So I have been tracking a social media piece I did recently; I get emailed each time someone hits my web page I created so I can see where they are coming from, and this one above caught my eye.

Make sure the csv columns are named the same as what you have in the database table.

I found this post on this topic very useful.

I have a project where I would like to display top 20 places to rent an apartment in the United States on a map of the US.

But instead of the normal Google map I would like to make it look like a Google Analytics Map above.

I am familiar with the API V3 on where to place the markers, but I am not familiar with Overlays (which I think is what is needed for the project).

Would I create an image of the USA from Analytics and then overlay it over the Google Map – is that the right approach?

74.115.1.7

I did a blacklist test on the IP and sure enough spamhaus.org had it on their balcklist.

An error occurred while Parsing an XML document. The element type “meta” must be terminated by the matching end-tag “</meta>”

I had not changed anything on those sites in weeks. So the Crystaltech tech stop and started the Coldfusion service on the Coldfusion box the sites were on and it started working again.

Problem solved! I like when it is that simple.

Update 7/22/09: The issue came back today and I got more than 100 errors with a slightly different message:

An error occured while Parsing an XML document. The element type “Locality” must be terminated by the matching end-tag
“</Locality>”.

So I called Crystaltech and had them restart the Coldfusion service, but this time it didn’t work. Then after about 5 hours the problem just went away by itself. I asked Crystaltech if they did anything and they said no.

I am using Ray Camden’s Google Map GoogleGeoCode CFC for geocoding my addresses which is where the error is occurring.  His code can be downloaded here.

Since it went away perhaps the problem is being cause by Google’s API. So I looked in Google Groups and sure enough Google told us there was a bug and they fixed it.

Error on Page: http://www.pickrent.com/rentals/colorado/colorado-springs.cfm/ param: startRow=fdwjcymeklfnnz or startRow=dwpgddhufcgxz or startRow=rfdnvdpwhjoyrvc

Referral Page:

User’s IP: 66.249.68.170

Server Port: 80

Error Date: 6/21/09 3:40 PM

User’s Browser: Mozilla/5.0 (compatible; Googlebot/2.1; +http://www.google.com/bot.html)

What is really odd is the trailing “/” at the end of the “.cfm”. Also odd is the URL parameter of “startRow=fdwjcymeklfnnz” which doesn’t exist. Only numbers can be used on that parameter.

I checked the IP address and it does belong to GoogleBot, but I have no idea where it is getting these random URL’s from. Perhaps it is going crazy or someone is linking to it that way.

I have fixed the issue now so it redirects home if this happens again, but I would love to know what caused this.

http://www.pickrent.com/videos/

The original custom feed validates fine:

http://www.pickrent.com/videos/feeds/feed.xml

I then burned the feed to FeedBurner:

http://feeds2.feedburner.com/PickrentTv

But when I click on the RSS button in the address bar on my FF browser it sends me to a page I can’t subscribe to:

I have been getting this message for weeks, I have tried changing the email address several time without success.

I think I have it figured out, I use SmarterMail with has this brillant spam filtering called greylisting, which is:

In name, as well as operation, greylisting is related to whitelisting and blacklisting. What happen is that each time a given mailbox receives an email from an unknown contact (ip), that mail is rejected with a “try again later”-message (This happens at the SMTP layer and is transparent to the end user). This, in the short run, means that all mail gets delayed at least until the sender tries again – but this is where spam loses out! Most spam is not sent out using RFC compliant MTAs; the spamming software will not try again later.

Sounds like twitter is set up to not try again. So I added them as a safe and trusted sender to get around this issue.

Update 2/16/09: My idea did not work – anyone have any other ideas to try?

Update 4/1/09: I started using my Yahoo address for twitter and that solved the problem. Still don’t know why my other email addresses didn’t work.

I am guessing every ones stats will show a large dip during this time.

I am sure Google lost millions of dollars over the past 30 minutes.