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• My journey to Coviu

  27 octobre 2015, par silvia

  My new startup just released our MVP – this is the story of what got me here.

  I love creating new applications that let people do their work better or in a manner that wasn’t possible before.

  My first such passion was as a student intern when I built a system for a building and loan association’s monthly customer magazine. The group I worked with was managing their advertiser contacts through a set of paper cards and I wrote a dBase based system (yes, that long ago) that would manage their customer relationships. They loved it – until it got replaced by an SAP system that cost 100 times what I cost them, had really poor UX, and only gave them half the functionality. It was a corporate system with ongoing support, which made all the difference to them.

  The story repeated itself with a CRM for my Uncle’s construction company, and with a resume and quotation management system for Accenture right after Uni, both of which I left behind when I decided to go into research.

  Even as a PhD student, I never lost sight of challenges that people were facing and wanted to develop technology to overcome problems. The aim of my PhD thesis was to prepare for the oncoming onslaught of audio and video on the Internet (yes, this was 1994 !) by developing algorithms to automatically extract and locate information in such files, which would enable users to structure, index and search such content.

  Many of the use cases that we explored are now part of products or continue to be challenges : finding music that matches your preferences, identifying music or video pieces e.g. to count ads on the radio or to mark copyright infringement, or the automated creation of video summaries such as trailers.

  

  This continued when I joined the CSIRO in Australia – I was working on segmenting speech into words or talk spurts since that would simplify captioning & subtitling, and on MPEG-7 which was a (slightly over-engineered) standard to structure metadata about audio and video.

  In 2001 I had the idea of replicating the Web for videos : i.e. creating hyperlinked and searchable video-only experiences. We called it “Annodex” for annotated and indexed video and it needed full-screen hyperlinked video in browsers – man were we ahead of our time ! It was my first step into standards, got several IETF RFCs to my name, and started my involvement with open codecs through Xiph.

  Around the time that YouTube was founded in 2006, I founded Vquence – originally a video search company for the Web, but pivoted to a video metadata mining company. Vquence still exists and continues to sell its data to channel partners, but it lacks the user impact that has always driven my work.

  As the video element started being developed for HTML5, I had to get involved. I contributed many use cases to the W3C, became a co-editor of the HTML5 spec and focused on video captioning with WebVTT while contracting to Mozilla and later to Google. We made huge progress and today the technology exists to publish video on the Web with captions, making the Web more inclusive for everybody. I contributed code to YouTube and Google Chrome, but was keen to make a bigger impact again.

  The opportunity came when a couple of former CSIRO colleagues who now worked for NICTA approached me to get me interested in addressing new use cases for video conferencing in the context of WebRTC. We worked on a kiosk-style solution to service delivery for large service organisations, particularly targeting government. The emerging WebRTC standard posed many technical challenges that we addressed by building rtc.io , by contributing to the standards, and registering bugs on the browsers.

  Fast-forward through the development of a few further custom solutions for customers in health and education and we are starting to see patterns of need emerge. The core learning that we’ve come away with is that to get things done, you have to go beyond “talking heads” in a video call. It’s not just about seeing the other person, but much more about having a shared view of the things that need to be worked on and a shared way of interacting with them. Also, we learnt that the things that are being worked on are quite varied and may include multiple input cameras, digital documents, Web pages, applications, device data, controls, forms.

  So we set out to build a solution that would enable productive remote collaboration to take place. It would need to provide an excellent user experience, it would need to be simple to work with, provide for the standard use cases out of the box, yet be architected to be extensible for specialised data sharing needs that we knew some of our customers had. It would need to be usable directly on Coviu.com, but also able to integrate with specialised applications that some of our customers were already using, such as the applications that they spend most of their time in (CRMs, practice management systems, learning management systems, team chat systems). It would need to require our customers to sign up, yet their clients to join a call without sign-up.

