Help me try something out

Michael · Post by **Michael** » Wed Nov 12, 2003 4:46 pm

Click over to http://www.guidetopetra.com/geotest.html and help me test something. You're supposed to see your local flag, and a short message telling you what your city and state are. I'm interested to know what kind of results people get... post them here!

String · Post by **String** » Wed Nov 12, 2003 4:49 pm

Yes, it did give me my flag but not the city and state. Was I supposed to sign in first or does it go by my IP address?

Michael · Post by **Michael** » Wed Nov 12, 2003 5:07 pm

It does some kind of funky IP address traceroute kind of stuff. I'm kind of surprised it gave you the flag but not the other... maybe all it could find was the "US" and not the state and city. There should be a sentence next to the flag that says something like, Welcome to our visitors from Las Vegas, Nevada (or wherever).

I'm considering the idea of using it to let people from this area know about http://www.PetraTulsa.org, but it is unable to locate my company's IP address so that's kind of troubling.

Plus the free version generates advertising popups for every 50th visitor or something, so if it's not going to work well I don't want to use it.

micah · Post by **micah** » Wed Nov 12, 2003 6:29 pm

I don't see the city/state line either, but there is a US flag.

If I were you, I wouldn't include something like that if it will do pop-ups. That will just tick people off for no real benefit IMHO.

Oh well, not that I see popups anyway. I use Mozilla.

Pethead1 · Post by **Pethead1** » Wed Nov 12, 2003 7:02 pm

All I saw was the flag of the USA. I guess thets right coz we now have 3 Georgia flags , The real one,the OLD governors flag and the one we are going to vote on. So I have know way of knowing witch flag I was suposed to see. I live in the south and we do things diffrent down here. Like I live in Gwinnett co half way between Atlanta and Athens. But we say we are from Atlanta. Not Georgia but Atlanta. I do not know why this is it just is. Atlanta is even going to have a flush tax. Yes if you are on the citys sewer system you will be taxed every time you flush. This is because the feds do not want to give Atlanta a BIG pile of money because not every body uses the bathroom in Atlanta. I say this to let ya'll know here, in the south things are diffrent. How am I know which flag to see?

Michael · Post by **Michael** » Wed Nov 12, 2003 9:54 pm

I fixed the code that displays the city name... my bad, I put it in there in a hurry and messed it up.

It's interesting how it works; they've figured out a way to circumvent popup stoppers. Every 50th person (or so) is REDIRECTED to the Geobytes page, and then the INTENDED page is delivered as a popup! But that is easy enough for the Web designer to stop from happening anyway; you pay like $9.95 for 1,000 redirects or something. Obviously, you would only want to actually use it on one page.

It got our city and country right!

micah · Post by **micah** » Wed Nov 12, 2003 10:39 pm

Got it. Now I'm tempted to click Refresh 50 times until it tries to do a popup/redirect. Weird.

Pethead1 · Post by **Pethead1** » Wed Nov 12, 2003 11:18 pm

Saw the line this time but it said I was in Franklin Lakes. Never herd of it. But didn't you say funny things happen with AOL dile-up?

String · Post by **String** » Thu Nov 13, 2003 3:15 am

I tried it the first time at work (behind a firewall) and I did just get the flag but not city/state. I am at home now and tried it (behind my personal Zone Alarm firewall) and I do see the flag, city, and state. Don't know if you changed anything but now it works for me. I am thinking it was work's firewall that preventing certain information to show up.

Michael · Post by **Michael** » Thu Nov 13, 2003 8:08 am

Pethead1 wrote:Saw the line this time but it said I was in Franklin Lakes. Never herd of it. But didn't you say funny things happen with AOL dile-up?

That's exactly what I wanted to find out... how well does it handle things like that. AOL's network is different in some ways than most dial-up; I'm pretty sure stuff from the Internet goes into the AOL network SOMEWHERE (where? I don't know) and then travels across their network to you. The city it mentioned is probably where one of AOL's connections to the Internet is.

It would be interesting for you to try it again after logging off and back on.

String wrote:I tried it the first time at work (behind a firewall) and I did just get the flag but not city/state. I am at home now and tried it (behind my personal Zone Alarm firewall) and I do see the flag, city, and state. Don't know if you changed anything but now it works for me. I am thinking it was work's firewall that preventing certain information to show up.

Yup, I changed the link to the Javascript; I had it messed up at first. I created the page in a little bit of a hurry when I had a few spare moments and didn't cross all my T's and dot all my I's. I'll bet you get city/country at your work now.

BriGuyPEI · Post by **BriGuyPEI** » Thu Nov 13, 2003 11:01 am

The countries of the world part seems to be working. It showed me a Canadian flag and got my city right. It didn't mention my province, but maybe it's not supposed to.

epdc · Post by **epdc** » Thu Nov 13, 2003 2:20 pm

it was correct the mexican flag and the city where I live but it didn`t appear the state, but as somebody said, maybe is not supposed to.

Michael · Post by **Michael** » Thu Nov 13, 2003 2:49 pm

The way it's set up it doesn't display the state - but I feel confident that if it gets the name of your city right it knows where you are. Thanks for trying it out! I'm still interested in more people's results.

spottacus · Post by **spottacus** » Mon Nov 17, 2003 11:45 pm

Correct: flag
Incorrect: city
Correct: state

It says I'm from Burnsville, MN. That's a suburb about 20 miles south of me. So nice try, but ultimately wrong.

String · Post by **String** » Tue Nov 18, 2003 1:58 am

Sometimes when I key in my zip code on various sites for Brooklyn Park, it comes up with Brooklyn Center or Minneapolis. Some of these zip code tables are not necessarily accurate.

Just a FYI.

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Help me try something out

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Fixed it

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