Blondie, 5/20/12

Since you are all comics scholars, probably you are well aware of the Blondie origin story: Blondie was a carefree flapper girl who fell in love with Dagwood, the aimless son of a wealthy industrialist, and when the two decided to get hitched, Dagwood’s snooty family disinherited him for marrying a commoner, forcing him to get a job and become the suburban drone we know and love feel occasional twinges of mild affection for today.

Anyway, I have this theory that one of the secrets of the strip is that Mr. Dithers is in fact Dagwood’s father, the son having defiantly changed his last name to “Bumstead,” signifying his expulsion from the Dithers family’s monied Eden. This explains a number of the strip’s anomalies: Why Mr. Dithers employs Dagwood despite the Dagwood’s obvious incompetence and Mr. Dithers’s just as obvious contempt for him; why the families occasionally socialize, awkwardly; and why Dagwood, despite his bluster and hostility, is so nakedly desperate for Dithers’s approval. There have been few scenes in the comics more heart-rending and pathetic than the last two panels of this strip, in which Dagwood collapses into his chair in exhausted happiness after receiving such a minor display of affection from his boss.

Judge Parker, 5/20/12

Ooh, we’re the opening stages of this Judge Parker storyline, so let’s use the little details we’re being given to predict how it’s all going to go down! My guess: Sam gets invited on an impromptu fishing trip, Sam turns out to be surprisingly deft at fly-casting, Sam so impresses Avery Blackstone that Avery Blackstone hands over millions of dollars of his studio’s money for the film rights to Judge Parker Emeritus’s unreadable books, because rich guys who are good at awesome hobbies need to look out for each other. It’s slightly less certain, though still decently likely, that Peaches, being a sexy lady of dusky complexion who has a difficult relationship with her boss, will turn out to be a terrorist and/or spy.

Mark Trail, 5/20/12

It’s hard to tell from Mark’s exposition whether the horrifying vision in the final panel here depicts two slugs having sex or attempting to devour one another, but either way it’s easily one of the most scarring thing I’ve seen this week. Once again, fun facts about nature reinforce my long-held philosophy of avoiding nature in all its slimy, horny and/or carnivorous glory.

Rex Morgan, M.D., 5/19/12

Uh-oh, in her sad and futile attempt to finally get ahead of Rex in their ongoing dickishness contest, June has gone a little off-script when it comes to her more immediate task, namely keeping Iris off the sauce. “Hey, Iris, you sure look pretty in that funeral dress! Good thing, too, since you need to wear it all the time, seeing as everyone you ever loved keeps dying. It doesn’t show off your rack to the same advantage that mine does, of course, but then what would, right?”

Spider-Man, 5/19/12

Thanks, Newspaper Spider-Man, for neatly encapsulating your narrative philosophy for new readers. “I don’t need any amazing, exciting powers beyond those of ordinary humans to dislike that creep! Sullen, baseless jealousy will be the engine of this plot, not a superheroic battle to save mankind!”

Pluggers, 5/19/12

An archaic, failing bureaucracy is pretty much the only thing tethering pluggers to the mainstream of human society, and once that tether snaps, things are gonna get real depressing real quick.

Mary Worth, 5/19/12

The sad thing about the awkward, violent gesture in panel one is that Wilbur thinks it’s a hug.

Let us waste no time in sending you off into your weekend, COTW-style!

“Dawn Weston got dumped by e-mail? Is this 1998? The modern young person dumps a mate by pinning pics of dead flowers, rotting fish, and a lolcat saying ‘It’s over!’ to their Pinterist page.” –Ed Dravecky

The runners up — also extremely hilarious!

“To investigate this crime thoroughly, Mark will need to go to both Gene’s fishing camp and to the victim’s as well. But maybe he was actually shot by yet a third rival? Better check out all the fishing camps, throughout the entire northern part of the state! Of course, to alleviate suspicion of what he’s doing there, Mark will have to go undercover by actually renting a boat and going fishing, at each site. Boy, won’t Mark have some great tales to share with Rusty when he gets home!” –seismic-2

“It appears that Gene is about to give Mark a noogie and Mark is trying to give Gene a reach around wedgie. This is the way guys greet one another. In prison.” –LoFoMoFo

“So right after ‘Get Up, Stand Up’, the radio starts to play Marley’s ‘Smoke Two Joints’. Snuffy keeps the funky dance, miming smoking a huge doobie. Because that’s totally in character, right? If this strip isn’t an insane drug vision, I’ve been reading it wrong for four decades.” –Hogenmogen

“Yes, now that Gina’s ponytail is finally going to disappear (please please), Nina’s collar will replace it in my nightmares.” –Poteet

“I do hope that Bobby and Gina have Mary back for each life decision they make to heap adulation on her again and again. ‘I know that many of you think that this new upstairs bathroom was made possible by Home Designs Ltd, but really it was Mary Worth! She made it all possible! Let us toast to her and that small pewter dish of soaps shaped like a scallop shell!’” –geekwhisperer

“It’s not Dawn. Wilbur’s toilet finally has had enough.” –imperturbe

“I suspect Dawn finally discovered Wilbur’s secret folder filled with a myriad of sandwich-related pornography.” –sporknpork

“It seems the Bum Boat’s ‘senior menu’ simply consists of putting a regular menu item in a blender, for ease of gumming and digesting.” –Perky Bird

“Oh, God … NO! Local trout have achieved the power of jet propulsion and will soon take over the world! Within minutes, they will be flying through every restaurant in the city … unless they already are.” –Spyglass

“I married your father because of his excellent hearing. But to answer your actual question, I’ve had about seven hundred cocks inside me.” –Doctor Handsome

“Did anyone notice there’s a number on the door behind Wilbur? ‘310.’ It’s pretty obvious Wilbur is inside his apartment, standing in Dawn’s bedroom door. So why would he have numbered doors in his house? Some kind of bizarre organization scheme. He has it catalogued in a ledger. ‘Room 310. Empty mayonnaise jars. Room 311: Bathroom.’” –Cloudbuster

“A good way to honor your mom’s sacrifice is to live your life to the fullest. Or, you could do the direct opposite: whine about death and spend time with Tommie.” –S. Stout

“Yes! I understand! You killed your mother, I killed my mother, Margo killed her mother! You think you’re the only one who killed their mother! Quit whining!” –Terrapin

“I like how Thel is standing about thirty feet away from her brood (including a toddler), her attention steadily focused elsewhere as the throngs of humanity surge around them, as if daring danger-strangers to just come and grab a brace of stubby-limbed malaprop-spewing munchkins on the way from Panda Express to Banana Republic. Maybe next time she can smuggle a sign out of the Kompound saying ‘FREE CHILDRUN PLEAZ TAKE 4,’ and bring it to the parking lot at Candy-Dispensing-White-Van-Drivers-Con ’12.” –fillmoreeast

“Can we talk about how great the expressions on the Keane kids are? They look so world-weary and callous as a result of their hopes and dreams never being fulfilled. Even when in agreement about their mother (who they all resent now), they cannot seem to snap out of their mass depression for even a moment. Wes Anderson, if you’re looking to revive The Royal Tenenbaums in a different format, look no further.” –Irrischano

“I love the generic travel agency in the background of this very obvious re-run strip. What is that store next to it, I wonder? A one-hour photo? A video rental store? A newspaper publisher?” –The Silent Penultimate Panel

I must thanks to all who put some cash into my tip jar! And we must give thanks to our advertisers:

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Family Circus, 5/18/12

“Every time Mommy leaves the Keane Kompound and interacts with non-family members, she briefly remembers that she once had social bonds with others, and even friendships! This is obviously unacceptable. I wish that, when we have to go on our once-a-month shopping trip buy the things we can’t make ourselves, there were no humans there at all to distract Mommy with the temptations of the rotten human society we’ve sworn to separate ourselves from.”

Ziggy, 5/18/12

Always just a bit behind the times, Ziggy is trying, and failing, to sell toxic mortgage-backed securities to a bird.

Rex Morgan, M.D., 5/17/12

“Never mind June being left at home to manage a sexy, charismatic, half-naked drunk lady,” you’re saying to yourself. “This strip needs to focus on its core strengths. Has Rex been a dick about anything lately?” Well, good of you to ask! You might recall that, right after the sadly departed Foster changed his will leaving everything (including $25,000 nobody knew he had) to Rex, he (supposedly) fell down the stairs while under the supervision of (estranged? ex-?) wife Mabel, who was not wise to this sudden will-change. There’s a couple of strange things going on here, and guess which one has been exercising Rex’s mind more? “You’re not implying that Mabel had anything to do with it!? Because if the police decide that she did, that might slow down the implementation of the directives in his will, and obviously nobody wants that!”

Apartment 3-G, 5/17/12

“Do you understand? I killed her!! And once I tasted blood, I couldn’t stop! My mother was the first of my many victims. And now I fear that my baby will start the cycle anew … with me. You have to help me maintain my position as Satan’s High Priestess of Death!”

Ziggy, 5/17/12

Congratulations, Ziggy: You have baffled me. The only scenarios I can wring out of this that make any sense at all are “Ziggy lives in a dystopian future when all forms of life other than people have been wiped out, and it makes him said to see the biodiverse glory that once was” or “Ziggy is watching a show about evolution and is the last survivor of a short, gnomish species of nonhuman primates.”

Crankshaft, 5/17/12

I’ve spent most of my life avoiding golf and golf courses at all costs, so I’m not really familiar with the social mores that prevail in those contexts. Is the sort of angry mob justice that’s looming in panel two typical, or is it just a strong but justified reaction to Crankshaft’s behavior and/or personality?

Rex Morgan, M.D., 5/17/12

“Never mind June being left at home to manage a sexy, charismatic, half-naked drunk lady,” you’re saying to yourself. “This strip needs to focus on its core strengths. Has Rex been a dick about anything lately?” Well, good of you to ask! You might recall that, right after the sadly departed Foster changed his will leaving everything (including $25,000 nobody knew he had) to Rex, he (supposedly) fell down the stairs while under the supervision of (estranged? ex-?) wife Mabel, who was not wise to this sudden will-change. There’s a couple of strange things going on here, and guess which one has been exercising Rex’s mind more? “You’re not implying that Mabel had anything to do with it!? Because if the police decide that she did, that might slow down the implementation of the directives in his will, and obviously nobody wants that!”