  Collaboration is a big problem. People are continuing to get more comfortable with technology and are less and less inclined to travel distances just to get a service done. In a country as large as Australia, where 12% of the population lives in rural and remote areas, people may not even be able to travel distances, particularly to receive or provide recurring or specialised services, or to achieve work/life balance. To make the world a global village, we need to be able to work together better remotely.

  The need for collaboration is being recognised by specialised Web applications already, such as the LiveShare feature of Invision for Designers, Codassium for pair programming, or the recently announced Dropbox Paper. Few go all the way to video – WebRTC is still regarded as a complicated feature to support.

  

  With Coviu, we’d like to offer a collaboration feature to every Web app. We now have a Web app that provides a modern and beautifully designed collaboration interface. To enable other Web apps to integrate it, we are now developing an API. Integration may entail customisation of the data sharing part of Coviu – something Coviu has been designed for. How to replicate the data and keep it consistent when people collaborate remotely – that is where Coviu makes a difference.

  We have started our journey and have just launched free signup to the Coviu base product, which allows individuals to own their own “room” (i.e. a fixed URL) in which to collaborate with others. A huge shout out goes to everyone in the Coviu team – a pretty amazing group of people – who have turned the app from an idea to reality. You are all awesome !

  With Coviu you can share and annotate :

  • images (show your mum photos of your last holidays, or get feedback on an architecture diagram from a customer),
  • pdf files (give a presentation remotely, or walk a customer through a contract),
  • whiteboards (brainstorm with a colleague), and
  • share an application window (watch a YouTube video together, or work through your task list with your colleagues).

  All of these are regarded as “shared documents” in Coviu and thus have zooming and annotations features and are listed in a document tray for ease of navigation.

  This is just the beginning of how we want to make working together online more productive. Give it a go and let us know what you think.

  http://coviu.com/

  The post My journey to Coviu first appeared on ginger’s thoughts.

• What’s new in Piwik 2.16.0 ?

  1er février 2016, par Matthieu Aubry — About, Development, Uncategorized

  In this blog post we showcase what is new in Piwik 2.16.0 and why you should upgrade your Piwik to this latest release !

  Piwik 2.16.0 is currently in Release Candidate and you can already use it by following these simple instructions. Piwik 2.16.0 will be officially released in a few days.

  To see the list of all 250+ changes, read the Piwik 2.16.0 changelog.

  Long Term Support for Piwik 2.X

  Piwik 2.16.0 is our Long Term Support version for Piwik 2. Learn more about Piwik LTS.

  New : Custom Dimensions feature

  With Custom Dimensions you can assign any custom data to your visitors or actions (like pages, events, …) and then visualize the reports of how many visits, conversions, pageviews, etc. there were for each Custom Dimension. They are similar to Custom Variables see the comparison of Custom Dimensions and Custom Variables.

  The new Custom Dimensions plugin is available on the Piwik Marketplace.

  Learn more about creating, tracking, reporting, managing, segmenting custom dimensions in the Custom Dimensions user guide.

  

  

  

  View the list of all visitors who reached a specific goal

  All Goal reports now include a link below the Goal report summary, that lets you see in one click all users that have converted any of your Goals :

  

  Events reports : option to view all columns : min, max and avg values

  By default in Actions > Events report, the columns displayed are “Total events” (Total number of events) and “Total value” (the sum of event values). It is now possible to click on the footer icon to view more detailed columns about event values : minimum event value, maximum event value, and average event value.

  

  Allow zoom to country in realtime visitor map

  In the real time map in Piwik (which displays your users activity appearing in real time !), it is now possible to zoom on a given country :

  

  Export all Records : new ‘all’ option in the Row limit selector

  It is now possible to export all of the data in your reports directly from the user interface ! Select ‘all’ in the row limit selector before exporting your data reports :

  

  New themes on the Marketplace !

  Feel like a change of colors ? Try out the new community submitted Piwik Themes on the Marketplace ! Learn how to install a new theme in Piwik (in only a few clicks).

