The Internet has never stop amazing me.  I have stopped contributing to this site for almost a year and when I came back I found the site has never been more popular.  The old adage of "If you build it they will come" is so true in the Internet world. 

So here are the stats:

Sept 2006 - 5,912 unique visitors, 2 GB bandwidth consumed and 14,007 pages viewed.

Aug 2006 - 5,226 unique visitors, 1.93 GB bandwidth consumed and 14,902 pages viewed.

Jul 2006 - 6,119 visitors, 1.53 GB bandwidth consumed and 15,703 pages viewed.

Jun 2006 - 5,990 visitors, 1.62 GB bandwidth consumed and 25,373 pages viewed.

May 2006 - 5018 visitors, 1.84 GB bandwidth consumed and 12,436 pages viewed.

Apr 2006 - 5,411 visitors, 1.72 GB bandwidth consumed and 11,963 pages viewed.

The top thre articles are "I give up - welcome!" The Darkside of WOW" and "WOW characters."  The remaining ones below these three are travelogues and pictures.  

September was a record month for transmission and visitors.  Bandwidth consumed was 2.56 GB serving 7,027 visitors with 7,532 page viewed.  Unfortunately, the majority of the traffic were related to the hurricane diaster in New Orleans.

The largest source of transfer usage were the photos from New Orleans.  The Hockey World Cup 2004 pictures were also popular as there is hickey this year.  The Fish section was also a very popular section for visitors.  The stockmarket ramblings section is now quiet with fewer posting from me these days.  Actually, my posting has been greatly affected by WOW more than anything else. 

Until next month ...

Woohoo!!! August 2005 was a record month, which exceeded May 2005 in terms of bandwidth consumption.  2.1 GB of transmission, 6,772 distinct host served and 18,269 page viewed in August 2005 compared to 2 GB of transmission, 6,318 distinct host served and 7,337 page viewed for May 2005.  The most popular category was the Fish and the Stock Market (Main page was not included, which would have been the highest category).  Its all good

The summer months are flying by!  And, its that time of the month - traffic report.  Transmission was 1.8 GB and number of vistors was 7,130 unique addresses.  Total paged viewed was 7,748.  The most popular categories were 745 hits for Stock Market Rant  (they are back? No.  Its more reading of the past post by real players now  - welcome), 637 hits on the Fish section (note to write more in there and there are stuff to write about as the tank is going nuts with brakish water for fresh wate fishes), Photo was 468 hits and Travel Logs was 220 hits. 

I am now really at a Crossroad.  I found out last week that someone stole my worldwatcher.com site!  But, I found my name available and I have it registered.  The decision is to move everything to my new domain or continue with this site or maintain both, which is really not a solution. 

As one who is deep in the Internet space, I am a PARANOID user.  I am in constant fear of deviants and what they might do with information at their finger tips.  For a spine chilling experience see post on gaming titled "A Chilling Experience." 

What I do not understand are the bloggers who have everything on the Net (their home, phone numbers, IM numbers etc...).  Are they not worried?  Or is the world so big that the information would be lost in the noise?  Me think not.   And with this view, shaping my real personal website is going to be a challenge.  I can't just say whatever I want  

I am off drive the traffic bandwagon.  It is a big load off my shoulders - a load that has been self imposed.  Posting was the lowest since I started and the traffic is declining. 

For June 2005, distinct host served was 6,251 and 7.565 pages were served for a total transmission of 1.396 GB.  Outside of the Main Page, the most popular categories are Fish Tank (530 hits), Photos (468 hits), Stock Market (267 hits) and Travel Logs (198 hits).   

The future for this blog is not good   I am in the process of re-assessing where to go next and what to do.  This blog will remain up as long as the vendor (blogware) continues running it.  My work is over.  It is being used as an example of what blogging is about and what blogware delivers.  It will be shown to many investment managers over the next few weeks.  It already has been made known to some of the investment community in Canada. 

Than again, this blog may make a come back with me writing more ....  I have noted many bloggers becoming less active in the summer.   Summer is a good time to spend enjoying life and accordingly less time in the cyber world.  Having said that, I am afraid I am doomed as I just started World of Warcraft last Saturday (more on this topic in the Gaming category), which means endless hours on the on-line massive multiplayer world.

Until next month, having a great July! 

7,220 distinct host were served and 1.67 GB of transmission was used for 8,215 page views.  It was not a record month.  The big surprise was traffic flow away from Stock Market Ramblings, which accounted for about 45% of traffic, to Fish and Photos, which accounted for about 55% of traffic flow. 

The change in traffic is interesting because it seems that people are searching for information related to fish and acquariums in the month of April.  On my travel website, I did also note that there are certain months traffic increase over the last few years the site has been up.  I attributed it to vacation planning like November, December and January and March, April and May months.  The first is North American related holidays and the latter Southern hemisphere related holidays as they are heading into their winter in May.  Cool, eh?

March was another record month for this blog.  Distinct host served was 9,223 with 9,189 pages served for a total of 1.7 GB of transmission.  Most popular article, again, was "One step forward two step back" for a total of 152 views.  Most popular category was "Photos" for the first time displacing "Stock Market Rant."  I did not include "Main Page," which would have been the most popular by default.  Referral stats showed "Livejournal" as the biggest referral directing 669 hits compared to "Skyscrapercity" last month, which was much higher at 900+ but it was not a good thing. 