Apartment 3-G, 5/17/12

“Do you understand? I killed her!! And once I tasted blood, I couldn’t stop! My mother was the first of my many victims. And now I fear that my baby will start the cycle anew … with me. You have to help me maintain my position as Satan’s High Priestess of Death!”

Ziggy, 5/17/12

Congratulations, Ziggy: You have baffled me. The only scenarios I can wring out of this that make any sense at all are “Ziggy lives in a dystopian future when all forms of life other than people have been wiped out, and it makes him said to see the biodiverse glory that once was” or “Ziggy is watching a show about evolution and is the last survivor of a short, gnomish species of nonhuman primates.”

Crankshaft, 5/17/12

I’ve spent most of my life avoiding golf and golf courses at all costs, so I’m not really familiar with the social mores that prevail in those contexts. Is the sort of angry mob justice that’s looming in panel two typical, or is it just a strong but justified reaction to Crankshaft’s behavior and/or personality?

Slylock Fox, 5/16/12

Here is a sad story from Josh’s past: When I was in seventh grade I had a big crush on this girl in my class, but being a terrifically shy nerd I never actually tried talking to her or interacting with her in any way; I just looked at her all moon-eyed for most of the daily duration of our Social Studies class, during which she sat just a row ahead of me and one seat to the right. One day after about five months of this, instead of rushing off as usual she hung back after class, came up to me, and looked at me intently. With my heart pounding, I could barely believe it when she finally said the words I had been waiting for: “I want you to stop staring at me.”

It turns out that, according to the scientifically unimpeachable facts presented in Slylock Fox, staring intently at someone is not considered an appropriate mating habit among primates! In fact, it makes you a creepy weirdo. I can only hope that this cartoon equips the awkward seventh graders of today with information they can use.

Blondie, 5/16/12

Call me dumb, or slow to pick up on insulting canine metaphors, or something, but it took me a minute to parse the “Ha ha, Blondie is talking about Dagwood like he’s a dog” joke here, primarily because I don’t believe that a “great sense of humor” is considered a dog stereotype? I mean, I understand that the rule of comedy threes requires Blondie to wedge something in after “loyal and well-groomed” that isn’t the punchline “terrific hearing” but might still be said to apply to both potential husbands and potential pets. I admit that coming up with one is tricky. Could it be something about ball-licking, maybe?

Anyway, kudos to the artist for realizing that the off-panel ARF! wouldn’t work if it weren’t clear that the Bumstead family pet weren’t the one ARFing. Daisy looks as if she were actually intended to be in the background from the strip’s conception, or at least has been composited in later with a reasonable amount of skill.

Garfield, 5/16/12

Yes, he exists in the service of a (blessedly subtle) poop joke, but I have to admit that I’m really charmed by this fly-prophet, crazed in messianic ecstasy and willing to invite anyone of any species to the promised land.

Barney Google and Snuffy Smith, 5/16/12

Good Lord, Smifs, you didn’t think these insatiable chew-rodents would really obey your so-called “laws,” did you? In retrospect, mankind wished a more effectively organized community had been on the front line in the first phase of the bloody Human-Beaver Wars.

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Date: Wednesday May 23rd, 2012
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Posted by Ian Myszenski, Google Analytics team

Mary Worth, 5/15/12

Wow, so the “Mary is summoned to Gina and Bobby’s surprise wedding, which goes off without a hitch” storyline lasted only three weeks, which has to be some kind of Shortest Mary Worth Storyline record. What could the point of it have been? Was it entertaining in and of itself, even by the fairly low standard of “entertainment” that we can expect from Mary Worth? No! Were we all desperate for closure on the “Gina and Bobby have been reunited and are 100% certifiably in love” plot? Most definitely not! But could their successful reunion and healthy emotional lives serve as a counterpoint to the misery and loneliness that will always afflict the sad and hilarious Weston clan? Now you’re talking!

I feel comfortable telling you (because you all know what a monster I am) that panel two of today’s strip — in which a shlubby, sad Wilbur, combover askew and chest hair on display, slouches away from his daughter, who begs an unfeeling God for mercy — prompted my biggest laugh from the comics so far this week. What might be the source of Dawn’s soul-wrenching sadness? I mean, based on Wilbur’s facial expression and the heartfelt nature of her cry, you’d think it was that Wilbur just told her that they’ve contracted father-daughter cancer and have only six agonizingly painful months to live, but probably it’s just that some boy was mean to her on Twitter.

Dennis the Menace, 5/15/12

“Huh, a little boy running in terror from an enraged, violent adult? Enh, not my problem! I think I’ll just stand here trying to figure out what order to put these three blank index cards in.”

Mark Trail, 5/15/12

HELPFUL CRIME TIP: If you’ve been arrested for murder, and you absolutely must admit to an incident in which you physically assaulted the person who was later killed, try not to get a faraway look in your eye or let a little smile play on your lips, thus making it clear to all what a fond memory this is for you.

I added a new print of a duck in some coffee.

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An ode to the father of the electric age.

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Hi and Lois, 5/14/12

An old standby in comics (or any other medium where corny jokes happen) is to have someone feign an inability to parse a completely standard turn of phrase any way but literally. Extremely minor kudos to Hi and Lois for at least portraying Lois reacting with wide-eyed bafflement and distress, exactly as an actual normal human would in this situation. “Wait, did … did Hi really not understand what I was getting at? Oh my God, is he having a stroke?”

Mark Trail, 5/14/12

“So I shot him! Wait, did I say that last part out loud?”

Just as individual Mark Trail strips are created by combining archival clip art, so too are whole plotlines now being generated by mashing previous plots together. In this case, we seem to be in for some combination of “Mark’s friend Johnny Malotte is not guilty of murder even though all the evidence is against him” (which ran from October 2007 to March 2008, and which among other things featured Mark getting this same sort of jailhouse interview, which is usually the privilege of lawyers and clergy) and “Competition between rival fishing camps turns violent” (which ran from December 2009 to April 2010, and in which two forest ruffians beat up a senator). These were of course two of the more awesome storylines of recent memory, so we can only hope that hybridization produces increased vigor so as to provide us with even more entertaining mayhem.

Barney Google and Snuffy Smith, 5/14/12

Sadly, Snuffy only managed to inspire Li’l Tater with a passion for justice, racial equality, and human rights. Everyone in Hootin’ Holler was outraged.

Judge Parker, 5/13/12

You know I’m a fan of people scowling sullenly in continuity strips, and today’s Judge Parker offers us a doozy! What’s the matter, Sam, are you sad because your once reputable law firm has suddenly become a literary agency for Judge Parker Emeritus’s terrible books and/or a wedding planning consultancy? Ha ha, just kidding, Sam’s law firm has never been “reputable.”

I am intrigued by our first glimpse of the Sam’s new antagonist, Avery Blackstone, who seems more than capable of holding his own in the coming effete-rich-guy-off. “Stewardess, your barbaric in-flight meal has caused minor discomfort to my digestive system! I demand that you vivisect one of the unfortunates in coach in order to fetch me a new one. Quickly now!”

Mark Trail, 5/13/12

I’m pretty sure Mark put all those boring snoresville facts about tuna in the throwaway panels just to make sure that his editors didn’t even bother to read past them to the part where he basically dared comics-reading children around the world to eat dangerous pufferfish. “Yeah, a bunch of nerd scientists are trying to make boring, safe fugu, the kind your mom would eat. What about you? Are you man enough to eat the real thing? The kind that might kill you? You’re not a little baby, are you? Baby want his bottle?”

Click Add New to enter your caption. Visit The New Yorker to enter their caption contest. You can also vote for your favorite finalist and view previous contest winners.

Faithful reader Nickoteen sent me this mashup of Rusty as a dummy. Maybe one day his wish to be a real boy will come true.

Rex Morgan, M.D., 5/12/12

Oh, hey, what’s going on in Rex Morgan, looks like it’s just Iris still sadly reading her dad’s memoir and AAAH AAAH AAAH AAAH AAAH AAH! In panel one, it seems that Iris’ face has been removed altogether, only to have a weeping grinning one-eyed horror glommed onto the front of her head in panel two. Has there ever been a comic-book supervillain whose origin story involved whisky and grief? Mabel better watch out at that funeral, is all I’m saying.

Gil Thorp, 5/12/12

Gil Thorp’s horror is subtler but still unsettling. I guess that our single parent pitcher has hit or grazed or come close to grazing the batter with the ball, as a response to anti-single-parent bullying? That’s pretty impressive, considering that in panel two the batter was digging in approximately 12 feet away from the empty patch of dirt where home plate is supposed to be. It still doesn’t explain the awful tangle of limbs emerging at impossible angles from the Goshen gal’s looming crotch in panel three.

Spider-Man, 5/12/12

The second best thing about the current Spider-Man storyline is that all the scripted lines in MJ’s play appear to be exactly the same level of corny and awful as Hardy Laurel’s ad-libs, despite the fact that everyone is acting like he’s desecrating Shakespeare. The best thing about the current Spider-Man storyline is how hilariously petulant Peter looks in today’s final panel. I dearly hope this drawing of him is used for all of his non-masked appearances in the strip from now on.

OK, well, now I feel kind of bad about my feud with Crock, if such a thing can properly ever have been said to exist, because it appears that Crock is closing up shop, and for … actually pretty heartfelt reasons. Strip creator Bill Rechin died last year, and, in that bizarre tradition that applies to the newspaper comics world and no other industry in America, his son Kevin took over the strip. Except that working on his father’s strip, instead of making him feel closer to his father as it might for others in his position, made him feel the loss all the more keenly. So instead of continuing, he’s closing it down; the last Crock strip will run on May 20. I want to offer my condolences to Mr. Rechin, and I hope he finds some peace from the move.

Anyway, now it is time for your COTW!

“No, no Rusty, the drug guys aren’t in jail. They’re still tied up to that tree where we left them. Have you ever dealt with the federal government? No, they won’t be in jail for two or three weeks, assuming they survive that long.” –cheech wizard

And your runners up! Very funny!

