I love Skype, because it makes it easy and fun to keep in touch with my husband when he travels. It's especially great for my kids, because we can all see and hear their daddy for the whole conversation, and we can talk as long as we want for free. Needless to say, I was really upset when I just updated to Skype 2.8 and it told me I can't use it at home anymore on my iMac, which is the only computer (and mobile device) that I have that plays audio and video properly.

I'll be honest, I'm not sure exactly what the problem is, but I have a solution. The error produced by Skype stated that Skype does not work with private WIFI networks; specifically my home network could not be accessed because it is private and secure.  Huh? It has something to do with security, Skype on mobile devices, and wanting to make money. Not exactly sure how it all goes together, but it was enough to make me rather irate.

If you use Time Machine for backups, here's how you can get it working again. Drag the current Skype application to the trash. After deleting it, there are still random Skype files on your computer. Using Finder, look at your Hard Drive under Library > Preferences, and also Library > Application Support. Delete any files that have "skype" in them. Then do the same thing in the same two folders under your Users account. Using Time Machine, go back to a time before you updated to Skype 2.8. Click on Applications in the Finder window to locate Skype. Select the file and click Restore in the lower right corner. 

My "About Skype" window still says it's running 2.8, but the application also prompted me for updates, so I'm not sure if it's the current or the older version. That 2.8 makes me think there must still be another file on the computer I missed when I was cleaning up. Whatever. I can now connect to my home network wirelessly, and hopefully you can too.

A very cool use of pngs, jpegs and style sheets: http://www.thinkgeek.com/

Not sure what you're looking at? Scroll and keep your eyes on the background.

Especially good for your website statistics reporting, if you ever need a number comparison to add scale go to http://www.numberquotes.com/

"Our home page was viewed 2,469 times last month, the same number of Golden Gate Bridges laid end-to-end that would reach to the planet Mercury!"

Hmm, sounds impressive, doesn't it?

Not everyone comes through your front door. A landing page is the first page a visitor encounters on your website, how that visitor enters your site. We typically expect this to be the home page, and most often it is. Why?

• It's the shortest address for someone to remember and type in.
• It's the address we advertise.
• It's typically where other sites link to on your site.
• It's where your visitors expect to find the latest news.

There are also unique landing pages created for advertising campaigns, the ones with that short and un-linked URL as discussed earlier.

But there's more you can learn from your top landing pages. Using Google Analytics, go to the Content section, then view your Top Landing Pages. Using the Advanced Segment drop down at the top of the page, check the boxes for All Visitors, Returning Visitors and Search Traffic. It will now display not only the total number (All Visitors), but also the proportion of visitors who were returning to your site. If they are repeat visitors returning to a particular page, they may have that page bookmarked. (Remember, we're looking at the first page a person sees on your site in unique visitor sessions, not how many times a visitor looked at that page in one session.) We don't know for sure how they arrived at this page, but we know it is important enough for them to know how to get to this page directly. What does that tell you about these pages? Perhaps you should pull the most current news/content from the top landing pages and include it on your home page.

Now analyze the search traffic segment. This should correlate with your top search phrases as mentioned earlier. Again, this identifies what people are looking for, and what they expect to find the most interest of on your site.

You'll also notice a column about Bounce Rates. A "bounce" is defined as a single page visit. For your returning visitors who went directly to this page, a high bounce rate isn't uncommon. They came to this page because they knew that was where the information they wanted was located. They found it, they left. It's disappointing they didn't spend more time on the site, but not entirely unexpected. Search engine traffic tells us more. If someone is using a search engine, they may not be familiar with your site. If they landed on a page and then left your site without looking around at other pages, this is where you'll want to focus some effort. You want visitors to explore your site if they are unfamiliar with you, so look at the top landing pages by search traffic, and if they have a high bounce rate, add elements to those pages that cause your visitors to explore further. Add cross-marketing features ("people who were interested in this item also found these useful"), coupons, promotions, and obvious links to related pages. You may need to improve your navigation links on these pages: are they difficult to see?

Have you ever wondered what keywords and phrases your visitors are searching with? Your website statistics will tell you, mostly. If you're using Google Analytics, look at the Traffic Sources; here you'll find a list of keywords and phrases most commonly used to send visitors to your site, along with their popularity.

If most of your keywords are variations on your name or business name, you can assume those visitors were most likely looking for you but couldn't remember your web address.

What about missing keywords? If the keywords used are a good start but there are other appropriate search terms that aren't making that connection, those terms are most likely being searched on but aren't bringing up your site. At this point you need to let your webmaster know which terms aren't working that should be, and find ways to get them on your site. More on how to do this in a future post.

