Spring Cleaning and Making way for HD3
Published January 9, 2012 by Richard Uren
Right now we’re putting the finishing touches on HD3, our new detection system. To get on the HD3 advance notice list simply drop your details into this form. The new system is a complete rethink of how a high performance detection system should work. You’ll be able to run it from your servers or ours and its blazingly fast.
HD3 uses a new API with a new schema (in plain English that means both data format and the way its queried are different), however there is legacy mode for queries on our servers, so you’re not left high and dry when migrating from HD2. If you’re using Javascript, with that little code snippet you paste into the tops of your web pages then nothing will change.
Some existing features of Handset Detection are not coming along for the HD3 ride. Effective immediately we’re cancelling the Affiliate System for both developers and referrers. Payments will continue until July 2012.
We’ll be replacing the affiliate program next week with a referrer program. Each friend of yours that uses the service will earn both you and your friend 2500 bonus detections each month.
Happy Detecting.
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New Detection Clusters
Published December 8, 2011 by Richard Uren
Over the next few weeks we’re making a few big changes to our network to improve efficiency and performance. There will be no service disruption however IP addresses of server groups will be changing while we shuffle our computing power around and upgrade servers.
To minimize the impact on folks with Handset Detection IP addresses in firewalls we’ve created api-corpfw.handsetdetection.com as a drop in replacement for api.handsetdetection.com. This allows us to dynamically add and remove ip addresses to our existing api.handsetdetection.com alias and keep api-corpfw.handsetdetection.com as a fixed set of IP addresses. Dont worry if you dont know what that means (its really just a note to corporate IT departments acessing our API directly).
To kick things off we’ll shortly be bringing on line 176.9.20.58 & 69.64.68.80 – Woo Hoo ! :-)
Image Credit : http://www.flickr.com/photos/yallen33
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Opera Mini, Access/NetFront, Openwave classification updates
Published October 23, 2011 by Richard Uren
Today we’re performing device updates which might have an impact on how you use Handset Detection.
Previously, unidentified Android handsets running Opera Mini would return Opera as the vendor and Mini 5 as the model along with Opera and Mini 5 as the browser, with Android as the OS. After the todays update we will return Android as the vendor and Generic as model with Opera as the browser and Mini 5 as the browser version. The same applies to Access/NetFront, Openwave and any other mobile based browsers.
This is more keeping in line with our policy where specific hardware can not be determined that it be referred to as having either a generic vendor or generic model.
Image Credit : KCIvey @ flickr : http://www.flickr.com/photos/kcivey
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Mobile analytics migration complete
Published October 19, 2011 by Richard Uren
Migration into our new mobile analytics system is almost complete, we’re just catching up on the last few days of processing now. One unintended side effect of delaying processing during migration was that customers who’s accounts ticked over during the migration windows are now getting slugged for last months detections in this month, which, well, isn’t fair.
So we’ve reset everyone’s detection counters to Zero on their main accounts only (the detection quotas are only accounted for off your main account). Hooray ! If you would like your site counters reset as well then let us know and we’ll hook you up.
We hope you enjoy the new system.
Image Credit : Shazwan @ Flickr : http://www.flickr.com/photos/shazwan
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Upgrading Mobile Analytics
Published October 15, 2011 by Richard Uren
Flowers by Peter Gorges
Hi Folks, Its been a while. We’ve been busily building out our new Mobile Analytics system which I am very happy to announce will go live shortly on our servers. Highlights include a massive speed improvement (up to 1000x in some cases), flash free charts (instead of a blank box on your swanky new tablet you’ll now get a sweet, informative, chart) plus mobile browser and mobile language stats – which we found lurking about the place !
You’ll know the upgrade is in progress when you see this orange message on the login screen :
Hi, We are presently upgrading analytics. The full upgrade will take 72 hours.
See our blog for more information.
Like the message says, the upgrade itself will take 72 hours. That’s a theoretical 72 hours, factoring in things as best as we can judge them. Worst case it might run to 96. Records will be migrated from most recent to oldest, so your 30 day stats should be fine after 5 or 6 hours. Close to 120 million MySQL records needs to be examined, tweaked and cross referenced before finding their new home in our shiny new MongoDB servers. Its all scripted of course so we don’t have to do that by hand ! Phew. :)
This is a complete rewrite, from the ground up, and it paves the way for us to do much more interesting things with mobile analytics in the near future. We hope you enjoy it.
Analytics will be online during migration however you might find inconsistencies in totals while the migration is in progress.
Detection services will not be affected by this upgrade.
Image credit : Peter Gorges @ Flickr (http://www.flickr.com/photos/petergorges)
UPDATE : Upgrade delayed until Monday 3pm Central.
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Welcome Recurly To The Team
Published June 13, 2011 by Richard Uren
After a long and exhaustive process I am pleased to announce that Handset Detection has gone live with Recurly, our new subscription billing solution.
You’ll see some newly styled billing emails and have a smoother process for plan and account changes.
A few customer cards didn’t come across cleanly into the new system, If that’s you then you’ll have an email about it and in those cases we’ll need you to re-enter your billing details. All in all the migration from WHMCS to Recurly was surprisingly painless, thanks largely to Recurly’s excellent tech support.
We’ll also be keeping Paypal Subscriptions as a payment option for those who prefer Paypal.