“Dying in childbirth? Honey, what decade do you come from? Update that subscription to W magazine, sister! It’s all about surviving childbirth so you can micromanage your child’s life these days!” –C. Sandy Cyst

“It all makes sense now. Every edition of Crock is addressed to one specific person and/or grudge, and is a complete mystery to everybody else.” –lorne

“Congratulations if you just googled ‘ABORBS’ to figure out if it was a real world. We’re equally idiotic!” –Chareth Cutestory

“Today on Reruns of Archie: that memorable storyline when the cast was turned into a swarm of buzzing bees! Here we see them abandoned by their queen and left to wander, bereft of purpose! Tomorrow: Jughead attempts to sting Coach Cleats!” –Black Drazon

“Look at the grin on Crankshaft’s granddaughter’s face, one of the biggest and most genuine in the history of the Funkyverse, as she gleefully and grattuitously forces him do something he really, really hates.” –Nekrotzar

“Miss Grundy’s all like, ‘Hey, you kids! Turn off those dildos!’” –Doctor Handsome

“The Riverdale ever-buzzing hive mind has been chastised by Miss Grundy, and for a moment, its seven lobes share a flickering of guilt. It leaves the building, lockstep, in unison, unhappiness creasing its seven brows. Then, the node of id, the Jughead, resumes its customary disdainful smirk. Soon, each unit mirrors it, and spoken simultaneously from seven mouths is the final decision: The fall of man.” –bunivasal

“That bus is perhaps the single greatest thing I’ve seen yet in Gil Thorp. I hope we’re treated to more storyline transitions inspired by the clip art options available in Microsoft Word 97.” –sporknpork

“I like that really shitty-looking ponytails are now an acceptable hairstyle for brides.” –Vulvarine

“There is no one on the other end of the phone. Mark is desperate to get out of the long-promised fishing trip with Rusty, so he is pretending to have an incoming call, and shouting to make sure Rusty will hear him from the next room. ‘WHAT? YOU SAY YOUR FATHER IS ACCUSED OF MURDER! AND THE PRESIDENT SAID THAT ONLY MARK TRAIL CAN HELP? BUT I PROMISED RUSTY I WOULD TAKE HIM FISHING! WHAT? THE PRESIDENT SAID THAT I HAVE TO COME THERE RIGHT NOW, OR HE WILL INVADE IRAN? I CAN’T HAVE THAT ON MY CONSCIENCE! RUSTY WILL UNDERSTAND … WON’T HE?” –Calvin’s Cardboard Box

“How can that lawman resist giving up all the answers? Mark has totally thrashed him in their ‘leaning furthest forward whilst exclaiming’ competition!” –Adam

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Judge Parker, 5/11/12

Whoops, Avery Blackstone isn’t some WASPy villain bringing danger and intrigue into our heroes’ lives! No, he’s going to inconvenience them, by bringing them money. People showing up unannounced to hand sizable checks to Judge Parker protagonists that they did nothing to earn are honestly one of the primary drivers of drama in this strip.

Dennis the Menace, 5/11/12

Mr. Wilson likes his nap time because that brief moment of obliteration of consciousness reminds him that someday he’ll finally enjoy death’s sweet embrace, and he enjoys Dennis’s because it reminds him that Dennis too will someday die.

Mark Trail, 5/11/12

Aw, now that Rusty knows that he’s been abandoned, again, he’s not even bothering trying to look halfway nonhideous anymore, but just going straight out with the “demonically possessed ventriloquist dummy” look, complete with hair stained red with the blood of his victims. Later, Mark goes and confers with an honest lawman whose job is to put people in prison if all the evidence is against them, unless they’re friends of Mark Trail, in which case he’ll just violate any and all confidentiality rules and spill his guts about everything!

Gasoline Alley, 5/11/12

Speaking of demons, what started out as a vaguely cute Gasoline Alley story about Slim and Clovia taking in a mischievous orphaned kitten has turned into a harrowing fable about good and evil and free will, with the cat being tormented by a sinister feline devil who is constantly forcing him to do awful things. Today, the cat begs to be absolved for the evil it’s done. But is the demon-cat a supernatural outside force, or just the representation of his own untrammeled id?

Marmaduke, 5/11/12

Speaking of demons, Marmaduke’s war against God isn’t going well.

The group also published Vocabularies for EmotionML, a Working Group Note.

Learn more about the Multimodal Interaction Activity.

The good news is that we published a new, easy to follow migration guide to help you make the transition and ensure your application continues to work after we shut down the Data Export API sometime in June.

If you are building a new application, we highly recommend using the Core Reporting API v3.0. For existing applications, we also recommend moving to v3.0 but it may be easier for you to migrate to v2.4 as an intermediary step, since it is backwards compatible with the Data Export API v2.3.

The great news is that if you make the move to v3.0, you’ll be able to take advantage of any new features, and the compact JSON format that reduces response size by 10x!

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Additional details and support:

• Core Reporting API Forum – for any questions you may have
• Core Reporting API Changelog – for details on the change

Posted by Pete Frisella, Google Analytics API team

Marvin, 5/10/12

Some people probably think I’m little harsh on poor li’l Marvin, repeatedly calling him the “world’s worst baby,” just because he isn’t potty trained, and glories in not being potty trained, and poops and pees in his pants constantly, for fun. Nothing the kid won’t grow out of, right? Well, it may concern you to learn that once he does finally learn to do his business in a toilet, like an adult, he plans to become a brutal dictator who will starve his own people if they refuse to support him politically. (Also, once he has obtained absolute power, he’ll probably just start crapping himself again, because who’s to stop him? You? Do you want your entire family sentenced to work in His Lordship’s diaper-processing plants?)

Mark Trail, 5/10/12

Uh-oh, you guys, Mark Trail’s gotta clear a guy on murder charges, so it looks like his fishing trip with Rusty has to be postponed, forever. Sure, a man had to die and another man had to languish in prison for a crime he didn’t commit to keep the horrible notion of Rusty-Mark bonding at bay, but I think everyone would agree that the sacrifices were worth it.

Judge Parker, 5/10/12

Hmm, since one of the main things we know about April is that she is extremely capable with firearms, perhaps Sam’s “I’m afraid April will have something to say about that” presages a full-on shotgun battle for control of Randy’s wedding. But that will have to wait until the strip cycles around to this plot again, sometime in 2014! Right now we have to worry about the mysterious Avery Blackstone. Something WASPy this way comes!

Mary Worth, 5/10/12

I’m sorry, the notion that this wedding reception would involve demure, well-dressed women applauding Mary’s meddling prowess has pushed it completely beyond the realm of believability for me, even by this strip’s rather lax standards. I’m now convinced that Mary never left California at all, and that this is just one of her masturbatory fantasies.

What if you want to build something quickly that’s custom-tailored  to your business? You would typically have to spend time learning the API, figuring out how to handle authorization, then deciding how to integrate this data with a visualization library. You could build a custom solution, but it took a lot of effort – until now, thanks to the Google Analytics Easy Dashboard Library.

Four months ago we started a project with a team of University of California Irvine students to simplify all of these steps. As part of this project, together we built the Google Analytics Easy Dashboard Library. This library makes it easy to use the Google Analytics API by distilling the process into three easy steps:

1. Register with Google APIs Console.
2. Copy and paste the JavaScript code.
3. Configure this code to query your data and choose a chart type to visualize it.

So now you can create custom Google Analytics dashboards very quickly, with minimal code.

Here’s a quick example. Say you want to create a line chart plotting visitors and visits for the last 30 days. Besides including the library, the only code required is:

<div id=”chart1”></div>
<script>
var chart1 = new gadash.Chart({
  'type': 'LineChart',
  'divContainer': 'chart1',
  'last-n-days':30,
  'query': {
    'ids': TABLE_ID,
    'metrics': 'ga:visitors,ga:visits,ga:pageviews',
    'dimensions': 'ga:date',
    'sort': 'ga:date'
  },
  'chartOptions': {
    hAxis: {title:'Date'},
    vAxis: {title:'Visits'},
  }
}).render();
</script>

Using the code above will create this chart.

It’s that easy! To find out more about using the Easy Dashboard Library, read our Getting Started guide.

While the current library is very useful, we think we can add more features and make it even easier to use. To reach this goal, we’ve started working with another group of UC Irvine students, this time for three academic quarters. This new project’s main goal will be to further simplify the library. We want the students we’re working with to engage with you and implement your feature requests, if possible. If you use this library, we’d love to hear how you think it can be improved. Feel free to send any feedback to through our new GA-easy-dash-feedback google group.

We hope this library saves you time and helps you get more out of Google Analytics.

Posted by,
Jeetendra Soneja and Nick Mihailovski, Google Analytics API Team

The W3C Membership, which convenes next week at its semi-annual meeting, plays a preeminent role both in Community Groups and in turning innovations into interoperable, Royalty-Free Web standards through an open consensus process. Open Web Platform traction has
resulted in more than 80 organizations becoming W3C Members in the past year.
Read the full press release and testimonials from some new W3C Members and learn more about W3C Community and Business Groups.

Mark Trail, 5/9/12

There is a famous rule of the Internet, and that’s Rule 34, and it goes like this: If it exists, there is porn of it — no exceptions. That means that somewhere out there someone has created a porn version of Mark Trail, by the use of advanced pornographing equipment that can break through the brittle shield of asexuality that surrounds the strip at all times. I’ve never had the intestinal fortitude to seek any such material out, but for two and a half panels I thought I was getting the setup to some canon in-strip Mark Trail erotica today. The mysterious call from the past on Mark’s bakelite handset that isn’t connected to anything in particular, the gratuitous use of “honey,” the sexy-for-Mark-Trail name “Trish,” the easy banter … and then bam, your arousal is crushed because this is about a young girl’s sick father, you pervert. And this is how that brittle shield of asexuality is kept in place.

Gil Thorp, 5/9/12

OK, let me preface the following by saying that I am fully aware that I am now someone who complains about the “good old days” of Gil Thorp, and that therefore I have become everything that I most despise. That having been said, remember the good old days of Gil Thorp, when they had a homeless kid playing on the team, and crowds at rival schools taunted him by dressing up like hobos, and it was amazing? That’s a pretty high bar when it comes to Important Social Issues-based taunting, and it looks like the Goshen girls aren’t going to reach it. “Hey, Darby, how many kids you got now? Because we heard you know how to have sex, and that’s how kids are made. Sex-having kid-maker! Go back to the obstetrics ward!”

