Link different AdSense and Analytics accounts

Google Analytics is a great tool for site owners and content developers to analyze the site traffic and make informed decisions about the content placement. Google AdSense, on the other hand, helps site owners to display Google ads on their site and earn money.

Google has recently integrated the two products so that the data is more valuable in making profit-generating improvements to your advertising and website.

When you login to your AdSense account, you will now see a link to integrate the account with an Analytics account. It is fairly easy to link the accounts if you have the AdSense and Analytics accounts under the same Google Account. I will go through the steps in linking the two in case you had the AdSense and Analytics accounts under two different Google Accounts.

Your AdSense login must be listed as an Administrator on the Analytics account if you want to link the two. So, log in to the Analytics account and go to ‘User Manager’. Click on the ‘Add User’ link and add your AdSense account as the Administrator user. Log out of Analytics and log in to AdSense now and click on the link to integrate the accounts. It will ask you if you want to create a new Analytics account or link to the existing one. Select the radio button to link to the existing one and follow the instructions.

That’s it. After few hours you will be able to see your AdSense data inside your Analytics account.

Restore your photos with Picasa after system format

Picasa is a great application to manage your photos and combined with the free Picasa Web Albums, it does a great job to upload your photos to the web and keep in sync.

After collecting years of photos in Picasa and having them in sync with the Picasa Web Albums, you might think it will be difficult if you format your system or move to a new one entirely. But it is not that difficult. All you have to do is to save the folder where you saved your photos to an external hard drive or a CD/DVD. And, after the format (or on the new system), copy that folder back and add it as a watched folder using the Folder Manager in Picasa.

Picasa keeps the sync and other information in an ini file inside each folder (album) and hence you won’t loose that information. If you had an album synced to the web, all you have to do now is to go to that album and connect it again to the synced web album using the drop-down menu after the sync icon.

If you have starred photos synced to the web, you might have to re-upload the photos to keep it in sync as this information is not saved in your albums folder.

You can also use the ‘Backup Photos’ available in Tools menu of Picasa to backup your photos if you do not want to manually move your folders.

URL changed for Telugu Movie Ratings gadget

Due to the closure of Google Pages and the move to Google Sites, I had to change the URL for the Telugu Movie Ratings gadget.

If you are one of those who added the Telugu Movie Ratings gadget to your iGoogle page or to your website, please remove it and use the updated links provided on the above page to add it again. Sorry for any inconvenience.

If you haven’t yet added the Telugu Movie Ratings gadget to your website or to your iGoogle page, now is a good time to go ahead and do it. This gadget fetches the latest five movie ratings from the IdleBrain.com website for you. You can see a demo by visiting the above link. Use the links on the bottom of that page to add the gadget to your website or iGoogle page.

Changes to Dollar to Rupee exchange rates site

I have deployed a new version of the code today to the Dollar to Rupee exchange rates website. This new version provides the ability to vote for your favorite money transfer provider / bank. Just visit the new page to vote.

If you want to add few comments about your vote to describe your experiences with the money transfers done through various banks, add your comments to this post in the comments section. Sharing your experiences will help other people who are new to money transfers or trying to find the best one.

There are few other small changes in addition to the voting feature:

1. The help messages that are displayed on every page at the top right hand corner of the page now use cookies and hence will not bug you every time you load the page. After the first load, you will only see the messages if you delete the cookies or the cookies get expired.

2. The weekly chart now displays the dates and axis lines on the x-axis of the chart to make it more easy to compare the rates. I have got mails from few users asking about this and it is now available.

Please note that the dates are shown only for the weekly chart and not for biweekly and monthly charts. For biweekly and monthly charts, the dates are getting overlapped and you will not be able to make out from the text if I display all those dates.

Continue to send your excellent feedback and I will add the new features as and when I find some time.

Follow me on Twitter

I finally joined Twitter (I'm not on Facebook, MySpace, Orkut and other social networks though!). If you're on Twitter and you're interested in the things I do or say, you might want to consider following me on Twitter.

