Cutting Over to a New Host - DOWNTIME IMMINENT

Guys, as we continue to deal with site and rating engagement growth, we will be cutting over to a new host today.

Currently our architecture looks like this: one pretty good database server, one very fast web server, one OK web server, one weak web server.

As of later tonight, our architecture will look like this: One very good database server, five very fast web servers.

We expect a noticeable improvement in performance, and of course, the ability to handle several times the amount of traffic that we can today.

We're going to be down for about six hours while we transfer our massive database to the new host.

Videos and Weblists

I love how folks are starting to embed videos into their lists - some of these are really entertaining.

Check out Wiseguy's recent lists on 2008 Campaign Ads and Awkward Political Moments.

Survey

If you get asked if you'd like to participate in a survey while surfing RIA, don't panic. It's legit. We are looking for some specific feedback on a couple aspects of the site.

Images

Guys, we made a pretty significant change as to how we handle images. Specifically, we've moved all of our 5GB worth of images (profile pics, item pics, list pics) over to Amazon's servers. This should fix some of those nagging issues related to changing or deleting a pic. Sometimes this would work, sometimes not. Now it should always work.

Also, the images should load much faster now.

If you see anything screwy with images, please let me know.

RateItAll Bebo App

Guys, we just launched a RateItAll Compatibility app for Bebo. We need your help testing it. You can add the app to your Bebo profile HERE.

As soon as you add the app, make sure to click the "join/login" link so you can sync your Bebo RateItAll account to your main RateItAll account.

It should be getting pretty clear what we're trying to do now - we want you to be able to post, share, and access your reviews from any site - not just RateItAll.com.

Thanks!

A Trusted Network?

Guys, we need your help. What's the best way to describe the folks that you have added to your "trusted network?" We somehow feel that "trusted network" doesn't quite do it. Any ideas?

Here's the list - please send in suggestions.

Improvements to Google AdSense Revenue Sharing Program

Guys, we rolled in some important improvements to our revenue sharing program.

Specifically, we are now sharing revenue 50/50 with program participants on every Google ad block on qualifying pages; Your Profile Page, Your Lists, Items You Contribute to Others' Lists, and your Review Pages.

I expect that this will result in a moderate increase in earnings for participants.

Also, we've made it MUCH easier to link your RateItAll account to an existing Google AdSense account.

To sign up for the Google AdSense revenue sharing program for the first time or to link your RIA account to an existing Google AdSense account, just go to your profile page, click the "Edit Account" link on the left hand side, and check the box that says "Sign Me Up for Google AdSense so I can earn cash."

Then choose whether you'd like to sign up for a new AdSense account, or link an existing AdSense account to your RateItAll account and fill in the fields.

You will get an email from Google confirming your enrollment. Also, you can check the status of your AdSense account (approved or pending) right on your RateItAll account page.

Rating Lists vs Yes/No Polls

One of the things that makes RIA so great is the creativity that folks have shown in using our Weblist tool to build fun and engaging content. We've seen the RIA rating engine used for everything from product rating, to travel diaries, to music rating, to video rating, and even reviewer rating.

But every once in a while, I believe our lists can start to stray from RIA's wheelhouse of rating / opinion related content, into things like general self expression tools, or yes/no polls.

And I don't want to go in that direction. RateItAll is an opinion / rating community. That's what we do, and we're not going to overreach.

An example of what I'm talking about are some of Dyna's recent lists like "Do You Remember" and "Have You Ever." It's been fun seeing folks tell stories about different experiences that they've had. However, these are not rating lists. It's very difficult to rate, on a one to five star basis, "Do Your Remember Your Very First Car."

We're not total hardasses about this - occasionally, a self expression list or two will slide on by. However, as a general rule, we're going to stick to rating stuff. That's our world, and that's what we know. So if you see some of these lists go invisible, that's me just trying to reign things in a bit.

Did you know...

It's now time for our ongoing, tri-annual series entitled "Did You Know?"  In this segment, we examine little used, but monstrously helpful features that are cleverly hidden from most users.

Did you know that you can sort our list pages by:

- # of ratings

- # of reviews

- alphabetic

- (and my favorite) Low to High

Low to high is particularly useful for finding the lowest rated item in a list (ie "worst song of the 1980's).

Just look at the bottom right of any RateItAll list.

Welcome Vijai and Lena

Guys, two new folks recently joined the RateItAll team: Lena, who is a UI designer extraordinaire, and Vijai, who is a super sharp senior web developer.

If you have a second, please shoot them a note and help me to welcome them to RIA.