Archie, 5/9/12

I don’t want to exaggerate too much, but I’m reasonably sure this is the greatest Archie ever made? See, Miss Grundy knocked the kids out of their thoughtless world of casual socializing, and just forcing them to change locations has caused them to re-evaluate everything they know about the world and each other, and now they’re just standing there, staring silently into the middle distance, terrified.

Crankshaft, 5/9/12

“Plus you know there’s nothing I loathe so much as buying gifts or otherwise bringing joy to others. My mind is so resistant to the idea that I always forget about it.”

Barney Google and Snuffy Smith, 5/9/12

“Haw, Lurleen, that is an amusin’ bit o’ wordplay! But still, you know the penalty for talkin’ to menfolk from other clans is death by stonin’.”

Honeycomb introduced Fragments to support reusing portions of UI and logic across multiple activities in an app. In parallel, the showDialog / dismissDialog methods in Activity are being deprecated in favor of DialogFragments.

In this post, I’ll show how to use DialogFragments with the v4 support library (for backward compatibility on pre-Honeycomb devices) to show a simple edit dialog and return a result to the calling Activity using an interface. For design guidelines around Dialogs, see the Android Design site.

The Layout

Here’s the layout for the dialog in a file named fragment_edit_name.xml.

<LinearLayout xmlns:android="http://schemas.android.com/apk/res/android"
    android:id="@+id/edit_name"
    android:layout_width="wrap_content" android:layout_height="wrap_content"
    android:layout_gravity="center" android:orientation="vertical"  >

    <TextView
        android:id="@+id/lbl_your_name" android:text="Your name"
        android:layout_width="wrap_content" android:layout_height="wrap_content" />

    <EditText
        android:id="@+id/txt_your_name"
        android:layout_width="match_parent"  android:layout_height="wrap_content"
        android:inputType=”text”
        android:imeOptions="actionDone" />
</LinearLayout>

Note the use of two optional attributes. In conjunction with android:inputType=”text”, android:imeOptions=”actionDone” configures the soft keyboard to show a Done key in place of the Enter key.

The Dialog Code

The dialog extends DialogFragment, and since we want backward compatibility, we’ll import it from the v4 support library. (To add the support library to an Eclipse project, right-click on the project and choose Android Tools | Add Support Library…).

import android.support.v4.app.DialogFragment;
// ...

public class EditNameDialog extends DialogFragment {

    private EditText mEditText;

    public EditNameDialog() {
        // Empty constructor required for DialogFragment
    }

    @Override
    public View onCreateView(LayoutInflater inflater, ViewGroup container,
            Bundle savedInstanceState) {
        View view = inflater.inflate(R.layout.fragment_edit_name, container);
        mEditText = (EditText) view.findViewById(R.id.txt_your_name);
        getDialog().setTitle("Hello");

        return view;
    }
}

The dialog extends DialogFragment and includes the required empty constructor. Fragments implement the onCreateView() method to actually load the view using the provided LayoutInflater.

Showing the Dialog

Now we need some code in our Activity to show the dialog. Here is a simple example that immediately shows the EditNameDialog to enter the user’s name. On completion, it shows a Toast with the entered text.

import android.support.v4.app.FragmentActivity;
import android.support.v4.app.FragmentManager;
// ...

public class FragmentDialogDemo extends FragmentActivity implements EditNameDialogListener {

    @Override
    public void onCreate(Bundle savedInstanceState) {
        super.onCreate(savedInstanceState);
        setContentView(R.layout.main);
        showEditDialog();
    }

    private void showEditDialog() {
        FragmentManager fm = getSupportFragmentManager();
        EditNameDialog editNameDialog = new EditNameDialog();
        editNameDialog.show(fm, "fragment_edit_name");
    }

    @Override
    public void onFinishEditDialog(String inputText) {
        Toast.makeText(this, "Hi, " + inputText, Toast.LENGTH_SHORT).show();
    }
}

There are a few things to notice here. First, because we’re using the support library for backward compatibility with the Fragment API, our Activity extends FragmentActivity from the support library. Because we’re using the support library, we call getSupportFragmentManager() instead of getFragmentManager().

After loading the initial view, the activity immediately shows the EditNameDialog by calling its show() method. This allows the DialogFragment to ensure that what is happening with the Dialog and Fragment states remains consistent. By default, the back button will dismiss the dialog without any additional code.

Using the Dialog

Next, let’s enhance EditNameDialog so it can return a result string to the Activity.

import android.support.v4.app.DialogFragment;
// ...
public class EditNameDialog extends DialogFragment implements OnEditorActionListener {

    public interface EditNameDialogListener {
        void onFinishEditDialog(String inputText);
    }

    private EditText mEditText;

    public EditNameDialog() {
        // Empty constructor required for DialogFragment
    }

    @Override
    public View onCreateView(LayoutInflater inflater, ViewGroup container,
            Bundle savedInstanceState) {
        View view = inflater.inflate(R.layout.fragment_edit_name, container);
        mEditText = (EditText) view.findViewById(R.id.txt_your_name);
        getDialog().setTitle("Hello");

        // Show soft keyboard automatically
        mEditText.requestFocus();
        getDialog().getWindow().setSoftInputMode(
                LayoutParams.SOFT_INPUT_STATE_VISIBLE);
        mEditText.setOnEditorActionListener(this);

        return view;
    }

    @Override
    public boolean onEditorAction(TextView v, int actionId, KeyEvent event) {
        if (EditorInfo.IME_ACTION_DONE == actionId) {
            // Return input text to activity
            EditNameDialogListener activity = (EditNameDialogListener) getActivity();
            activity.onFinishEditDialog(mEditText.getText().toString());
            this.dismiss();
            return true;
        }
        return false;
    }
}

For user convenience, we programmatically focus on the EditText with mEditText.requestFocus(). Alternatively, we could have used the <requestFocus/> tag in the layout XML to do this; however, in some cases it’s preferable to request focus programmatically. For example, an OnFocusChangeListener added in the Fragment’s onCreateView() method won’t get called if you request focus in the layout XML.

If the user focuses on an EditText, the soft keyboard will automatically appear. In order to force this to happen with our programmatic focus, we call getDialog().getWindow().setSoftInputMode(). Note that many Window operations you might have done previously in a Dialog can still be done in a DialogFragment, but you have to call getDialog().getWindow() instead of just getWindow(). The resulting dialog is shown on both a handset and tablet (not to scale):

The onEditorAction() method handles the callback when the user presses the Done key. It gets invoked because we’ve set an OnEditorActionListener on the EditText. It calls back to the Activity to send the entered text. To do this, EditNameDialog declares an interface EditNameDialogListener that is implemented by the Activity. This enables the dialog to be reused by many Activities. To invoke the callback method onFinishEditDialog(), it obtains a reference to the Activity which launched the dialog by calling getActivity(), which all Fragments provide, and then casts it to the interface type. In MVC architecture, this is a common pattern for allowing a view to communicate with a controller.

We can dismiss the dialog one of two ways. Here we are calling dismiss() within the Dialog class itself. It could also be called from the Activity like the show() method.

Hopefully this sheds some more light on Fragments as they relate to Dialogs. You can find the sample code in this blog post on Google Code.

References for learning more about Fragments:

• Fragments Dev Guide

• “Basic Training” on Fragments

• Updating Applications for On-screen Input Methods

• OnEditorActionListener

• EditorInfo and IME options

Together, these documents outline the vision for RDFa in a variety of XML and HTML-based Web markup languages. RDFa Core 1.1 specifies the core syntax and processing rules for RDFa 1.1 and how the language is intended to be used in XML documents. RDFa Lite 1.1 provides a simple subset of RDFa for novice web authors. XHTML+RDFa 1.1 specifies the usage of RDFa in the XHTML markup language. The group also published a draft of the RDFa 1.1 Primer today.

Learn more about the Semantic Web Activity.

Wizard of Id, 5/8/12

It’s really kind of sad that this fearsome, powerful wizard, heir to a long tradition of human beings who have managed to pierce through the barrier separating our mundane world from the realm of magic, having just used his unspeakable powers to bring a poor mortal back from the brink of death, feels a need to make a terrible and barely coherent joke relating to Apple’s electronic gizmos. It ought to be just as sad that cartoonists working on long-established strips that run in hundreds of newspapers around the world also feel the need to make terrible and barely coherent jokes relating to Apple’s electronic gizmos, but, you know, that ship sailed long ago, so it’s hard to feel more than just mild disgust about it at this point.

Family Circus, 5/8/12

Aw, look at that, the name of the mall the Keanes have descended upon sounds like “Bless ’em all,” isn’t that nice? For my money there are not nearly enough mall/all puns out there in the world. For a while, when I lived in Oakland, there was this truck from Lavine’s Heating & Cooling that was often parked near my apartment that featured prominently the company’s URL, kingofthemall.com, meant, I assumed, to indicate that Lavine’s was King of Them All, with “them all” referring to all the HVAC contractors out there (or who knows, maybe it meant all of humanity, but the on-truck marketing copy didn’t seem that grandiose otherwise). I always saw that and thought “Boy, the King of the Mall must be pissed that he didn’t grab that URL when he had the chance.” Anyway, I’m curious as to whether an encounter with the horror of a litter of Keane Kids will make Blessem Mall’s management regret being so universal with their blessings.

Apartment 3-G, 5/8/12

Haha, this some high-quality amateur Freudianism going on right here! Nina’s mother died giving birth to her, so now she’s ambivalent about having a baby because she … never had a mother to love her? Or maybe because she did have a mother, and then that mother died horribly while giving birth to a baby. Just a thought!

 

Google can help. We recently teamed up with DudaMobile to release a free mobile site builder.  In three easy steps you’re able to get started with mobile: (1) enter your site’s URL, (2) customize your site and (3) redirect mobile users automatically to the new mobile-friendly version.  It’s free and takes just a few minutes to complete!

Join us on Thursday, May 10th at 1pm EST/10am PST and watch as Google showcases how two businesses, Top Mast Resort in Massachusetts and Sava’s Restaurant in Michigan, go mobile and build mobile-friendly sites–live on air.

You’ll see how Top Mast is preparing to take advantage of mobile travel purchase intent – which is five times higher than online travel purchase intent, according to InsightExpress.  You’ll also see Sava’s move ahead of 95% of restaurants that do not have mobile-friendly sites, according to a study by Restaurant Science.

