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As part of the Nike+PHP project, I wanted to display the download count for the project. Mainly as a badge of pride, but also as a tool I can use to gauge the popularity of the project.

Google don't offer anything like this on their own site, let alone as a widget, so I launched gCount this week.

Entering your Google Code project name will return a total download count and some JavaScript you can pop onto your website that will display the same count.

I'll post updates to [http://twitter.com/cchana]twitter[/url] if I make any enhancements and maybe even promote projects using the service!

During the winter of 2007, Google AdSense just worked so well for me. 12 months later and it was hard to replicate even a quarter of what the previous year had offered. To be fair, due to a lack of time and effort, other advertising avenues also dried up and I had to make changes.

I made some, but nothing I did ever helped to recover the revenue. A few months on and I decided to close Be Unequaled and Billionaire-Boys-Club.co.uk for good. I have plans for the former and ideas for the other, but nothing in the immediate feature.

receeve.it is ready for a BETA launch and you can either signup on the homepage for future news or readers of this post can register for real on the BETA site before we even launch!

I aim to continuously improve the site where time allows and one of the main aspects of that is revenue.

Google AdSense is currently in place and while I'm making just pennies a day, I'm hoping a web application will serve up a better click through rate than a forum/blog can. I have other ideas for revenue, so I'm not relying on Google to make receeve.it self sufficient, but it could play a key role IF it begins to pay at levels it was back in 2007.

As part of a proejct at work, I needed access to a .Mac/MobileMe account, so I decided to sign up for the 90-day free trial that Apple are offering. To be honest, I just don't get it!

MobileMe looks amazing. Very Mac, very slick and 3 out of the 4 times I've logged in, it's worked! The other time, it just timed out again and again.

I already sync work and home calendars through Google and my iPod Touch is more than capable of working alongside Gmail.

I do love the way, if my Mac was on, that I would be able to browse through my hard drive, but at £60ish a year, it's just too much money. To me, a NAS makes far more sense and with the big G being free, that MobileMe just doesn't seem like good value for money.

If you want to get at me through MobileMe, I very much doubt i'll be using it beyond the trial, my address is cchana@me.com

Real Madrid were dealt with quite nicely over in Spain. My friends went to watch the game and I was really happy that they saw a victory as with Real, you never really knew who would turn up! I felt we showed them way too much respect though. We let them have the ball and do as they wish. They didn't punish us, but with the amount of possession they had, they really should have.

Two weeks later, Liverpool were running riot. 4-0 at Anfield. Fantastic. Some 4 days later and we'd scored another 4! The league leaders were poor. Embarrassing even and to top of a good two weeks, Benitez has committed himself to leading the club for another 5 years.

Fantastic! :)

Oh, and here is a gem of a link. Anfield on Google's Streetview!

The figures are in and one thing that continues to surprise me is the market share IE6 still enjoys. Yes it's in decline, but I am just amazed that more than 20% of those browsing the web are making do with such a poor piece of software. Weirdly, I don't know anyone that uses it and wouldn't instantly remove them from my circle of friends if they refused to upgrade to IE7 at least!

• September 2008
• Internet Explorer 7 26.3%
• Internet Explorer 6 22.3%
• Google Chrome 3.1%
• Firefox 42.6%
• Mozilla 0.5%
• Safari 2.7%
• Opera 2.0%

Apple and Opera must be wondering what they have to do to get their market share to grow. Safari renders fonts beautifully, even on a PC, but they have been leapfrogged by Chrome which is still in beta and in it's first month!

I still use Firefox at work, but half of the team I work with use Chrome. I can't wait for the Mac version because it is a nice piece of software.

In the past, I've often stumbled across gadget and tech news a little too late but I've been making better use of the web apps and services available to me.

Google Reader has to be my favourite right now. It's something I've wanted to see for ages, but only after a bit of searching did I find it. I'll be adding a Google Reader widget to the sidebar in a few days so that I can share my favourite topics with my audience.

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