Document Copyright Issues

I was doing a little research the other day looking up some data to support the chassis design section of the web site.

So I pull up this Handbook from the DOE and I'm speed reading, scrolling through the pages really quick. Stopping for a moment as I see some data on equipment rack grounding I like, other wise I keep scrolling.

I scroll past a table with a blue background, and I stop ~ all the tables on my web site once had blue back grounds. It's an Ampacity table for copper wire. Just above the table is data relating to derating wire bundles, just like my site.

Scrolling to the next page I see another table for chassis wire color coding, again copied from me. Even the text above the tables has been lifted. Even a disclaimer I used about not covering Military color coding is used.. The next 5 tables, with text, all from my site.

Now to be fair the data used in the tables covering color coding by voltage and TFE wire Ampacity were both derived from some other DOD standard. However there are two differences here; first any data derived from a military specification did not have a copyright, and second I didn't copy their table I retyped and reformatted the facts.

So what is the issue here?
a. First the US Government does not copyright their information. So if I copy data from a military standard I'm safe, it's free to use.
b. Second, I do copyright my data and it is not free to use. Also my site is not listed in the References section of the document, so I received no credit for the copied data.
c. Third, Once my data was put into that government handbook I lost my copyright because US Gov documents have no copyright ~ so now anyone can re-copy it.
d. Finally, Did my tax dollars pay someone to copy data from my site ~ it's a double hit. I paid someone to undermine my website.
e. Guess what, this posting on site visits (6/20/09) noted a 50% reduction in visits to the page that lost the data [Wire Insulation Color Coding]. All the text and tables that were copied originated from that page.

Notes;
1. For a number of years many tables on the web site had blue back grounds, but a few years ago all the tables were changed to a clear background. Changing the background color was one of a number of changes I made to reduce the bandwidth of the site. A clear background does not require any HTML code, while a colored background requires bgcolor=xxxx (what ever).
2. In some cases the department seal used by some agencies do have restrictions on use. I'm not sure if I can display the DOE seal or not, I know NASA does not like it.
3. The chassis design section covers a few dozen pages and addresses the issues that may come up while designing an equipment chassis, with Equipment Rack data..
4. I will be using data from this handbook, I have already posted a graphic for an equipment rack ~ again there is not copyright covering this DOE Handbook.

Comparing Visits from Different Years

One of the reports from Google Analytics is an overview of visitors from any two dates that are of interest. You can also compare any two sets of date ranges. In this case the graphic to the left compares 1-1-08 to 7-22-08 vs. 1-1-09 to 7-22-09. The graph points [dots] are per week, but you can show data per day or per month. Click the image for a larger view of the data.

Notice that the graph lines appear almost identical. However the data indicates there has been a -0.56% increase visitors from this year to last, or around a decrease of 7000 visitors. That's less than one day worth of visitors, so maybe the site went down a few hours more this year than last.

Not much to worry about until I scroll down the report and review the data on a per page basis. That's when the data starts to look troubling. Here is a sampling of a few of the pages that are in decline, ignoring the few pages that showed an increase in visits.

CANbus -4.24% in visitors.
USB Interface -5.21% in visitors.
interfacebus.com [home page] -15.68% in visitors.
PCIexpress Interface -37.28% in visitors.
RS422 Interface -5.16% in visitors.
SerialATA Interface -7.19% in visitors.

Now these are not buses that are in decline, so there is no reason for these pages to see any decrease. Unlike the RS232 bus that is being left off newer computers; that page also showed a -12.25% decline, but I can deal with that.

So what is the deal with a graph that shows no real decrease, but many pages that seem to be in decline. Well when you check the blog listing new engineering pages, you'll see that over a hundred new pages have been added over the same time frame. So the new pages are leveling out this year even as a number of pages are seeing a reduced number of hits.

Hmm, I happen to be looking for the VME64x pin out today, my page came up first in a Google search but I decided to select the next guys page. Sure enough there's my text, plus a link back to me ~ stay off my site. Guess it's time to start looking at some of these other pages to see what's finding its way onto other websites.

Most of these guys running hardware or engineering sites aren't engineers at all, you can kind of tell by what they copy.

The point here is always spend some time searching the Internet looking for your work. I found a guy a few years back who had copied my PCIe page [and a dozen others], but I had just written the page. It had taken several hours to generate the different pin out tables in HTML, and he grabbed them in a matter of minutes.... Better stop now or I'll start naming names. Oh had two typo's I found weeks later, to bad he missed garbing the up-dates.

