Woopra Is Great, Except For One Small Thing

Stat tracking service Woopra is getting a lot of positive buzz at the moment. The Lebanon based startup offers live stat tracking via a cross platform desktop app, and also supports WordPress and vBulletin sites via plugin (other sites can be coded in).

I signed up a week or two back and have been using it ever since. It’s great and even addictive. The ability to see who is visiting your site (it sometimes even shows people’s names…I don’t know how but it does), where they came in from, what they are reading, all in real time is super sweet for a website owner. The package also offers a strong range of site statistics that are easy to access. I found the video above on YouTube that shows some of the features. Woopra is crack for a stats junkie, however, there is one small thing…well, perhaps one very large thing. It requires Java 6 to run on a Mac.

Now updating a Mac to run Java 6 is really simple, but it’s the problems running Java 6 causes to other programs that makes this really painful. Just about any other existing program that runs on Java I have installed won’t run on Java 6. Users can go into “Java Preferences” and switch back, but the question then becomes: it is worth while having to switch back and forward just to run Woopra?

Admittedly I’m still running Woopra, but when you know something is bad for you, you have to give it up, and I’m tired of getting caught by apps that won’t run due to the weird decision to build Woopra on Java 6. I probably need some Woopra patches and gum to ween me off, but I’m going to quit soon…honest….