How cool would it be to have a map of the world, with all the known empeg user locations on it, possibly even updated in real time?

I thought of this while playing around with a nifty little utility called VisualRoute. This handy tool works like a standard trace route, with one major exception. It has a map of the world, and visually plots out the course on the map. Pretty slick.

So I got to thinking... What if we took the IP addresses of all of the machines that connect to this forum, somehow plugged them all into an app like VisualRoute, and then slapped up a link to the resulting map?

If done correctly, the result would a "Hit Counter" the likes of which the world has never seen. (Well, at least I've never seen anything like it.)

If it has been done before, oh well, somebody beat us to it. I still think it's a cool idea. If not, who better to bust it out first than the empeg crowd...?

So, what do you guys think?

I think it's a great idea too...I would love to see where all 4000 some players are. I have used Visualroute on occasion myself to find out where my SHOUTcast streams are being listened to. It's really cool to know that there is someone in Korea listening to the tunes I'm webcasting for example...

John

Whoa, that VisualRoute site rocks.

That site can give some interesting interpretations of where in the world a host address is.

I've had my transatlantic link terminate in the middle of the North Sea before!

Check out http://www.networldmap.com/TryIt.htm to see how close they can guess where you (or any other IP address) are in the world.

What?!? Tony, You haven't seen that before...?

Damn... I thought for sure you were going to bust out some link that was even crazier than that, and call mine old hat.

Well... I'm glad I could hook you up!

If you think that is neat, check out NeoTrace (win32 app) at http://www.neoworx.com/products/neotrace/default.asp

There was a little project someone got posted on metafilter.com or something of similar nature, and had a map of the world. It put a dot for each corresponding person that had viewed the page onto it according to LAT/LON provided from I guess IP table lookups.

I watched it grow for a couple days, the author said he would release his code. He took the site down stating too much bandwidth usage and didn't release it. Did anyone else see it too? know where he put the code?

Yeah, I've checked out NeoTrace before, too. Also cool.

BTW, NeoWorx recently got bought out by McAfee, and NeoTrace is now called McAfee Visual Trace.

I'm not sure if they've done anything other than change the name at this point.

Would be cool except - I can't think of any reason why anyone would give their empeg an external IP address but I lots of reasons NOT to use valid addresses, so we'll end up with a lot of 10.,172. or 192. addresses, which aren't resolvable to location.

I'm having a hunt about - I remember seeing something similar to Neotrace and VisualRoute on SourceForge which mapped the route on a globe and tied in ping times showing the different routes your packets took. Well cool.

I agree, getting ahold of all the actual empeg IP addresses would be next to impossible to do, I'm sure most of them have unrouteable ones anyway, and it would also probably be seen as a security risk. That's not what I meant...

What I was suggesting, was meant more as a visual hit counter for this forum, not of the actual empegs themselves. That's why I suggested using the IP address of peeps connected to this forum, not their actual empeg's IP address.

I think It would give us a good idea of the spread of the user base, and general interest in the empeg across the globe. You would get both home and work locations for owners, and locations of people who browse the forums, but aren't actually owners. All in all, it would be good, valid data. Heck, somebody at Sonic Blue would probably be interested in it for marketing reasons...

http://www.xpenguin.com/ip-atlas.php

Is more or less what you need. This version is only designed to do the current user. If you tweaked it to update the JPEG on disk you would have a nice history of all users (open JPEG, draw location, save JPEG, show saved file on web)

-Geoff

Instead of this, why not an extension (or new version) of the empeg user database that would show where every owner is on a map. Would be interesting to see where the larger concentrations of empeg owners are in the world.

Very cool. Sorry I slightly misunderstood. Of course the fun thing now is that my IP address from work will probably show me 400 miles away from my usual location (or possibly 3600 depending on which office I'm in). The wonders of global companies

I'm happy enough to say - I'm in central Scotland, usually between Edinburgh and Livingston, feel free to plot my location.

Here's two: The Bay area, and Cambridge. Who needs a map?

Interesting.. A friend of mine has a webpage that users on a list type in the longitude and latitude, and generates a world map (jpg format) on the fly. If interested, I'll ask him where he got it..

Me.

we'll that's a nice thought....uhhmmm....let me think...I think a gook idea would be to add at least a field in emplode or Jemplode settings, where you could give your Country, City and Post code or lattitude and longitud or whatever..uhmmm...Jemplode is able to update itself in internet (emplode could have a similar option) when the empeg update itself your location could be forward to a database and with this database you could draw a map, everything could be done automatically in this way

Well just a thought
Mario

i noticed there is a lack of Empeg/Riocars in the New York City area.

It seems like most of the units went to Texas, CA, and overseas.

Well, you could overanalize this and look at the relative sizes of NY and Texas. Those Texans definitly have a much bigger need for a lage collection of music when they have to drive somewhere.

Now, I'd disagree with myself on this one though. The empeg appeals to a certain type of person, and rarely does this conincide with who does the most driving.

Matthew