Communique Massive

Ahoy all,

I recently decided to add a bit more commentary to the blog, hoping good discussions will arise. This means, friends, that I encourage you to post topics/questions/etc. to throw around. If it goes well I'll add a small forum to the future site (mid-June).

For a few different reasons, I wanted address questions I've received regarding the information collected by the LivPhotSoc hit counter. It's a cool 'trafficscope', but I cannot track a specific individual's visitation habits. I can see the name of the town a visitor's ISP is located in, but am in no way able to match up IP addresses with specific visitors. I can also see that people from Norway, Malaysia, Poland, Japan, Canada and Mongolia (and a lot more) are checking out our blog - very cool. I like being able to see that since December our visitor count has risen by 200+ and page views by 900+. I don't take it any farther than that, though, and couldn't even if I wanted to - it's a free, relatively limited service.

BUT, some rather interesting tracks can be left behind in the site stats - some good, some bad. On the good side, I know there's someone in/near McKinnon, WY, that seems to like the our photo world and frequents it often...even though I don't know anyone from this town in my neighboring state, do any of you? I know, my asking as much might appear strange to this person, but I greatly appreciate their patronage and smile each time I see they've returned. Also, there are some folks in Norway that have spent more time on the blog than anyone else, members included, which I think is awesome. Many thanks to them as well, Norway fascinated me when I spent time there.

On the bad side, however, are things such as my discovering a second occurrence of code theft from our blog. When I discovered it the first time I felt it was someone simply trying to learn how to build a CSS layout - 'View / Source' is a great tool when things are new or tricky. Interestingly, this first one has identical links to those found on this site (Jay's site, Ninja Tune, Kung Fu Cinema), plus the LivPhotSoc hit counter at the bottom of their page. The second site dropped the links, but incorporates the hit counter again. I left them a friendly comment suggesting that they remove the counter from their site(s) or I'll report them to Blogger.com. Fun stuff.

So, I hope these examples provide resolution to 'tracking' concerns, as well as show insight into how the hit counter helps protect LivPhotSoc in certain ways. I'm working hard to produce what will be an 'image-protected' environment for us to post in - everything on this site is both copyrighted and intellectual property. But for now I'm enjoying watching the good numbers grow and attempting to curb the malicious ones.

Thanks for reading, feedback encouraged.

~~CR

p.s. - here's a very wide shot to accompany a very long post. this is the new PFL compound, from N to S, via the E. be sure to expand the photo when it opens in the next page...it's better bigger.

Comments

  1. This is what Cody posted to the Mongolian folk.

    "WHY HAVE YOU STOLEN CODE FROM MY BLOG? YOU HAVE A COUNTER AT THE BOTTOM OF YOUR PAGE THAT DOES NOT BELONG TO YOU. THOSE HITS REPRESENT MY SITE. HAVE YOU EVER HEARD OF ASKING FOR ASSISTANCE VERSUS STEALING WHAT IS NOT YOURS? FEEL FREE TO CONTACT ME, OR PLEASE REMOVE MY INFORMATION FROM YOUR BLOG.
    IF YOU CHOOSE NEITHER, I WILL REPORT YOU TO GOOGLE."

    It's interesting how they've taken the hit counter and never refreshed or got an account on their own. I don't feel that sharing web code is that big a deal, but they should start their own stats. Having the stats of the LIPS blog on their site just conveys the wrong information.

    J

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  2. It only appears as though they haven't "refreshed" the counter, as I contacted the administrator for SiteMeter and had him change the code for our counter so visits to their sites don't skew the hit results for LivPhotSoc. The number on their site will never change, which should clue their visitors in to the false front it assumes.

    I, too, agree that sharing code is ok, but it needs to be generic and universal, not specific, plagiarized language that is misrepresentative. As a side note, the ALL CAPS and more abrasive language of my comment, which Jay copied above, appeared only after my previous contact attempts were ignored. In a sense, I've also 'spammed' several comment fields of various posts on their sites. I commented to them previously, so I'm not sure what their intent is - there's a chance they simply don't know English and discarded my requests. Granted, there are many, much more worse things they could have done, but it's still inappropriate for them to link the counter, specifically. After the changes made through SiteMeter, though, I'm not too worried about it.

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  3. Hey Code man, That's way cool. Is this stitched or a special rotation camera of sorts?? Either way, I like!

    I just noticed that you caught Heather driving through looking a the place. It's the green Acura by the building. Make sure you point it out to her. You spy.

    Thanks for the post, I don't have a comment at the moment. But maybe photos again soon.

    Larry

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  4. I showed Heather and we shared a good laugh...she told me she was showing Mike how much of a hotrod the car is. :-)

    The panorama is 8 shots I worked on and stitched together in Photoshop. I actually discovered an awesome new trick in doing this proceedure that really helps to minimize variations in color along photo edges. I'll show you sometime if we get the chance - fun and quick.

    Thanks, Lar.

    CR

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  5. You should take down those nasty links before other people click on them. They suck!

    Haxorz.

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  6. BTW, Nice panaorama! Do more man!

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