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When not snowed under by the sheer weight of spam and rubbish mail, its important to take time out to find those little amusements in the day to day junkmail. Here's one that came in today, personally addressed to a one-off email address that was on my site for a while, asking for a link exchange because clearly I have something to do with shonky weight-loss products.

  Please use the following details for my link:

  Title : weight loss for women
  Please link The Title to this URL :
  http://www.######.com/

  Descripcion:
  It takes more than just losing a few pounds to truly live a happier,
  healthier and more fulfilled lifestyle. That's why the Slim Girl's Box
  of Secrets comes with a unique set of benefits that you just won't find
  elsewhere.

Oh dear, a bit Too Much Capitalisation, and can you at least spell check your Descripcion.

Perhaps look at the format of your text and where you line-wrap.

I'm not sure I can get past the Slim Girl's Box, and for some reason I keep reading it as Slime Girl, not Slim Girl, so maybe the entire product line needs revision.

  I hope you have a nice day and thank you for your time.

No problem, my bills in the mail.

  Best regards;

  Sharon Rottino
  Web Marketing Consultant
  sharon.rottino@##########

...and I refuse to make a cheap joke about a spammer with a surname that sounds like Rot In O.

Who views my photos, why, how often, what brings them here?

Every day or so I check with Flickr to see what is being viewed the most, and what has been viewed the most overall.

Oddly, my most viewed image has more than ten times the views of the next most viewed, and to me is a fairly boring bland photo. Linking to it here would only drive the view count up higher, so I won't!

  New office desk, just like the old office desk
  1760 views / Nobody counts New office desk, just like the old
  office desk as a favorite / 0 comments

It hasn't been there a great deal of time more than other photos, it's only posted to one group, nobody posts comments on it and I have no idea why it gets viewed so often. Any ideas?

Next on the list

  10/365 - Dad, are you sure this is an approved baby carrier?
  116 views / 1 person counts this as a favorite / 1 comment

Now I can see why number two is popular, but not number one. Very puzzling.

Generally the most recently posted photos get a few views, I guess from my friends and contacts as they popup in feed-readers and various "what's new" lists, but oddities stand out and I'd love to know what causes them. Surges of interest seem to come and go; one day it'll be tandem bicycles, the next Milford sound, the day after that any parrots. Topical subjects in the news, both very local and world-wide, act as triggers, the PBS/RRR Community Cup and Melburn-Roobaix both kicked off an interest as their times of year came arond. Of course this posting itself will have an effect, you can't measure something without affecting whatever it is you're measuring….

Tinkering about I add tags here and there and have found that the more, and better, tags that photos have then the more likely it will to be viewed — hardly surprising, it means people can find it. They're tagged, and where appropriate I try and find machine tags to add, and nearly all have latitude and longitude information in the EXIF data and in the geo-tags and can be found on the Flickr map.

Photos of the two weeks in China seem to attract a continual low-level interest, but nobody ever leaves comments on them so I have no idea who is looking at them.

All in all its a fascinating insight into what appeals to others, from a set of photos that vary wildly in quality and interest.