As people who are designing/developing and/or managing web projects, we usually pay a lot of importance to metrics and their trends -website statistics, Twitter follower numbers, the number of sales of a product and so- to better analyze if things are performing as expected.

All these data are usually behind different applications/interfaces; Google Analytics keeps the stats, the number of comments are in the WordPress admin, leads can be viewed from SalesForce or invoices are in Freshbooks. And, there can be some others like the data in custom apps.

Logging into each of them to get a snapshot of everything usually takes a lot of time. And, this is what Cyfe is about.

Cyfe is a hosted dashboard with a simple and good-looking interface that allows us to view any data from a single place.

It has a pretty good number of ready-to-use widgets that can pull data from popular applications like Google products (Analytics, Adsense, FeedBurner, Gmail), MailChimp, Twitter, Facebook, SeoMOZ, Alexa, Zendesk, SalesForce and more.

Also, it has support for data from custom sources including a CSV file (hosted in a URL or uploaded directly), HTML, image or RSS.

Such an ability is so good as we can easily auto-generate CSV files with the data to be visualized using the scripting language we prefer (like "sales from the project x" and "new sign-ups from the project y") and let Cyfe grab + display the data. Or, we can provide the URL of the chart image generated in our own web application and it is displayed like an iframe.

The application has multiple charting options (line, area, bar, pie) so it is possible to view each custom metric with the one that fits the best.

Cyfe is not a single dashboard app and any number of tabs can be created which is handy for creating groups and collecting the widgets of each project under its own dashboard  which is good if you are viewing a pretty high number of widgets.

Widgets can be positioned by drag 'n' drops just like iGoogle to create the order we want. And, we can upload our own logo for a more custom look.

Also, the application can be reached from any device (desktop, tablet, mobile) and things will work smoothly.

It comes with a free plan that includes 5 widgets that will be enough for many and plans with more widgets exist.

The giveaway for HelpOnClick, the lovely live chat/support application, is ended today and winners of 10 Lifetime Basic Accounts ($19/month) with free Desktop Application ($59) are selected.

!! The WRD-exclusive offers below still continue:

• free plan upgrade (from Basic to Pro or from Pro to Deluxe) + free desktop application (normally $59) once you purchase the service by visiting their website from the links in this post.
• partners (resellers or affiliates) who sign-up by visiting their website from the links in this post will get 40% lifetime commissions instead of 30%.

What is HelpOnClick?

It is a web-based live support chat application that can be integrated into any website within minutes with just a copy-paste of an HTML code.

The application shows visitors in real-time, presents detailed info about them and enables them to start a conversation with you or you can choose to push a conversation with them.

Multiple support staff can use it at the same time, transfer chats between each other and use tools like "canned responses" for a faster communication.

HelpOnClick has an advanced reports and statistics system for analyzing the support department easily (number of support requests/day, operator statistics, etc.).

Its look and feel can be changed with theming support to reflect your website's identity and every text or icon can be customized.

And the winners

The winners are selected randomly from the commenters and here they are:

• ionut (comment #333022)
• gecko (comment #333499)
• Jonathan Hindi (comment #333761)
• ConspiracyTheory (comment #333000)
• stiggi (comment #333218)
• k19s (comment #333261)
• Roger (comment #333078)
• Izzy Rebel (comment #332993)
• Chuck Lasker (comment #333249)
• Jason (comment #332919)

Congratulations and thanks to everyone for trying your chances.

For any website who is selling products/services and would like to provide a quick support to their visitors, live support chat systems are very useful as they are simple-to-use, return questions into sales better, analyzed easily and can be used by distributed support teams.

HelpOnClick, a feature-rich live support chat service, is giving away "10 Lifetime Basic Accounts ($19/month) with free Desktop Application ($59)" to WRD readers and also offers:

• free plan upgrade (from Basic to Pro or from Pro to Deluxe) + free desktop application (normally $59) once you purchase the service by visiting their website from the links in this post.
• partners (resellers or affiliates) who sign-up by visiting their website from the links in this post will get 40% lifetime commissions instead of 30%.

