May 2007, Week 5 -- Ad Hoc

   It’s harder to count web visitors than was previously thought. According to ComScore.com, a single visitor can be counted many times if they regularly delete or block “cookies” from their computer.

   Many web sites place a cookie, a small line of code on a visitor’s computer, when they first visit the site. This helps those sites collect information about the user and sometimes makes it easier for the user to navigate that site the next time they come to it. When the user deletes those cookies and later returns to that site, they are counted as a new user. This can and does happen over and over. It’s impossible to know how many “visitors” are simply the same people returning to the site later. This is particularly important to advertisers, since the rates they are charged are usually based on the number of visitors to that site or a section of the site.

   The CEO of ComScore says his company did a survey of 400,000 PCs and found that a sizable number of users cleared the computer’s cookies on a regular basis. (We would be among those.) He estimated that many sites are then inflating the count of unique visitors by as much as ten times the true number.

A leap into the web

   LeapTag.com  is much like the StumbleUpon.com web site we wrote about some weeks ago. In that one, you let them pick sites at random and take you to some places you were unlikely to have found any other way.

   Both these sites try to zone in on your interests. But StumbleUpon brings you all kinds of websites, where LeapTag brings you news and blogs. If you like model trains, StumbleUpon finds you train sites, LeapTag finds you model train news. Both services would like you to rate the sites they find, but LeapTag also asks you to rate the ads that appear on their pages; you don’t have to rate anything if you don’t feel like it.

   You start by downloading and installing the free LeapTag software for Windows or Mac. Then when you type something in the search box, the software creates a page of news for that category. The software then tailors its next search for news according to what you said you liked.

   One downside: your category tag can wander far from the original topic. We created the category “Economics” and were interested in articles about the University of Chicago and its influence on the world. But we also tagged an article on diabetes, and after that, every story that came in under “Economics” was tied to health problems. We started a new “Economics” tab to solve this problem, but we kept the old one as well because we liked the way it saved our favorite sites in a handy sidebar. It also saved the ads we liked, which were all for books.

 Microsoft Does Math

   The best part of the new “Microsoft Math” is what they call their “step by step” solution. You can enter an equation and they solve it and show you how they arrived at the solution.

   The new program is available as a download for $20 from Microsoft.com/math. On the other hand, for a few dollars more, as they say in the movie business, you can get Microsoft Student at one of the discount sellers like Amazon.com and it contains most of the same things plus an encyclopedia. We say “most” instead of “all” because the math part of “MS Student” does not cover calculus, which is too bad because it’s fun. In fact, if we may digress for a micro-minute, it reminds Bob of the time Archimedes was working on a problem and came just a smidgen away from inventing the integral calculus before he was distracted and went on to something else. That would have been about 2,000 years before Newton discovered it.

   Microsoft Math is aimed at middle school, high school and college students, though we could all benefit. Complex curves and solids are generated on-screen in color and pop-up notes explain new terms. You can save any of these projections as a “tif” file and insert it into reports. There is also a reference section with standard formulas in the “Equation Library.”

Truly Real Estate

   Trulia.com  is a real estate site that re-designed and re-launched itself in May, providing an unusual extra feature. Along with browsing a list of two million properties currently for sale in the U.S., you can ask about parking. At least, sort of. We have no interest in buying property – we rent and love it – but on a whim, we asked: “If you wanted to go to Wrigley Field for a Cubs baseball game, where would you park? A local told us parking isn’t much worse than it is when the Cubs aren’t playing, People nearby also rent space on their lawns. You can ask other questions about a neighborhood: schools, animals, bus service, etc.

   Now, if you happen to be interested in real estate, you can type in an area name or zip code and get a map and a description of what’s available. If you search on a large city, a list of neighborhoods appears off to one side. If you know something about the city, it helps narrow the search. If you’re interested in a particular property, they’ll send you a note if it comes up for sale. Sometimes it comes up for sale just because you, the deep-pockets buyer, have asked about it.