Rambling from Ogden Point

Cards From Ogden Point
is a free E-Card (Posty) service operated by Ron McLean from his home near Ogden Point in Victoria, British Columbia, Canada
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Location: Victoria, British Columbia, Canada

I'm happily retired living on Canada's West Coast. The system says I'm a Cancer -- I'm a Gemini.

Wednesday, April 05, 2006

September 2005 News

September 2005
On September 14 a visitor from an ISP based in Warren Pennsylvania viewed 689 pages on Cards From Ogden Point. This is a site record for a single visit according to my page counters.
On September 28 and 29 a visitor from California viewed a total of 873 pages in two visits -- 353 the night of the 28th and 520 more the morning of the 29th.
Since the Site Meter Counter service added the map of visitor locations to their service that I described last month, I also discovered www.clustrmaps.com and www.gvisit.com both of whom offer visitor maps.
I created a page with links to various visitor map pages.
Click here for the Visitor Map List.
Seeing how the maps interact with visitors has been a good learning experience.
The map location accuracy depends on the accuracy of the IP locator data base used by each of the map services. The three services used for these pages give different information about some visitors which means they must use different geolocation services. Visitors from large ISP's that operate in several cities/areas may indicate that the visit is from the wrong location. Often that will be the location where the ISP is registered, and in some cases it may be where the "signal" left the ISP's internal equipment and entered the open internet. For example I have shown up on Site Meter as if visiting from Vancouver and Kelowna as well as the correct location of Victoria on different visits even though I have not moved and my connection is at a fixed IP address (all locations did correctly identify Telus as the ISP - Telus is the primary telephone service provider for British Columbia and Alberta and offers internet services all across both provinces).
If you click the newsletter maps below after visiting this page your location should show up on the map as one of the latest visitors depending on whether there is a second (or more) visitors on the page at one time.
You can click here for another geolocation service to see where it places you on their map.
The flag and the map on the lower half of the page show where that system "thinks" you are and it gives you the option of correcting that information if it is not accurate.
You can also do a connection speed test while you visit that page.
ClustrMaps offer a basic map that tracks visitors with different sizes of dots for the number of visitors from a particular area on the map. The service provides no other information about the visitors. It has no way of "turning off" its counter for my address so the biggest cluster dot will likely always be over Victoria BC because the system counts every visit I make to the site including previews as I edit the pages. The "cluster" dot that covers Victoria appears to also include Vancouver and the Lower Mainland so it is a very coarse measurement. The map updates once daily at about 4am GMT which makes it 8pm here in Victoria while both other services are "live" and are constantly updated.
Their service is driven by the thumbnail map on the pages that are counted.
Click here for a map of visitors to Cards From Ogden Point from ClusterMaps.com
Gvisit uses Google Maps and the visitor map is interactive, allowing the viewer to zoom the map for closer looks and more information. I was sufficiently impressed with the service that I sent them a donation to expand from their basic service. The transaction (from the time I decided to send the donation until the conversion was complete) took about 16 hours which I think is amazing service from someone 3 time zones away on the other side of the continent. Excellent service and an excellent product in my opinion. The internet certainly has made the world a smaller place.
I built a page with a frame to house their map and their visitor lists on one page.
Click here for a map of the most recent visitors to Cards From Ogden Point using Gvisit and Google Maps.
Click here for a map of the most recent visitors to Newsletter From Ogden Point using Gvisit and Google Maps.
Click here for a map of visitors to my PhotoServer.
Click here for a map of visitors to Hug From Ogden Point.
Click here for a map of visitors to www.ogdenpoint.ca.
Click here for a map of visitors to www.ronmclean.bc.ca.
The map provided by the Site Meter counter shows up to the last 100 locations from which the site was visited. You can see the individual visitors by placing your mouse over the dots on the map. The dots are color coded to show the most recent visitors.
The map is quite good and there are lots of options on the page for finding more information about the visitors as the site you are viewing is the home page for the counter itself. You can select the number of visitors and their home continents from the links on the page. You can view lots of other information about the last 100 visitors from other links on the page.
Click here for a map showing the locations of the 100 most recent visitors to Cards From Ogden Point from Site Meter
Click here for a map showing the locations of the 100 most recent visitors to News From Ogden Point from Site Meter
Click here for a map showing the locations of the 100 most recent visitors to www.ogdenpoint.ca from Site Meter
Click here for a map showing the locations of the 100 most recent visitors to www.ronmclean.bc.ca from Site Meter
Click here for a map showing the locations of the 100 most recent visitors to my PhotoServer from Site Meter
In addition to learning about and installing the visitor map systems, I have been experimenting with and learning about VOIP (Voice over Internet Protocol) telephone service. (You know -- once a telecom tech always a telecom tech??!! lol) So far I've found the best performance on Skype and the best conversation quality on Gizmo.
I think the technology has the potential to revolutionize telephony as it is/was known -- specially long distance services. With the possibility from several providers of getting a telephone for my home in Victoria that behaves like I'm in Winnipeg, Ottawa, or Halifax -- or in Europe somewhere -- the traditional notions we have about long distance telephone service have to change, and the traditional telephone service providers have to do something to make their service attractive and competitive.
The service may never replace the actual wired telephone as the household's primary communication device. VOIP by its nature doesn't lend itself to services such as 911 calling easily. (Which police/fire department or which ambulance does it dispatch?) It also depends on system power for the device and/or computer that make it operate so you couldn't do things like report a power outage. The "on line" services such as Skype or Gizmo don't care if you are calling next door or across the country, their charges are the same (their call in / call out charges are per minute). The "phone replacement" services such as Vonage and Primus charge flat rates for monthly access and various services which operate like wired telephones except that you can get your "virtual wired telephone" to appear to be in any location in which they offer service. I could get a telephone connection here in Victoria that behaves like it is a wired telephone in Winnipeg (including my old telephone number if it is still available).
The owners of E-Bay recently bought Skype for several billion dollars so it remains to be seen what will happen from that.
(I wonder if they found it listed on E-Bay and used Pay Pal for the transaction? lol)
More about my foray into VOIP will follow I'm sure.

1 Comments:

Blogger ClustrMaps Team said...

Hi... we're pleased to see that you've been experimenting with ClustrMaps, and indeed numerous other related service - such thoughtful comparisons are important and you've done a great service to the user community!

We just wanted to mention that we too are users of numerous related services, and they all have different 'overlapping' philosophies and approaches.

Our intention was to emphasise speed, scaleability, and compactness, by providing a lot of information in a tiny thumbnail map (intended to be viewed at a glance by all page visitors, right 'up front' on the main page you place it), along with long-term storage that displayed *ALL* visitors to your site, and very quickly.

Because we enjoyed your comparison and posting, we've also upgraded you to a free ClustrMaps+ account, so that you can experiment with the 'zoom to continent' feature and see what you think - also you'll get a permanent archive of old maps that way.

Regarding the artifact of your own IP causing too big a blog, we are going to add a 'block this IP number/range' feature to upcoming versions, so stay tuned!!

We, too, pride ourselves on speedy customer services, so don't hesitate to get in touch if you have any questions, comments, or suggestions for improvements to the service.

All the best, and thanks again for using ClustrMaps!

-C.J. on behalf of the ClustrMaps Team

12:22 AM  

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