Premium Accounts Now Track Up to 500 Pages

If you've been managing your Premium account to stay within the 250 page limit, you can take it easy now. The limit for Premium accounts has been raised from 250 to 500 as of this evening, which should be more than enough for the great majority of sites being tracked. No charge for the upgrade!

I've also got some more servers on order. Those are supposed to arrive later this week and I'll be using them to beef up both the web counters and the member area of the site. I'll also throw a new database server into the web hosting side of things, just to keep things fair. :)

Get Your Daily Stats via Twitter

So, I had some free time today and I figured I'd play around with Net::Twitter, which is a handy little Perl module for use with the Twitter API. I have to say that it's so incredibly easy to use that the Twitter integration was a lot of fun. Rather than test it myself and wait around, I've added the feature to the repository today and it's now available on the live site. It's always fun when stuff works out so well that you can go from an idea to production on the very same day!

The summary tweet is a count of your hits + unique hits from the previous day. It's sent to you via direct message, so it's private and does not appear in your timeline.

Here's what you do to activate this new feature:

• Follow me on Twitter (so that I have permission to send you direct messages)
  
• Log in to the WunderCounter
• Choose Twitter from the Options menu
• Enter your Twitter username and set Send Daily Tweet menu to yes
• Click the send test now link.
• If there is no error and you get a test message from me in your account, you're all set. If you have problems getting going, please get in touch with me via the usual methods

That's it! You'll get the message sometime after midnight CST. Probably within the hour, after all of your daily data has been aggregated. The amount info is obviously limited because of Twitter's format, but I think it could be a handy way of tracking your stats, especially if you're on the go and/or haven't had a moment to log in and check your stats on a given day.

So, let me know what you think. If there's some interest, there are other places Twitter could be used in the application. For instance, getting a Tweet when a certain IP address hits your site might be a worthwhile addition. Another use may be to create a custom schedule of tweets throughout the day when you'd like to be updated on your stats. For example, you could get your summary info sent at 9:00 AM, 5:00 PM and 10:00 PM. Those are just some ideas I've been playing around with, but I'm always open to suggestions, so keep them coming in.

Bug Fixes: Search and Layout

I've just fixed a couple of noteworthy bugs. First off, in some cases, when a user tried to produce custom report results for specific pages, no results would be returned even when there clearly should have been results. This would have affected all searches which can be constrained by "page". For example, if you had searched on traffic by city and decided to view results only from page "x", you may have (incorrectly) gotten no results. There was a problem with the SQL searching on the wrong column for page names, which has now been fixed.

Secondly, those of you who use Internet Explorer would have seen search results in black text displayed on a black background for some reports, such as the hits by city. This is caused by MSIE not recognizing "fff" as shorthand for "ffffff" (which is how "white" is defined in the source of the report). This has now also been fixed. Thanks, Perry, for pointing out both of these issues.

If you come across bugs (or what you think might be bugs), please let me know when you see them. These can be problems with actual data or even just display issues. I develop in Firefox and don't always have the chance to check things out in Internet Explorer, so occasionally display issues can appear which I'm unaware of. Taking the time to let me know allows me to fix it for you as well as any other users who may be seeing the same thing. The faster you report it, the faster I can fix it!

Support Emails Back Online

If you sent an email to support@wundercounter.com over the last little while, it probably bounced back to you with an error message. The contact form at wundercounter.com was working as was the telephone support, but direct emails to the support address were bouncing. The issue was that my oldest web server (a Sun/Cobalt RAQ XTR) died recently and that machine happened to be hosting the help desk. This was the server which originally ran the WunderCounter when I first got into the web hosting business. It lasted for 9 long years and finally, after some fans began to malfunction, it went to its final resting place. Actually, I'm amazed that something with non-stop moving parts lasted the better part of a decade. I'm also amazed that I've been doing this for this long -- it was just supposed to be a hobby to get my mind off my studies while I was in University.