I see many happy one year anniversary for early blogware users and I think it is coming up for this blog - May 17, 2004.   It started out as an experiment and I think it has been modestly successful.  There are 396 articles on this blog and a 163 photos but not all are accessible to the public. 

I have to thank you readers and the Google and Yahoo serach engines for driving up the traffic and making it rewarding for me      If there is one regret, I wish I have more interaction with the readers - don't be shy.  It appears I am not the only one who feels this way after reading one of the very successful blogs.  Let's see what April has instore for us all ....

Bandwidth is about to blow through the 1 GB limit for this account and we are just half way through the month.   To date, I have 4,760 unique host servedand 936.5 MB of transimission used.  I am just amazed "One step forward two step back is still the most popular article."  I have a tough time locating the article as there are a total of 387 articles (not all for public consumption). 

I did have lunch with a retiring CFO of a very large company.  We talked about the blog phenomenon and what motivated me to do all this work.  Attention? Hmmm....  I said I wanted to give something back and life has been very good to me.  I want to share my knowledge and help people invest.  Truly, I don't want your money and I have a regluar job.  Essentially, I said I was really happy with the traffic growth and the satisfaction in that people recognise the value and they come for whatever reasons - that is the only reward I seek.  It is the only reward I think that makes us truly happy - being recognise for contributing.  To that note, I thank the readers and visitors for making it rewarding for me.  For Mike, I am sorry I am using up all your bandwidth.  I here Ross is sucking up to 60 GB a month  

Traffic blew through the 1 GB tansmission limit to 1.3 GB for the account.  Total page view was 7,701 and 7,925 unique host served.  This were all marginally better than January.  The bandwidth sucking came from a Netherland site.  They linked my Toronto city pictures to their website and everytime their webpage loads it pulls the picture from this blog - pretty neat way of minimising their bandwidth at MY COST   Well, at Mike's cost   But, Ross is going to put a stop to it. 

It is interesting to watch where the traffic is aggregating - stock market ramblings, fish and than my family.  It simply amazes me how so many people can zoom in on the most interesting article - my personal stock portfolio holdings.  It's like looking for the Easter Egg  

Thanx for your interest!  There are 380 articles and 162 photos in 5 photo albums.  That is a TON of WORK!    And, it always feels good when it is done.  Here is a PDF on how to increase your blog traffic from a stroy here. 

It's that time again to review how this blog did last month.  There were 7,483 distinct host served (one can say that there were 7,483 visitors but the same visitor may be counted several times depending on how often their IP address change), 763.2 MB of data transmission, 7,262 pages viewed.  While transmission is lower, the number of pages viewed and distinct host served is at record high.  This is good as I try to reduce the download by managing and archiving the older stuff.  Mike would be very unhappy if I eat up more bandwidth as a freebie. 

The most popular article was "One Step forward two step back" at 182 views compared to 92 times on the same article in December.  It's interesting that my personal stock portfolio is so popular   I am happy because I have acomplished my mission on both objectives - 1. Share my family with my extended family and friends 2.  Give something back as in to help people invest.  Mission accomplished. 

Thank you to all of you readers who make it worth my time spent on this blog.  Thanx to Tucows and Blogware for the service! 

Cheers!

If this keeps up, this blog would be a victim of it's own success.  For the month of December, 6,588 distinct host served, 903.3 MB of transmission used out of the 1 GB limit (opps), and 6,619 pages viewed.  The most popular category was the Stock Market ramblings with close to 700 visits compared to a bit over a 1,000 for the Main Page.  A distant 3rd was the Fish section with "German Ram" as the key search word that led the audience to this site.  And, Blog is growing. 

I had lunch with Mr. Imclone (cause he made me soooo much money) this week and we talked about our wives and things they could do while they were at home raising the family.  I said that they (the wives) should do something woth the Internet - like blog!  He told me that a mutual acquaintance's wife took to blogging and over the last 7 to 10 years built up a huge knowledge base on wines (starting from ground zero).  Well, she is now considered one of the top ten authorities on wine because of her blog.  So ladies, let's get with the program!

I started this blog out as a product evaluation for Tucows who is the provider of blogware.  It has gotten a little bit out of hand - heeheehee   I don't want to think that I was instrumental in pressuring Ross to provide a better way to embed pictures for blogware but the end result is that embedding pictures is a lot easier now than when I started (than again once you figure it out it just becomes part of the workflow).  The next feature should be SPELL CHECK!!!  Ross promise that is in the next rev.

If you have been keeping an EYE on CES, you would have read about Bill's view on blogs (in addition to the blue screen of death during his presentation).  Apparently, the next revision of Office and Outlook would support blogs and stuff inside these applications.  Watch out people!  The Black Hole is growing.  Do you remember spell checkers and gramma checkers and on and on of little add-ins and plug-ins?  Where are they?  Inside Office the Black Hole of productivity software - heeheehee.  I guess it is not so much different than the math co-processor disappearing into the microprocessor.  Anyways, watch out Tucows, Goggle, LiveJournal, AOL etc...  But than again, its such a huge market surely there is enough room for everyone? right? 

Thanx again for you patronage!  Best wishes for the New Year!