  

  Let Super User view and edit segments created by other users

  As a Super User of Piwik, it can be very useful to view all Custom Segments created by all users. Starting in Piwik 2.16.0 any Super User can now view all Segments for a given website in the Segment selector :

  • Segments that are shared with All users will now appear below a section “Shared with you :” (a segment can be shared to all users by any admin user by selecting “This segment is visible to All Users” in the Segment editor)
  • Segments that are not shared with anyone are now also visible under the section “Visible to you because you have Super User access :”

  

  New segment ‘deviceBrand’ to segment by Device Brand

  You can now segment by device brands such as Apple, Samsung, LG, Google, Nokia, Sony, Lenovo, Alcatel, etc. The complete list of device brands you can use is listed on the Segmentation developer guide.

  

  New segment ‘actionType’ to view only particular Actions types (pagesviews, downloads, outlinks, events…)

  Use the new “Action type” segment to view only particular actions such as : pageviews, contents, sitesearches, events, outlinks and downloads.

  

  New segment : ‘actionUrl’ to view any actions that matches a given URL

  Use the new “Action URL” segment to view any action that matches a given URL, whether they are Pageviews, Site searches, Contents, Downloads or Events.

  

  New segment operators : “Starts with” and “Ends with”

  The new segment operators “Starts with” and “Ends with” can come handy when creating Custom Segments, and complement well the existing segment operators : Contains, Does not contain, Equals, Not equals, Greater than or equal to, Less than or equal to.

  

  Learn more about Segmentation in our user guides or in the Segmentation developer guide.

  Making Piwik more accessible

  Web accessibility refers to the inclusive practice of removing barriers that prevent interaction with, or access to applications or websites, by people with disabilities. When sites are correctly designed, developed and edited, all users have equal access to information and functionality.

  In Piwik 2.16.0, and with the help of high school students from the Catalyst Academy, we have made several improvements that make Piwik more accessible :

  • Menu now include the ARIA metadata (to make menus easier to navigate and use)
  • Page titles and various key tooltips have been improved (to give a better context to the data)
  • Keyboard access has been much improvement and Piwik is starting to be usable with the keyboard ! (this is very useful as many users are not able to use a mouse, and they should be able to view Piwik reports with the keyboard only)
  • ‘Skip to main content’ link (when pressing the TAB key) now skips the cursor to the page content.
  • Search bar was further improved : try it by pressing the ‘f’ key (useful to open any Piwik report or page without using the mouse)

  New user preference : display times either as 24h format or AM/PM format

  Users can now select whether times should be displayed in 24h format (16:20) or in AM/PM format (4:20pm)

  

  Other admins and Super Users are not visible to users with ‘admin’ permissions anymore

  Piwik 2.16.0 just became even more respectful of your privacy : any user you created and assigned an “admin” permission will not be able to view all other usernames anymore. This change was requested by many Piwik users who rightfully preferred not to disclose all usernames to any ‘admin’ user.

  As a result of this change, when a user with ‘admin’ permission (admin user) wants to give additional permission to another user (target user), the admin user will now need to know the target username and enter it in the Manage Users interface :

  

  New Config file viewer

  A new menu entry Administration > Diagnostics > Config file, lets Super Users view all config values in the UI :

  This new screen serves several purposes :

  • help Piwik administrators discover and learn about all the possible config file settings that Piwik offers.
  • let Super Users and Admins easily view any overridden config.ini.php INI setting without having to open the config file on the server.

  

  New report ‘Personal settings > Custom Variables’ displays custom variable usage

  A new report visible to Super Users lets you see how your Custom Variables slots are being used, which ones are still unused, and how many times a given custom variable name was used.

  

  Learn more about Custom Variables.

  Improvements to Heartbeat feature to accurately count time spent on the last page

  The heartbeat feature which lets you accurately track how long do visitors spend on your website, has been improved in 2.16.0. If you would like to measure how long do people spend on your pages (even if they don’t interact with your website or app), then consider using the heartbeat feature. Learn more in our guide Accurately measure the time spent on each page.

