After the recent generally positive reception for the juke tuned-in map we've been experimenting further with the Google Maps thing. The objective is to provide a quick visual of from where everyone is coming at any point in time, and hopefully expand weenie's global reach and inclusive nature.
Here's a prototype of a composite map that basically shows everybody connected to the site, either reading the forum, checking out the wiki, listening to the juke or all of the above. There's an element of 'if it looks like a nail every tool looks like a hammer' in this we do realize but it's pretty good fun nonetheless so bear with us.
Yep we resolve location from the ip address so it may not be totally accurate but thats all we have... but for the purposes of this app all we really need is the approx area
I checked last night and it was giving my location as that of the DSLAM router (Everett, WA) that handles my service, not my physical location, which makes sense. Some websites that auto-detect give the option of entering the actual physical location (which it remembers), something that also makes sense if you're looking to check if a local retailer has an item in stock, etc. before you head out. But in our case, the extra step is just extra work for our intrepid IT masters. They do enough already! So I'll sign off with a big THANK YOU to them all!
I'll put a disclaimer on there somewhere, to the effect that "although it may appear some weenies live in Dagenham or Glasgow this is clearly an absurd proposition and we deeply regret any distress, or decline in Dagenham property values, this may have caused"
The lonesome grey search bot somewhere in eastern China was a nice touch too!
Cheers
Pan
Cheers Pan. Yep, we get indexed daily by what we classify as 'good' bots, those that keep us high up the search rankings for CB topics, particularly on Google. In addition to Google bots the other search engines we see are China's Sosospider & Baidu, France's Exabot, US's Bing & Yahoo, and a few others.
We also get hit by a literally hundreds of spambots every day. These are hacked computers that are members of 'botnets'. The people who own the machines don't even know they're hacked in 99.9% of the cases. We started tracking their stats closely in December due to the bandwidth issues they were creating and now block the worst of them at the front door. It's an ever-changing picture but we have good tracking tools in place and can shift our blocks pretty quickly. The worst of them are from China, Ukraine, Russia and also the US
So I definitely recommend installing antivirus software and keeping it up-to-date if you don't want to become part of the zombie botnet army. If the worst does happen though and you need any help getting 'unhacked' let us know, we will be glad to assist. Ping us on Facebook if you ever see this when you try to access the site: http://weeniecampbell.com/403.shtml
« Last Edit: January 31, 2013, 04:13:09 PM by Rivers »