Now, this machine hasn't hosted the WunderCounter itself for a very long time, but it was running some useful software and it wasn't broken, so it didn't need to be fixed. However, now that it truly is broken, I'm in between help desk systems. I hope to have that fixed in a reasonable amount of time. I'm looking at a couple of ticketing systems, Redmine being my favourite right now. It's a really great project management system and it handles ticketing as well. If you're looking for something to help you keep track of projects, clients and bug reports, you may want to have a look at Redmine. It also integrates with many different version control systems, which is perhaps what I like best about it.

Having said all that, if you need support, there are the traditional methods of telephone and the contact form at WunderCounter.com, but the email is working again. I'll add a ticketing system back to the list shortly, but in the meantime don't hesitate to get in touch if you have any questions, input etc.

Do You Have a GPS-Enabled Camera/Phone?

One of the projects I'm working on right now is a web site which is inspired by the Gawker Stalker. This web app will allow users to upload or email photos, which will then be added to a Google map. In the case where users have GPS data embedded into their photos (like a location-aware iPhone), the images will automatically be thumbnailed and added to the map.

The difference between this site and the Gawker Stalker is that:

• you'll be able to upload your own photos
• photos (and sightings without photos) will be mapped in real time (lag will be 1-2 minutes)
• photos and sightings will be tweeted as they are added to the map
• you'll be able to map any location which can be mapped by Google maps, so you're not restricted to Manhattan etc
• if your phone is email-capable, you'll be able to shoot a photo and upload it to the site immediately, giving real time feedback

I'm looking for some beta testers who are willing to help me test out the functionality. We're planning to move to a "live beta" of the site in the next couple of weeks, with a view to going live worldwide later this summer. I'm specifically looking for folks who have camera phones which will embed GPS data into their photos. So, all generations of the iPhone are good. Blackberries may need some tweaking. I'm not too familiar with other phones which may have similar functionality, but if you have one of these phones, please do get in touch with me.

I should add that, for the beta, you won't need to post photos of celebrities in your neighbourhood. This is more about testing the functionality of the site than trying to get any specific content.

How to Get a Discount on Web Hosting

If you're looking for a new web hosting account or want to switch from a different hosting provider, you may be eligible for a WunderSolutions discount. To see if you are eligible for a discount, log in to your WunderCounter account and choose "discounts" from the "options" menu. If you find a discount code displayed on this page, you may use it to sign up for one new web hosting account @ http://www.wundersolutions.com If you have any questions or unsure whether you qualify for a discount, please get in touch with me using the contact form.

Can I use the WunderCounter to Track Email?

The short answer is Yes (and No). If you want to track who and how many people read your emails, you can certainly do this with the WunderCounter. I'd recommend the Myspace style tracker, but any of the HTML-only trackers should work. There are a few things to keep in mind:

1. You need to be sending HTML email in order to embed the counter image
2. Not everyone reads HTML email -- some people have their mail readers display text only
3. Some people read HTML email, but have images disabled by default

So, you can use the WunderCounter, but you won't get 100% tracking. You'll get a good chunk of it, but there will always be some folks who read the email without you knowing it. It works that way with any email tracking product.

Now, having said all of that, let me offer a few words of advice:

1. Tracking email reads on a commercial email blast is fine and probably even expected
2. Tracking email reads on personal email is not cool and more than a little creepy

Use your best judgment when deciding whether or not to track email reads. If someone is stalking you and you want to trick them into giving up some info on themselves, by all means, track their email. I mean, if there's criminal activity involved, you decide if it's appropriate. Other than that, I think there's an expectation of privacy that comes with email that doesn't apply to web surfing. People expect to be tracked online, but they don't expect to be tracked when viewing non-commercial email.

I only bring up the stalking because, over the years, I've been surprised at how many people use the WunderCounter to keep tabs on people who they feel have been stalking them (online or otherwise). Hey, it happens, and it's a legitimate use for the WunderCounter. The vast majority of users aren't in this situation, but it's certainly a part of the demographic.

So, yes and no is the clear and unequivocal response to the question. :)