Does my statistic look big in this?

Today it's all about evaulations. Get that, box ticked. There are different tools for evaulations : Google Alert, Survey Monkey. There are even evaluation tools available for the social networks like Flickr, Twitter, even Blogger.  Tick again.

So why am i giving a 1 out of 5 in this report card? The adventure itinerary was badly planned and barely worded. Its like being given a GPS unit in Chinese or Russian (and not knowing the language) and being told to find your way to the city centre.

First stop was to set up Google Alert. Quite easy to set up and access once you've signed into your gmail account. Basically you type in some keywords, a search is done (mine is set up for weekly), and you receive an alert via email with the link to the results. Useful for keeping up with industry news online.

Next stop was more of a challenge. Feedburner. 101 lesson: "FeedBurner's services allow publishers who already have a feed to improve their understanding of and relationship with their audience. Once you have a working feed, run it through FeedBurner and realize a whole new set of benefits." That's what They say. In everyday lingo, its a tool that turns your blog into an RSS feed, another way of getting your words out into the electronic universe for analysis. I did play with it, but it has a very useful button that allows users to delete the feed at any time. And yes i did press the button. No, i am not a fan.

The last stop of the day was Survey Monkey. You can either sign up or pay a subscription to create a survey and obtain the results. If you're interested in seeing the survey i've set up the link at the bottom of the window. Try it. It will never appear in any academic journals or thesis, but in the spirit of things... I can see a use for this tool in libraries for customer feedback online. Also provides a way of analysing what comes through on their website - looking at the stats and keeping record of the answers. Comes with a html tag for web pop-ups or as a link to open in a separate window for the survey.