Putting a Moratorium on New RateItAll Reviewer Lists

Guys, there's plenty of ways to rate each other as reviewers, as well as other ways to scratch each others' backs. I'm going to be hiding all new "rate the reviewer" lists for a while.

Couple of Minor Display Changes

Guys, a couple of minor display changes were made to the site today:

• We are now showing the top 70 items on any list page before making you page. This will only affect long lists, like this list for Horror Movie Reviews, for example.
• Similarly, we are now displaying up to 70 reviews on any item page. Here's an example.
• We are hiding reviews of fewer than 10 characters from appearing on the item page. They will still show up in the recent comments page, or on a reviewer's archive page, but not on the item page. The way we see it, if someone just writes "sucks!" (five characters), they probably just meant to leave a rating anyway.

Have a great and safe Fourth of July weekend....

RateItAll's Randyman Interviewed by Ringside Report

RateItAll Randyman writes well on just about any topic. But if there is one area where he reaches back just a little bit more, it's in writing about boxing.

What you might not know is that Randyman hosts a popular boxing blog at boxing-ring.blogspot.com where he talks about the LA fight scene. The photos alone are worth a peak, and not surprisingly, the writing is top notch.

Randyman was just interviewed by the Ringside Report - the interview is pretty in depth, and Randyman shares a lot about where his love for the sport comes from. He also plugs RateItAll, which we very much appreciate.

Anyway, congrats to Randy for his blog getting some well earned attention.

App to show off your RIA Reviews on Facebook

RateItAll's friends over at iWidgets built us a neat little app that shows off your recent reviews on Facebook. Here's what it looks like (and you can add it yourself, here):

Doing a Little DB Tuning at Midnight

Guys, we will be tuning our database tonight at midnight. We expect the site to be down for twenty to thirty minutes.

Debrief

Late yesterday afternoon, we had our best web server fail. The traffic load was too much for the remaining two web servers to handle, so performance tanked. Our host was unable to troubleshoot the issue, and we were told that they would take another shot at it Saturday (today) AM.

So, at this point, we knew a couple of things; we knew that our remaining two servers were not up to our traffic load, and that there was no guarantee that we would be able to get our big server back online today.

So yesterday evening, Automatt and I made the decision to try and migrate the service to what is called a "cloud computing" hosting provider. This is a new type of host that gives you virtual machines, and the ability to quickly add capacity as your traffic grows. It's all self serve, so it's conceivable that we would be able to get back up and running late Friday night.

So we configured five virtual webservers and a database server, migrated our database over to the new host (which took a few hours as it's pretty big), and pointed the "RateItAll.com"domain to the new IP address. By the time everything was ready to go, Automatt and I had worked through the night and it was after 6AM PST. Unfortunately, when you update DNS information, there's not an immediate update across the Web. In our case, some folks were not able to access the site until about 1:30PM today.

Once we had RateItAll up an running on the new service provider and everybody around the world was able to hit the site, it became quickly apparent that our new virtual host did not have the computing power to handle RateItAll's load. Many more virtual servers would have been needed, and it was unclear that even then, these virtual servers would be able to handle the dynamic nature of RateItAll.

Around the same time, our original host got back to us and let us know that they had managed to repair our big web server that had gone down late on Friday.

So at this point, early this afternoon, we made the decision to go back to our original hosting configuration, which we were sure could handle RateItAll's traffic. Some of you may still be seeing an IP address as opposed to the RateItAll.com domain in the web address line - this should be resolved back to RateItAll.com shortly.

Once we pointed the domain name back to our original IP address, for whatever the reason, bots from Google and Yahoo started hammering us at much higher intensity than normal. This has impacted performance today, making the site very slow. We are now working to slow down these crawlers to get the site speed back up.

It's been a brutal weekend so far with very little sleep and a lot of stress. The good news is that we learned some valuable info - mainly, that cloud computing (at least the provider we tried) is still too early in the game to be a viable host for a big traffic site like RateItAll. We also learned that although we have multiple servers, we are very much dependent on a single server to maintain our quality of service - this will be changing this week.

Thanks for your patience as we go through this.

Caution: Server Maintenance in Process

Guys, we are working on the site. Tread carefully rating stuff... site performance will be dicey for a while.

I'll post a full debrief shortly of the last 18 hours - it's been an interesting experiment.

Site Coming Back

Site should be available to all over the next few minutes. Thanks to Automatt for the long night of work put in to get us live.

Status

We are making progress, but expect it will be another hour before we are back online.

Update

Automatt and I decided not to wait to see what happens with our lead web server tomorrow - we're moving over to another service provider tonight, so that we can have a snappy website through the weekend.

