Category: Excel blog

On the Google Analytics dashboard there’s a world map, that shows where my Excel blog readers are located. Not surprisingly, most are in the USA, and the rest are concentrated in a swath of English-speaking countries, from Canada to New Zealand.

The map never changes, so I usually glance at it and move on. Today though, I clicked on Canada and it showed a dot for each city with readers. Hello, Yellowknife! And apparently they don’t have the Internet anywhere Sault Ste. Marie and Winnipeg, or maybe they have the Internet, but no Excel users.

Coincidentally, the second city in from the right is Sydney, Nova Scotia, and the second city from the left is Sidney, British Columbia.

The line of dots along the border reminded me of a comment that David Letterman made last week, after the Olympics. He said the USA wouldn’t have to invade Canada to overtake it, they could just move the border 1° north.

If you zoom out from the map, you get a regional analysis of the visitors. No surprises there, with most readers from the Americas.

And finally, I checked a larger version of the dashboard map, that gives better detail on the world countries. The only surprise here is that no one from Greenland has visited the Contextures Blog in the past month. I’ll have to get the marketing team to look into that.

So, are there any surprises in your Google Analytics maps?

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On Twitter today, someone mentioned www.genderanalyzer.com, and reported that it guessed her blog was likely written by a man (59%).

So, I decided to test my website and blogs, to see how they’d be assessed. Here’s the description of how the analyzer works:

It uses Artificial Intelligence to determine if a homepage is written by a man or woman. Behind the scene, a text classifier hosted over at uClassify.com has been trained on 11000 blogs written by men and women.

I figured that the Excel sites would lean to the male side, because of the technical material. Probably more men than women are blogging about computer stuff.

And I was right – here are the scores:

1. We think http://blog.contextures.com is written by a man (82%).
2. We think http://www.contextures.com is written by a man (84%).
3. We think http://www.pivot-table.com is written by a man (84%).

It’s interesting that my Contextures website is slightly more manly than my Contextures blog. 😉

This blog though, is gender neutral, despite having a female name.

• We guess http://debradalgleish.com/blog/ is written by a man (55%), however it’s quite gender neutral.

So – how does your blog/website rate?

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Just like you, I get a fair amount of spam and other junk in my email inbox every day. There are regular requests for Excel help too, that I’ve written about before.

Some of those Excel help requests come with a file attachment, but most files are fairly small – in the 50-200 Kb size. I’ll admit to opening some of them, if the help request is interesting, and the problem is well described.

Today I got an email with a 2 Mb Excel attachment, from someone I’d never heard of, let alone had any prior interaction with. He was offering me an “interactive workbook” that I could put on my Sample Excel Files page.

Through careful research, he learned that my name is “Hi”, so that impressed me. (Many people believe that my name is “Sir”, so “Hi” is an improvement.)

I deleted the email immediately, so I can’t quote it exactly, but it had only a short paragraph with a vague description of the attachment. There were no details about sender or the file that made me want to take a look.

Sharing Your File

There are some files on my Sample Excel Files page that other people have created. You can learn amazing things by taking a look at someone else’s work.

Both Ron Coderre and Roger Govier have generously provided so many sample files that I created separate pages for them. Dave Peterson has contributed several files too, like his popular Navigation toolbar. But even they wouldn’t send a random 2 Mb file without asking if I’m interested.

If you have an Excel workbook that you’d like to share on my website, please let me know. Maybe it would be perfect for my website visitors.

If we haven’t met, or emailed, before, tell me a little about yourself, and the kind of file that you’ve created. I try to keep the sample files pretty small, so they’re quick and easy for people to download, so I probably won’t be able to use your file if it’s too big. 

Does This Happen to You?

Do you ever get giant Excel files that you didn’t ask for, and weren’t expecting? How do you handle that?

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Occasionally I check the Google Trends page, to see what’s the hot news of the day (or hour). If you’re stuck for a blog idea, or dinner conversation topic, you might get some inspiration there.

It’s not too surprising, but today’s hot topic is the iPad, in a variety of spellings.

You can also see the hot searches, which are usually quite different than the hot topics. Today is the 24th anniversary of the Challenger explosion, so it makes sense that people are searching for information on that topic. But amaryllis flowers?

Website Trends

At the bottom of the Google Trends page, there’s a link to Trends for Websites. That takes you to a page that shows trends for Wikipedia.org. You can put your website in the search box, to see the overall trends, or focus on a specific page on your site.

You’ll see information similar to the data in Google Analytics, such as unique visitors and visitor regions. Here’s the visitor trend for the first part of last year on the Contextures site.

Check Similar Sites

When you view your site trends, you’ll see a list of other sites that people visited. You can put one of those sites in the search box, and see how it compares to your site.

For example, I took a look at Chip Pearson’s Excel site. Most of his visitors came from USA, India, UK, and Canada, and they also searched for Excel formulas.

