World Wide Blogosphere

I have a little web meter thingy attached to this blog, and also to my regular web site and my online SF writing guide, which counts visitors. It can do other things, as well. One of the coolest things it does is show me a world map with little dots on it, telling me where people have come to visit from. I absolutely love this feature, and I check it nearly every night. (Don't worry—it doesn't identify you, or lead me back to your computer, or anything like that. But it does show me the city and country that someone connected from.)

Of course, the largest proportion of visitors are from the U.S. and Canada—no surprise. But outside America, I see I'm having conversations (okay, mostly one-sided conversations) with people from Singapore, Iran, Japan, India, Australia, New Zealand, Slovenia, Italy, Bulgaria, Germany, England, Ireland, Iceland, Norway, Brazil, Spain, Portugal, the Netherlands, France, Poland, Hong Kong, the Philippines, Lithuania, and Mauritius. Probably some others I missed. I can even click to see a map of the country, and read a little about it.

I love this connection with people from around the world. I know that some of you are from countries that are not on particularly good terms with my own—and that almost makes it more gratifying, to be able to reach across boundaries in a small way like that.

You know what would be cool? If more of you left messages to say hello. Then we could a multi-sided conversation. What do you think?