Well, the end of the holiday season means that it's finally time to start checking the visitor stats again. More visitors mean more sponsors, preferably sponsors with really deep pockets. We usually use SiteMeter to check our statistics, but reBlog points out that there's another way to play the Web site statistics game: VisitorVille.

"VisitorVille is software that takes a new visual approach to web analytics; instead of representing website visitors simply as numbers or graphs, it displays them as real people in a real environment. You can watch your site traffic as if you were people-watching in a big city. VisitorVille brings your website visitors to life as animated characters in real time."

Wired Magazine calls it "SimCity for Traffic Nerds," while Lockergnome raves that "VisitorVille takes your normal, boring traffic and brings it to life."