Mint? Don’t know what Mint is? Well, if you have been away from the Earth since tuesday, it’s probably normal; otherwise it’s quite not normal!

Mint is the replacement for ShortStat, the freeware statistics viewer using PHP. Both are — were (for ShortStat) — made by Shaun Inman.

First, let’s talk about the weekend buzz caused by the release of the so-waited software. Announced on the weblog of mostly every beta testers (I guess, I don’t know how many they were): Jeff Croft, Jason Santa Maria and Kevin Cornell to only name a few. There were so much good words about the final product that the community couldn’t dislike it.

I didn’t test the software so I can’t say if it’s worth 30$ for each site it’s installed on. My instinct tells me that it is a excellent product (as ShortStat is) but there are some excellent freeware or open-source alternative out there. Awstats to name only one.

Also, I don’t think my site is popular enough to spend 30$ to see max. 20 different referrers a day. If I had over 200 uniques per day, I think I’d consider buying it.

The best thing for me — but not for Shaun — would be a free version with only basic features, like last referrers, total unique visitors/day, etc. Something like ShortStat, but with that awesome green and gray design.