I don't know if all the necessary code to do it would already be in place or
not, but one way to count "total number of users" with a plugin would be to
include a unique identifier for the XBMC system that's running the
download. MAC address for the active network interface would be an easy way
to do it.
Alternatively, since you're already sending the version number (as part of
the file name), another option would be to only count the number of
downloads of the *most recent* file. Maybe even take it a step further if
you can find space in the GUI somewhere, a cool statistic would be a line
graph with number of downloads on the Y axis and version number (or release
date) on the X axis. Sort of lets you see how the plugin has grown.
On Sun, Feb 13, 2011 at 7:54 PM, Jonathan Marshall <[email protected]>wrote:
> Hi All,
>
> First off, let me thank you all for the great effort with all your addons.
> The addons are what makes XBMC so great - keep it up!
>
> We'll be introducing download statistics within XBMC for addons in Eden,
> and to do this we've got some nice statistics-collecting stuff care of
> TheUni's work with google analytics.
>
> First off, I want to assure you that no user-data is collected in order to
> generate these stats. Basically what happens is we receive a download
> request on our server, and then apache then requests a .gif (server-side)
> from google analytics. Thus, the only info google sees is that the
> xbmc.org server is downloading a particular .gif. The location of the
> .gif tells google what the download was (eg
> "script.xbmc.subtitles-v1.0.7.zip") and the referrer string tells analytics
> whether this is an update or fresh install (we know this as XBMC sets this
> info in the referer URL - or at least it will do in Dharma 10.1 as we forgot
> to backport it!). In addition, the user-agent string tells us XBMC version
> and OS version.
>
> We're working on adding the downloads info into the UI at the moment, and
> we're wondering what makes the most sense to include. My thinking is that
> we want:
>
> 1. The total downloads.
> 2. Some measure of "install base" or "popularity".
>
> Number 1 is obvious. Number 2 is not so obvious. Reason is that addons
> that have had a lot of updates will obviously have a lot of downloads, as
> those users will ofcourse be receiving the updates. Thus, total downloads
> itself isn't really good measure of install base. If we only use "fresh"
> installs (i.e. ignore all updates), however, then those addons that are
> included with XBMC (recentlyadded, confluence etc.) will essentially be zero
> as you can't "fresh" install it (you already have it). Another measure
> might be total_downloads/number_of_updates. Assuming updates are far enough
> about that most users will get each update, then we can assume each user
> receives the same number of updates and we have a reasonable number.
> Ofcourse, any user that doesn't have auto-updates on, and instead just
> checks every month or two screws that one up. An alternate is maybe just
> listing some sort of fuzzy "frequency of update" thing (eg "Updated:
> Regularly") and let the user take that into account.
>
> We can also use this to order by number of downloads, or order by
> "popularity", so whatever statistic we use it needs to be reasonably fair
> (equally biased for the statisticians).
>
> So, is this sane? Do you think a different measure is needed? Do you not
> care?
>
> PS: If you're interested in your downloads to date (regardless of whether
> they include updates or not) I'll send through a post in a bit with those
> totals.
>
> Cheers,
> Jonathan
>
>
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The ultimate all-in-one performance toolkit: Intel(R) Parallel Studio XE:
Pinpoint memory and threading errors before they happen.
Find and fix more than 250 security defects in the development cycle.
Locate bottlenecks in serial and parallel code that limit performance.
http://p.sf.net/sfu/intel-dev2devfeb
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