Jeff Hester

Poking around the intersection of KM and Social Media

Archives for September 2005

ClustrMaps: Site Traffic with a Geo-Twist

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Most blogs and websites employ some method to track how many visitors they get. Usually those stats include information like where they came from (the referring link), if they used search terms via Google or another search engine, and their approximate geographic location. I recently ran across a new service being called ClustrMaps that adds a neat visual twist to that data.

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ClustrMaps creates a little thumbnail image that shows the relative geographic position of each visitor to your site. You’ll find the thumbnail in the column next to this article. Larger red dots indicate a greater number of unique visitors from that location.

In my own case, I found it interesting that my blog apparently has no interest to anyone on the African continent. Maybe it’s time to add a post about the South African jazz scene?

ClustrMaps provides a slick way of seeing where your readers are coming from, and the basic service is free. Check it out.

Wikipedia’s Evil Twin

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Wikipedia is a tremendous resource and a pretty cool way for people to collaborate on documentation. In just a couple years, it’s grown to become one of the largest encyclopedias available, with over 30 million entries and arguable the most up-to-date information of any encyclopedic resource.

One of the attractions of Wikipedia is that it’s built on a free, open-source solution: Wikimedia. It makes it easy for any group to create their own repository of knowledge and information — even mis-information.

Let me introduce you to Wikipedia’s evil twin: The Uncyclopedia. Think of it as The Onion meets a Wiki. Rather than informing, the Uncyclopedia’s goal is to amuse and annoy. Consider a few Uncyclopedia entries, such as France (“The French are also known to run in terror at the slightest hint of danger and surrender instantly to any threat…”); New Orleans (“Although the American Emperor has told everyone that New New Orleans will be even better and bigger than it was before, there are serious doubts as the Americans have proven they are pretty terrible at rebuilding cities that rely on oil…”); or knowledge (“A rare and tragic disease, not recognized as such by the many trash collectors claiming to be professors. Knowledge is 100% fatal, with recent studies showing 4 1/2 out of 7 people died when they were imbued with it…”).

Now you know why I’m in a handbasket.

Looters don’t like Country-Western

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As reported by the Associated Press –

“They took everything — all the electronics, the food, the bikes,” said John Stonaker, a Wal-Mart security officer. “People left their old clothes on the floor when they took new ones. The only thing left are the country-and-western CDs. You can still get a Shania Twain album.”

At least looters had the good taste to avoid crappy music.

Telephone Pictionary

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I subscribe to probably too many things. On the upside, I’ve gotten very good at scanning for juicy morsels. Today’s morsel comes from Mark Hurst’s Good Experience newsletter, and it looks like fun. It’s called Telephone Pictionary — a cross between Pictionary and the old school-room game “telephone.” A very simple concept that works well with 5-7 people. There is no winner or loser — it’s just for laughs.

Read the instructions (be sure to check out the examples), then give it a try and let me know how it goes!

And cheers to co-worker Tara for tipping me off to Good Experience (quite some time ago).

Live from New Orleans

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My heart goes out to the people of New Orleans and the other areas ravaged by hurricane Katrina. Today I learned about a blog being maintained by someone currently living in a high-rise in downtown New Orleans. They work downtown at a data-center, and have power generators, water, and obviously an internet connection. It’s a sobering eyewitness view of life in the aftermath of Katrina. Visit the Survival of New Orleans blog.

Geotags, FlickrFly and Google Earth

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Technology really is pretty cool.

I’ve extolled the virtues of Flickr and Google Earth before, but now a guy by the name of Rob Roy has linked the two together with FlickrFly. FlickrFly adds a nifty little “Fly to this location” link to your properly geotagged photo. Clicking the link (assuming you’ve installed Google Earth), will take you around the globe and zoom you in on that spot on the big blue ball we live on.

If you’d like to check it out, grab a free copy of Google Earth and click one of the “Fly to…” links to see Sacre Coeur, Place Vendome, Thousand Island Lake in the Minarets (really cool with terrain turned on), or the Golden Gate bridge.

Adding Geotags
If you use Flickr (and why shouldn’t you… it’s free!), it’s now even easier to add geotags to your photos. There’s a new Greasemonkey script for Firefox called GMiF that puts the power of Google Maps right into Flickr. Makes it really, really easy to point-and-click to tag your photos with the correct latitude and longitude information.

For more on geotagging, check out the Geotagging Flickr group.