The OC Food Review Blog has yet another cool little article (by Tawin Kiethanom) - this time, it's a look at creating a "geovisitor", a bit of tracking code/HTML that allows you to get the most info from your visitors.

The website uses an free external website called hostip.info to extract the location from the incoming ip address. The HTML code creates a small hyperlink image which directs the user to the main Geovisitor page displaying their geolocated hits on a google map. Now I know this isn't an amazingly unique idea but I must admit it hasn't be done with this kind of style before.

He walks through the steps:

• parsing out the XML from the result call to hostip.info
• setting up a database to record the information
• displaying an image on the same page with a RewriteRule
• integrating the information into a Google Map (via the API)

Sounds simple, right? Well, have no fear - there's plenty of explaination the whole way through, so you won't be at a loss.