Division By Zero

Google Analytics goes Asynchronous

• Jonathan
• 2nd Dec 2009
• Analytics, Google

Google have just announced an amazing new feature / change to the way we implement Google Analytics tracking code. It’s called Asynchronous Tracking and basically it means that the GA javascript can be downloaded separately from the rest of the page’s content, resulting in faster load times.

Another nice effect of this is that we can now put GA code at the top of the page, meaning accuracy will increase!

I won’t go into the technical details, you can read those over at the Google Code Blog, and you should check out the migration examples too.

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Get the centre of a Google Map as Latitude and Longitude

• Jonathan
• 28th Nov 2009
• Google Maps

Here’s a nice little javascript function to get the Lat / Long coordinates of the centre of Google Maps – I found it prticularly useful once when creating a flash map which showed the locations of a national chain of golf fitting centres.

javascript:void(prompt('',gApplication.getMap().getCenter()));

To use it simply go to Google Maps, centre the map on the place you want the coordinates of, enter the code above into the address bar and hit enter. A nice text field alert will pop up allowing you to copy the Lat / Long values.

If you’re going to be doing this regularly you may find it useful to create a Firefox bookmark with the code set as the location. That way you can simply hit the bookmark and have the coordinates appear (as long as you’re on Google Maps that is).

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Google Gets a Caffeine Boost

• Jonathan
• 12th Aug 2009
• Google

Google has launched a beta of an upgraded search which it claims will make your search a whole lot faster.

It’s available to try now at http://www2.sandbox.google.com.

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