Knol is just not working for me

Well maybe Knol is working or maybe it's not. I have about 10 different Knols published of varying lengths, with different generation dates. Some Knols have been out there for months while others were just published, so some have more page views than others for that reason.

The ten Knols out there have been viewed 11,460 times over the last year. Now that number is not so bad for ten random pages on the internet, but there's a bigger issue. Those 11,000 page views have only sent 595 visitors to interfacebus.com, the site that really counts [link is not the main page].

Those incoming visitors have a 67% bounce rate, or 67% of the incoming people only check one page before leaving the site. So for every 19 Knol page views I get one page view at interfacebus.com ~ that doesn't sound that bad, put like that. But only 30% of those new people coming in were interested in the site. err only 178 people had any interest in the main site; now that sounds low.....

I consider the Knols just another web site:
1. Another external site that points to interfacebus
2. Another way to show up in the Search Engine Results [SERP]
----- two unrelated sites may show up on the same page result.
3. The Knols point to a number of my pages, other than the home page
4. The Knols push Page Rank to the pages being pointed to.
5. Another way for new people to find my site.

The dots [points] on the attached graphic are per week for the data range indicated. The data is from Google Analytics, for Referral sources, filtered to show only incoming hits from knol.google.com.

I don't track the amount of time spent working a page, so I can't say if it was worth the effort to work with Knol. However it takes months to get a page going after the Search Engine delays are accounted for.

FYI; the best Knol relates to a general description of Computer Buses, with 3,442 page views and a page rank of 3.

What ever; most of the Knols are to short, so I need to keep spending more time working them. Maybe someday I'll get some visitors from the Knol pages.......

[Text Removed 6-28-2010]

Why do Web Stat Counters Differ

So I was looking at the Manufacturers listing section again, just to see how that section was doing. Looks like there are 95 individual pages that make up the manufacturers section. There are 10 pages that make up the listing of companies that start with the letter 'A', as an example.

The graphic shows two examples of counters that might track incoming visitors, both counters represent page views.

The top counter is from Google Adsense and the bottom counts represents page views from Google Analytics. Both counters require JAVA Script to be enabled in the browser.

But why are the counters so different, there both from Google? The Adsense counter seems to be counting at a higher rate than the Analytics counter. Note the scales differ between each counter.
Click the graphic for a larger image.

Pages with the least amount of visitors;
Component Vendors, 'Us'.
IC Vendors, 'Ap'.
Equipment Manufacturers, 'Go'.
IC Manufacturers, 'Gen'.
These are the bottom 4, but it could be these page were only generated last year and may not be as old as some of the other pages.....

Links from an External Page

One of the data points AWSTATS provides is a listing of Links from External Pages.
AWSTATS is the server side counter used by interfacebus.com.
With the start of the new month the listing is small and still workable. Scrolling down the list the column indicating page visits goes blank, while still indicating hits to the site.

That normally means that another site is directly linking to graphic files on my server [site]. The site is using my graphics from my server. The graphic wasn't copied, it's being used directly from my server ~ using up my bandwidth. Not really sure if I like that better than just taking a copy of my picture file.

So I checked a few of the sites using the largest bandwidth [most hits] and visit the other web site. Once I find the graphic file their linking to, I go back to my server change the name of the pic file and up-date my pages so that they to point to the new file name. I save bandwidth and they end up with a broken link. Some times I'll leave the old file name valid but change the pic file to a graphic of my site address :)

Both sites I check were forums, which normally don't allow people to upload graphics. Web sites normally just take the graphics out-right.

The attached graphic is an example forum site that had copied one of my pic files. Some time last year I changed the file name and had a graphic of my site name up-loaded......

Alexa Demographics

Alexa is one of many web sites that collects data on web site visits, but with Alexa you have to run their tool bar. With out the tool bar they don't collect any data.

So they only gather data from a certain group of people, and not from every one who might visits a site. Because of this I've never worried about the over all stats they display because I know it's only from a small segment of the population. However at the same time, many people also think the opposite.

Any way here is a partial data chart from Alexa for interfacebus.com.

The green represent above average visits from a group, while red represents below average visits. So the web site brings in older male visitors that are highly educated while they are at work.

Click on the image for a larger view of the pic.