How have you found the first few weeks at GoSquared, Saul?

Hi all. Thanks for the welcome.

The first few weeks here have been great! Joining such a rapidly growing company as GoSquared, every day poses new challenges to get stuck into. There is never a dull moment!

The team here is great – we all make sure that if one is stuck, help is always at hand. We also make sure that while working hard, like all good companies, we play hard – a beer on a Friday is always a great end to the week!

What has caught your attention while working at GoSquared?

The thing that stands out most (apart from James’ dented MacBook) is the focus the team has on our awesome users!

Every decision we make is made based on what you guys want and the comments you make through feedback. Throughout each day we always ensure that time is set aside to discuss your feedback and look at ways of integrating your requests into GoSquared to allow you to make the most out of your websites.

So what’s your role?

Like in many small companies, it is important to be able to fill any role. So far I’ve been working on both development and business development tasks, but, who knows what I’ll be working on tomorrow!

We have some really cool ideas lined up and I’ll be working hard with the team to realise them.

Out of all of your tasks, what is your favourite?

I love working on the things that impact our users directly – whether that is A/B testing the website to improve usability or whether it is developing a new feature. If our users see it, I love being a part of it! It’s always great to hear the feedback on what we do.

When not working with the GoSquared team, what do you like to do?

I enjoy doing all sorts of things – running, music, reading and travelling – I love trying new things and going to new places.

Even when not in the office, I can usually be found reading up about new tech and thinking of how it can be used practically – It is really important to us here at GoSquared that we all know what is going on in the tech world around us so that we can use our knowledge to ensure that we are bringing our users the most up to date, cutting edge features.

Any final thoughts on working with us here at GoSquared?

I think we have a fantastic, tightly knit team here at GoSquared.

Geoff and JT are insane developers and it is awesome to see some of the things they are working on.

James is always thinking of you guys, our users, ensuring that we all put you first and make things as straightforward and easy as possible.

I hope that together with the existing team, I can help GoSquared to push boundaries and to explore new, exciting avenues. The possibilities of what we as a team can achieve are endless and I’m really excited to be a part of GoSquared. Watch this space!

Thanks for that Saul! Again, welcome to the team!

Back in September, we wrote about how we dramatically improved load times of the GSTC (GoSquared Tracking Code), the snippet of JavaScript you place on your site to enable GoSquared to track your traffic. We made it asynchronous, non-blocking, globally distributed, and reduced load times by 80%. Now we’re back with another update.

This time we’ve focused on the actual JavaScript executed by the GSTC. We’ve been through every line of code with a fine toothcomb and optimised it for blazingly fast execution, and we’ve made some real breakthroughs. We’ve now reduced the total script execution time from about 300ms to an average of 10ms. Yes, you heard that right. We’ve made our tracking script thirty times faster. In fact, in some browsers, the tracker is more than a hundred times faster than before. And no, this is not a late April Fools joke.

Besides that, we’ve also done some clever optimisation of our code to reduce the size of the tracking engine’s footprint. It wasn’t easy, as it was pretty small to begin with, but we’ve managed to make the tracking JavaScript file more than 25% smaller. That means 25% faster load time across the board. Add that to our crazy execution speed improvements, and this means that while our tracking code was very unobtrusive before, its impact on the performance on your site is now barely detectable.

And despite the fact that we’ve reduce the size of the tracking engine, we’ve actually gone and added more functionality. We’ve added in a few new functions to make it easier to integrate GoSquared into your site if you have a lot of JavaScript. Take a look over at the full documentation of these functions, and have a play around.

And the best part about all these changes? You don’t have to do a thing. The tracking code you put on your website is still exactly the same. So you’re already taking advantage of these performance improvements, and can start using the new functionality straight away.

Note: In case it wasn’t clear – this was an April Fools joke, and is not a project we intend to actively develop going forward. We shall keep the page online for the memories, though, just like we did with FutureStats.

Building on top of the powerful foundations of LiveStats by GoSquared, we’re very excited to announce LiveStats 3D – an entirely new way to visualise your site’s traffic in real-time.

Extensive research and testing, combined with overwhelming customer feedback showed us that just “watching” your traffic unfold wasn’t enough. People wanted to feel their traffic. They wanted to experience that same punch-in-the-stomach feeling their servers experience in a traffic spike.

Attention Grabbing

Our Head of data visualisation and engineering at GoSquared, Mr. Tren Dee, explained that in the current climate of data overload, visualisations need to work harder to gain the attention of users.

With LiveStats 3D, we’ve made it impossible to ignore your traffic stats. LiveStats 3D utilises an initial draft spec of HTML6 (due for release later this century) to fully utilise your computer’s screen real-estate, processor cores, and memory to provide a truly immersive experience. *

Based on our experience from developing Futurestat’s traffic spike prediction engine, LiveStats 3D transcends the limitations of traditional two-dimensional space to provide a unbeatably unique statistical journey of marvel, wonder and awe. In end-user tests, we’ve actually seen people break down and cry due to such an incredible experience. The world is not 2D, so why should your stats
be?

Improved Twitter Integration with the Dick Bar

Also coming in LiveStats 3D, we have completely overhauled Twitter integration. Overwhelming feedback from everyone** who loved the Twitter Dick Bar suggested LiveStats was incomplete without such functionality. Now that Twitter has decided to remove the Dick, ahem Quick Bar from the native iPhone client, we felt it was our duty to keep the functionality alive and kicking for the user base that
desires it.

Learn more about LiveStats 3D now! And watch the 3D video on YouTube.

* Fully immersive experience requires 3D red/green glasses.
** Ev sends his regards.