Dick’s Daily Dose of Excel visitors are mainly from the USA, with a few from the UK, and they don’t search for anything else.

My visitors at Contextures.com are from the same regions as Chip’s and have very diverse interests. I have no explanation for their search topics!

Take a Look

Check your site, and a few of the similar sites. Do you find anything that surprises you?

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For my desktop computer, I have two monitors – a 22” widescreen (that seems to be dying), and a 20” square. It’s easy to forget that other people don’t have as much screen real estate, and they’re reading my site or blog through a smaller window.

Today I found Google Browser Size, which shows the percentage of people who can see a specific area of the window, without scrolling.

According to Google:

Google Browser Size is a visualization of browser window sizes for people who visit Google. For example, the "90%" contour means that 90% of people visiting Google have their browser window open to at least this size or larger.

I typed in the URL for my main website, www.contextures.com and you can see the results on the widescreen monitor above.

According to Google Browser Size, 90% of the visitors would see most of the What’s New section. Only 40% would see the first project heading, for Microsoft Access Database Design.

I’m not sure if this includes people who are using an iPhone or Blackberry. They probably don’t seem much at all!

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Akismet blocks most of the spam comments on my blogs, which is great. I check the list of blocked comments, and have only found a handful that were incorrectly marked as spam.

Most of the flagged comments are obvious spam, with long lists of links to dubious sites, or completely off topic remarks with links, or comments in Russian with links. If I can’t understand it, I’m sure not going to approve it! Delete.

A few comments try vague flattery to get their link-bearing comments posted. “This is the best post I’ve ever read on this topic. Keep up the good work!” Delete.

Others try confrontation or controversy. “Your article had great content until the last paragraph. Then you went completely off target.” Delete.

There are a few gems buried in the rubble though. I saw a comment in the Akismet list this week that made me laugh. “I found your blog while searching for first aid for heart attacks.” Really? You took the time to bookmark my site, then came back to make a comment? I hope your dying friend or co-worker wasn’t inconvenienced! Nice try though. Delete.

Have you found any treasures in your pile of spam comments?

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Yes, I have a new microphone but don’t worry, I’m not using it for singing. The injuction that the neighbours filed is probably still in effect.

I’ve been making Excel tutorial videos for a while, and posting them on my Contextures site and YouTube. The most popular video, Drop Down List in Excel, was created in June 2008, and I probably used the $10 microphone that came with the computer.

The sound quality isn’t too good, and I’ve tried other microphones since then, with varying results. So, to improve the videos, I decided to splurge on a better microphone.

After hours of Googling, and reading reviews, I chose the Rode Podcaster USB microphone. I ordered it from Vistek, a Canadian chain that specializes in cameras and video equipment.

The microphone, at $349 CDN, wasn’t cheap, and I hoped it would prove to be a good investment. I unpacked the microphone and plugged it in, and after a bit of fiddling with the audio settings, it worked well.

However, the microphone is quite heavy – the specifications say 21.5 ounces, which is about 1.5 pounds. If you’re trying to record your voice and use the keyboard at the same time, it’s a bit of a challenge.

The microphone came with a “Microphone Stand Mount” but I discovered that’s something you attach to a microphone stand. And, of course, I didn’t have one of those lying around the office. (To the people at Rode and Vistek: It would help if you mentioned what accessories are required.)

So, it was back to Vistek to order a microphone stand. After waiting, and waiting, I learned that the new guy who took the order hadn’t processed it. He just took the money and put the order in a drawer somewhere, or forgot to push the right button.

The stand finally arrived, and I tried to figure out how to attach the stand mount and microphone to the stand. There were no instructions with the stand, and no pictures anywhere on the web, that I could find. All the pictures show the microphone separately. What help is that?

Finally, I found instructions that said to attach the microphone through the loop in the stand, using the locking collar at the bottom of the microphone. That was helpful, except that my microphone didn’t come with one of those.

Another phone call to Vistek, and they found another Rode Podcaster in stock. So, they took the locking collar from that one, and gave it to me. Here’s the Rode Podcaster Microphone attached to its microphone stand mount with the locking collar.

And a side view.

 

Now, after only five trips to the store, I have a new, fully functioning, microphone and stand.

But I’m too tired to use it!

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I’ve added pages for my sites at the AboutUs.org website wiki.

• Contextures
• Excel Pivot Tables
• Excel Theatre
• Debra D

Because the site is a wiki, you can create an account and edit your own pages, or other pages.

It seems to be well-managed, and I decided it was better to create and edit my own pages, than to leave the default entries that were created.

The account registration only took a couple of seconds, so I’d suggest that you check your site there, and improve the pages, if they exist. If they’re missing, add the pages, with a bit of information about your site.

I don’t know how much traffic you’ll get from the AboutUs.org site, but at least you’ll have another backlink to your site.

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