If you are not on Twitter and still want to follow my tweets, look for the ‘Twitter Updates’ widget in the sidebar of this blog that displays my latest 5 tweets.

A new home for Dollar to Rupee exchange rates

As some of you might have already noticed, there is a new home for the Dollar to Rupee exchange rates. I have moved the latest Dollar to Rupee exchange rates to the previously historical values website to be more consistent.

Previously, you had to go to a different site to check the current values and a different site to check the historical values / chart. Now, everything related to Dollar to Rupee exchange rates is at one place and has a more consistent look and feel.

The live data page now displays when was the last time the values were fetched from the banks. This last fetch time is in UTC. The heading for each page is in a different color for easily identifying the latest values from the historical values (green is latest, red is historical).

So, in summary, below are the new links that you might want to bookmark.

Current Dollar to Rupee Exchange Rates – http://www.dollar2rupee.net

Historical / Old values - http://www.dollar2rupee.net/history

Line chart to compare the values graphically - http://www.dollar2rupee.net/chart

Thanks again for you support and suggestions. Keep the feedback coming.

Trillian Astra – Very promising multi-protocol IM client

I have tried Trillian before. But I had to give it up when the support for Google Talk through their Jabber/XMPP plug-in was announced for only Pro users. After several years, I’m trying Trillian again. The next version of their chat client called ‘Astra’ is in beta testing and so far I’m very impressed.

The best thing that has happened to Trillian with Astra is that they have made a whole range of previously pro-only features free. The entire plug-in system including the Jabber/XMPP plug-in to connect to Google Talk is now free. This makes the free client appeal to everyone and be competitive with other clients on the market.

There are premium features such as history viewer, themes and a possible iPhone version which you can purchase by paying a one-time fee (no need to pay every year). And then there are premium services such as web-based chat and video chats which have annual cost to use. Overall, I feel that the new model of their premium services and subscriptions is very good to make the free offering competitive enough without destroying their ability to monetize.

Trillian Astra boasts of more than 400 features with highly customizable interface for IM, mail, social networks and content syndication. It syncs your contact data and preferences between your computers and keeps itself updated. Tabbed windows will keep your desktop clutter free as there are no separate windows for each person you are chatting with.

The current beta release is pretty stable and I haven’t faced any issues so far. If you want to try it out, go to their website and signup for beta invitation. They seem to be pretty open now to beta invites. I got my invite in just few minutes after the signup.

An Evening at the Google HQ

As I have specified in my previous post, I was invited for the Google Campfire One event that took place on 7th April 2009 from 7 to 9 pm. Below is my account of the evening at Google HQ and the outcome of it.

I went in at around 7 pm and after parking the car I found directions to the event hall. At the registration desk, I was asked for my first name and then issues a name tag. There were few snacks and drinks available along with a cake in celebration of 1st birthday of App Engine. Event presentation started exactly at 7:30 pm as specified and I’m not going to write here all the announcements that were made. You can check their blog post to see what was announced.

Out of all the announcements, those that interest me are the ability to run Java apps on App Engine and the cron support. I have been working in Java space for the past 4 years and had to learn Python to create the dollar to rupee and "cricket links" apps on App Engine. With this new Java support, I don’t have to work with Python and it makes creating apps a lot easier for me.

I have few ideas for the new apps that I’m going to create on App Engine using Java and as always, you are welcome to give me suggestions on anything you would like me to work on. If I like the idea and think that it can be implemented on App Engine, I will work on it.

With cron support, I don’t have to work-around to use scheduled tasks. And it provides a way to add few features to the Dollar to Rupee application. I was thinking on implementing email alerts. How useful it will be if you can receive an email alert when the exchange rate crosses a certain value like 50 ? Write in comments about what you think and I will try to work on something that is useful for a large user base.

I'm invited for Google Campfire One

I don't know whether it is a random selection or it is due to the apps that I have built using Google products, I got an invite from Google to attend the Campfire One that is taking place today at 7pm at the Googleplex.

I will blog about my visit to Google HQ and the experience at Campfire One tomorrow.