Lonliness of a FreeBSD Surfer

Earlier today I surfed onto a site called Pool tot Pool. Noticing an ExtremeTracking button I had a look - I just cannot help it! This tracker ha been running since 25th November 2006, in that time it has had 10,110 hits, yet I am the first person to surf onto the site using FreeBSD, and my visit puts FreeBSD usage to 0.01%.



However, Net Applications give the percentage Internet traffic for FreeBSD as 0.01%, so I suppose satistically, after 10,109 hits, it was time for me to find this site!

Opera 11 Alpha

Today Opera 11 Alpha was released. I decided to see how the different counters recorded Opera 11 Alpha on its first day.

Opera 11 Alpha used on FreeBSD:

Opera/9.80 (X11; FreeBSD 8.1-RELEASE i386; U; en) Presto/2.6.37 Version/11.00

No result:

BraveNet - Fails to count Opera 9 / 10 and now 11!
Belstat
GoStats - not working at time of test
W3Counter (Browser ID: Identification Blocked 0)

Opera 9

OneStat
SiteMeter
24Log
ExtremeTracking

Opera 10

Clicky

OPERA 11

ShinyStats
Statcounter
Motigo

Full marks / flexibility to ShinyStats, Statcounter, and Motigo. I'm also sure ExtremeTracking will register Opera 11 before too long.

iPad Identification.

I recently had a play with an iPad in a local shop. Once I got over the problem of it auto-correcting the address from blogspot to bloodsport I was able to see how the different counters recorded my visit:

iPad / Safari:

ExtremeTracking
StatCounter
Shiny

Mac OSX / Safari:

SiteMeter
Brave Net
24Log

iPhone / Safari Mobile:

Clicky

Max OSX / Safari Mobile:

OneStats

Are Apps a Good Thing?

There are thousands of apps. They can do the most amazing things; but are all these apps. a good thing? Especially apps. that allow the use of established web-sites.

I was using my favourite currency conversion site XE.com when I noticed a link for the Android XE.com app. I then realised that there are XE.com apps for the iPhone and Blackberry too.

My reaction was why would you want an app. to convert currencies, you can do it so easily in the Android/Blackberry/iPhone browser? Not owning a mobile phone I tried XE.com on a divice (Nintendo DSi XL), Opera Mini simulator, and Opera Mobile Emulator for Linux. XE.com performed beautifully on all three.

I continued to wonder why bother with an app. I thought that having the app. would make it easy to go back to XE.com again, but then so would bookmaking the site!

I asked my other half why bother with an app. for a job which is easily accomplished in the browser, and she suggested that apps. suited people who were not too conversant with computers. This I can not see because it requires no more technical ability to use a browser than it does to use an app.

I wondered if apps. were to make use easier on a small screen, but I have tried .mobi versions of sites and would generally prefer the full site with extra scrolling, or change to column mode to actually read. I find it infuriating that Wikipedia defaults to the .mobi on the Wii.

So why bother with apps? The web should be open to all, are we not just making bits exclusive to those with the right kit?

Disappearing Google Chrome Hits

A couple of Google Chrome anomalies. Surely I can not be the only person to have noticed.

1. Extreme Tracking does not include Google Chrome in browser totals:



Browser Totals: 29 Opera = 100%

Browser Details: 29 Opera + 1 Google = 100%

If you check Extreme never includes Google Chrome in Browser Totals (above example used for ease of view).

2. OneStat have stopped including Google Chrome in their Stats:

Last years OneStats browser stats for a Dutch web-site:



Google Chrome accounts for 1.64% of browser visits.

However, same site this years stats to date:

PLD Linux

For many people their first experience of Linux is to try a Live CD, giving a taste of Linux without installation on their PC. PLD is a live CD I have been playing with recently which is very good, and seems to run better/faster as a live CD than some of the better know distributions (live CD are not quite as fast as installed operating systems).

PLD

Version ~ Titanium LiveCD 4.4.0 Stable fits onto a standard CD. Upon booting the CD PLD does not require the user to answer any questions, and goes straight to the desktop, and connects to the internet automatically (unfortunately I have not tried on a machine that relies on WiFi, and not asking for preferred keyboard layout results in the juxtaposition of @ and "):




Unfortunately, it does not load on my AMD Phenom II, or Via C7-M machines, on a Pentium 4 machine with 192 RAM, PLD loaded beautifully, but did not have enough memory left to load Opera.

PLD give their minimum requirements as:

"Minimum System Requirements: Intel/AMD Processor (i686) with 600MHz, 256MB RAM, CD-ROM Drive
Recommended System Requirements: Intel/AMD Processor (i686) with 2.0GHz, 1GB RAM, DVD-ROM Drive, Graphics Card that supports DRI (recommended Intel i945GM or higher)"

Everything seems to work well, and efficiently, not lots of hanging waiting to the CD to spin as happens on many live distros. Opera is up to date Version 10.10, and surfs very well - flash is not included, but I have added the file libflashplayer.so from a USB to the desktop and amended Operas preferences (Tools, Preferences (do not use Ctrl + F12), Advanced, Content, Plug-in Options, Change Path), and this has worked very well. One niggle I have found is that the system does not shut down when commanded!

Overall a simple and straighforward LiveCD.

Google' Wireless Transcoder

I was looking at recent hits on ExtremeTracking and realised the big "G" was not a visit by Google Bot but a visit using Google' Wireless Transcoder. Not knowing what Google Wireless Transcoder was I looked it up, and found out that it is a way of rendering of websites to obtain the essential information, making them suited for display on a PDA.

Although I do not have a PDA I decided to have a play with Google' Wireless Transcoder, its URL is here. Steves Stats is a site I obviously tried:





Much simplified, but all the information is available.

From the above visit, how did the verious counters register Google Wireless Transcoder:

1. No Icon. Hence, nothing registered:

ShinyStats
BraveNet
BelStats
SiteMeter
24Log

2. Icon, but nothing registered:

Motigo

3. Browser identified as Safari:

GoSats (Safari 52513)
GetClicky (Safari 3.1)

4. Visit registered as Google Bot:

OneStat

5. Correctly identified as Google Wireless Transcoder:

StatCounter
W3
ExtremeTracking

From the user agent it becomes apparent why it is mistaken for Safari:

Mozilla/5.0_(en-us)_AppleWebKit/525.13_(KHTML,_like_Gecko;_Google_Wireless_Transcoder)_Version/3.1_Safari/525.13