Where are you?

[compilerbitch]

Create your own visitor map!

(first seen on mhw's LJ)

It obviously must pick up the IP addresses of browsers that load the image, then do some kind of reverse lookup on the address to get the geographical location. Very cool, I think -- I didn't realise that information was available.

Comments

[mair_in_grenderich]

for example, it's not particularly accurate about identifying cities though.

[midendian.livejournal.com]

The only paying customer of geoip companies are marketing people, so you've probably been spared exposure to them :) Quova is probably the most profitable, and has by far the worst name (sounds like it should be the name of a NSFW body part).

The info isn't exactly available; it's all heuristic-based, so you'll get different answers from different companies. They have to make Big Assumptions like an IP is in the same region as the billing address of the owner of a netblock.