We expect to back online by 1AM PST.  More update to follow.

Hardware Failure

Our biggest, baddest web server fell off the grid a few hours ago, and is not responding.

So, we are currently running on two smaller web servers, which are pretty much pegged under our regular load.

We'll know more tomorrow AM about whether this box is recoverable - best case scenario is that it's just a power supply issue, which would be resolvable.

Expect performance to be sluggish until we get this box (or a replacement) online.

Ads in the Recent Reviews River

You'll notice that we've moved ads on the recent reviews page from the right sidebar into the river. We're trying out different stuff to try and find the balance between what converts, and what isn't uber annoying.

Commenting Now Working Across MySpace

You can now access comments on your reviews from your MySpace account. Here's a screenshot. This also means that folks using RIA from MySpace will receive your comments that you post on their review on RIA. With great power comes great responsibility :)

Best Error Page Ever

Not that we intend to serve up many error pages, but in the off chance that we do.... we now have the best error page ever.

Try clicking this link - and make sure to keep refreshing (the photo will change).

More RIA Trip Reporting

There's nothing I like better than a good RIA trip report... Zuchinibut has just set one up for his recent trip to Oregon.  Has anyone else been to these places?  Chime in!

Battling Some Application Errors

We're on it.... stay tuned.

Messaging Bug Fixed

I'm sure everyone has noticed that annoying little bug in which RateItAll personal message threads reverse the names of who is saying what.

For example, when people send me hate messages, the thread might read something like this.


AngryUser69: I'm sorry you feel that way. We do the best we can.

Lawrence: RateItAll Sucks! My pet monkey could do a better job moderating this site!

When in fact, the exchange was really like this.

Lawrence: I'm sorry you feel that way. We do the best we can.

AngryUser69: RateItAll Sucks! My pet monkey could do a better job moderating this site!

For obvious reasons, this could get confusing. I'm happy to say that it's fixed now.

MySpace Invites Now Working

For those of you using RIA for MySpace, the invite tool is now working. You can challenge people to take a test, you can share a review, or you can share the app itself.

The only catch is that you have to invite one at a time.... you click on the name of the person that you want to share / invite with, then click on the next one after the box pops up.

The invitation shows up in the recipient's bulletin space.

Remixed RIA Video from Hyve Up

My friends over at Hyve Up have created a cool video with background techno music of me trying to explain what RIA is:

You can rate HyveUp with this widget:

Technology Blogs on RateItAll

RateItAll Funding

Hey All, just a heads up that RateItAll has raised some funding.

The good news is that not much is going to change, other than than our ability to provide a better service to the RIA community. A few more developers and an awesome designer will be joining Automatt and myself. This will mean they we will be able to fix things and add features at a must faster rate, and that things should work better.

We remain committed to our core philosophy of giving our members more rights than just about any other site - owning your reviews, sharing revenue on your reviews, sharing your reviews on places like MySpace and Facebook, and of course, leaving whenever you want and taking all of your stuff with you.

Thanks for your support.

Irishgit's SF Tour

I caught up with Irishgit tonight, live and in person in San Francisco. We hit Zeitgeist, Arinell's for pizza, Casanova, and then Arinell's for pizza again. We gossiped about RIA stuff and talked a lot of sports and politics.

Overall it was a pretty good night.

IG is the third person I've met through RIA. Previously I met JonTheMan and Minkey. It's amazing how well you can get to know somebody by reading what they think about everything.

Rebooting DB Late Tonight

Guys, we are doing some scheduled maintenance late this evening that will required a DB reboot, bringing the site down for a 15-30 minutes.

Automatt, will you comment with the exact time?

Speaking of Trip Reports...

Speaking of using RIA to document trip reports, check out Irishgit's reviews of the places and things that he's seen while driving down the Pacific Coast.

Word has it he will be hitting San Francisco's legendary Zeitgeist beer garden tomorrow at 7PM. I'm in as well - any other local RIA'rs are welcome to stop by.

Obama and Fear

OK, we have a couple of new quizzes live on MS and Facebook. An Obama VP quiz based on GTH's Obama VP Candidate list, and a fear test based on Jamie McBain's list of things you are afraid of.

And to my conservative friends out there, please don't read anything into the juxtaposition of the "Fear" and "Obama" quizzes.

I can't believe we don't have a 2008 Democratic candidate list yet

Who wants to take it on?

Here's the 2008 Republican VP candidate list.

