I like many other webmasters regularly check logs and statistics of my websites to see what type of traffic I am receiving, and where it is coming from.  It is a necessary part of search engine optimization and interactive marketing.  I personally use awstats (an open source project) for this task as it analyzes the key areas of my logs that I am interested in and outputs it in a very easy to read and use HTML layout.  However, awstats while very useful, doesn’t by itself allow you to deeply analyze the logs and see exactly who is visiting you which in turn determines to some extent whether your marketing campaigns have been successful.

Enter GeoLite City by Maxmind.  Another open source project (with licensed paid versions as well) that is easily added to awstats as a plugin.  GeoLite City is a database of ip address ranges showing the location they are registered to.  This allows awstats to check this database against every ip address that visits you, and prints this information into your awstat logs (screenshot)!   Pretty cool huh!  This information is extremely useful to determine how successful your marketing initiatives have been.

As an example, say you post an ad for investment properties in various local Dallas, Houston and Austin Texas newspapers.  In this ad you included your web site information.  With this plug-in you will be able to analyze exactly how effective your ads are pulling.  Not seeing the results you want and the hits from Houston?  Maybe pulling the ad, modifying it or changing the placement will yield better results and a positive return on your investment!  That is just a small example of you can utilize this software and the GeoIP database to your advantage.  The possibilities are endless!

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As far back as I can remember I have always liked to take things apart and put them back together.  This inner desire to understand how things worked was very intriguing to me.  It all started at a very young age, unscrewing any electronic component (calculators, radios, etc) I could find around the house and then putting it back together.  This was taken to another level once my parents bought me my very own computer in 9th grade; a Pentium 200MMX with 64MB EDO RAM.  I was thrilled, and I began to play with my new toy day and night learning the intricacies of the system.

All of this excitement was brought to a sudden halt once I decided to explore how this software actually worked on this new system I had just received.  I was amazed that I could not see the source code of any of the programs I had installed.  Everything was hidden behind a pretty exterior shell that read “Microsoft Windows”.  I was eager to learn, but I was being held back; not only by this pretty exterior shell, but also by the exorbitant cost of software associated with this operating system.  A cost which was way out of any 9th grader’s budget!

I was very upset.  Eager to learn about systems, networking and programming I started to research alternatives, and came across free open source software.  The first project I came across was a popular project entitled “Linux”; a Unix-like operating system which is not only free, but also contains open source code and development allowing all underlying source code to be freely modified, used, and redistributed by anyone.  I was ecstatic!  Not only did I find software that was within my budget (free), I also found software that had it’s source fully available for me to study and learn.

After installing Linux for the first time, I was amazed at the plethora of other free software packages that were packaged along side of it, all with source available.  I could edit the software, make it better, add my own functionality, the possibilities were endless!  It was these free software packages that allowed me to explore and actually learn networking, programming and system administration.  Without these free open source software packages, I would have never been as interested in the computer industry as I am today.

It is very apparent that open source software promotes education and innovation, while closed source software stifles it.  As the great Albert Einstein once said:

“Example isn’t another way to teach, it is the only way to teach.”

And closed source software is a very poor example…

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