VisitorMap uses the existing information that is already saved by ShortStat. It is meant to be a plug-n-play addition that doesn’t require any database or other changes. The only required change is in the file itself to set the Google API Key (free) for the folder you are installing it in to.

This is a quick and dirty release. Some of the data parsing I am doing could probably be done cleaner, but it works for being a late night “for fun” project… at least for now.

The data is provided by hostip.info which is a “Community GEO IP Project” (thanks to Randy for finding it). Basically it looks like they rely on visitors to state where IP’s are located. So to that end, it’s not a comprehensive list. When first testing the script, out of the 50 referers, only 18 had an entry in their database. But this is the only site we could find that was open and free, so if anyone has a better option (that doesn’t cost an arm and a leg… or even a toe) let me know. At the same time, because it is a free, open-source service… this may not be the best option for those with lots of traffic as they aren’t meant to be used for tons of hits.

Version 1.0 includes:

• Uses ShortStat CSS for similar look and feel
• Click on markers for more details (referer,page visited, date/time, browser/os, location)
• Text list of visitors with links to open the marker “balloons”
• Toggle between a small map with the above text links and a bigger map with no link list.

That’s about it… pretty simple as I said. But it works.

Please let me know what you think.

See it in action
Download the code

Thanks go out to Randy Hall at Code Dump for helping me test.

Every time I ran into a new cool feature my jaw would drop a little farther. The fluid zoom, rotate, and angle can be played with for hours. Adding in the other features such as 3D buildings, earthquakes, etc. are even more fun. It’s got a whole section of local businesses that you can turn on to see where they are in whatever city, that hooks into the Google Local database (food, banks, schools, pharmacies, movie rentals, etc). It even has other funky things like Crime Stats, Census data, Postal Code boundries and more… although I didn’t run into any of those that worked in my local area (Utah) so that may be only available in certain places.

It is so much fun I am seriously considering upgrading to the Google Earth Plus to be able to get the cool extra features.

I know that hundreds of people will be writing about this today, but I was so impressed I just had to add my .02. Go download it and have some fun… it’s awesome!

ActionScript is fairly similar to JavaScript, and if you know any programming language you will be able to appreciate the majority of what is going on, just maybe not the fine details. But If you know the poem well enough you may be able to get a good enough kick out of it if you are even slightly techy/geeky.

Found via /.

Jabberwocky text to compare to

I’m not sure how I feel about going to the dark side (Apple that is… really… one mouse button? come on!), as it felt a little weird looking down at the apple logoed cable sticking out of my box. But my hatred of the OS aside, you can’t deny that the iPod is a good product, and will hopefully bring me many hours of enjoyment.

So I’ll try and post every now and then how things are going with my new Apple relationship…. maybe that will get me to post more then once a month.

I’ve now had it for just over a day. First weird thing I noticed while clicking (scrolling) around the menus was the capacity before I did anything with it was 18.6 Gigs. What the heck is on there that takes 1.4 G of space? I can understand a little descrepency in size for whatever OS is on there, and a little for other misc stuff… but 1.4 gigs? Come on… Ok, I’m leaving the above rant just for history sake, but decided to go Google ipod capacity 18.6 while typing this up and found that it kind of was what I thought above… that whole “misc stuff” stuff. Binary verses decimal… yadda yadda yadda… blah blah blah… still sucks.

Anyway… am in the middle of re-ripping all my CD’s to have them at a higher quality (192 instead of 128 or whatever I had before), and to start over in a new folder with all spiffy legal music. Ripping CD’s is quite easy with iTunes… but still boring as heck.

Enough blabbering for now… back to ripping… weeeeeee.

Dislikes so far are:

• Filters don’t work very well. They don’t explain how they work, so there isn’t much “help” to go with it. I tried just experimenting with it to figure out the syntax that is allowable, and found a few things out. But when I do a test search it comes up with X number of messages that match the filter. But when I apply it, only Y messages are listed.
• Labels are nice, but folders have perks too I love being able to assign a given message to 5 labels. But I hate that unless I want to archive a given message, everything shows up in my inbox. So the daily status emails I get from my server that I don’t want to really read right off the bat… are just sitting there staring at me, taking up prime realestate. It would be nice to have both folders AND labels, so I can physically move a message to it’s “main” category, but still be able to find it as associated to other labels

Gotta get back to work, so I’ll make this short. Just wanted to link to a few cool places:
Gmail4Troops.com – Donate your invites to those defending our country. A small but valueable way to say thanks.
Pop goes the GMail – A hack to download your gmail to a pop account.
Gtray (sporatically working link) – A desktop application that sits in your tray and checks for new GMail every X minutes. It uses Internet Explorer as a conduit to do the checking, and can only open IE directly… so as a FireFox user, I just see the bubble popup saying I have a new one and know to go look, instead of going through that bubble to see what’s new. This is a very early program, so hopefully things will get better.

Man this sucks! Leo is reporting that everyone at Tech TV is getting the boot, thanks to their new owner Comcast. I love my Tech TV. I would watch it more if it didn’t bore my poor wife to tears. This will be a major loss, and hope it can be prevented. Needless to say, G4 will not get my viewership if this does go through.

Bad form Comcast… bad form.