4 BILLION maps served…[now 5B!] September 1, 2008

[UPDATE: by April 2009 this is now > 5 billion; see newer posting]

Since we began a few years back, we have served up well over 4,000,000,000 (4 billion) maps. In other words, counting every dot on every user thumbnail map that has even been displayed, we have displayed over four billion of them, because a dot only appears when the corresponding thumbnail map has been shown to visitors. In fact the number is higher than this, because repeat visits from the same IP address to the same site within a single day only count as one dot, and hence this is considered just one thumbnail map display, even if repeat visits result in multiple displays by our server. Indeed, because we stopped counting repeat visits some time ago, our ‘rate of growth’ appears diminished in recent months, but this is actually an artifact of this more cautious (and fair) counting method!

We are thrilled by this, and want to thank our loyal users yet again. Some geographical hit counter map widgets may look nicer, or zoom in further, or show all kinds of detailed information about visitors (that the visitors may wish they had not revealed!), but only ClustrMaps provides the unique combination of

• blazing speed (all map images are pre-stored and pre-computed by us
• complete visitor privacy and anonymity (no cookies, no spyware, no profiling) [UPDATE: see posting re cookies/privacy
• public bragging rights (visitor details are private, but the overview of dots is public)
• massive scalability (we can show millions of dots: others may show only 100 or 1000 recent ones)
• unbelievable customer support, even for free users (just read the testimonials)
• best ‘gestalt’ view: ‘impossibly many dots in an impossibly small space, impossibly fast’… and all without resorting to tricks such as ‘one dot per country’ or ‘superficial clusters’

Enjoy your ClustrMaps, and get in touch if you ever want to discuss your maps.

Cамый лучший виджет (widget) карты счетчика ударов для потребителей LiveJournal August 28, 2008

Can you do better, or improve this translation of instructions for the best hit counter map widget for users of LiveJournal? Email us your translation (complete HTML of the section linked here) and we will give you a free upgrade to ClustrMaps+ (better maps, no ads).

Translation by Yahoo! Babelfish

БЫСТРАЯ СВОДКА (детали ниже):

• скопируйте `ClustrMaps HTML обеспеченное нами;
• logon к вашему учету LiveJournal;
• пойдите вести дневник… Подгоняйте тему журнала… Покажите… Представление… Дополнительные варианты…
• считайте последний вход обозначено `если вы имеете внешний счетчик, то паутины, вами смогите вписать HTML для его затир here’, `ClustrMaps HTML в большой текстовый участок, тогда за исключением

See the complete Russian-language instructions for ClustrMaps on LiveJournal, including email instructions for receiving your free upgrade.

Best Hit Counter Map Widget for WordPress, Windows Live Spaces (Live.com), Flickr, LiveJournal, Last.FM August 23, 2008

We recently posted about better instructions for deploying our ClustrMaps geographical hit counter map widget on Blogger (using Google Gadgets). Now, we’re pleased to mention that we have also provided much better screen snaphots and instructions for deploying ClustrMaps on a number of our other popular destinations. In particular, check out our instructions for WordPress, Live.com (Windows Live Spaces), Flickr, LiveJournal, and Last.FM. Here’s just one screen snapshot example, below… the others are listed on the links in the previous sentence, and also on the specific pages you’ll find listed on our HTML Setup page. Enjoy the world’s most scalable, compact, and speedy public-visible hit counter map widget!

Gujarat ClustrMaps Users: નકશામાં જોયું તો જોયું જાણે ન કશામાં August 19, 2008

Wow, Manish Mistry writes the following, links to multiple Gujarat-language ClustrMaps user sites, and adds a cool graphic shown below (hmmm… let’s hope it’s flattering – my online translation tools don’t really handle this one):

ક્લ્સ્ટર મૅપ્સ કોઈ સાઈટ આ ગોળ દુનિયાના કયા ખૂણે વધુ વંચાય છે તેનો “ચિતાર” આપતી સરસ સેવા છે. (એક આડવાત, વૅબ 2.0 ના જમાનાની ડોમેઈન નામ પાડતી નવી ફઈઓ યાહૂ ના ફ્લિકર પાસેથી જોડણીમાં નો e કાઢી નાંખતાં શિખી છે! લાંબું લિસ્ટ તો ListR પરની આ પોસ્ટ તથા પ્રતિભાવો પર મળશે).

