SharkJumping

For the small percentage of those readers who have not yet installed StatCounter, I must highly recommend the software/service.  The free version gives you very detailed data about your web site visitors (visitor count, key word analysis, user path, visitor length, browser, etc.), and the reasonably-priced paid versions increase the log files to track more popular sites beyond the last 100 visitors.  It's easy to install on your web site/blog, and it appears to be a very reliable source of data, especially if your statistics from Typepad keep falling over like mine do.

I assume there are better and more expensive enterprise-style paid tracking services, but I'll say that we will launch Donnerwood's consumer platform next month with StatCounter as our primary tracking mechanisms since it's the best value for the money (we'll pay for the higher level service).  It's amazing to me how far we've come when I think that this service provides far better data than we had when we launched Listen.com's music service in 2000, in spite of the long hours we put into creating the tracking service of that time.

This is a key example of the new types of web services available today, along with the improved Shareware-style business model which allows a company to provide a robust low-cost service at very little cost while making up the revenue on the upgrade options - the log file premium option allows Statcounter to offer a full product experience without any type of DRM or time-out measure, but still incents many of us to upgrade to the paid package - a great model for the future.