Another way to use your traffic sources data is to see what your visitors are looking for. For instance, the primary purpose of this blog currently is to share my knowledge with my clients and to answer questions they frequently have. However I've also blogged about my iMac, and I'm finding that's what people are searching on. That's not necessarily a problem as my clients are given the direct URL to my site and therefor shouldn't be using search engines, but I am finding it quite interesting how many people are viewing my iMac saga as well, based on their "iMac" search words.

Another very useful piece of information you can glean from your website statistics is how visitors are finding your site. For instance, are they typing the web address in directly, or finding it via a search engine or some other site? This data is useful because you can track which sites refer traffic.

If you're using Google Analytics, all of this and more can be found in the Traffic Sources section. On the overview page is a simplified pie chart displaying Direct Traffic (those who typed in your address or clicked on a bookmark/favorite), Searc Engine traffic, and other Referring Sites. This last group contains visitors who came by clicking on a link to your site from some non-search engine site, such as a directory, a colleague's site, Facebook, etc. Please note Twitter is often not listed here due to the funky way they shorten URL's. I'll write more about this in a future post, it's enough for now to know that Twitter links often appear in the "Direct" category, so don't be frustrated if you don't see them listed as highly as you expect.

Do you pay for advertising on other websites? You don't need to rely on their honesty in reporting, you can look at your own referring sites to verify the number of times a visitor came from that website to yours. But wait, there's more! By creating an advanced segment that filters your logs to only analyze visitors from that particular source, you can profile the traffic that's coming from your paid advertising on a particular site. You can now see if they are spending quality time on your website, how many pages they view, which pages are the most popular, and even if they follow through with a purchase or other online call-to-action. This gives you a good indicator of whether you're spending your online advertising budget in a worthwhile marketing campaign. Pretty nifty, eh?

God bless AppleCare Support! Ok, I'm still unhappy with the local store, the corporation and the repair center, but the AppleCare Tech Support people are fabulous, wonderful, amazing, and they can work miracles. They've saved me so many times already. 

My iMac has been working ok lately, but honestly I've been afraid to do anything significant in case it started acting up again. Just a few days ago I decided to start using it more seriously, and consequently ordered new software and a new external hard drive for storage (did I mention my Seagate backup drive is dying?) It all arrived yesterday late in the day. If I had been paying attention to my fate trends with the iMac, I should have known something was coming...

Before I had the chance to install the new backup drive, my child stepped on the surge protector, turning it off and consequently the iMac as well. I didn't think much about it last night, after all it's a reliable surge protector. When I tried to turn the iMac back on this morning, the iMac was dead. When I pressed the power button, I heard the fan start up, then nothing. Black screen.

So I called AppleCare, and they fixed it! Apparently the power had been "locked" on the iMac somehow, I didn't ask for specifics, but all you have to do in this case is:

1. First disconnect the computer from the power source for 15 seconds.
2. Plug it back in.
3. Press and hold the Option, Command and R keys while you press the power button, then quickly press the P key as well.
4. Continue to hold the Opt, Cmd, R and P keys until you hear the start up sound twice. That resets everything and voila! Tears are gone, you're back in business.

Have a happy day.

Just as you can add a personalized cover to your Flip camcorder, or "skin" your media player, you can add a "Persona" to Firefox. Go to http://www.getpersonas.com/ and look through the gallery, or check out this one of one of my four-footed local neighbors: https://www.getpersonas.com/en-US/persona/174914 .

If you're browsing with Firefox (sorry, it doesn't work in Internet Explorer,) when you find one you like click "Wear It" or "Wear This Persona". Your picture now covers the entire toolbar.

You can create your own as well, it's as simple as creating a couple of JPG or PNG files. Go here to get started: https://www.getpersonas.com/en-US/upload   It does require the free Personas plug-in to use.

Having issues with Adobe Photoshop CS4's eyedropper tool? It's a new feature in Photoshop CS4 that I may some day find useful, but the default setting made me think there was a problem with my installation. When you have the eyedropper tool selected and you're trying to select a color but it doesn't take, verify in the "Sample Menu" (this is the bar at the top where you find tool-specific menus) that it is sampling "All Layers," not only the "Current Layer."

Tim Ash has authored an excellent article on ClickZ about how important it is to get your site visitors to trust your website. He outlines the four steps towards building trust: appearance, transactional assurances, experts and media, consensus of peers. It's well worth reading: http://bit.ly/a8FGzG (and more important that your webmaster read it!)