Finally, you’ll hear from the CMO of Dudamobile, Dennis Mink; he’ll talk about best practices when using the mobile site builder and walk through important questions to ask yourself when building a mobile-friendly site.

Details on how to tune in
1. Sign into Google+ on Thursday, May 10th at 1pm EST/10am PST
2. Go to the Think with Google Google+ page
3. Look for the stream post and click to enter the live stream

Be sure to set a reminder in your calendar! If you have questions before or during the Hangout, post them with the hashtag #GoMoSite as a comment on the Google+ page.

Posted by Suzanne Mumford, Google Mobile Ads Marketing
Source: (1) Gomez 2011 (2) Nielsen February 2012

Mark Trail, 5/7/12

It looks like Mark is running out of excuses to avoid his oft-postponed fishing date with Rusty. Ha ha, “check my e-mail,” does Mark even know what e-mail is? He probably overheard some teens talking about it down at the general store once and is now using it as a desperate ploy to avoid spending quality time with his hideously ugly ward. “Uh, sorry Rusty, I talked to my e-mail and it told me that there’s some Indian artifacts being smuggled in the southern part of the state! I need to go find the smugglers, so I guess that fishing trip will have to wait until next month, or something.”

It’s pretty well known that current Mark Trail storylines are pieced together from old art, with dialogue spottily updated to reflect technological advances. This has given us such hilarious moments as Rusty claiming his old-timey camera used a “memory card,” so I look forward to Mark “checking his e-mail” with what is clearly a CB radio.

Hi and Lois, 5/7/12

“I thought it was just a whimsical name, but I can’t seem to hold down any food and I’ve lost 10 pounds in the last three days, so I guess it was made of some kind of deadly poison.”

Gil Thorp, 5/7/12

OK, this is the day when I finally manage to work myself up to get excited about the Gil Thorp spring storyline. Yay, we’ve got … a loss and a rainout? Aw, nuts.

Crock, 5/6/12

OH SNAP I JUST GOT TOTALLY BURNED! It may have taken six years, but the good people over at Crock have finally noticed that they’re in a feud with me, and have responded appropriately. While the idea that I began my blog as the result of some kind of massive traumatic brain injury would explain a lot of things, the jokes on them: I never had any artistic talent in the first place, suckers!

Of course, if you aren’t me or part of the fairly small slice of the comics-reading public who also reads my blog, this strip would make exactly zero sense to you. Just another Sunday Crock, in other words.

Rex Morgan, M.D., 5/6/12

That lovingly rendered next-to-last panel sure isn’t going to change the minds of anyone who thinks that the creators of Rex Morgan, M.D., have some kind of sick nostril fetish.

Apartment 3-G, 5/6/12

“So my suspicions are correct: Nina is an eternally undead vampire! At last, a worthy adversary!”

Mark Trail, 5/5/12

Oh, man, you didn’t expect this Mark Trail storyline to end without a powerhouse moral lesson, did you? “Rusty, America’s landscape is lousy with marijuana, and probably most of your little school friends are dopers! It’s not safe out there for anyone, so maybe it’s better that you just stay in the Lost Forest compound, forever. Those friendly beavers won’t try to push a reefer at you, I can promise you that!”

Crankshaft, 5/5/12

Don’t Leroy and Loretta usually at least try to make their hostile asides about one other relate in a vaguely punny way to whatever situation they find themselves in? Like, Leroy should be stage-whispering this to a salesman as they shop for a new car. Just blurting this stuff at a party reeks of even greater levels of desperation than we’ve seen before. “Loretta’s hair isn’t factory color. I mean, she dyes it. Her blonde hair is a lie. A lie like our marriage. Oh, God, I hate every waking moment. Do you have a gun in the house? Can you put it to my head and pull the trigger? I’ll pay you!”

Funky Winkerbean, 5/5/12

Many of you may have already heard about the blockbuster Gay Teens Go To The Prom storyline Funky Winkerbean’s got lined up for the spring. I’m fully in favor of this because (a) I think gay teens should go to the prom together if they want and should be depicted as doing such in comics where proms happen and (b) any Funky Winkerbean strip time dedicated to gay teens going to the prom is strip time not dedicated to beloved characters dying in agony, leaving emotional devastation in their wake.

The mechanics of such stories are a bit tricky in comic strips like this, in that if you suddenly make an established character is gay it seems a bit deus ex machina just to make the plot happen, whereas if you suddenly introduce generic gay characters who only exist for the purpose of the storyline, it makes it very obviously an Issue Story rather than a story about the characters in your strip. Probably the best way to do it would be to introduce a new character who then becomes a part of the recurring cast (which is what Archie did), and who knows, maybe these two guys will stick around, though there are already so many Funkyverse teen characters that I can’t keep track of them all. Hopefully they’ll be given names at some point, at least.

But maybe they won’t! Because as the third panel reveals, the nemesis of gay teen happiness for the next several weeks will be Becky’s mom, who, if I’ve got my Funky history right, once launched a moral crusade to get Comic Book John’s comic book store shut down, because comic books are smut. Thus the important lesson that Gay Relationships Are Valid will probably just serve to make clear the real point of the storyline, which is that Becky’s Mom Is Terrible.

Crankshaft, 5/5/12

But maybe we won’t get to see any of this played out, because it turns out that the entire Funkyverse is really just a series of tales Grandma Rose is telling to her grandkids in order to scar them emotionally.

How will this work, hmm?

Apartment 3-G, 1/1/11

Well, this is just slightly awkward but it will definitely do in a pinch!

Click Add New to enter your caption. Visit The New Yorker to enter their caption contest. You can also vote for your favorite finalist and view previous contest winners.

Early COTWs for you today because, like all right-thinking people within a 100-mile radius of Baltimore, I will be spending most of the day at the Maryland Film Festival. I expect to see you there, if you’re cool. But the rest of you can enjoy this comment of the week!

“And while we are on our way to the wedding across town, you will all be padlocked in this room. As the ceremony is taking place this building will be set on fire. Thank you all, we couldn’t have asked for a better wedding present!” –Nekrotzar

And the very funny runners up!

“The best detail in Mary Worth is how the taxi just has CAB written on the side, like it’s a generic brand taxi for people too cheap to spring for the brand name taxis with their seatbelts and trained drivers.” –Citric

“The sounds of Lois fapping her dirty rug outdoors while Irma ‘airs’ out Thirsty with a broom handle could be the premise of worst erotica slash fix ever.” –Sciencegiant

“I guess ‘estate’ sounds classier than ‘an abandoned ChiChis.’” –John C Fremont

“I am hoping, hoping hoping that the ‘big announcement’ turns out to be a hard-sell pitch for time-share condos in the Florida Keys.” –Yr Obt Servt

“Mr Blake is so bored by Tommie’s presence that he can’t actually even bring himself to look at her. ‘Nina is asleep, Tommie. And if I ever run out of the Zopiclone tablets I’ve become dependent upon since my wife’s death, I’ll be sure to give you a call, and you can bore me out of consciousness, too. Now I’m just going to stare fixedly at the wall behind you in an effort to shut out your prattling inanities.’” –Higgs Boatswain

“This yammering jagwagon’s ad-lib doesn’t even make any damn sense. He’s just saying a bunch of words in a vaguely wisecrack-y cadence. ‘Your hand? Hold it over your heart, and pledge allegiance to the flag of the United States of My Penis! That was gold, right?! Improv!’” –Doctor Handsome

“Good boy, Andy … that’s enough, fellow! I don’t want to spend hours cleaning that hippie’s Brylcreem out of your claws.” –Fats Pinto

“The artists and color monkeys over at Spider-Man can’t seem to settle on a look for Hardy Laurel. Is his hair blonde or brown? Is he young or middle-aged? Is his scarf red or green? It’s like watching Bewitched if they kept changing Darrins in every shot.” –Mcbain

“It wasn’t a kiss and we weren’t drunk! I was just trying to take over his body by sucking what little remains of his soul from his body after weakening his defenses with alcohol. Actually okay I was pretty drunk too.” –Tophat

“Bobby and Gina seem to associate mainly with live studio audience members who know how to ‘gasp,’ ‘oooo,’ and ‘aaaaaw’ in unison at the appropriate time. Take special note of the two gentlemen in panel one who are looking to get in front of the camera themselves with their patented synchronized fist pumps.” –pugfuggly

“The second panel of Blondie is just a sampling of how it went down. ‘Ha! Ha! Couch zucchini! Ha! Ha! Ha! Ha! Couch zucchini! Couch zucchini! Ha! Ha! Ha! Yeah! Couch zucchini! Ha! Ha!’ They were there for hours.” –Flamedrake

I must thanks to all who put some cash into my tip jar! And we must give thanks to our advertisers:

• Do you want to go to the moon?: Three lucky young winners will spend 172 hours on the moon at lunar base DARLAH 2. It’s the opportunity of a lifetime!

To find out more about how you could be thanked in this spot, and more about sponsoring this site’s RSS feed, click here.

By Waz. Get the lowdown on the old original here.

Mary Worth, 5/4/12

Oooh, it’s a surprise wedding! This rates about a 3 in “actual surprise revelations” but maybe as high as an 8 in “surprise revelations that one might reasonably expect in a Mary Worth plotline.” Still, as our heroine gasps in three-part harmony with other guests, does it look like her beaming smile from the first panel has crumpled a bit? I mean, she’s just been denied a host of wedding-related meddling pleasures: she’ll have no opportunities to give passive-aggressive advice to Gina, first hinting that she’s spending too much and then implying that she’s being cheap; she won’t have time to perfectly calibrate her gift choice so that the couple will hate it but still feel awkward returning it; she’ll barely have time to ask prying questions to their families and find out the deep-seated emotional problems that will lead to their inevitable divorce in 18 to 36 months. C’mon, Mary, start working the room, now! We are running out of time.

Blondie, 5/4/12

I’m going to do my best to avoid contemplating Dagwood’s phallic torso, though I will give kudos to the syndicate coloring drones for reading enough of the dialogue to make his shirt green. I do find it pretty funny that Elmo can just wander into the Bumsteads’ house with his friends, like Dagwood is some weird, exotic pet that he’s letting them look at.

