Predicting the Winner of the 2008 Pres. Election

So, even with a few glitches at the polls today - it seems that voters are still getting out there and making their votes count.

A coworker showed me this tracker and I think it is a pretty cool way to see all of the predictions (looks like everyone is leaning toward obama right now)

Where to get your election 2008 news

Election day is finally upon us, and to help you get the latest news, here are a few places to get election 2008 coverage.

1. BBC election coverage - It is great to get a little bit of coverage from a different perspective than the US and the BBC is the place to get some outside info on the presidential election

2. findingDulcinea - If you want a little history with your breaking news coverage, this is the place to get it. For the past few months fD has been covering the lead up to the election, and today they've got some great stories about what we learned from the 2000 election, which campaign has more money, the most controversial elections in US history, and general election day coverage. You can even get some laughs with the collection of parody campaign videos.

3. Twitter Votereport - tag your voting day news with #votereport, or check out the page to see what other people are tweeting this election day.

Firefox Tabs Just Got Better

The day I learned about browser tabs my online experience changed for the better - new window? no need. Just Cmd T and you can open a new tab.

Last week I learned how to navigate through those tabs - and I've since become a Web browsing master.

Here are some of those tab tricks (this is for Mac users with firefox 2 - if you have firefox 3 or are using windows - check out mozilla's keyboard shortcuts page).

Move to the next tab Ctrl Tab

Move to the tab to the Right Cmd Option Right Arrow Key (Or use Ctrl Tab)

Move to the tab to the Left Cmd Option Left Arrow Key

Ever close a tab on accident? Fear no more - Cmd Shift T will reopen the last tab you closed.

Love every site you have open in your tabs? Cmd Shift D will bookmark them for you.

And, if tabbing just isn't for you - Cmd N will open a new window.

BloggingDulcinea - We've Got a New Blog

So - we moved our company blog to it's own site and gave it it's own identity.

Check out "Librarian of the Internet" where you'll find ramblings and insight from our writers, researchers, and whoevers about what we're finding on the web, what's going on in the New York startup scene, and other great stuff.

Here's a preview of the blog





Don't worry, just because there is a new kid in town doesn't mean I'm leaving All the Write Sites - there's room in my heart for two blogs (who knows, maybe even three).

Maybe Alexa is on to Me

So - just as I'd divulged the secrets of Alexa Rank in my "improve your alexa rank without even trying" post, Alexa went ahead and changed how they rank things (pretty much meaning that they are now gathering data from more than just the alexa toolbar users).

I hope that some of you enjoyed the last few glory days of abusing the toolbar rank system, and I suppose I should have kept my big mouth shut about it (I'm sure the Alexa developers were sweating in their computer chairs as they read my blog and discovered that I'd unlocked the secret of their system).

For some of you this was probably a change in the right direction (I know for my blog it helped me break the 1 million mark - sort of a big deal) - for some it probably had no effect or minimal effect - and for a few it undoubtedly hurt your rank (and for those folks I'm truly sorry - I know that most of my self esteem is based on my alexa rank value). If you feel confused about why change happened - read Alexa's explanation, it's vague but will give you an idea of what's going on now.

Don't worry, as soon as I figure out how to improve your new alexa rank - I'll let everyone know and Alexa will have to come up with a new algorithm yet again (I had no idea I had so much clout in the internet world).

Improve Your Alexa Rank - Without Really Trying

Note: The following tips will work best for smaller sites (such as this blog) with current page ranks higher than a few hundred thousand. However, they wont hurt any site (large or small) so feel free to give them a try.

In the beginning of my journey to Internet expertise, I thought that Alexa rank was the end-all of site rankings, I figured that there was some magic formula used to determine how many people were visiting a site each day - and that that magic formula (much like Google PageRank) would forever remain a mystery to me.

I was wrong.

Alexa rank is (as far as I can tell) limited to the amount of info it can gather from Alexa toolbar users, and in some cases has no real reflection of your actual rank as a site.

Don't believe me? Check out the page on Alexa that discusses how Alexa rank works.

Take special note of the following phrase from the "Some Important Disclaimers" section:

"The traffic data are based on the set of toolbars that use Alexa data, which may not be a representative sample of the global Internet population."

So - what does this mean to you and how can you use these minor flaws to the benefit of your rank?

Well, the "may not be a representative sample" bit is key. Because Alexa has to make an assumption about the number of toolbar users as a percentage of internet users as a whole - smaller sites can tip the scale in their favor.

