Geography (Was: Re: What this list is for)

On Fri, 22 Mar 1996 hallam@zorch.w3.org wrote:

> What this list is for:
> 
> Discussion of Web logging, e.g. my Extended log file
>  
> drafthttp://www.w3.org/member/WWW/TR/WD-logfile.html
> 
> 	Phill
> 
> P.S anyone out there?

Yes. Tried to look at your draft, but it was password-protected.

Why don't you sample it to the mailing list so that we can discuss it.

And while we're waiting, some food for thought: It would be very useful 
from a marketing point of view to log browser georgraphy, i.e., the city 
of origin. To some extent this can be derived from the host domains (or 
rather from host IP addresses, since some of us turn off the inverse 
look-up to improve server performance. We do the look-up when we crunch 
the log.) That involves building a database of domains to cities, but it 
can't help us with domains like aol.com and large corporations such as 
Bell Northern that funnel all their traffic through a single domain.

An additional benefit of this would be to enable better geographic 
"zoning" of content, something we're already doing and which probably 
will become increasingly prevalent at large sites.

So why should this be in the log rather than in some higher-level 
demographic mechanism? In order to ensure its universality. Where does 
the geographic information come from? Perhaps a one-time browser setting. 
Perhaps a more dynamic mechanism. The trick would be to ensure consistent 
identification of the location.

James Calloway, General Manager                     http://www.nando.net
Nando.net, a McClatchy New Media company
127 W. Hargett St., Suite 406, Raleigh, NC 27601-1351
Voice: (919) 836-2858  FAX: (919) 829-8924

Received on Saturday, 23 March 1996 11:55:51 UTC