Slashdot Mirror
Web Logs Finally Meet Sim City
l0rd writes "A good piece on wired says :
A few games of Roller Coaster Tycoon don't usually translate into productive work, but for one developer the diversion planted the seed for making website analysis more intuitive.
Several years after playing those inspirational games, Robert Savage came up with VisitorVille, a website-traffic analysis package that essentially crosses the DNA of SimCity with that of the traditional chart- and graph-centric tools businesses have long been using.
Screenshots included."
It's all fun and games until a SimTornado comes and wipes out your city.
They could do that. Just put a big slashdot logo inside the tornado.
A preposition is a terrible thing to end a sentence with.
Would it appear as a swarm of locust?
But Can I pick up visitors and toss them in the water just like roller coaster tycoon? That game is awsome, I certainly hope they make another with full 3D environments.
Visitorville's sure in for some real skyrises and bright lights today...here we come :)
An Indian-American Hindu committed to non-violent thought/speech/action alarmed by the global explosion of radical Islam
Is if this is just useless, or if it's expensive, as well.
Get those damn kids off of about.html's grass!! Get outta here, you whippersnappers! Why, when I was your age, we more'd through NSCA logs by hand and we liked it!
VisitorVile is telling me my web site has turned into a getto. Time to install the police station apache mod and upload more parks.
-- Thou hast strayed far from the path of the Avatar.
Obviously a single page that gets overloaded should be represented by the Riot or Fire events.
Slashdotting would be, what... the Tornado? Maybe the giant Godzilla! Rawr!
That green slime had it coming.
i wonder if someone scanning for the newest webdav worm of the week shows up as a little bank robber running around the town, checking every door....
"I know, not only have they plugged all the streets, but they're filling every coffee shop. I tried to get a biscotti this morning and I couldn't even get to the counter! They were just pushing and shoving to get to the counter, and then they'd just read the menu and leave. Bastards who did order just got a cup of coffee, then dumped it on the floor. Bastards."
"Yeah, the Mayor ought to do something, maybe put up signs for Slashdot tourists that send them to TubGirl town, or Goatseville. One sight of those neighborhoods would get their asses out of here..."
"Who lives there, anyway?"
"Trust me, you don't want to know..."
I can just see it... there would be a spotlight that comes out of the sky, and then the zombie users would descend, burning everything in their path and reducing the building to rubble. Then little clean-up crews and such afterwards.
If Jesus wants me it knows where to find me.
Until they give it a name on par w/ "spinning cube of potential DOOM", it's not gonna cut the mustard.
Speaking of which, ever since I read that article, it's been pretty much downhill for everyone else's project names too. Hm.
[o]_O
and the VisitorVille.com analyzer reports:
"SimCopter 1 reporting heavy traffic!"
--- Das einzige, das wir zu fürchten haben, ist die Furcht selbst.
But wait! There's more! It's a desert topping AND a floor wax, too!
"Who are in control, they are not in control of anything - they don't even control themselves!" - Glen Beck
A much better metaphor for the /. effect.
/. buses are just plowing through the people in town, leaving bloody corpses strewn in their wake. As the looting continues, people start making off with the foundations of the buildings and, one by one, they start simply collapsing and filling the area with rubble and dust.
Thousands and thousands of buses with "/." on top pour into the town. They all dump 50-60 passengers each and the streets suddenly become full. It's so packed that there's rioting in the streets and fighting. Everyone pours out of the buildings to join in the looting, and every building in town goes dark as people make for the exits. The streets are so packed that the
After you yank the network cable, the dust slowly clears and all you find is countless corpses, destroyed buildings, and smashed busloads of people from where the buildings fell on them.
If that isn't the perfect metaphor, what is?
- Give a man a fire and he's warm for a day, but set him on fire and he's warm for the rest of his life.
Time to file that patent application, eh?
Please note: We are currently experiencing an extremely heavy server load due to the Wired article. Some images may not load. Thank you for your patience.
/.'d
-From the visitorville website
Wired article my ass... its because the article got
Where's the love?
Its all fun and games until someone loses an eye... then its just fun.
I think it would strengthen the metaphor a bit if the AOL bus was a short bus instead of the full-length one they're using now.
Maybe if your site fails to properly load for a browser, the visitor should burst into flames with associated noises. That way website owners would not remain oblivious to broken websites. It would be uncomfortable explaining to the boss why avatars are screaming and dying whenever they enter your site.
I propose an unwashed heathen for IE users, a cool looking guy for the various incarnations of Netscape/Moz with associated logos on the shirts, a blind person with a cane for lynx users and a mad scientist for Opera. As alternatives, you could use a person in a wheelchair or stait jacket for IE and, hey, an opera singer for Opera. I want Bender for web spiders, its not negotiable:)
If you include mail servers in there, you could use mail trucks to deliver the mail, with the brown UPS trucks delivering from non-spam sites and the USPS trucks delivering from sites that are known spam havens. I know Im more excited to see the UPS truck than the USPS truck. Nobody sends junkmail through UPS.
Drop me a line at:
Key ID: 0x54D1D809
I was thinking more along the lines of 10,000 Canyoneros.
I could easily see how a few real world metaphors can be used in a sort of 'stretchy' fashion, the way the buildings get bigger and smaller in this thing based on how many people are 'in' it. I wonder how it handles the fact that people change locations pretty much instantly.
Of course the next step is full on Grand Theft Router with little armed PacketPeople who can actually fight for bandwidth! Yeah! Or maybe capture the flag, but the flag is actually a P2P connection. And moderators would be huge silent golems striding through the city, rearranging things as they see fit, stepping on some but lifting up others, and never telling us why... and of course the Ancient Editor Gods, resplendent in their ivory towers floating above, casting down both wisdom and duplicate stories in equal measure. Ah, what a sight it would be.
If Jesus wants me it knows where to find me.
Shouldn't those be Canyoneros with /. on top? Not only would they drop off passengers, they'd get involved in nocking down the buildings and running over the corpses and other vehicles as well.
Yeah, a Post Office in the city with a huge truck that makes regular runs to the city dump. :^)
The Spoon
Updated 6/28/2011
So when your site gets slashdotted, how does it show up? A giant lizard attacking your city?
There's no place like