Updated the Wowza Launch Script. Changed it to be more friendly to a non-root user directory, as well as adding logic that makes the startup package on the fly, so that if you want to edit the contents, the next launch will send the current incarnation.
Stay tuned for a post soon on the anatomy of a Wowza startup package for EC2.
Updated the code for the Wowza statistics collector. Command-line options, parsing stream names, a little cleanup.
Also updated the RRD pages to reflect the new file I created.
On our live stream page, we have a nifty little javascript counter that lets you know when the next service is.
Leo noticed today that in Internet Explorer, it’s counting down properly, while in Firefox, it’s saying the event is already happening. On a hunch, we changed the target date to 12/31, and it started working properly again.
So, IE’s Javascript is smart enough to figure out that on December 29, the target date of January 3 is likely to be the one next week. Firefox is clinging to the past and assuming that I really meant the January 3 that happened 51 weeks ago.
How is it that the same script can be interpreted so differently within the same language on two different browser platforms? This stuff is supposed to be standard!
I’m looking to put together a live map for seeing where people are coming from on our live stream. One format of this map would be a full-screen display at the ops console, the other would be a small map on the website itself. If you’re using this kind of technology, Id love to know how you are doing it, whether it’s with a monthly service, or you rolled your own code.What I’ve looked at so far:
Google Analytics: Doesn’t come anywhere close to realtime. Looks like about a 24-hour waiting period for your data. Looking at the historical data for the live site, it doesn’t seem to be all that accurate either. Numbers, locations, and durations of visits seem to be way off what we’re seeing in our feedback and in our logs.
W3Counter: Seems interesting, but their site performance/availability is a major problem. I smell scalability issues.
VisiStat: Very nice product, but a little spendy for what I’m after, considering its shortcomings. Live map doesn’t appear to have the ability to specify a timeframe. Either you refresh the page and it adds new visits to a blank map, or you leave it up and nothing falls off the back.
Feedjit: I use this for my blog, and it’s great for that (see widget in the sidebar). But I can’t see using this for a “real” site. I greatly dislike the inability to customize the widget beyond text color (I really don’t want it showing the geoblogosphere link, it’s completely irrelevant and a distraction). It too seems to lack the ability to restrict the map by timeframe.
None of these products appeared to have the ability to customize the map display, most of them had a map that was ridiculously small and didn’t scale with the browser window.
If you rolled your own, how complex was it? What was the cost for the geolocation data?
EDIT: Forgot about Woopra… Looks awesome, but it’s still vaporware.
EDIT^2: OK, so Woopra isn’t technically vaporware, apparently real people are using it, but it’s been in “beta” for a very long time.