Googling something like ‘Amazon Free Shipping Promo Code’. Easy, right? Also make sure to check out Top 10 Grocery Coupon Websites for Cheapskates. VoIP ServicesWhen I first started getting serious about writing I worked for a gaming network based in the Netherlands. Me being in Ireland meant international call charges. I just kind of accepted it for a couple of months and must have wasted at least fifty Euros on calls to and from my bosses/co-workers. Some people may call me stupid for not using VoIP services earlier like Skype and Google Talk before but I just never thought of it at the time. A few e-mails later and I had switched my normal method of calling my bosses to Skype – and I saved money (lots by my calculations). I think that international calling will be extinct over the next few years as VoIP services gain more recognition as a good way to conduct long distance calls and conference meetings. Also check out some Skype replacements which we have covered in the past such as Gizmo5 and ooVoo. Charnita also covered 6 other VoIP possibilities. Make Money on the InternetThere are numerous ways to do this but only a few ways to make it work properly to the extent that you can call it a job. eBay businesses (when done right) can become quite profitable but I suggest you do your homework. To make online selling work you have to have a product that’s in demand. For instance, if you know a guy who refurbishes 16GB iPod Touches and will sell them to you for 100 bucks, you can then sell those for $150 and make money. Its all about the product. Another way to make money online is by blogging (check out my authors page to see my posts about blogging). It’s tough work and the chances of success without actual interest in your niche are nil. Jimmy Rogers did two MakeUseOf posts on how to find blogging work (here and here) and MakeUseOf is always hiring if your interests lie in the internet / technology area.
In my experience, most articles take around an hour or so to write up. But they can be pretty draining considering some of the ‘less interesting’ subjects you may be asked to write about. However, spending a couple hours every day doing this and you’ve got hundreds of dollars at the end of the month. You also get 85% of the ad revenue from your articles. I don’t write for them anymore but I still get a monthly payment in excess of $50 just for the revenue my articles bring in every month. In the past, we have covered numerous other ways of making money on the internet. Here’s some of them :
Make Money Online With Your Humorous Pet Video – Laurence Hopefully you’ll be able to save money using the above tips. Do you have any money saving (or making) tips for tech? If so let us know in the comments. Image Credit: _ES Did you like the post? Please do share your thoughts in the comments section! New on Twitter ? Now you can follow MakeUseOf on Twitter too. Related posts
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| Become A Multitasking Master With These 6 Exposé Tips [Mac] Posted: 23 Nov 2009 10:00 AM PST
From Panther to Tiger to Leopard and now, Snow Leopard, we’ve seen Exposé slowly maturing from a young cub to the ferocious beast it is today. There’s just so much more you can do with Exposé now compared to a year or two ago. And sticking with the multitasking motif, I’ll show you 6 different ways you can make use of Exposé in your daily workflow, shaving precious seconds off your regular routine. Quick Look in ExposéQuick Look is now integrated into Exposé, allowing you to preview a window without exiting Exposé. Invoke the All Windows Exposé view and while your mouse cursor is hovering over a window (highlighted by a blue rim), press Spacebar. You are now previewing that window in full resolution but wait, you’re still in Exposé. You may either press Spacebar again to return to the All Windows view or click on the preview (or press Enter) to select that window or the Escape key to exit Exposé. This works wonders if you have a lot of windows open and they end up being generated as tiny thumbnails. There’s no more guesswork involved. You can now be sure of the window you’re selecting while still in Exposé. Cycle through appsIn Snow Leopard, Apple introduced Dock Exposé, where you can now click and hold on any Dock icons to invoke an Application Window Exposé view. While in that view, you can press Tab and cycle through any running application. Pressing the accent (`) key will reverse the cycle order. You can achieve the same effect via the Application Switcher. Press Command+Tab and hold the Command key. Keep pressing the Tab key until you reach an application you want to view in Application Window Exposé view and hit the 1 key while still holding on to Command. You can now release the Command key and press Tab or the accent key to cycle through applications on your Dock. Reorder windows by name and typeIf you have loads of open windows, viewing them individually and finding the right one in Exposé can be tricky. The order in which Exposé windows seem to be arranged in Snow Leopard remains a mystery to me. However, you can arrange the windows alphabetically if you hit Command+1 while in Exposé. Pressing Command+2 groups similar apps together in no particular (known) order. In the screencast below, I tried to demonstrate the difference between reordering by name and by type. Select window by nameLet’s just say that you’re working with a lot of windows and you’d like find a specific one while in Exposé. By typing the first few letters of the window you’re looking for, Exposé will refocus the highlighted window to the closest match. In the screencast below, watch my mouse cursor as it highlights the ‘Music’ folder. I begin to type “thi” and the highlight jumps to wrap around Things. Press Enter to select that window and exit Exposé. Quit and hide appsNotice that now, even in Exposé, the Dock is still in view. If you left-click on any dock icon, a contextual menu will pop up to provide you with options to quit, hide, keep in Dock, open at login and show in Finder. In the same vein, you can also quit an app while using the Application Switcher. Press Command+Tab and hold the Command key. Hit the Tab key until you reach the app you want to quit then press the Q key, still holding on the Command key. The app in question will quit without interfering with Application Switcher. In the screencast below, I’ll demonstrate how both of these methods look like when they are performed. Only show windows from current SpaceAs I said above, Spaces is another friend all for mutitasking. Alas, a caveat — when invoking Exposé in Snow Leopard with Spaces activated, all windows from every Space is shown. To make Exposé display only the windows from the current Space, a little Terminal magic is required. Launch Terminal then copy and paste these commands in one at a time and hit Enter after each one.
