The long sought after Google Analytics Data Export API beta has finally been made available to the public. The API will allow developers to access the read-only data from Google Analytics in their own applications.

Any data that’s available through the standard Analytics web interface is available through the API. The Analytics API is a Google Data API. This is the same API protocol used for Google Calendar, Finance and Webmaster Tools.  If you’ve used any of these APIs, the Google Analytics Data Export API will look very familiar to you.

Client libraries for the JavaScript and Java programming languages have been provided. Support for more programming languages is in the works. For any programming language you want to use you can make requests directly to the API over HTTP and access the data in XML.

To get started, you firstly need to get the documentation from Google Code. Here you’ll find example code, a developer guide, FAQ, and the complete API reference.

You can then sign up for the Google Analytics API Notify email group so you get the key announcements on feature updates, code changes and other service related news that relate to the API.

It will be interesting to see some of the inventive ways developers present the data from Analytics.

Microsoft have officially confirmed that May 5 is the official public release date for the Windows 7 Release Candidate.

“I’m pleased to share that the RC is on track for April 30th for download by MSDN and TechNet subscribers. Broader, public availability will begin on May 5th,” wrote Microsoft’s Brandon LeBlanc in a corporate blog.

This follows news of a possible Windows XP virtualisation mode which allows Windows 7 to run older software that doesn’t work on Vista or Windows 7 natively. The “WinXP mode” has not been confirmed yet by Microsoft, so consider it a rumour at this stage.

For those of you who are gamers and currently don’t own a copy of the Orange Box from Valve Software, this could be the time for you to buy it. Valve are now offering the Orange Box for only $9.99 on Steam.

Orange Box comes with Half-Life 2, HL2 Episode 1, HL2 Episode 2, HL2 The Lost Coast, Portal, and Team Fortress 2.  6 games for $10…not a bad deal at all considering the normal price for all the games separately is $79.95 . I think I will grab myself a copy for that price.

For more information: Orange Box on Steam

When writing PHP code and database queries, speed of execution and working out where the bottle necks are can be extremely time consuming. Filling your code with echo statements can be daunting. However, Ryan Campbell from Infinity Box Inc. (the creators of Wufoo, a HTML Form Builder), has developed PHP Quick Profiler (PQP), “a small tool (think Firebug for PHP) to provide profiling and debugging related information to developers without needing them to add a lot of programmatic overhead to their code.”

All that’s required is that you upload the necessary files to your project folder and include the PhpQuickProfiler.php file in your code. This will then enable the console, memory and file logging. Speed and database tracking require a bit more work, but can be implemented as well.

The interface is encapsulated within PQP, removing the need to insert CSS or Javascript into your code. The PQP file does it all for you.

I’ll definitely be using this in future projects, and also using it to optimise some older projects. Highly recommended for PHP developers.

For more information: PHP Quick Profiler

Demo: PQP Demo

For those of you who are Star Trek fans, you can now preorder Star Trek Season 1 on Blu-ray for only $64.99. That’s a huge 50% off the SRP.

You can also preorder the full Star Trek Blu-ray package (includes Star Trek: The Motion Picture, Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan, Star Trek III: The Search For Spock, Star Trek IV: The Voyage Home, Star Trek V: The Final Frontier, Star Trek VI: The Undiscovered Country, The Captains’ Summit Bonus Disc) which has also been reduced by 43% to $79.99.

Order now while the deal lasts.