Peter pointed out in a comment on the post “Who are you?” that Michael Green has scooped me with the whole google map of visitors idea.
He stumbled across gVisit, which does basically the same thing that I was trying to do with jVisitors, but does it 1) somewhere else and 2) in a way that works.
I’m still going to follow through with the alterations to the jVisitors plugin, I think, because it’s a good way to learn how to use the Google Maps API, and because there’s far more information available than what the gvisit’s site presents (time of visit, return/new, and so on).
I’d say this was a case of great minds thinking alike, except that Michael Green is way smarter than me. It’s still cool, though.
Even if there are a few little…oopsies:
August 19th, 2005 at 9:29 am
it’s that alternative texas, ya know..i think the bugs are from the IP tracking, seems to happen with all the programs i’ve seen. my bet: mass proliferation of IP-masking technology in ~1 month or less.
August 19th, 2005 at 10:09 am
Well, there’s a problem with that. The client has to send their IP to the server, or else the server can’t respond. You can use a proxy server, but in order for someone to host a proxy, they need to provide the bandwidth, inbound and outbound, to take any request, forward it to the destination, recieve the reply, and forward it back to the client. THat’s a whole lot of bandwidth for anything on a mass scale.
The inaccuracy of IP geocoding is probably going to be fixed first, I think. When an ISP/company/individual purchases a netblock, they don’t need to register a location (as you do for a domain name, for example). But the various databases out there are becoming more accurate by the day, as people correct them. (IE, my home IP address originally showed that it was in Norfolk, VA. Since the entire netblock is assigned via DHCP to RCN cable modem customers in Somerville, MA, I just submitted a correction for that subnet.)
August 19th, 2005 at 2:07 pm
yeah..this is the point at which my head starts buzzing.
August 19th, 2005 at 2:13 pm
Well, if you’d stop drinking before noon, that wouldn’t happen, now would it. Silly….