Trip Reports via RateItAll

One of my favorite things to do after taking a trip is to write up the things and places that I saw. I just wrote up my trip to Atlanta for my brother's bachelors party. We went to a ball game, and I reviewed Turner Field, a couple of Atlanta bars, and the hotel I stayed at.

For me, RateItAll is almost a diary of sorts, and this is one my favorite things about the site.

Two New Quizzes

I added a Job Compatibility Test and a Break Up Quiz to MySpace and Facebook. Check them out!

Also, thanks for all of the good suggestions for more compatibility quizzes... I think we need a way for anybody to convert their lists into a FB / MS quiz.

Agree is the New Funny

Sometimes when I'm utterly baffled by a review, but I want to acknowledge that I read it, I will drop an "agree" vote on it.

Often this makes no sense:

Reviewer: "I remember growing up in Kentucky snorting the Grizz four time per day."

Me: Agree

I didn't grow up in Kentucky, and I certainly have never ingested the Grizz. Yet I somehow feel compelled to drop an "agree" vote.

Is there any cure for what I have?

Posting a Video Review: A How To from Genghis the Hun

GenghisTheHun has very helpfully put together a video explaining how to post a video review to RateItAll.

Genghis chose to shoot the clip in sort of a Blair Witch style - minimal light, with only a hand and several eerie lights visible. I found myself overcome with an inexplicable feeling of dread after watching it.

But if you can get past the horror film techniques, his tutorial is quite helpful.

Here are the cliff notes:

- Record your video using a web cam or camera
- Export it to your desktop
- Upload it to YouTube
- Copy the embed code from YouTube and paste it into the review field

But I encourage you to watch the whole video. Thanks GTH!:

Suggestions for New Compatibility Tests?

If anybody has suggestions for lists that could be converted into compatibility tests, please let me know. These tests are a great way to drive traffic to specific lists... if you have a list that you think might work as a compatibility test (it should be mainstream, easily rate-able, and with pictures and images), please let me know.

Down for Everyone or Just Me?

Sometimes when your favorite site goes down, it's hard to tell if the problem is on your end, or on RIA's end.

Here's a cool site to help you answer that question - if you can't get to RIA, make sure to hit: Downforeveryoneorjustme.com.

Religion Compatibility Test Now Live....

.... on Facebook and MySpace. Let's add some quantitative compatibility numbers next to the great debate.

Hey University of Singapore - Knock it Off

In addition to the million or so humans a month that visit RateItAll, there are also thousands of "bots" - non human visitors who crawl and scrape our site for content.

Some of these bots are benign - for example Google, Yahoo, and MSN all operate bots / spiders that are used to index our content so that it can show up in their respective search engines. These bots follow strict rules, and respond to our requests to slow down if they are hitting us too hard. We love them.

But others are rogues. Pounding our servers without regards to our requests, and scraping our (yours and RateItAll's) content so that they can display it elsewhere and try and make money off of it.

Today, one of those rogue bots was hitting pretty hard - we tracked it back to the University of Singapore. They were hitting us about twice as aggressively as Google, which is pretty aggressive.

So if you guys over there in Singapore are reading this, nice work. You overdid it and now you are permanently banned.

RateItAll is Hiring

Guys, RateItAll is looking for developers / engineers. Here's the job req - please let me know if you know of anyone.

The Meaning of Trusted Networks on RateItAll

There's been some debate as to what does it exactly mean to add somebody to your trusted network on RateItAll.

While I don't think there is any one answer, I think Ridgewalker puts it better than most when he says:

When I first came on here, back in '05, I'll have to admit that I was a tad baffled by the "Trusted List", so I asked someone who I respected, what this was all about. I can't think of a better, or alternate title for this list, but it's not always about trust. It can be about respect for a person's point of view and the way they express it. It can be a "thanks" for the helpful information, or for making me laugh. It can mean, simply, that I like you, or appreciate you. It might be a "welcome sign", as some people click on anyone who leaves more than one review. My situation here might differ from most others, in that I had maintained a base of friends even after I left the sight, so when I returned, so did a portion of my "Trusted List", very quickly. As far as genuine trust goes, there's very few people who I would actually trust with intimate information and I'm sure that's true with most reviewers, here. The over-whelming majority of people that have my picture on their page, I like, respect and appreciate. It's obviously not mutual 100% of the time, but I see no risk here in reaching out to others, because I have learned that, whether online, or in real life, you never know what part a person is going to play in your life when you first meet them. I met Stark online...

As far as this suggestion goes, I think it is contrary to the nature of RIA, but is perfect for someone who likes to slip notes under doors and run away...

"New Stuff" page

Guys, we've made some changes to the New Stuff page - the page that tracks new things that have just been added to the site.

