For some time now I’ve watched my blog’s statistics. I’ve used Webalizer and AW Stats. I’ve followed the visitor list closely (mostly to deal with defacer diaper kiddies). And a little over a week ago, giving serious consideration to adding custom banner ads, I decided to try StatCounter to get a better handle on my blog’s traffic. This is what I’ve learned:

Now what’s nice about StatCounter is that afaik it reads only real page views; search bots might visit, but they don’t count. What’s not nice about StatCounter is that (again) afaik, it doesn’t count feeds. Considering that I see lots of feeds in my stats – more than regular page visits – I’m guessing that AW Stats is probably a better gauge of how many people read the content I’m generating.

Add to this my recent findings regarding sites like Technorati. For no reason I can explain, my blog went unnoticed for the better part of a year. And I’m not the only one who has noticed this happening to their blogs. In addition, I stumbled upon something interesting regarding Technorati. If you are discussing a book for example, but don’t mention the title in the headline or in the first paragraph (or some set number of words perhaps), even if your entry has been registered/pinged, a search for that book may not yield the entry. Go back and update the post by moving the title to the first paragraph, and it will miraculously appear. Huh?

What a mess. Not just from the standpoint of someone attempting to gauge interest in the content they generate, but also from the standpoint of someone expecting to have good information supplied to them via a feed. Well, don’t count on it.

Why bring this up? Because I’ve just read something on Wired, “Island Wisdom, Coded in Java” (Link), that gets to the heart of why I don’t use a feed. It’s related to why I don’t think shopping centers and brick-and-mortar stores will vanish in the sea of e-commerce: there is both joy and learning in discovery. Sometimes I find an interesting article where I’d never think to look. Sometimes I happen to read something I’d considered unrelated to my interests and discover previously hidden relationships. Having information fed intravenously is no replacement for searching and discovery.

For this reason I’m considering cutting the feed from this blog. I write this mostly for my own enjoyment; certainly not because of the abundance of conversation here (which is admittedly stifled by the deluge of blogspam on any entry older than a few days) and obviously not from ad revenue. Plus, if I were to add banners pitching the niche products of microbrands, most of the target market – first adopters – would never see it.

So if you draw a feed from this blog, give me a compelling reason not to cut the chord.

Cool. Read more over on Inhabitat (Link) or, if your German is up to the translating task, visit the the Kulturarena website (Link) and follow the links it provides (the Gil Wilk site has some additional photos I enjoyed).

There is so much neat stuff happening in the world and what’s the big news in the U.S.? McMansions.

{Image Copyright © Torsten Seidl, Berlin und Cityrama, Berlin}

There’s a one-page piece over on Wired, “When Virtual Worlds Collide” (Link), that to me is pretty much stating the obvious. If I had to guess, author Steven Johnson read Raph Koster’s now net-infamous declaration on single-player games (I mentioned Koster’s posts earlier – reLink). And maybe – probably – he’s been following news of Multiverse (also something I’ve mentioned – reLink); the effort to create an infrastructure for MMOG’s. What he misses imo are the kinds of comments I’ve made on 3D file formats and their lack of portability in that post and elsewhere (I’ve also hinted at solutions to this issue – reLink). OGLE might be neat, but it’s no substitute for a truly universal 3D format.

Maybe someday.

{Update: Terra Nova has picked up the story and posted an entry, “Yeah, not so much” (Link). The discussion over there might be of interest. I’ve only scanned the comments, but I don’t get the impression some of the people there have followed Koster’s remarks regarding single-player games residing inside a larger metaversal (is that a word?) structure. It’s really mostly about games and narratives, I think.}

It’s quickly becoming a drag-n-drop (virtual) world. From an article over on Gamespot news, “Epic shows off Unreal tools ” (Link):

Willard showed off a level whose appearance was easily altered using the engine’s ability to link together multiple shader effects with an easy click-and-drag interface…
…
Epic’s post-processing editor gives artists a simple way to create shader effects without relying on a programmer to implement each effect. The tool is a graphical user interface that lets the artist select and attach pre-built shader effects to game graphics.
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Willard also demonstrated the Unreal Engine 3 Kismet system, a scripting tool that allows the designer to schedule game events in a flow-chart-like format.

That shader system sounds a lot like Maya’s amazing Hypershade system, which always blows my mind when I get into it. And that Kismet system sounds like something with which I’d like to play.

The tools just keep getting easier. I just wish I had access to and use of a high-level PLM system. Imagine doing the 3D, having the equivalent of a Kismet for electronic circuitry and programming, then fabbing the parts and downloading the code to put a physical device in motion?

How this all starts to play out is going to be fascinating.

via Blue’s News

I rarely hear any news out of WildTangent, a company that first came to my attention back in 2000, when Paul Steed joined them after leaving (getting booted from) id software. Well, it appears they’re alive and kickin’ and Ad Age has some interesting news (Link) of a videogame advertising currency/token system they’ve developed. From the news article:

The token system, called WildCoins, lets users extend their game play as long as they wish without having to spend the typical $19.95 to buy the game. Coke is offering tokens as prizes through a loyalty program on its MyCoke Rewards site.
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Up to now, it was too expensive for advertisers to pay to giveaway a game to users as part of a campaign. “This is a way for us to unlock customer promotions within video games,” Mr. Madden said.
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WildTangent also gives game developers a share of revenue for all the tokens sold. Given the 1% to 2% conversion rate of most online titles, this meant that game developers were locked out of recognizing any revenue from the bulk of game play. “It helps accelerate quality of games into the marketplace,” Mr. Madden said. “Developers [have an incentive] to create the best content now.”

Does WildTangent still depend on ActiveX? I hope not.