The parameters modeled range from: (a) Server Side: application’s design, systems architecture, Server SKU’s, geohosting, CDN’s, to (b) Network-Related: bandwidths, connectivity, network latencies, last mile effect, to© Client-Side: OS and browser mix, system configs, to (d) Business-Related: current/projected revenues, market shares, user-minutes, competitive advantage, feature parity, discoverability and adoption, and trends, to (e) Performance-Related: where Hotmail is with respect to its regional/global competitors and previous milestones. The model is fine tuned through AB Testing, comparing the before/after deploying new features, last mile instrumentation, revenue trending and market research.

via Performance-Based Design – Linking Performance to Business Metrics: Velocity 2009 – O’Reilly Conferences, June 22 – 24, 2009, San Jose, CA.

Much like normal web analytics, they look at specific business and market-share metrics to assess their efforts’ success. However, assessing their server and network-related feedback also gives a lot of insight into how their full customer experience is performing and is a good idea for any company using analytics. Remembering to check your user’s actual bandwidth, browser versions, error messages, and so on sounds mundane, but can help you create a positive user experience all around and not just by assessing your conversion funnels.

Version 1.6.1 RC2 is available for download, and it fixes most issues with IE8.

The current git tree has some minor extra fixes. It works fine for us ( http://www.skyrock.com ) even with the IE8 version shipped with the latest Windows 7 preview.

via LinkedIn: Discussion: Prototype Community.

The StreamGraph shows the usage over time for the words most highly associated with the search word.

via Twitter StreamGraphs.

He has a couple of other visualization tools mentioned on the page, but I like this one for brand monitoring during an event or after a release. BTW, this is NOT one of the top 10 ways to avoid thinking about the swine flu.