  

  New AnonymousPiwikUsageMeasurement plugin
  

  AnonymousPiwikUsageMeasurement plugin was created for those who would like to measure how their Piwik services is being used. This plugin also sends anonymised tracking data to our demo-anonymous.piwik.org which will help us learn how your Piwik is used and how we could improve the application. Learn more about AnonymousPiwikUsageMeasurement plugin.

  

  Show a warning when Piwik is used as a SuperUser via HTTP

  It is highly recommended to use HTTPS (SSL) for your Piwik server. If you are logged in as a Super User and viewing any Administration pages, you will now see a warning notification message at the top of the screen inviting you to use HTTPS :

  

  MySQL 5.7+ support

  The awesome Piwik community has helped us identify several issues with MySQL 5.7 support and Piwik is now fully compatible with the latest MySQL version 5.7+. Piwik is officially compatible with MySQL >= 4.1 and up to Mysql 5.7 ! Piwik is also compatible with MariaDB.

  

  Better detection of new devices and robots

  Our Device Detector library can now detect many new types of devices : smart TVs, new tablets and mobile phones, and more. New bots were added to our list of bots to keep your analytics report meaningful.

  Learn more : What Device Detector is able to detect, About Device Detector.

  New Referrer Spammers

  Every week we keep updating our community-list of referrer spammers. More than 50 new spammers were added since the last Piwik release !

  Note that the list of referrer spammer is automatically updated every week in your Piwik, so you need to wait at most one week to benefit from the very latest list.

  Learn more about Stopping Referrer Spam in Analytics reports.

  

  Ability to support new SMS providers to send Scheduled Reports by text message

  When you create scheduled reports in Piwik, you can specify one or several email addresses (to send reports by email) and you can also configure phone numbers (so your reports are sent to your phone via text message). So far we only support one SMS Provider “Clockwork SMS” but it is now possible for anyone to create a very simple plugin that adds a new SMS Provider to Piwik.

  A new SMS Provider plugin was released on the Marketplace : FreeMobileMessaging. If you have a favorite SMS Provider, we encourage you to create a new plugin for it !

  Piwik PRO mentions

  A few new mentions of Piwik PRO were added into Piwik to let users know that they can get Professional Help, and additional services and products. For example a new widget was added to the default dashboard. If you provide your Piwik service to your own clients, maybe you would like to remove the Piwik PRO widget and other ads, see this FAQ : How do I remove from Piwik the links to “Piwik PRO” or to “Professional Services” ?

  Stability, Reliability and Performance

  Dozens of other bugs were fixed (including several Major bugs) and many small improvements are included in this release. All these changes make Piwik more stable and reliable, as well as easier to troubleshoot and maintain. We are proud to be able to offer Piwik 2.16.0 as our Long Term Support release !

  If you have any feedback, questions, suggestion, or bug to report, please join our Piwik Community Forums.

  We hope you will love this 2.16.0 release as much as we loved making it.

  Happy Analytics !

• What’s new in Piwik 2.16.0 ?

  1er février 2016, par Matthieu Aubry — About, Development, Uncategorized

  In this blog post we showcase what is new in Piwik 2.16.0 and why you should upgrade your Piwik to this latest release !

  Piwik 2.16.0 is currently in Release Candidate and you can already use it by following these simple instructions. Piwik 2.16.0 will be officially released in a few days.

  To see the list of all 250+ changes, read the Piwik 2.16.0 changelog.

  Long Term Support for Piwik 2.X

  Piwik 2.16.0 is our Long Term Support version for Piwik 2. Learn more about Piwik LTS.

  New : Custom Dimensions feature

  With Custom Dimensions you can assign any custom data to your visitors or actions (like pages, events, …) and then visualize the reports of how many visits, conversions, pageviews, etc. there were for each Custom Dimension. They are similar to Custom Variables see the comparison of Custom Dimensions and Custom Variables.

  The new Custom Dimensions plugin is available on the Piwik Marketplace.

  Learn more about creating, tracking, reporting, managing, segmenting custom dimensions in the Custom Dimensions user guide.