The Kickstand Cyclery just published three new volumes of collected comics (and extras!) from the popular bicycle comic ‘Yehuda Moon’. Come out to Joy Machines Bike Shop and celebrate with a book signing. There will be bikes, beer and books – free books. Everyone who walks through the door gets a complimentary copy of ‘Yehuda Moon and the Kickstand Cyclery, Volume 1′. Rick Smith and Brian Griggs will be on hand with quill pens at the ready to sign these and your other book acquisitions.

The concept of trackbacks, a protocol by which different sites could notify each other of referencing links, first emerged back in 2002. Since then, the blogosphere has grown in leaps and bounds, but the requirement for each site to explicitly implement this protocol has always stood in the way of adoption. If only you could crawl the web and build an accurate link graph. The good news is we already do that at Google, and are now providing this insight to Google Analytics users.

If you’re not familiar with Trackbacks, then think of it as automated Google Alerts for all of your pages: you publish new content, we scour the web for pages that link to it and build automated reports for you right within Google Analytics – simple as that.

These reports provide another layer of social insight showing which of your content attracts links, and enables you to keep track of conversations across other sites that link to your content. Most website and blog owners had no easy mechanism to do this in the past, but we see it as another important feature for holistic social media reports. When you know what your most linked content is, it is then also much easier to replicate the success and ensure that you are building relationships with those users who actively link to you the most.

To learn more about the new Social and ROI reporting, take a look at our announcement last month, and also take a look at in-depth example of how to use these new reports to measure your user’s engagement in Google+.

Posted by Ilya Grigorik, Google Analytics team

• PROV-DM: The PROV Data Model introduces the provenance concepts found in PROV and defines PROV-DM types and relations.
• Constraints of the Provenance Data Model introduces a further set of concepts useful for understanding the PROV data model and defines inferences that are allowed on provenance statements and validity constraints that PROV instances should follow. These inferences and constraints are useful for readers who develop applications that generate provenance or reason over provenance. (First Public Working Draft)
• PROV-N: The Provenance Notation allows serializations of PROV instances to be created in a compact manner. (First Public Working Draft)
• PROV-O: The PROV Ontology expresses the PROV Data Model using the OWL2 Web Ontology Language (OWL2).
• PROV Model Primer provides an intuitive introduction and guide to the PROV specification for provenance on the Web.

Learn more about the Semantic Web Activity.

Mark Trail, 5/3/12

“Oh, man, why is Josh focusing so much attention on this Mark Trail storyline when there’s other things happening in the comics pages,” said absolutely nobody because this Mark Trail storyline is the greatest achievement in storytelling since the invention of writing. Today we have a classic Mark Trail trope in action, which is Just Leave The Bad Guys Tied Up. Ha ha, look at those guys, stone cold defeated by a good smack to the head/vicious dog attack, there’s literally no way they could wriggle out of those ropes (Ranger Tom was surely a Boy Scout) and definitely no way that they had any kind of accomplices helping them run the massive grow operation that Ranger Tom now realizes exists all over the forest he’s supposed to kind of be in charge of. Nope, they’ll be there when the “clean-up crew” arrives, and I’m just starting to consider that maybe the “clean-up crew” are not so much “trained marijuana disposal experts” as “guys I know who aren’t afraid to kill some drug growers execution-style and bury them in shallow forest graves, since any legal proceedings might bring to light evidence of neglect that would negatively reflect on my job performance.” But, better to not be there for that unpleasantness, blood stains are hard to get out of khaki, let’s just go back to Lost Forest and have some late-night pancakes instead. Mmmm, pancakes!

Hi and Lois, 5/3/12

Is it weird that I find this incredibly creepy? Lois has left her eyes all over the house … watching … ALWAYS WATCHING.

Get your hands on all four full-color, 96 page Yehuda Moon books – free shipping to U.S. mailing addresses during the month of May.

If you weren’t able to join us last week, you can view a recording of the webinar here.

Questions & Answers:
Q: How can I learn more about getting started with attribution using Google’s tools?
A:This webinar was the first in a series on attribution — please watch the blog for updates and registration information for our next webinar, “Building Blocks of Digital Attribution.” In the meantime, read on for some more tips.

Q: Where can I learn more about setting up conversions?
A: Setting up conversion tracking in Google Analytics is one of the most valuable things you can do to make your reports actionable and meaningful, and getting these set up properly will allow you to use Google’s attribution solutions. There are resources available in the help center to help you set up goals and ecommerce tracking. You can also view the recording of our recent “Reaching your goals with Google Analytics” webinar.

Q: When should I use AdWords Search Funnels compared to Google Analytics Multi-Channel Funnels? 
A: Both tools can give you insight into how your customers ultimately end up converting on your site. If you are using AdWords Conversion Tracking today, Search Funnels is available without any additional configuration. You can see the interactions your customers have with your search ads leading up to conversion, including both clicks and impressions. However, you can only see these interactions for paid search on Google AdWords.

Multi-Channel Funnels in Google Analytics allows you to analyze traffic sources beyond search, including display, social, email, referrals, affiliates and more – putting your conversion path data in a broader context. Using these reports requires installing Google Analytics tracking code on your site, and setting up goals and/or ecommerce tracking (see links above) — once these are set up, Multi-Channel Funnels reports work automatically. Note that you  are not able to analyze search ad impressions in Multi-Channel Funnels.

Watch this blog for updates on future webinars in our attribution series that will provide more details on Search Funnels and Multi-Channel Funnels.

Q: How much of an impact does the use of multiple devices have in skewing the numbers we see in these reports? 
A: Mobile and other devices are becoming increasingly important. Multi-Channel Funnels will report on conversion paths that take place on a single device, but not across devices. For example, if a user visited your site on a mobile phone, and then completed a purchase in a desktop browser, those interactions would not be included in the same conversion path.

Q: Can I report on both AdWords Keyword and Matched Search Queries in Google Analytics?
A: You have the option to view either the AdWords Keyword or the Matched Search Query by choosing these dimensions in the data table. Multi-Channel Funnels and Attribution Modeling support a wide range of AdWords and non-AdWords dimensions for reporting and creating attribution modeling rules.

Q: Can you add your own models to the Attribution Modeling Tool or they are all built in? 
A: You can create and save custom models in the Attribution Modeling Tool in Google Analytics Premium. Custom models allow you to create rules that adjust credit based on attributes like the traffic source (e.g. search vs. direct), position (first, middle, last) the level of engagement driven (time on site and page depth), and timing (how much time prior to conversion).

Q: How do advertisers take action on attribution data?
A: Attribution data can help advertisers identify marketing efforts that may be undervalued or overvalued under models such as the last click, so they can adjust their marketing programs. For example, a general keyword like “shoes” may show fewer conversions compared to a more specific, branded term for a type of shoe on a last click basis. However, applying a model that gives some credit for searches prior to the last click may show that “shoes” is credited with more conversion value. When making optimization decisions around which keywords to invest in or cut, advertisers can look at multiple models, and then experiment with investing in keywords that show higher value under alternative models. Similar methods apply to channels like display, social, email, and affiliates. This can help identify areas of opportunity that are missed when using only the last click.

Happy Analyzing!

Posted by Bill Kee, Product Manager for Attribution, Google Analytics team

Judge Parker, 5/2/12

Just to keep you Judge Parker non-obsessives in the loop, Katherine is actually Randy’s stepmom, a sexy lady (because this is Judge Parker, natch) who appears to be roughly Randy’s age but who nevertheless does in fact consider him to be her beloved son, so her momzilla intervention in his upcoming nuptials are sure to be super creepy on a number of levels. But, while I am always here to keep you up to date the quasi-Oedipal goings on in the continuity strips, I can’t offer any coherent explanation as to why Randy has chosen to decorate his judge’s chambers with an enormous bust of Homer. I mean, I’m not a miracle worker.

Mark Trail, 5/2/12

“It was these drug plants that got me excited!” Ha ha, some days this blog just writes itself. I’ll bet the drug-destroying team is going to be super-excited too!

Apartment 3-G, 5/2/12

Hey, if you ever find yourself working in the Pentagon’s PR department and need to write a press release that says something along the lines of “We had to destroy that village in order to save it,” why not try “As usual, our kindness was totally misunderstood”?

A friend of mine makes awesome stuff and you should go buy lots of it.

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• Web Workers, which defines an API that allows Web application authors to spawn background workers running scripts in parallel to their main page. This allows for thread-like operation with message-passing as the coordination mechanism.
• HTML5 Web Messaging, which defines two mechanisms for communicating between browsing contexts in HTML documents.

Learn more about the Rich Web Client Activity.

• SPARQL 1.1 Overview, which provides an introduction to a set of W3C specifications that facilitate querying and manipulating RDF graph content on the Web or in an RDF store.
• SPARQL 1.1 Graph Store HTTP Protocol, which describes the use of HTTP operations for the purpose of managing a collection of RDF graphs in the REST architectural style.
• SPARQL 1.1 Query Results CSV and TSV Formats, which describes the use of
  CSV(comma separated values) and TSV (tab separated values) for expressing SPARQL query results from SELECT queries.

Comments are welcome through 01 June.

The group is further planning to shortly release a 2nd Last Call working draft of the SPARQL 1.1 Query Language, after which we plan to advance all Recommendation track drafts in the next iteration to Proposed Recommendation directly. To this end, the group is currently gathering implementation reports and would appreciate reports from the community of implementations of any of the SPARQL1.1 specifications. Learn more about the Semantic Web Activity.

Hagar the Horrible, 5/1/12

You know, I’ve been reading Hagar the Horrible for most of my literate life, and like most people, I had always assumed that the recurring strips where Hagar and Lucky Eddie crack wise on a tiny desert island just served as a place for desert-island gags rejected by the New Yorker. It’s only at this moment — as Hagar wistfully thinks about his wife, who’s thousands of miles away, who has no idea where he is, who he’ll probably never see again — that it occurred to me to try to fit these scenes into the larger narrative of the strip. Now that this conceptual shift has taken place, here’s my first question: what happened to the rest of the crew? Did Hagar and Eddie eat them?

Six Chix, 5/1/12

When I first scanned this strip I thought it was some miracle of life nonsense, but seeing the exhausted expression on momma bird and the frankly terrified look on papa bird, my guess is the real point is that spring made these birds horny and so they had some bird-sex and forgot to use birth control. Or should that be … BIRDTH CONTROL?? Because they’re birds, you see! Ha ha! Anyway, long story short, they have a bunch of children they don’t want now.

