We're live! Public beta launched today.

We launched the free beta of FeedMagnet to the public today.

This is just beginning. We're working on a ton of new features that we'll be rolling out over the next few months. What we're most interested in at this point is your feedback. Set up some feeds, stick the widget up on your website, and then let us know what you thought of the experience and what features you would like most to see over the coming weeks.

by Jason Ford on Dec. 16, 2009

Mastering Custom Segmentation in Google Analytics

Google has made some major strides in adding new features to Google Analytics over the past year. I used to recommend Google Analytics for basic tracking needs and Omniture (which is expensive) for when custom user tracking or goal conversion was required. After spending some time playing with the new custom variables and segmentation features in Google Analytics, I think I can say that for the vast majority of websites I've worked on - even those run by large enterprise companies with complex requirements - Google Analytics is all you need. And the best part is, it's free.

by Jason Ford on Dec. 11, 2009

Twitter is a "language we speak"

I just came across this paragraph on the #140conf website:

At the #140conf events, we look at twitter as a platform and as a language we speak. Over time it will neither be the only platform nor the only language. #140conf is not an event about microblogging or the place where people share twitter “tips and techniques” but rather where we explore the effects of the real-time Internet on Business.

I'm 100% on board with this idea.

by Jason Ford on Nov. 25, 2009

Simple JavaScript Date Formatting

This week, in anticipation of our alpha launch, Jason asked me to write a mechanism for giving a user the ability to embed one of our feeds on their webpage. You know the drill here; we give them a box of code to copy and paste onto their page, and then after that it just sort of magically works. Anyway, in the process of doing this, I was at a point where I wanted to format what the date and time would look like.

Jason and I do a pretty good job of talking about what's coming around the corner, and he'd mentioned to me in passing that one thing he'd like in the future is a mechanism to allow the user to customize what the time formatting looked like, so I wanted to make sure I planned for that in advance. So, this morning I took on the challenge of taking a JavaScript date object (created from an integer Unix timestamp) and formatting it.

I decided that the best use of time was probably just to write a function to take a date and output it in an arbitrary way, rather than hard-coding the exact formatting we were going to use to start. That would allow me to easily accept an arbitrary format later, and also allow Jason some flexibility if he didn't like how one of the formats looked when he saw the final page; he could just edit the format string rather than asking me to revisit the date formatter.

by Luke Sneeringer on Nov. 19, 2009

Grid Design with Sass

We are a little fanatical about grid-design with www.FeedMagnet.com. We spend time making sure every element of our pages lines up to the pixel with the grid. There are a number of tools that can be used for grid design in CSS, but we chose to use a couple tools that are still a little less common among designers - Sass and Compass - because of the flexibility they provide.

by Jason Ford on Nov. 13, 2009