statistics

Flickchart – your own Top 20 Movies of all times

Flickchart is yet another one of those sites that is supposed to help you choose the next movie to watch, as well as share with your friends the list of movies that you’ve enjoyed. The interface is somewhat simple and straightforward, even though the functionality is plenty.

Basically, you are presented with the two movies next to each other and you have to click on the one you think is better. If you haven’t seen either one of the given movies, you can skip it for the next. Flickchart computes your voting into a Top 20 Movies of all times list, as well as a bunch of other sub-lists – by genre, by decade, etc.

Overall, that’s a much needed site with some really cool features. There is only one problem with it. It doesn’t work. I mean, it doesn’t work as I expected it to. It keeps throwing unknown weird films that I’ve never heard of at me. It keeps giving me movies for voting which I clearly marked as I haven’t seen. And the resulting Top 20 Of All Time list is weird at best. Some of the movies which I want there – are there, yet not at the places I’d put them manually at. The other movies seem to not make it there at all.

There is a “By Title” voting mechanism which one could use to move things around, but that is not very useful at this stage either. For example, I had “Avatar” at position #2. I thought, even though it’s a nice movie, #2 is a bit too high for it. So I took the “By Title” tour and in just a five or six clicks “Avatar” ended at #46. Seriously, WTF is going on?

As much as I’d love to use this site, I think it’s still too early. I need to give it some time to mature. But I’ll definitely be back to check out later. Have you tried it yet?

Google Chrome overtakes Microsoft Internet Explorer as most used browser

Via The Next Web I’ve learned that according to StatCounter global stats, Google Chrome has just overtaken Microsoft Internet Explorer as the web’s most used browser. These are very good news! For the amount of pain and suffering MSIE caused to web developers all around the world during the last decade or so, it truly deserves to crash and burst in flames. That not being a realistic option, being kicked out of the web slowly, but surely seems like a good alternative.

Drink more alcohol to save the environment!

While browsing through the news articles from a few days ago, I noticed two separate items from Cyprus Mail newspaper. These articles weren’t linked or related in any way, but in my news reader they came up right next to each other, and I think the connection is obvious.

The first article was about Cypriots drinking less alcohol than their European Union peers:

CYPRUS has among the lowest consumption of alcohol per capita in the EU but when it comes to those who do like a tipple, binge drinking is quite prevalent.

According to a report released yesterday on alcohol in the EU, compiled by the World Health Organsiation (WHO), Cypriot alcohol consumption stands at 9.3 litres per capita compared to the EU average of 12.4. Malta came in at the lowest with 8.1 litres per capita, Greece with 10.5 and the UK with 12.5.

The second article was about Cypriots producing more junk than anyone else in Europe.

CYPRUS has again topped the list in Europe as generators of the most household waste with 760kg per person on average.

In the EU27, 502 kg of municipal waste was generated per person in 2010, while 486 kg of municipal waste was treated per person. This municipal waste was treated in different ways3: 38 per cent was landfilled, 22 per cent incinerated, 25 per cent recycled and 15 per cent composted.

The amount of municipal waste generated varies significantly across member states. Cyprus, with 760 kg per person, had the highest amount of waste generated in 2010, followed by Luxembourg, Denmark and Ireland with values between 600kg and 700 kg per person, and the Netherlands, Malta, Austria, Germany, Spain, France, Italy, the United Kingdom and Portugal with values between 500kg and 600kg.

Finland, Belgium, Sweden, Greece, Slovenia, Hungary and Bulgaria had values between 400kg and 500kg, while values of below 400kg per person were recorded in Lithuania, Romania, Slovakia, the Czech Republic, Poland, Estonia and Latvia.

There! I think there is enough data to support the theory of solving the environmental crisis with alcohol consumption. Now all I need is a government grant to do some extensive drinking research.

Website traffic, the learning curve

I’ve built plenty of websites over the years. Some – from scratch, others – mere customizations and adaptation of someone else’s work. But when it came to web promotion, I’ve usually handed it over to someone else. Don’t get me wrong – I have a pretty good idea about how these things work, but I didn’t keep up and I haven’t practiced in a long while.

Currently, I am involved in the project, where the web promotion bit is my responsibility. Until the project grows and earns enough to hire a professional. So I’m using it as a platform to refresh my knowledge, catch up with current trends, tools, and techniques, and to try out a few ideas of mine own. It is an interesting experience.

One thing I like is that the website is brand new on a very young domain with no previous history. The A/B testings and statistics cuts are very clean. There is an opportunity to measure the effects of this or that campaign with a lot of precision and no interference from any other traffic sources.

A lot has changed since I did it the last time. One thing that amazes me is how dirt cheap the web traffic is these days. I mean that when I first went in to buy some, I had a price in my head. I paid less and I got more than I expected. Then I studied it for a few days and got a way better price. Then I tried something else and got an even better price. I’m sure I’m not at the end of the tunnel yet either.

Of course, this is a random, not targeted, pretty much not convertable traffic. But it does have its pros this early in the game, and given the price – it’s well worth it. Even with that I’ve got more conversions than I hoped for.

Let me mention it once again – I am pretty much a newbie in the practical terms of this. If you have any advice or any resources that you think might help me out – please share and let me know. Once I get a better hand of it, I’ll share my thoughts and experiences too. Right now though it’s too embarrassing to do so.

Cyprus prison population

The other day I was reading Cyprus Mail’s coverage of Cyprus prison overpopulation problem. As any other problem it does involve attention. But for me personally the article was more useful with absolute numbers rather than relative. This paragraph in particular:

Cyprus’ total prison population in June this year, including pre-trial detainees and remand prisoners, was 831. Its prison population rate reached 105 per 100,000 members of the population, lower than the EU average of 137 per 100,000.

Can you imagine that there are only, more or less, 830 people in prison? And some of them aren’t even proven criminals yet – pre-trial detainees!

Coming from Russia, with it’s multi-million population and millions of people in correctional facilities, and criminal culture tightly integrated into the population with TV, movies, music and language; so tight indeed that even presidents, premiers and ministers are using bits and pieces of it during their public speeches and appearances; I find it almost impossible to believe that there are less than a 1,000 people in Cyprus jails.