Spider-Man, 5/1/12

Oh, man, I don’t know why I’m surprised, but MJ’s supposedly funny play is terrible. Unless maybe the quote marks around all the dialogue indicate that the cast is in on the joke about how terrible the play is, and are playing the entire thing for meta-comedic laughs at the meta-awfulness of it all? That sounds like something that would play in Brooklyn rather than on Broadway, and anyway it’s been repeatedly demonstrated that nobody in the Spider-Man newspaper strip is even a tiny bit self-aware, because if they were they would immediately stalk away in disgust.

Mark Trail, 5/1/12

Just wanted to keep you up to date with the Mark Trail action. Today’s action: a bad guy lets loose with a WHAT TH’, which is always awesome. Also, apparently Andy’s kill switch is hard to turn off! Man, look at that slavering maw in panel two! He’s got a taste for human flesh now!

Funky Winkerbean, 5/1/12

“He used to joke about it, but it’s not a joke anymore. It’s completely true! My father can’t feel any human emotion or grasp ordinary, everyday experience unless it’s mediated through a recording device of some kind. In this way, he has become the archetype of a 21st century human being.”

Beetle Bailey, 5/1/12

Hey, remember back in the ’90s when Walker-Browne Amalgamated Humor Industries LLC made a big deal about sending General Halftrack to sensitivity training, because of his constant, actionable sexual harassment of his secretary? Well, it didn’t take

Here is something that you might not know, because I haven’t really publicized it much on this blog: 18 months ago, after almost ten years of freelancing, I took a full-time job as associate online news editor at ITworld, a very nice site where I got to work with great people covering technology. Four weeks ago, I quit. My last day was Friday.

I didn’t quit because the job was bad (it wasn’t, and if you live near Boston or San Francisco and would like to apply for it, you can). But I was burned out on the process of coming up with quick reactions to news all the time. And what I really wanted to do — what I’ve wanted to do ever since this blog started connecting with a large audience, years ago now — was be funny, full time.

You can read all my process-y feelings about it over on my jfruh.com blog, but the short version is that I’ve quit my job to try to do full-time writing, mostly funny. This is completely bonkers, obviously. I couldn’t do it without my wife supporting me (in more ways than one) in this decision, but it’s still pretty terrifying. Of course I shall continue to mock Mary Worth over here; but I hope you all will come along with me as I try out other stuff as well. I have several projects in the works, some of which will never see the light of day, some of which will hopefully blow your minds. The best way to follow all the stuff I’m doing is to follow my Twitter or Facebook or Google+ or Tumblr (which is also just a regular blog that has an RSS feed and everything). And of course I’ll announce the big stuff here.

Oh, and if you’re a professionally funny person who’s always thought, “Gee, I’d sure like to collaborate with Josh Fruhlinger on something,” well, now’s your chance! Shoot me an email at bio@jfruh.com. I suddenly have some free time on my hands.

Mark Trail, 4/30/12

I would like to hereby apologize for disparaging the quality of the violence in the current Mark Trail storyline last week. The lackluster bludgeoning on Friday was clearly just a set-up for this fully awesome scene of Andy suddenly transforming from a cheerful, happy companion to a slavering vicious attack hound at Mark’s command. Do you think Mark saw that the marijuana grower was growing marijuana with a gun in his hand? If so, we must assume that he knows that any bullet fired from such a feeble pistol would simply bounce harmlessly off Andy’s massive skull. It’s not like he would ever put his best friend in danger, after all!

Family Circus, 4/30/12

The key to understanding this panel is Jeffy’s expression of heavy-lidded boredom. “Mommy always looks great, and yet society’s crushingly unrealistic expectations about female body types can cause her to spiral into an emotional tailspin when that cheap scale tells here she’s gained only a few pounds. I’d rage against the patriarchy, but I’m just too exhausted by the efforts I make to comfort her, efforts that always fall short.”

Apartment 3-G, 4/30/12

Kudos to Apartment 3-G for being so sensitive as to keep all intimate, interesting details about the death of Nina’s mother off-panel. Sure, letting us in on this information would have made the storyline more engaging, but at what emotional cost to its fictional characters?

Mary Worth, 4/29/12

The greatest thing about Mary Worth … wait, no, scratch that, there are so many great things about Mary Worth, how can I be expected to choose? Ahem, let me start over. One of the great things about Mary Worth is how each storyline begins with limitless possibilities of amazingness. These are generally swept away by a tide of painful boring, but it’s fun to imagine at the beginning where it’ll go, and once in a while you do get an Aldo-style payoff. Anyway, right now I’m hoping that against all odds the Gina-Bobby star-crossed love story will suddenly become an Agatha Christie-style locked room mystery in this mysterious mansion. “Is all this yours?” “Ha-ha … no! It belongs to a friend of ours, mysterious benefactor who specifically requested that we gather a demographically heterogeneous group of people, each with a dark secret that will come out at some point during the proceedings, for a ‘special announcement!’”

Your first clue: this Long Island manse has the Spanish-tile roof that we see everywhere in Mary’s West Coast home. Did she ever really leave California at all? Or did her flight out, which was full of trippy visuals, all happen in her own head? Prepare to have your mind blown at the shocking conclusion! Or maybe Bobby and Gina will just announce their engagement at their friend’s house and then Mary will go back home, that seems more likely.

Marvin, 4/29/12

Whatever you think about Marvin’s relentless and repulsive obsessions, you have to credit the strip for using the entire space the Sunday format provides to set up this “Marvin enjoys wetting himself” joke.

Hi and Lois, 4/29/12

Hi and Lois sure has been leaning heavily late on the Thirsty and Irma sure do hate each other schtick. That all ends today in spectacular fashion as Irma beats her husband to death with a broom handle, while a horrified Lois watches and tries to figure out how not to be arrested as an accessory to murder.

Funky Winkerbean, 4/28/12

Quick Funky recap: Those anonymous replies to Cody’s texts weren’t from Summer, they were from his friend, not because his friend was in love with him, but because he too was hot for summer, but then Summer was seen flirting with some jock, the end, OH BUT WAIT, Cody got some more anonymous texts which he’s deleting and which — SHOCKING REVELATION — come from some blonde girl in the background of panel three who I don’t know who she is? Now everyone loves someone who doesn’t love them back, and the cycle of Funkyverse pain is complete. Mostly this story has made me think that it was originally written with anonymous paper notes in mind and then there was a sudden realization that “Oh crap kids use the texting now, right?” and then “notes” became “texting” even though that made everything make little to no sense.

Mark Trail, 4/28/12

So, violence has broken out in Mark Trail, but does anyone else find this a little anticlimactic? Mark doesn’t get off any awkward bon mots or even use his fists, but rather just knocks out Drug Guy #1 with a desultory WHAP to the back of the head. I know, I know, Drug Guy #2 is still out there, waiting to be dealt with in hilarious ways, I should just be patient.

Rex Morgan, M.D., 4/28/12

The tale of the Sexy Half-Naked Drunken Houseguest is not turning out to be anticlimactic at all, though! I love that Rex and June have their own little code word for “Make sure that lady doesn’t drink all the off-brand liquor we have in the cabinet.”

Apartment 3-G, 4/28/12

“TELL ME EVERYTHING YOU KNOW,” Nina’s father orders Tommie. “How can we use your knowledge to get Nina back together with the husband who betrayed her so she can be in an intact marriage when she gives birth to the baby she never wanted? HER HAPPINESS DEPENDS ON IT.”

Rejoice! For the week’s top comment is upon you.

“Is anyone else weirded out by how Slylock Fox is standing? ‘Don’t mind me, I just have a tape recorder down my pants, if you know what I mean.’ *Wink* Wink*” –Holly Folly

And behold, there are hilarious runners up:

“Looking to sober up? Play the Mary Worth drinking game! The rules are simple: take one shot every time you see a person who isn’t white while she is in New York. Spoiler alert: at Mary’s insistence they are filming the story arc in Calgary.” –NoahSnark

“AAH! AAH! AAH! AAH! I can see Margo’s waist! I didn’t even know she had a waist! I don’t know, man, I just sort of assumed you got to the navel and she just … stopped! I’m freaking out!” –bunivasal

“I don’t think Jeff even knows what Mary said. Judging from the dazed look on his face, I’d say he’s just automatically answering out of his drunken stupor. Expect ‘When?’ ‘Where?’ and ‘How?’ to follow, quite possibly after Mary’s already left the room.” –Pozzo

“You ARE way out of line, Nina. Margo has never claimed to be anyone’s ‘friend’, much less yours.” –Chryon HR

“I could be misremembering completely here, but didn’t Gina have to leave New York in the first place because her father unwittingly witnessed a brutal gangland murder? And now that Gina has returned to the scene of the crime, everyone she ever met or spoke to during her sojourn in Santa Royale is mysteriously called together to assemble in one convenient place … Yeah, I know, I’m always secretly going ‘please God, let this Mary Worth plot end in a gruesome mob-related massacre,’ but this time I really think we might be on to a winner.” –Higgs Boatswain

“I was thinking magenta is a poor color choice for sneaking up on someone in a forest, but Mark probably thinks he blends into the background of whatever the crazy potheads are hallucinating.” –nescio

“After Gina ran off from the diner to be with her soccer daddy without so much as a by your leave to Mary, Mary jets across the country to attend a party with a ‘special event.’ I hope the ‘special event’ is the kidnapping of Mary for ransom that no one will pay.” –Gabacho

“That guy’s more of a Stooges Three, if anything.” –Mibbitmaker

“Spider-Man will have to defeat him in a half-assed fashion stand around being slightly clever while Laurel Hardy’s super-power backfires and he pushes himself down the stairs. Or maybe the director will just call security.” –Nekrotzar

I must thanks to all who put some cash into my tip jar! And we must give thanks to our advertisers:

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To find out more about how you could be thanked in this spot, and more about sponsoring this site’s RSS feed, click here.