To restore Exposé back to its original settings:
So there you have it, 6 useful tips to help you manage Exposé and multitask more efficiently. I hope that they come in useful. If you have any more Exposé tips, feel free to add them in the comments section. Image credit: James the photographer Did you like the post? Please do share your thoughts in the comments section! New on Twitter ? Now you can follow MakeUseOf on Twitter too. Related posts
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| 4 Ways to Integrate The Dropbox File Sharing Program Into Your Life Posted: 23 Nov 2009 08:00 AM PST
MakeUseOf writers have highlighted Dropbox’s virtues more than once. In 2008 Dave interviewed its founder, Drew Houston; Angelina suggested several interesting ways for students to use Dropbox; Jackson reviewed Dropbox’s iPhone app; and Jeffry showed Mac users how to remotely trigger a file download using Dropbox. But as useful as the Dropbox file sharing program is on its own, it’s even better when used in tandem with the applications you already know and love. Whether it’s remotely starting a Bittorrent download, synchronizing your calendar and to-do list or making your video game habit instantly portable, Dropbox can make multiple computers function as though they are one. Start a Bittorrent Download From AnywhereBittorrent is the peer to peer technology of choice for most Internet users, but it’s not exactly easy on bandwidth. So if you think of something you want to download while you’re at work, running bittorrent on your work computer is probably a good way to get fired. You can, however, easily start a bittorrent download on your home desktop machine or media center from work with a little bit of Dropbox magic.
Most bittorrent programs are capable of watching a given folder for .torrent files. Point your program towards a folder in your Dropbox file sharing program, and volia. If you leave your desktop computer on while you’re at work, you can add a .torrent file to the folder in your Dropbox from work and your download will automatically start — at home. Can’t install Dropbox on your work machine? No problem; just use Dropbox’s web interface to upload the files. Keep Your Calendars SynchronizedI’m sure many of you use Google Calendar for your online calendar needs — it’s an easy-to-use calendar you can access anywhere. But online calendars are only useful when you have an Internet connection, leaving you without you data in those (admittedly increasingly rare) instances when there’s no nearby WiFi connection. Dropbox’s strength being the ability to make data on one computer accessible from all your computers, combining Dropbox with your desktop calendar application of choice can deliver a great compromise between an offline and and online calendar: simply save your calendar file to your Dropbox. Your data will be accessible when you’re offline, and you’ll even be able to make changes. As soon as the computer you made those changes on connects to the Internet, however, they will take affect on all your computers. Mozilla’s Sunbird works beautifully this way. Simply create a new iCal file and save it in your Dropbox, then open the file with Sunbird on all your systems. Now all changes you make to your calendar will be visible on all your systems. Sync Your To-Do List or Desktop WikiFor many, Remember the Milk is the ultimate to-do list, but if suffers the same limitation online calendars do: you need to be online to access it. If you find for this reason that your ultimate to-do list strategy is an old-fashioned text document with a list of tasks, Dropbox can make that document accessible on all your computers. Simply move your text to-do list to your Dropbox and you’re set.
Alternatively, if you use a desktop wiki such as Zim [Windows/Ubuntu] or Tomboy [cross-platform] to keep track of your current tasks, consider storing your wiki’s repository in your Dropbox. I myself use Zim to store everything from phone numbers I need to remember to wireless passcodes I need when visiting friends and family. Dropbox ensures I’ll never forget to transfer a critical piece of data from my desktop to my netbook. Make Your Gaming Instantly PortableAll work and no play makes Dropbox sound very dull. If you love playing video games on your media center computer, or your desktop computer, but wish you could continue the fun on your netbook during your bus commute to work, Dropbox can help with that too. Many games will give you the opportunity to save your game to a certain folder; simply save to your Dropbox and you can continue on your netbook without missing a beat (assuming the game’s installed on that computer as well.)
