When I did the covered bridge and Sidney Lanier bridge websites for work I looked around for a free counter that would tell me how many people were visiting. I went through a couple of iterations before I found one I really liked called Site Meter. Not only does it count the hits without counting the same visitors repeatedly while they are on one visit, but it tells you what browser they are using, the operating system, what link they clicked to get to the site, the time zone, and their internet provider. Although I never implemented it on DOT’s web sites the intended use of Site Meter is for you to put the counter on every page. Then they can count how many pages on your site each visitor visted as well as which page they are entering on and which they are leaving on.
Category: Web
Jump the Shark
I was writing a blog entry today about The Flintstones and needed to do some fact-checking and found a web site about TV shows called Jump the Shark. The purpose of the site is to let people share their opinion on when a TV show peaked (or really hit bottom). The title is based on when Fonzi jumped the sharks on Happy Days (wearing his leather jacket). Some people say shows never jumped the shark, but opinions differ. One funny aspect is that brand new shows quickly get entries. It’s always good to the be so cool that you realize a show is tired before anyone else so people start off pretty early.
One funny observation on Gilligan’s Island (which was only on for 3 years) was that the professor should have confessed that he could have gotten them off the island on the first day but a geek like him would never have had a chance with women like Ginger and Mary Ann back on the mainland.
Anyway, it’s funny to read people remembering the shows although some of it is not for kids.
Atlanta Traffic Website
It’s not often there are any perks to working at DOT, but they are letting us test a new traffic website. It will be available to the public but right now it is at a temporary address:
It allows you to customize your view of traffic and add pictures from your favorite traffic cameras, show text from your favorite overhead message signs, and see what the average speed and travel times along interstates. It’s pretty neat. You set up an account and it remembers your settings just like My Yahoo does with news and stocks.
Eventually the current page will be upgraded to the existing site:
Helping people
Yeah, it’s not going to Jamaica or anything, but I still like to help people. So on ipodlounge a guy posted a question:
>>I know that this has been covered numerous times, but I have yet to see a post about the Tivoli radio. I would like to play my iPod thru my Tivoli radio, it has a 1/8 (mini plug) hole in the back labeled MIX IN. would I need a line with a 1/8 jack on both ends’
Thanx for the help.<>Yes<>Thanx for the help, I’m sorry I forgot to mention I have the Tivoli RadioCombo, nontheless, I bought a line at Radio Shack with an 1/8 jack on both ends for $4.99 and am enjoying the iPod thru the Tivoli as we speak.Thanx again and what a great place come for questions.<<
Blogs
One of my AvantGo subscriptions is the NY Times technology page. I usually sync up on Sunday nights so I get some stuff from their Sunday journal (like Parade). This week they had an article about web logs (or online journals) and how high school kids use them. You can read the original but I’ll post the rest later.
Highlights:
“Ninety percent of those with blogs are between 13 and 29 years old; a full 51 percent are between 13 and 19”.
After the writer posts a comment to one kid’s journal a kid writes a new entry titled “i like how older people have grammar online”
The people who write them like expressing themselves publicly, but live in fear that someone they know will find out too much. At least one person asked that their name not be used so their parents wouldn’t find out about their blog, even though it’s available to everyone in the world (solution: geeky dad creates Movable Type site so that his kids can have their own web logs).
There are many different sites out there. The article starts with one called Blurty, then LiveJournal, and finally Xanga. The writer asks some high school girls (randomly I guess) if they have LiveJournals. “No” one said “we have Xangas.”
That’s about it. One thing I thought of while I was reading the article was that what is really needed is editors. There are tons of blogs out there and some deserve attention, but you have to have some way of going through all of it. Not randomly, probably not even by popularity since you’ll just get the most incendiary or lurid content that way. There doesn’t seem to be any lack of source material, it just needs to be culled.
Article text follows . . .