ઘણા ગુજરાતી બ્લૉગ પર આ નાનકડો મૅપ ઘણું બધું કહી જાય છે. પણ પછી એક વિચાર આવ્યો કે આ મૅપ્સ જે તે સાઈટની લોકપ્રિયતા ઉપરાંત એ પણ કહે છે કે આખી દુનિયામાં ગુજરાતીઓ ક્યાં ક્યાં છવાયેલાં છે! (પૂર્વધારણાઃ ગુજરાતી બ્લૉગ વાંચનારા ગુજરાતીઓ જ હૉય છે.) તો જુઓ કેટલાંક બ્લૉગ પરથી…

Manish then embeds a cool MagToo widget… it’s Flash, and it’s better to see it embedded in his own site to get the effect, so I’ve merely copied a static screen grab which itself links to his site:

Manish Mistry’s embedded MagToo Flash widget showing Gujarat ClustrMaps users and their readerships.

Best Hit Counter Map Widget for Blogger using Google Gadgets August 16, 2008

[UPDATE: If you have landed at this page from an external search, you may not know that ClustrMaps is a very compact, fast, scalable, and no-frills hit counter that shows a tiny map with the locations of ALL visitors to your site, without them having to click on anything. Full details are on our main site at www.clustrmaps.com. This posting is about how we’ve made it even simpler to add our little widget or gadget to your blog].

Blogger has recently simplified the ability to ad widgets (or gadgets as they call them) to blog sites with blogspot.com addresses. We have accordingly updated our instructions for adding ClustrMaps to Blogger, including a detailed series of screen snapshots like this:

We love having so many Blogger/Blogspot users… enjoy the setup instructions and the widget/gadget! We’re always happy to help out if you need to drop us a line or leave a comment (message box will appear below after clicking).

SiteMeter bug hurts us all, so we wish them speedy recovery August 2, 2008

[UPDATE: SiteMeter’s own blog at weblog.sitemeter.com says “We corrected a compatibility issue with our SiteMeter tracking code and IE7 and IE6 browsers that started last night.” So everything mentioned below now appears solved: Excellent news!]

As widely reported on Techmeme, The Reference Frame, The Inquisitr, Mashable, and elsewhere, a nasty interaction between Internet Explorer and a Javascript coding “anomaly” caused thousands of sites using Sitemeter’s web analytics tools to display “Operation aborted” error messages. As The Inquisitr states:

the problem happens when anybody using Internet Explorer tries to open any sites with the Site Meter code present, and thousands of websites/blogs have been shut off from IE users, including PerezHilton.com and blogs in the Gawker Media stable

We commented on a few of the tech blogs reporting the problem that “as a 3rd party analytics provider, we feel SiteMeter’s pain… blackouts/blockages like this are no fun for anyone… here’s wishing everyone a speedy recovery from this blip… outages/blockages like this are bad for all of us in the analytics/geolocation business, so it’s good for everyone to get this resolved soon, to restore user confidence!”

Although we are in a slightly different niche from Sitemeter (we offer rapid gestalt geographical overviews of thousands or millions of visitors on a public map with some statistics, whereas Sitemeter offers detailed statistics with private maps), we of course overlap and compete to some extent! Nevertheless, we feel strongly that outages like this are bad for all 3rd-party-analytics and widget-providers: in that sense, we’re all “on the same side”, and that is why it is in our interests for SiteMeter to recover quickly from this difficulty. Future users of their widgets, our widgets, and those of other providers, need to feel confident that they are immune from outages and bugs like this. Sure, bugs happen, but this is the very reason that many widget providers, including both ClustrMaps and SiteMeter, also offer a ‘plain vanilla’ HTML option: for ClustrMaps this is typically ‘option [B]’ when you sign in to your Admin page or use the rapid-registration ‘Create yours’ shown at the top of any of our big map pages. For this option, ClustrMaps deliberately provides just a simple jpg image wrapped in a simple link: no javascript, no cookies, no spyware, no tricks.

Change your own email (now) and URL (soon) June 29, 2008

Users are often emailing us to change their registered email address or URL. We’re happy to announce that you can now change your own email address, and will shortly be able to change your own URL. The (only) problem with URL changing has been related to the ability to ‘preserve’ or carry over your existing red dots and statistics, and once we integrate this with our overnight update cycles it will be ready for release.

In the meantime, if you want to change your registered email address, you can do this by going to your personal ‘Admin’ page, logging in as usual (with your URL and password), and clicking on the ‘Change personal details‘ button, as highlighted below:

At this point you will be prompted for the email address you wish to change to, and you must (re)enter your existing password for confirmation.