August 2007

Television has Nielsen ratings. The web has a mess of competitive standards. Is there something wrong with web analytics, or will the market settle this on its own? Om and Joyce put top execs from Quantcast and Hitwise on the couch this week to find out. Plus, on the Hitlines, Gateway, Earthlink, pink slips and a flood of VC funding. Don’t miss this week’s episode of The GigaOM Show!

I still think the best analytics come from software that runs on the web server, such as Urchin. Google recently purchased Urchin and will likely integrate it with Google Analytics in the future. However, the interface is clunky and slow. Right now I use Shaun Inman’s Mint to monitor most of the traffic on my site.

Most people use word processors like MS Word as they would a typewriter — manually making section headers bold and centered, inserting hard breaks between paragraphs, etc. This formatting method is fine for short documents, but for long documents that include multiple sections, figures, tables and other elements that need to be styled consistently throughout the text, it pays to learn Word’s advanced features.

These features are easy-to-use, but poorly documented and, in my experience, underused — even by professionals that frequently write long documents. This tutorial presents ten tips to help you start using Word the smart way.

For the second year in a row, immunologist Shizuo Akira occupies the top tier, this time by virtue of seven Hot Papers on Toll-like receptors, innate immunity, viral recognition, and other topics. Akira and colleagues also published a 2006 report that wound up among the year’s most cited (K.J. Ishii, et al., #33 in the first table).

I found this report interesting because I just completed my preliminary examination here at the University of Michigan on the antiviral response in plasmacytoid dendritic cells. Many of the papers I cited were published by Shizuo Akira and his colleagues.

James Murphy and Pat Mahoney delve into their New York roots for FABRICLIVE 36, a hot sweaty blend of seminal disco, deep rare grooves and edgy tech-infused funk from influential artists such as Donald Byrd & 125th St, Chic, Lenny Williams, Junior Byron and Love of Life Orchestra. A delightful nod to their future, past and present (including LCD Soundsystem’s own ‘Hippe Priest Bumout’), this mix is unashamed hand-clapping fun, full of upfront rhythms, obscure treats and heart warming guilty pleasures.

I can’t wait for this one! You may know James Murphy through LCD Soundsystem, his collaborative project with DFA partner, Tim Goldsworthy (formerly of UNKLE).

Fox Cable Networks today predicted that it will not be able to reach a distribution agreement with Comcast Communications to carry Big Ten Network prior to the Aug. 30 launch. Fox, as a partner of the Big Ten Conference in Big Ten Network, has the lead role in negotiating carriage agreements on the network’s behalf.

“The fact is that Comcast is unwilling to negotiate with us, and it is now clear that it’s highly unlikely any agreement will be achieved prior to launch,” said Bob Thompson, president of Fox National Cable Sports Networks, who is working closely with Big Ten Network during its initial stages and is a member of the network’s Board of Directors. “Anyone who lives in an area serviced by Comcast who wants to make sure they don’t miss a game had better make alternative plans.

Michigan fans without DirecTV service will have to make the trek to Michigan Stadium or their local bar to watch the game against Appalachian State this weekend. The Big Ten and Comcast are in dispute over pricing. Comcast wants BTN on their premium sports tier ($6 a month) and the Big Ten wants it for free on expanded basic cable.

1845: Scientific American, the oldest continuously published magazine in the United States, makes its debut.

Founded by Rufus Porter, a prolific inventor as well as a pretty fair painter and the scion of a wealthy New England family, Scientific American was originally printed as a single-page newsletter with a demonstrated liking for news coming out of the U.S. Patent Office.

I was not aware that Scientific American is the oldest magazine in the United States still in publication. I have a subscription to their digital service, which lets you access their complete archive in PDF format.

ANN ARBOR, MI – A vaccine against anthrax that is more effective and easier to administer than the present vaccine has proved highly effective in tests in mice and guinea pigs, report University of Michigan Medical School scientists in the August issue of Infection and Immunity.

The scientists were able to trigger a strong immune response by treating the inside of the animals’ noses with a “nanoemulsion” – a suspension of water, soybean oil, alcohol and surfactant emulsified to create droplets of only 200 to 300 nanometers in size. It would take about 265 of the droplets lined up side by side to equal the width of a human hair.

The oil particles are small enough to ferry a key anthrax protein inside the nasal membranes, allowing immune-system cells to react to the protein and initiate a protective immune response. That primes the immune system to promptly fight off infection when it encounters the whole microbe.

Besides eliminating the need for needles, the nanoemulsion anthrax vaccine has another advantage, the researchers say: It is easy to store and use in places where refrigeration is not available.

The Wolverines have finished each of the last three seasons with consecutive losses, and ending that dubious streak is why Long returned to Michigan for the 2007 season, rather than entering the NFL draft.

“That’s one of the reasons I came back,” Long said. “We haven’t finished a season strong as a group. We haven’t beaten Ohio State. We haven’t won a bowl game. We want to come out on top as seniors.”

Thanks to Long’s surprising decision, the Wolverines enter this season as favorites to win the Big Ten championship, something that has elluded them since Long’s redshirt freshman season in 2004.

When Long, a 6-foot-7, 313-pound native of Lapeer, Mich., decided to return to school for his senior season, tailback Mike Hart and quarterback Chad Henne soon followed. That trio, along with receivers Mario Manningham and Adrian Arrington, gives Michigan what could potentially be one of the most explosive offenses in college football.

And it was Long who started Michigan’s domino effect.

“When you give up $12 or $15 million, you have to be a Michigan man,” Hart said. “You have to love the school.”

Or you must really want to beat Ohio State, which knocked the Wolverines out of the BCS National Championship Game with a 42-39 win in what was one of the most anticipated games in recent history.

Ever wanted to type the copyright icon, or do an accent over an A without having to resort to some character palette? We have, and it takes time and is an effort. So we put together a series of help sheets that reference all of the characters that aren’t listed on your keyboard, along with their shortcut keys to make your life easier.

Over the past few days, these claims have been widely circulated throughout the Web. But when I spoke to Comcast spokesman Charlie Douglas earlier today, he flat-out denied that the company was filtering or “shaping” any traffic on its network. He said the company doesn’t actively look at the applications or content that its customers download over the network. But Comcast does reserve the right to cut off service to customers who abuse the network by using too much bandwidth.

I can verify that Comcast is actively blocking torrent seeds as of this morning. When Verizon FiOS is available in Ann Arbor, I’m switching both my Internet and TV over to them.