What is HelpOnClick?

It is a web-based and real-time live support chat service where visitors can instantly start chatting with you or leave a message when you are offline.

The application provides real-time traffic data, notifies you when a visitor is browsing your web pages and even enables you to start the conversation by "pushing a chat invitation" before the visitor asks for it (which can be a good method if you think the visitor is trying to decide between the products).

It is possible to chat with multiple visitors at the same time, thanks to features like "canned responses" and "seeing what the visitor types before the message is sent",  you can respond much faster.

If there are multiple support operators, the application can assign the chat requests randomly and also, chats can be transferred between operators (like forwarding an expert question to a senior).

HelpOnClick has an advanced reports and statistics feature where you can analyze your support departments easily (number of support requests/day, operator statistics, etc.). And, you can search inside or display the past conversations anytime.

The interface of this chat support system can be customized with theming support and the ability to change every text + icons.

For the installation, all this functionality starts working by a one time copy-pasting of an HTML code.

How to join the giveaway?

In order to win one of the "10 Lifetime Basic Accounts", just comment to this post and winners will be selected randomly with the query below on 09 May 2011 (one week later).

SELECT * FROM wp_comments WHERE comment_post_id=2224 AND comment_approved=1 AND comment_type='' GROUP BY comment_author_email ORDER BY RAND() LIMIT 10

Good luck to all.

Glow is a JavaScript library, built by BBC that aims to make working with JavaScript and the DOM easier, similar to the popular ones like jQuery, MooTools, etc.

It tries to do this by abstracting common tasks, hiding cross-browser issues, and providing a set of user interface widgets.

on reviewing the major libraries we found that none met our standards and guidelines, with browser support in particular being a major issue.

The library is very well-documented & it already comes with various ready-to-use widgets like:

• autosuggest
• carousel
• overlay (lightbox)
• slider
• timetable
• & more..

Several demos are provided to see Glow in action

Bubbling Library is an easy to adopt Yahoo! User Interface (YUI) Library extension for event-driven applications.

It consists of a set of plugins, behaviors and widgets.

This YUI extension has the following features:

• Plugins
  • Dispatcher
  • Lighter
  • Form Manager
  • Sound Manager
  • Translator
• Widgets
  • Accordion Manager
  • Loading Mask
  • Tooltip Manager
• Behaviors
  • Bookmark Links
  • RSS Feed Links

Bubbling Library is well-documented and has lots of examples of every feature.

Meteora is set of cross-browser widgets and controls for quickly creating rich and customizable web applications without programming excessive JavaScript that is painful to debug in every browser.

Meteora is based on the great mootools framework (version 1.11) and scripts that already work with mootools can be used with Meteora too!

To see some nice demos of this JavaScript widget library, check:

• Editor widget
• File browser widget
• Table sort widget

mooSocialize is an ajax based social bookmark widget which helps submitting content to the social bookmark websites easily.

Once clicked, a window with the social bookmark website logos appears. Clicking the desired social bookmarking website does not redirect you to another website, a hovered window like Lightbox opens and the new website runs there. This nice feature helps keeping your website visitor on your page.

There is also a WordPress plugin which helps integrating mooSocialize into a WordPress powered blog.

Name says it all but mooSocialize is built with the beautiful mootools javascript framework.

Creating ajax applications are now much easier with WaveMaker Visual Ajax Studio for both developers and users with even no JavaScript experience.

WaveMaker Visual Ajax Studio is a visual builder that helps ceating web-applications using Ajax widgets, web services and databases. Best of all, it does not require complex codes, forms, patterns or portal frameworks.

Some Features:

• Drag & Drop Assembly
• LiveLayout™
• Push to Deploy™: One-touch application deployment
• Visual Data Binding>
• SOAP, REST and RSS web services
• Leverage existing CSS, HTML and Java
• Deploys a standard Java .war file