  

  

  

  View the list of all visitors who reached a specific goal

  All Goal reports now include a link below the Goal report summary, that lets you see in one click all users that have converted any of your Goals :

  

  Events reports : option to view all columns : min, max and avg values

  By default in Actions > Events report, the columns displayed are “Total events” (Total number of events) and “Total value” (the sum of event values). It is now possible to click on the footer icon to view more detailed columns about event values : minimum event value, maximum event value, and average event value.

  

  Allow zoom to country in realtime visitor map

  In the real time map in Piwik (which displays your users activity appearing in real time !), it is now possible to zoom on a given country :

  

  Export all Records : new ‘all’ option in the Row limit selector

  It is now possible to export all of the data in your reports directly from the user interface ! Select ‘all’ in the row limit selector before exporting your data reports :

  

  New themes on the Marketplace !

  Feel like a change of colors ? Try out the new community submitted Piwik Themes on the Marketplace ! Learn how to install a new theme in Piwik (in only a few clicks).

  

  Let Super User view and edit segments created by other users

  As a Super User of Piwik, it can be very useful to view all Custom Segments created by all users. Starting in Piwik 2.16.0 any Super User can now view all Segments for a given website in the Segment selector :

  • Segments that are shared with All users will now appear below a section “Shared with you :” (a segment can be shared to all users by any admin user by selecting “This segment is visible to All Users” in the Segment editor)
  • Segments that are not shared with anyone are now also visible under the section “Visible to you because you have Super User access :”

  

  New segment ‘deviceBrand’ to segment by Device Brand

  You can now segment by device brands such as Apple, Samsung, LG, Google, Nokia, Sony, Lenovo, Alcatel, etc. The complete list of device brands you can use is listed on the Segmentation developer guide.

  

  New segment ‘actionType’ to view only particular Actions types (pagesviews, downloads, outlinks, events…)

  Use the new “Action type” segment to view only particular actions such as : pageviews, contents, sitesearches, events, outlinks and downloads.

  

  New segment : ‘actionUrl’ to view any actions that matches a given URL

  Use the new “Action URL” segment to view any action that matches a given URL, whether they are Pageviews, Site searches, Contents, Downloads or Events.

  

  New segment operators : “Starts with” and “Ends with”

  The new segment operators “Starts with” and “Ends with” can come handy when creating Custom Segments, and complement well the existing segment operators : Contains, Does not contain, Equals, Not equals, Greater than or equal to, Less than or equal to.

  

  Learn more about Segmentation in our user guides or in the Segmentation developer guide.

  Making Piwik more accessible

  Web accessibility refers to the inclusive practice of removing barriers that prevent interaction with, or access to applications or websites, by people with disabilities. When sites are correctly designed, developed and edited, all users have equal access to information and functionality.

  In Piwik 2.16.0, and with the help of high school students from the Catalyst Academy, we have made several improvements that make Piwik more accessible :

  • Menu now include the ARIA metadata (to make menus easier to navigate and use)
  • Page titles and various key tooltips have been improved (to give a better context to the data)
  • Keyboard access has been much improvement and Piwik is starting to be usable with the keyboard ! (this is very useful as many users are not able to use a mouse, and they should be able to view Piwik reports with the keyboard only)
  • ‘Skip to main content’ link (when pressing the TAB key) now skips the cursor to the page content.
  • Search bar was further improved : try it by pressing the ‘f’ key (useful to open any Piwik report or page without using the mouse)

  New user preference : display times either as 24h format or AM/PM format

  Users can now select whether times should be displayed in 24h format (16:20) or in AM/PM format (4:20pm)

  

  Other admins and Super Users are not visible to users with ‘admin’ permissions anymore

  Piwik 2.16.0 just became even more respectful of your privacy : any user you created and assigned an “admin” permission will not be able to view all other usernames anymore. This change was requested by many Piwik users who rightfully preferred not to disclose all usernames to any ‘admin’ user.