How? Well, if Alexa assumes that one out of every 100 internet users has an Alexa toolbar (I'm just making up the numbers - but the example still works), and they get data back that says that one Alexa toobar user visited your site each day - they might assume that you get about 100 visits a day. For large sites with a broad appeal and a diverse set of users, these assumptions work just fine.

However, for a very small site (with very low traffic) the assumptions made by the Alexa technology can work in their favor. Lets say a small site gets three visitors a day, if no one that visits your site has an alexa toolbar (not even the creator) it will seem as though the site has no traffic and it will be doomed to remain on the alexa directory with no thumbnail and a horrible page rank. Now, if only one of those three visitors has the toolbar - it will seem to alexa that you have 100 visits a day (based on my made up figures from above). BUT - if all three of the users have the toolbar - it might seem as though you have 300 visitors a day. A great exaggeration from your actual traffic - and a great boost to your self-esteem.

So - for smaller sites - asking your regular userbase (your mom, your friends, etc) to add the Alexa toolbar can greatly inflate your page rank (and thus make all of your visitors super-visitors).

How quickly can you expect results? Well, the rank that you'll see on Alexa is an average of the last three months, so you wont see an immediate jump to whatever your rank is for today, but if you get your few dedicated users to keep coming back and keep using their Alexa toolbars - you'll slowly see your site creep up in rank.

For larger sites, making sure that your userbase is aware of the Alexa toolbar is never a bad idea (especially if your site tends to skew to an older or less web-savvy userbase - you may not be getting counted for all of the users you actually get simply because they aren't using the latest add-on features for their browsers).

Some added bonuses of Alexa add-ons.

If you install "sparky" you can see the Alexa rank of every site you visit and have easy access to the traffic summary pages of the sites you visit.

If everyone that reads this blog post installs an alexa toolbar or add-on, my blog may even get a boost (currently stands at around 2.7 million mark - yikes!).

Stumbling over StumbleUpon

It was the thought of putting one more add-on onto firefox that’s kept me away from StumbleUpon for so long, but today I made the leap.

However, after a few hours of StumblingUpon things - I’m still on the fence about whether or not I'll keep if for a couple reasons:

1. There is the possibility that I will be stumbling from now until eternity (it is a pretty fun way to discover stuff).

2. The interface just isn’t what I expected it to be and I got a little confused in the midst of my site discoveries.


For the sake of blogging, I’m going to focus on the problems with StumbleUpon as I see them – in hopes that someone will “stumbleupon” my suggestions. Why? Because I know that we always want feedback for our site – and enjoy a good round of constructive criticism. Also – I hope my critiques will help a few lost stumblers find their way to successful stumbling.

Here’s where I got tied up

Uploading a photo for my profile – after the upload – there was nothing to click to take me back to my profile – the page just said “photo uploaded successfully” – what did I do? Well, I just hit the stumble icon and went on my merry way.

Back up – just finding my profile for the first time. Yeah – seems simple enough – but the toolbar icons that look like they might lead to my profile actually lead to other stuff – I finally figured out that clicking on the star icon (my favorites) would lead me to one part of my profile and I’ve been using that to navigate back and forth. (click on my profile below to take a peek at what I've been stumbling).Stumbling something new – like All the Write Sites – which turned out to be just about the easiest thing ever (just click the thumbs up icon and if no one else has discovered it you’ll get a chance to categorize and review it).

What exactly does “adult” mean? When you stumble something – a question asks you to indicate whether it has adult content or not. So I was stumbling a friend's blog that includes a few curse words and figured that might be considered adult (I didn’t want someone to complain that I wasn’t labeling my stumbles correctly) so I clicked “yes” for adult. Well, little did I know that adult really just means “porn” and will actually just add the “porn” tag to that site – forever if you are the first one to stumble it. So – StumbleUpon – if you mean porn why don’t you just say it? Otherwise well-intentioned folks like myself try to be honest and end up mislabeling content.

I also don’t know why every time I give a site a rating now I get directed to a page with other people that felt the same way I did about it – I’d rather not see those people because frankly I don’t care who else liked
This picture of the world at night – or this time-lapse cityscape.

Not that I don’t want to make new friends – just that I’d rather see more web content than more web profiles. Anywho I think I can turn that function off – I was just too lazy to figure out how (note – later I was less lazy and figured out how – it is in the “tools” pulldown – hit “toolbar options” click the “configuration” tab and then make sure the “show page review after rating” is NOT checked).

So - for those who are wondering if StumbleUpon is worth the investment (it's free) - it probably is - but don't be afraid to stumble around the toolbar a bit until you have it figured out.