How accurate is Alexa?

Alexa.com, the "web information company" is designed to provide statistics on the popularity of websites on the internet - I just wonder how accurate it is at doing so.

Alexa gathers its statistics using the Alexa Toolbar which is an add-on to Internet Explorer. There's the first problem - there's no official Firefox version. (I say official because there is this Firefox extension, but I'm not convinced that it sends home browsing statistics). I think most would agree that the more savvy web user will tend to use Firefox in preference to IE... and they'll sift through more of the web than the average surfer. But, being affiliated to Amazon.com, you'd think it would have enough users to provide statistical reliability anyway. I guess the more popular you website is, the more reliable the figures are. (Other problems include extra browsing lag and occasional crashes.)
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Tags: statistics, webmaster, Alexa

Rugby World Cup wallchart

***Discount rugby kits and equipment***

The Cricket World Cup is over, but there's another one on the horizon - Rugby World Cup 2007. Get your wallchart (excel spreadsheet), check the fixtures and clear your diaries!
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Related: rugby, World Cup, spreadsheet, wallchart

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Discover music

Need an online radio station that streams full length songs suited to your taste in music? Try Musicovery.

Listen to a full length movie online

ListenToAMovie streams the entire audio track of a movie (and some tv shows) online. It is not a files sharing or file swapping site. And although the audio is mono and the encoding quality is intentionally set very low 24Kbs (less than AM radio quality) you can still get the gist of what's going on. They've got a fairly wide selection too.

Tags: audio, film, movie

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Demographics prediction

From Microsoft adCenter labs is a potentially quite powerful tool that predicts the demographics for a particular search term.

"You can use adCenter technology to predict a customer's age, gender, and other demographic information according to his or her online behavior-that is, from search queries and webpage views. General Distribution is the breakdown by age of MSN Search users-based on a one-month MSN Search log-regardless of search query used. Predicted Distribution is the predicted breakdown by age of MSN Search users for a single search query, based on the adLabs predictive model."

The Children of Hurin

It's finally out in the shops (UK and US)!

"Started somewhere around 1916 - 1918 by J.R.R. Tolkien, then revised several times, it has taken his son Christopher Tolkien 30 years to finally complete it and form the tale of Turin Turambar and the other offspring of Hurin of Hador for publication as an independent work. It is the first, full-length, cohesive Tolkien novel to be published since The Silmarillion of 1977."

Flora London Marathon

I was pretty tired after last year's London Marathon. I didn't run in it, but I did do some exercise that day :) Anyway... this Sunday is when it comes around again. It's always great to have a lie-in, wake up, flick on the TV and see lots of people sweating it out. Good on them! There are lots of people running for some great causes.

Tags: London, marathon, charity

Firebug

A plug here for an excellent Firefox extension - Firebug. Designed to help facilitate web development, it shows you the html in a webpage, any javascript it's running, xmlHttp requests and more!

Related: Firebug, Firefox

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