Hitmaps!

      As known to anyone, people have been trying to understand and
predict the climate ever since ages. Frankly speaking I have just an iota of idea about all these thingies in details but now that I read a bit on the topic I am able to say a few things that I know them. Going about studying climate, Statistical methods are more about collecting data and banging your head [read applying Numerical Methods!] against the data. Smarter way to do so might be mathematical modelling only! You at least require some mathematics to predict stuff!
    They have been largely following 2 methods for this viz, simplified and approximated models which work with some restricted parameters like, location specific models, atmospheric-conditions specific models, etc. These will neglect effects of small things or approximate them but more complicated modelling includes many more miniscule details than these restricted models. And they do need to know what all can happen- mathematically and practically- with small small changes brought out in these parameters. Climateprediction is one such ongoing project at the Open Univ, UK. Their vision is to "improve methods to quantify uncertainties of climate projections and scenarios,including long-term ensemble simulations using complex models."
    Now since they needed to test run their models and use a truly random dataset of conditions to test run their models and at the same time needed to keep a track of who is running their model where on the face of the earth. So to locate the users downloading their models Jiri came up with Hitmaps! Using these its been a matter of click only to locate people using their climate-prediction s/w. What Hitmap actually do is to display the [approximate] physical location of visitor to their site. A database relating user's IP to geographical location is needed as hitmaps take the IP and simply display whatever location it gets based on IP, on the geo. map. Well in the first place authenticity and accuracy of locating IPs on a map is difficult to establish. But on a larger scale with a broader look like this, it works fine.

      But this is only the start, what Marc's team is actually trying to achieve is what they prefer to call "enhanced presence management " as they have explained in their philosophy!(w.r.t. instant messaging!) One of the futuristic vision of the people [Yanna] working on this project is research on ". . . . 'presence' in the online and wireless connected world and [to]investigates the potential of massive multiplayer games and playful multi-user interaction based purely on 'presence' information." I am clueless as to what kind of games that would be or how this techno. could be exploited in games already available. May be 'coz as I said I have next to an iota of idea about all this techno. and may be 'coz I am not a gamer. Someone pls. enlighten me, if you can!
   But nevertheless, at least this project satisfies my curiosity of keeping track of the geographical presence of the people reading this .The principle behind it is "Hits to a web page are collected by including the thumbnail HitMap image into the page (as the one at the top of this page). The IP of the page requester is translated into geographical coordinates and stored in a database. Once a day, the Hitmaps map images (the thumbnail image and the rest of maps it links to) are updated according to the database" as stated on hitmap's website.

      Unfortunately, as of now they are moving their servers and hence no more new users are allowed to register. I will be putting up one hitmap for this blog to but lets see how long they take