  As a result of this change, when a user with ‘admin’ permission (admin user) wants to give additional permission to another user (target user), the admin user will now need to know the target username and enter it in the Manage Users interface :

  

  New Config file viewer

  A new menu entry Administration > Diagnostics > Config file, lets Super Users view all config values in the UI :

  This new screen serves several purposes :

  • help Piwik administrators discover and learn about all the possible config file settings that Piwik offers.
  • let Super Users and Admins easily view any overridden config.ini.php INI setting without having to open the config file on the server.

  

  New report ‘Personal settings > Custom Variables’ displays custom variable usage

  A new report visible to Super Users lets you see how your Custom Variables slots are being used, which ones are still unused, and how many times a given custom variable name was used.

  

  Learn more about Custom Variables.

  Improvements to Heartbeat feature to accurately count time spent on the last page

  The heartbeat feature which lets you accurately track how long do visitors spend on your website, has been improved in 2.16.0. If you would like to measure how long do people spend on your pages (even if they don’t interact with your website or app), then consider using the heartbeat feature. Learn more in our guide Accurately measure the time spent on each page.

  

  New AnonymousPiwikUsageMeasurement plugin
  

  AnonymousPiwikUsageMeasurement plugin was created for those who would like to measure how their Piwik services is being used. This plugin also sends anonymised tracking data to our demo-anonymous.piwik.org which will help us learn how your Piwik is used and how we could improve the application. Learn more about AnonymousPiwikUsageMeasurement plugin.

  

  Show a warning when Piwik is used as a SuperUser via HTTP

  It is highly recommended to use HTTPS (SSL) for your Piwik server. If you are logged in as a Super User and viewing any Administration pages, you will now see a warning notification message at the top of the screen inviting you to use HTTPS :

  

  MySQL 5.7+ support

  The awesome Piwik community has helped us identify several issues with MySQL 5.7 support and Piwik is now fully compatible with the latest MySQL version 5.7+. Piwik is officially compatible with MySQL >= 4.1 and up to Mysql 5.7 ! Piwik is also compatible with MariaDB.

  

  Better detection of new devices and robots

  Our Device Detector library can now detect many new types of devices : smart TVs, new tablets and mobile phones, and more. New bots were added to our list of bots to keep your analytics report meaningful.

  Learn more : What Device Detector is able to detect, About Device Detector.

  New Referrer Spammers

  Every week we keep updating our community-list of referrer spammers. More than 50 new spammers were added since the last Piwik release !

  Note that the list of referrer spammer is automatically updated every week in your Piwik, so you need to wait at most one week to benefit from the very latest list.

  Learn more about Stopping Referrer Spam in Analytics reports.

  

  Ability to support new SMS providers to send Scheduled Reports by text message

  When you create scheduled reports in Piwik, you can specify one or several email addresses (to send reports by email) and you can also configure phone numbers (so your reports are sent to your phone via text message). So far we only support one SMS Provider “Clockwork SMS” but it is now possible for anyone to create a very simple plugin that adds a new SMS Provider to Piwik.

  A new SMS Provider plugin was released on the Marketplace : FreeMobileMessaging. If you have a favorite SMS Provider, we encourage you to create a new plugin for it !

  Piwik Consulting mentions

  A few new mentions of Piwik Consultants were added into Piwik to let users know that they can get Professional Help, and additional services and products. For example a new widget was added to the default dashboard. If you provide your Piwik service to your own clients, maybe you would like to remove the Professional services widget and other ads, see this FAQ : How do I remove from Piwik the links to “Piwik Consultants” or to “Professional Services” ?

  Stability, Reliability and Performance

  Dozens of other bugs were fixed (including several Major bugs) and many small improvements are included in this release. All these changes make Piwik more stable and reliable, as well as easier to troubleshoot and maintain. We are proud to be able to offer Piwik 2.16.0 as our Long Term Support release !

  If you have any feedback, questions, suggestion, or bug to report, please join our Piwik Community Forums.

  We hope you will love this 2.16.0 release as much as we loved making it.

  Happy Analytics !