• Meet members of the Google Analytics team, experts, and other users like you
• Learn through tangible examples how to measurably impact your business
• Find out how others solve the challenges you are facing today
• Have your business questions addressed by Google and Google Analytics Certified Partners

Posted by Jon Day, Google Analytics team

Spider-Man, 4/27/12

Here is me getting you up to speed on the current Spider-Man plot: Peter went with MJ to a cast meeting for her play, and her co-star showed up on crutches, and said he had a freak accident in which he fell down the stairs (“almost felt like someone pushed me!”). I half-expected Peter to be enlisted to replace him, but then the stuff you see above happened, which makes almost as little sense. Don’t Broadway productions as a rule have understudies for the major roles? Can anyone just wander in off the street and secure a part in a stage play if they’re desperate enough? Is MJ’s play actually a comedy? Would anyone with even a slight sense of what might make someone a bankable comedic actor use the name “Hardy Laurel”? Are we expected to be surprised when it turns out that Hardy Laurel is the guy who pushed MJ’s co-star down the stairs, using some kind of boring superpower, and that Spider-Man will have to defeat him in a half-assed fashion?

Mark Trail, 4/27/12

Honestly, you can’t blame those “drug guys” for their violent anger at Ranger Tom. I mean, if you had spent a hot afternoon harvesting marijuana with a pirate cutlass and some fat-cat government bureaucrat who had been sitting on his ass all day started whining about being thirsty, you’d want him to shut up too.

Mary Worth, 4/27/12

I’m sure as a cabbie you get inured to the inane conversational stylings of your passengers, but I do find Mary’s choices here kind of puzzling. This “special announcement” is frankly the most interesting thing you’ve got in this anecdote, Mary! Why are you holding it in thought-balloon reserve?

Barney Google and Snuffy Smith, 4/26/12

Poor Jughaid is grappling with the problem of living a righteous life in a world (and with a soul) indelibly marked with sin! “Parson sez my conscience keeps me from doin’ wrong, but it ain’t so” frankly sounds like it could have come straight out of a Flannery O’Connor story. However, Loweezy’s simple-minded guffawing indicates that this dilemma won’t end with a harrowing but ultimately enlightening revelation; Jughaid’s just going to grow up to be a chicken thief, like everyone else in his family.

Mark Trail, 4/26/12

“If I can just do this without making any noise! If only there were a way for me to clarify my thoughts without speaking them aloud! I’ll just have to shout them as quietly as I possibly can!”

Marmaduke, 4/26/12

In order to cement his rule as demon-king of Earth, Marmaduke has savagely devoured all human politicians, regardless of their ideology or partisan affiliation, and has collected their campaign signs as grisly trophies.

Click Add New to enter your caption. Visit The New Yorker to enter their caption contest. You can also vote for your favorite finalist and view previous contest winners.

Mary Worth, 4/25/12

Oh, man, the fancy New York City party Mary’s going to is being thrown by none other than Bobby and Gina! Gina, you might recall, was a waitress who was pining away for her lost childhood love and then Mary gave her the painfully obvious advice of “Maybe look him up on the Internet?” and then she found out that he was a soccer superstar who still loved her, of course. Last we saw her she was getting the hell out of Santa Royale at maximum speed and acquiescing eagerly to Bobby’s casual marriage proposal. Have they really waited this long to have an engagement announcement party? I’m thinking it’s something bigger. “We’ve asked all our loved ones together here because we have a special announcement: Gina has transcended this plane of existence to become an omnipresent, omniscient deity! Wherever you go, whatever you do, her disembodied consciousness is gazing at you from the clouds!”

Gil Thorp, 4/25/12

How bored have I been by the current “Milford’s new star pitcher has a secret and that secret is the child she had when she was 14″ storyline in Gil Thorp? So bored that I haven’t discussed it, like, at all, for eight weeks! How much do I miss the “All the Milford players are getting tattoos at a completely legal tattoo parlor” storyline from the winter? So much that I really wanted that to be an enormous cross tattoo on the neck of the girl in panel three, but I think it’s just a shadow or something.

With User Timings, you can track and visualize user defined custom timings about websites. The report shows the execution speed or load time of any discrete hit, event, or user interaction that you want to track. This can include measuring how quickly specific images and/or resources load, how long it takes for your site to respond to specific button clicks, timings for AJAX actions before and after onLoad event, etc. User timings will not alter your pageview count, hence,  makes it the preferred method for tracking a variety of timings for actions in your site.

To collect User Timings data, you’ll need to add JavaScript timing code to the interactions you want to track using the new _trackTiming API included in ga.js (version 5.2.6+) for reporting custom timings. This API allows you to track timings of visitor actions that don’t correspond directly to pageviews (like Event Tracking).  User timings are defined using a set of Categories, Variables, and optional Labels for better organization. You can create various categories and track several timings for each of these categories. Please refer to the developers guide for more details about the _trackTiming API.

Here are some sample use cases for User Timings

• To track timings for AJAX actions before and after onLoad event. 
• A site can have their own definition of “User Perceived Load Time”, which can be recorded and tracked with user timings.  As an example, news websites can record time for showing the above fold content as their main metric instead of onLoad time. 
• Detailed performance measurement and optimization of sub components on a page, such as time to load all images, CSS or Javascript, download PDF files and time it takes to upload a file.

Want to check out User Timings Report in your account?
Go to the content section and click the User Timings report under Content section. There are three tabs within the User Timings report for you to review: Explorer, Performance, & Map Overlay. Each provides a slightly different view of user timings reported.

The Explorer tab on the User Timings report shows the following metrics by Timing Category, Timing Variable, or Timing Label (all of which you define in your timing code).

• Avg. User Timing—the average amount of time (in seconds) it takes for the timed code to execute
• User Timing Sample—the number of samples taken

The Explorer tab also provides controls that you can use to change the tabular data. For example, you can choose a secondary dimension—such as browser— to get an idea of how speed changes by browser.

To learn more about which timings are most common for user timings, switch to the Performance tab. This tab shows timing buckets, providing you with more insight into how speed can vary for user reported timings for selected category, variable and label combinations. You may switch to Performance tab at any point of navigation in the Explorer tab, such as after drilling down on a specific category and variable, to visualize distribution of user reported timings.  The bucket boundaries for histograms in Performance Tab are chosen to be flexible so that users can analyze data at low values ranging from 10 milliseconds granularity to 1 minute granularity with addition of sub-bucketing for further analysis.

The Map Overlay tab provides a view of your site speed experienced by users in different geographical regions (cities, countries, continents).

-  Satish Kambala & Mustafa M. Tikir, Google Analytics team

The State of the Web – Spring 2012

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Curtis, 4/24/12

Whatever issues I have with Curtis’s repetitive and corny jokes (and I have many issues with them), I’ve always been a fan of the strip’s incidental details. The posters hanging up in Curtis’s room are generally good for a laugh, whether they’re extolling rap as an abstract concept or hot new rap groups like Nuns with Guns. Today we see that Curtis’s genre classifications have gotten more sophisticated (he’s traded in his RAP posted for a HIP-HOP poster), but really what tickles me is that he has a giant, textless picture of a triple-decker hamburger hanging on his wall. It’s the sort of thing Dagwood Bumstead would own, if he had any authority over his home’s decor.

Apartment 3-G, 4/24/12

If anyone wonders why I always think Margo is the best: This is why Margo is the best! Most of us, if caught drunkenly making out with a pregnant friend’s spouse, would at least offer some kind of half-assed apology. But that’s not Margo’s style. Margo’s style is boozily slurring “No … you’re out of line!” at her friend instead.

Pluggers, 4/24/12

Elitist Neapolitan ice cream reminds pluggers of the two things they hate the most: immigrants and race-mixing.

1. Page Analytics: leads to more information regarding traffic that was resulted from the post.
2. View Ripple: leads to the post Ripple, an interactive visualization of the public shares of the post
3. View Page: leads to the website page that was shared
4. View Activity: leads to the actual publicly-shared post on Google+ 

Mary Worth, 4/23/12

Oh, I’m sorry, were you expecting there to be some more dramatic meat to the “Nola reforms” storyline, or at least maybe the reappearance of that comically weepy televangelist? Well, tough! Having squared all that business away, Mary is going to jet off to New York City without so much as a pool party. Who needs some lame California soirée when there’s a hip New York City get-together you’ve been invited to, probably in some converted loft space on the Lower East Side, am I right?

I’m actually pretty sure that this will be the first time I’ve ever seen Mary leave Santa Royale, other than when she flew to Vietnam to rescue Dr. Jeff from the charity work he loved so much. Obviously Jeff doesn’t get invited on fun trips, though we should maybe question whether Mary is going to have as much fun as she thinks she will. Since she was unable to handle the raw urban horror of downtown Santa Royale and its hellish Women’s Shelter, I imagine she’ll find even New York’s most upscale neighborhoods utterly terrifying.

Apartment 3-G, 4/23/12

Because you know what happens in New York? Rampant adultery, that’s what! I mean, if you consider mashing your faces together drunkenly and saying “KISS” really loudly to be adultery, which I’m assuming Mary does. Anyway, this kissing business is clearly Margo’s worst bad idea yet — not because Margo is somehow morally opposed to stealing men away from their hugely pregnant wives or anything, but because Scott is a whiny little feeb not worthy of her attentions and Nina is a badass who can strangle people with her mind.

Panel from Slylock Fox, 4/22/12

Well, it’s about time that a member of the Slylock Fox rogues gallery started fighting back against the cruel dictatorship of ratiocination that’s always keeping them down; and I’m enough of a speciesist to be glad to see that it’s Slick Smitty, the lone human recurring character in this strip full of anthropomorphic insanity. Still, it’s unsurprising to see that he’s not getting a fair trial here by this all-animal jury, who all appear enraptured by Slylock’s blatantly classist argument. “Remember, a true gentleman would have offered his right hand for a handshake. By crudely thrusting his left hand at me, Slick Smitty proved he was no gentleman. Didn’t he deserve to have his delicate metacarpals crushed by my powerful vulpine paw?”

Mary Worth, 4/22/12

I know it’s a fairly small aspect of this plot, I’m a little worried about Dan Smithers, the man whom Nola lied about in order to get his job. Do you really think he’s going to get his job back? How’s that conversation going to go? “Hey, Prez, I know that you were willing to fire me for embezzlement based only on the say-so of your underling who you were sleeping with, and who stood to benefit by my removal, but I’m willing to let bygones be bygones and establish an incredibly awkward working relationship with you! Oh, FYI, since I left I developed a drinking problem.”