Are you a retro-gaming fanatic who likes to always have your emulator on-hand? Most emulators allow you to configure where to save your progress for all games. Point your favorite program towards a dedicated folder in your Dropbox and it will save your game to all your computers without any effort on your part. ConclusionThere you have it: four unique ways to combine Dropbox with programs you already use on a regular basis. The underlying theme may be the same —data from a given program automatically synchronizing between all your computers — but adding such automatic synchronization can change the way you interact with your computers. If your calendar has a date on one computer you can access it on another. If Link is about to save the princess on your media center, you can finish the job on your netbook. The best part: once you set up programs in this manner everything happens without any intervention from you, allowing you to focus on whatever you’re working on. This is how computers should work. Download Dropbox here, if you haven’t already. The service is free for a 2 gigabyte account, and you won’t need more space than that to apply the tricks described above. Do you have your own Dropbox mashups you’d like to share? Please share; point it out in the comments below. Did you like the post? Please do share your thoughts in the comments section! New on MakeUseOf ? Get cheat sheets and cool PDF guides @ www.makeuseof.com/makeuseof-downloads/ Related posts
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| Reinvigorate: Real-Time Analytics That Pick Up Where Google Leaves Off Posted: 23 Nov 2009 06:00 AM PST
One such evolution in site analytics comes from a startup called Reinvigorate. Where Google has reigned supreme in delivering detailed statistics about site usage and traffic with their free analytics service, it's fallen short on delivery of that information in real-time. Let's take a look at the way Reinvigorate can be utilized to achieve a clearer picture of visitor behavior, and how it might work towards achieving the goal of increased awareness between website owners and their users.
Who Goes There?While having the ability to see how many visitors you might have on a given day is helpful, being able to know how many visitors are on your site right now is valuable. It's valuable for determining how and when to scale up your site's infrastructure to accommodate higher loads of traffic. It's valuable to determine if you've suddenly been linked from a high-profile blog or news outlet. It's also the key metric Reinvigorate features at their core that set them apart from Google – showing exactly how many active visitors are on your site at any given time.
Re-Invigorating, Isn't It?Reinvigorate is a site analytics application that offers the ability to see not only how many visitors you have, but also their names, and where they've just come from. In addition, you can see the actions taken by these users as they happen. Some of these actions include posting a comment, or becoming a new user – activities that can even have an associated sound effect (such as a satisfying "cha-ching" any time a user makes a purchase) when viewed in Reinvigorate's desktop tool called Snoop. Snoop is a quick, free download for Windows or Mac that instantly keeps you updated with the latest happenings occurring on your site. Where Google sometimes lags behind, the web interface of Reinvigorate allows you to dig deep into granular metrics by not only the year, month, and day – but also by the hour. Referrals, session activity, visitor details, and navigation paths are all available nearly immediately as they occur. Features on the horizon for Reinvigorate include scalable charts and graphs of all of the immediate data, and heatmaps to pinpoint exactly where and how often your pages' content is clicked – in real-time. Reinvigorate is free to sign up for and use during their beta testing phase, and offers a tour of their offerings at their site so you can see for yourself how the real-time site analytics data it collects can be visualized. Installation is a simple Javascript code block added to pages you wish to track – or if you're a WordPress or Drupal user, an even easier plug-in download is available to get you up and running immediately.
Isn't It Time?The bottom line is that if you're not paying attention to your users' actions and behaviors as they occur, you're missing out on a wealth of information that can be the tipping point to lead your website's success. Reinvigorate's strength is its ability to discover more knowledge about your users than ever before. While Google Analytics remains an industry stalwart, new innovations from companies like Reinvigorate can offer cost-effective solutions to stay connected in today's real-time web environment. Consider The AlternativesIn addition to Reinvigorate, other companies offering real-time site analytics services include Chartbeat, Clicky, ClickTale, and Woopra. See also: Free Traffic Analytics Tools you Should Know About. Which analytics service do you use and is it real-time? Related posts
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The other day, a friend of mine got an e-mail from his Internet Service Provider (ISP) about a copyright infringement. He didn’t know what this was all about so he had me take a look at it.
If no one who has access confesses to the deed, refer back to the letter. The one I read listed the date and time that the copyrighted material was accessed, as well as name and type of file. So if you see it’s the new Eminem album, chances are it wasn’t Great Aunt Ethel who did the downloading. That information will help you to identify who did the downloading. Talk to them about the perils of copyright infringement when you download copyrighted materials.
Last but not least, do a very thorough virus scan of your computer. It is possible that you may have a trojan that is opening up your hard drive to the Internet. That may result in unauthorized sharing of files also. 
If you’re anything like I am, you’ve accumulated a great deal of photos of your family, your travels and everything else that interests you. Other than storing it away on disk or even creating an online photo slideshow with them, wouldn’t it be cool to make your own 
If there’s one thing that gets to me it’s wasting money. I know we all like to splash the cash a little and have fun – hell I’m known to buy the latest gadget, game or gizmo if my bank balance permits me. But it’s spending money when one doesn’t have to that gets to me.
However, as students you may want a quick way to make an extra $50 per week. Well I have one that will work – and it’s not a scam or short-term solution. You simply write copy for a large company called 
Spread out over several 
I personally love the 
To accommodate the ever-increasing desire for startups and corporations to reach out to their audience and discover more about them, site analytics tools are evolving to showcase much more about the types of people that visit their online properties and how they interact with their content – and each other.
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