Time is an illusion

Travelling in the locals at night in Mumbai, can be refreshing. A few days ago, I was returning from work on the Harbour Line local trains, and drifting in and out of that blissful state called drowsiness. Almost empty compartments - put your feet up, and wait for your station.

On this night, I noticed bright lights along an empty stretch of road, just outside the Chunabhatti station. Some sort of fair - music, hawkers, and a large ferris wheel which was more or less the big attraction - decked up in white light, and going round and round crazily. Somehow, the image stuck - and the next morning, I decided to take my camera along, so I could cart off a shot the next night when the train slowed down at the station. And I did just that.

The wheel was turning round and round the next night too, only there was no one in the carriages. An off day at the fair perhaps.

I got an invite from MeasureMap yesterday and integrated the javascript into the theme code. Involves inserting their javascript tracking code into the header, comments and page files. The process is pretty much hand-held, what with MeasureMap giving large screenshots of where exactly in the page code their javascript needs to be embedded.

I had completely forgotten that I had signed up for this till I got their email…happens a lot to me these days, since these “invite only” websites and tools have started. I don’t really know how many people come to the site - maybe something like 50 individuals/day. The log viewer at MeasureMap does some basic straightforward reporting like

• Number of Visitors
• Time of visit
• Country of Visitor
• Browser Used
• Search keywords used to arrive
• Referring Site

I have no idea what future additions or plans MeasureMap has in store, but I doubt with the current reporting set and features, they have a real distinct advantage over other visitor tracking sites.

Update: So Google decided to come out with a response to MeasureMap Google Analytics, which uses urchin’s tracking mechanism. I signed up for Analytics, and integrated it into Wordpress using one of the many available plugins. I’ll let it run for a few weeks before checking up on its reporting features. Don’t have time to read about its feature-set and customise them right now. Techcrunch has a post about Google’s urchin Analytics versus MeasureMap.