Recurly joins Freshbooks, Pingdom, DnsMadeEasy, Postmark, Campaign Monitor, Zendesk, Assembla and Amazon S3 in our all star cast of world leading SaaS components that power Handset Detection.
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Tablet Detection, Console Detection, API Update & New Features for Sites
Published August 15, 2010 by Richard Uren
Todays update, out in a few hours, contains support for Tablets and Consoles accessible via our new API call : detectall.
Attention people using API Kits : There is a change to the behaviour of the detect API call which may impact you. Back in the pre iPad days there was an assumption that the detect call was the way to tell if something was a mobile, or not. Detect only returned handset information, so if it found something then that something was always mobile. Then iPads arrived, which complicated things. In the main redirecting iPads to a mobile site is not desired which meant inspecting detection results and excluding iPads from redirection. So here’s the change, from today detect will only detect devices classed as mobile. Performing a detect on an iPad will return Not Found, just like a normal browser.
To detect Mobiles, Consoles and Tablets in the one request use the new detectall API call and inspect the ‘class’. Class will be Unknown, Mobile, Console or Tablet. As we add more types of device into our database we’ll expand Class.
Sites gets isConsole and isTablet tests as well.
Thats all for todays update. As always if you have any problems then drop a note to hello@handsetdetection.com
If you’re using the PHP or Java API Kits then I recommend updating to the latest kit to take advantage of the automatic load balancing features, plus the new detectall call for Consoles & Tablets.
Stop Press : This release also includes a swanky new footer and a few bug fixes : most notably a problem preventing quota emails being sent.
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Forrst, New Relase and API Kit Updates
Published August 2, 2010 by Richard Uren
I’ve never been a big fan of wood grain. I mean its great on trees, polished wood floors, exposed timber beams but in design I cant really say that its my cup of tea. Perhaps its child hood trauma over 70′s laminex ? Or sympathizing with my friend Pete who once accidentally purchased a pair of very expensive woodgrain’esq Bolle sunglasses thinking they we’re tortise shell (sure Pete, .. we’ve all made that mistake). So I find surprising that I completely adore the slick use of wood grain over at Forrst. Perhaps its the awesome design or the even more awesommer community that have won me over ? Anyhow – if you’re a designer or developer check Forrst out. Its well worth it.
Somewhat tangentally related to Forrst is tomorrows updates. We’ve done away with our janky old Amiga Guru Meditation inspired Error/Info messages and taken a sweeter more Forrst’y approach. Plus Error/Info messages now stack so you can get a couple at the the top of the screen if you whack all the wrong keys. :-)
Under the hood there was a significant upgrade of our framework from CakePHP 1.2.6 to CakePHP 1.3.3 and bug fixes for Sites which wasn’t logging handset stats correctly. We’ve also kicked off a week of API Kit updates, starting with our Java Mobile Detection API Kit. New features include configurable read and connection timeouts, http proxy configuration, automatic fail over in the event of connection timeout, an easy to use config file and support for downloading our Mobile User Agent Database (which we’ve had for a while and its finally making its way into the api kits).
TL;DR : Java API Kit out now, Website updates out tomorrow 3rd August 2010, 2pm (GMT + 10), check out Forrst. :)
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Mobile Detection Just Got 1000x Easier
Published July 6, 2010 by Richard Uren
Im really excited today to be announcing our new Sites feature. I’m excited because Sites really delivers on our core promise of making mobile easy. API Kits are great, and they’re powerful, but it can be a bit confusing without some technical skills at hand. So now we have Sites. It literally takes 5 minutes to setup and its a piece of cake. Here’s the benefits :-
1) Yes, Finally you can create a bunch of website profiles all under the same account! There’s no limit to the number of sites you can have. Setup 1 or 100 its fine with us, really. There’s no need to mess around with multiple accounts anymore, unless you really want to.
2) Sites have optional Redirection Rules. Mostly you’ll use redirection rules to automatically send mobile visitors off to your mobile website. We’ve even got a special check in there so mobile visitors dont get redirected if they go back to your normal website site – because thats just good form (We call that Smart Redirection – make sure to tick that box when setting things up). How do you enter redirection rules ?
- Login
- Click Dashboard
- Click Sites
- Click Add Site Profile
- Enter the Site Name
- Enter the Site URL
- Click Add New Rule
- Enter your Conditions
- Click Save
- Copy and paste your site’s unique script tag into the head of your main homepage
- Kick back because its Job Done !
There’s even a video. Its 5 minutes or so.
For the more adventurous we also expose the detection results in Javascript so you can script up your own mobile magic if you like.
In other news : API Kits are being updated at the moment to assign detection requests to site profiles, plus we’re laying the foundations for console detection, (Wii, PS3, Xbox), as well as iPad detection and other tablets. Sites has proved exceptionally stable so we’ll be removing the beta tag in the next release or so. There will also be some shuffling of links about, Sites will replace Dashboard in the top right hand corner, Detection History Download will move into the Sites Actions and, eventually, API Kit configuration will move into Site Information.
Here’s a few screen shots of sites in action :-
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Ruby on Rails API Kit goes gold
Published July 4, 2010 by Richard Uren
Oh My ! I totally forgot to mention that James Rowe released a Ruby on Rails API Kit for Handset Detection back in mid June. If you’re into Ruby goodness then this is the API Kit for you. All packaged up under the MIT license. Yeah ! Thanks James.
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