I found a cool little plug-in for Firefox last week called Ghostery. It alerts you about the web bugs, ad networks and widgets on every page that you visit. It is really eye opening, to see how many hidden scripts are embedded in web pages. I am kind of addicted to it now, I feel like I am missing something when switching back to Internet Explorer! The little window to the right is displayed when you visit my blog.
Another amazing observation is how many sites have Google Analytics embedded in them. I have been using WordPress Stats to monitor my blog for the last couple of years. When I switched to Bluehost, I decided to enable Google Analytics for my site, as well as my wifes. If you have not checked out Google Analytics, you should seriously check it out… It is very well done, generates volumes of metrics, and extremely easy to add to your blog or website.
I have already blogged about ScribeFire in the past, I use ScribeFire to do all of my blogging; it is a really nice little tool to create new and edit content on your site. A co-worked hipped me to another interesting plug-in a few weeks ago called YSlow, which is integrated with Firebug. If you are developing web pages and are concerned about the rendering speed, these two plug-ins look to be the answer. YSlow analyzes web pages and suggests ways to improve their performance. Pretty cool idea! I seem to spend more time on the backend plumbing, but hope to look into these tools more in the the near future.
