Recommending what content to read next is a key feature for Metro UK. We’re planning to make it the theme for our next mini hack day. We might even make it a competition. It might go something like this… Recommendation APIs Each team will provide a recommendation API, which will be called by 1% of…… Continue reading Hackday: content recommendation engine
Category: Web
Is iOS Newstand a big deal for news on tablet?
Newstand on iOS is awesome. It downloads news overnight so that you can read it offline during your morning commute. This is a big deal for mobile but maybe not for tablet…. only 15% of tablet owners take it on the commute. Tablet usage is much higher in the evening when users are relaxing at…… Continue reading Is iOS Newstand a big deal for news on tablet?
“Next article” micro-analytics: Redis and Node
My last post demonstrated a micro-analytics app using Redis and Ruby/Sinatra. Here is the equivalent using Node/Express/Node Redis. var express = require(‘express’); var app = express(); var db = require(‘redis-url’).connect(process.env.REDISTOGO_URL); /** * Log navigation from one location to the next * @param {string} from: one location * @param {string} to: the next location * @returns…… Continue reading “Next article” micro-analytics: Redis and Node
“Next article” micro-analytics with Redis and Ruby
@elgrom has an interesting idea for predicting which article users are most likely to read next:Every time a user navigates between articles, log it.For each article, calculate the most popular “next” articleHere is how to do it in 12 lines of code with Redis and Ruby/Sinatra. (Next i’ll try it with Node for better scalability).require…… Continue reading “Next article” micro-analytics with Redis and Ruby
Re-creating Live Tiles on the web
I’ve been trying a couple of few JQuery libraries to simulate Windows 8 Live Tiles on the web. Cycle – http://jquery.malsup.com/cycle/ MetroJS – http://www.drewgreenwell.com/projects/metrojs QuickFlip – http://jonraasch.com/blog/quickflip-2-jquery-plugin Cycle is my favorite! Here’s a small demo that uses it
Metrics: Time on site
Average time on site is flawed. TOTAL time on site (TTS) is more robust. It’s the total time spent on the site by all (target) users. With this metric: some users spending more time on the site is always good; more users is always good. Other issues are detailed here. For example, “bounces” count as zero…… Continue reading Metrics: Time on site
The Scientist
You are measuring traffic, right? Number of hits. Unique users. Good, just checking. Do you measure the impact of each feature? Metro don’t (watch this space). Here’s an example. We recently redesigned our masthead – the header, logo, background, navigation, search tool and banner space. It took us quite a while. Some people thought this was…… Continue reading The Scientist
Using the Metro API – a guide for newbies
I’m going to show you how to use the Metro API. This post is aimed at javascript beginners but i recommend you try out this fun interactive introduction first – http://www.codecademy.com/ Step One. Create a file on your computer. Call it something like “metro.html”. Step Two. Copy the HTML below into it. Open the file in…… Continue reading Using the Metro API – a guide for newbies
Form tools
It’s often useful for non-techies to be able to embed forms in a page. Here are a few tools which might help… SurveyMonkey Google forms Wufoo Jotform QuestionPro Enjoy!
Atom on JSON
Atom is a widely used XML format for syndicating content. But what if you want to use JSON? You can use Google Data Protocol, but the format carries a lot of XML baggage with it. It doesn’t really play to the strengths of JSON. IMO, JSON’s strengths are: Simplicity. No namespaces. (The flip side of…… Continue reading Atom on JSON