We've simplified the hierarchy of links shown for each new list or item, and also give clearer credit to the person who added it.

Two New Features!

Guys, we just launched two cool new features.

The first is our "Friend Finder" feature - this lets you use your email address book from sites like Gmail, Yahoo, and LinkedIn to find folks you know who are already on RateItAll. It also lets you invite friends who are not already on RateItAll to join your trusted network. You can try out this feature HERE (and it's also on the main navigation bar for now under "Friend Finder.")

It's a really easy way to add people that you may know in real life to your Trusted Network on RIA - I just added about 70 people who I had no idea were on the site. It's also a great way to invite new people to the site.

The second feature is an alert email when someone adds you to their trusted network. This email is sent from messaging@rateitall.com so you'll need to make sure that email address is whitelisted if you have a spam filter AND that email address that you're using for your RateItAll account is current.

No more analyzing friend networks to see who just added you.... Enjoy!

A friendly request

Guys, a request. Can we please keep the (intentionally) funny reviews to Weblists? Posting joke reviews of products or businesses is a bit more problematic for me, as more often than not, I end up getting an angry phone call. This includes tongue in cheek posts about Dog Food (you don't want to make those people angry), The Grizz, Magnum Condoms, the movie Brokeback Mountain, the DJ called Donovan in San Francisco, and other listings.

If your well written, genuinely funny, but off topic review of a product or local business gets vaporized, you will know why.

Doing a little DB Maintenance

We will be back up shortly.

Green Compatibility Test

We just converted Kamylienne's excellent list of environmentally friendly activities into a compatibility test for MySpace and Facebook.

Let's see how Green compatible we are.

To check, go to your MySpace and Facebook account, access the Compatibility App, and finish the test.

Like the new Anon Avatars?

If you like them, please leave me some pleasant feedback.

If you don't, you can complain to Automatt.

(I think they're cool)

O, RateItAll

No, that's not the Unabomber. That is RateItAll's own...... GENGHIS THE HUN (cue applause), performing his mega hit "O, RateItAll."



And here are the lyrics:

"O, Rateitall, O, Rateitall, Just what the hell are y'all?

Each looks to each, and cares all flee.

Each looks to each, and blesses thee.

O, Rateitall, thy sacred site, Makes us waste, many a night.

Each looks to each, and cares all flee.

Each looks to each and blesses thee.

O, Rateitall, O, Rateitall, Just what the hell are y'all?

Seems Vaguely Familiar

Anybody else remember this guy?

Plaxo Integration

Any RIA'ers use Plaxo to manage their contacts? Well, they've built out this neat social network called Plaxo Pulse that aggregates all of your web activity into a single news feed for your Plaxo contacts. As of today, RateItAll is now integrated, so you can add your RateItAll Review stream to your newsfeed just by filling in your RateItAll nickname. Here's a screenshot of my feed:

Rating Art

RIA Member Planetary Gear has created some of my all time favorite weblists.

Check out his lists for Dali and Picasso - he's added pictures of each painting. Want an enjoyable and peaceful hour or so? Try speedrating either the Dali or Picasso list and watch the art go by...

MS-XXXXXXXX, FB-XXXXXXXX, and RateItAll.com

There's been a bit of confusion recently about what's up with all the RateItAll accounts beginning with "MS" or "FB" that occasionally show up on the Hottest Reviewers section of the home page.

This is related to the feature that we recently launched for MySpace and Facebook that allow folks to read and write reviews from their MySpace account, as well as to take compatibility tests.

The short version is that users with an "MS" user name are folks who have not explicitly joined RateItAll.com, but are using the site's functionality via MySpace. Similiarly, folks with an "FB" user name are people that have not explicitly joined RateItAll.com, but are using our functionality via Facebook.

If somebody who is not logged into RateItAll.com adds our feature on Facebook or MySpace, we automatically create a RateItAll account for them starting with "FB" or "MS." Existing RateItAll members should make sure to merge their RateItAll / MySpace or RateItAll / Facebook accounts in order to avoid having two different accounts - to do this, just click the "Merge" tab on the Facebook or MySpace feature.

Recently, a RateItAll reviewer accidentally set up an MS account in addition to his / her RIA account, without merging it with their RateItAll account. This resulted in two different, active accounts on RateItAll. By itself, this is not a TOS violation.

However, some way or another, the RateItAll reviewer's "MS" account then applied more than a thousand "helpful" votes to that same member's RateItAll account. The only way this could have been done was via manual clicking of the helpful button on each review. It probably took a long time.

And because we have IP tracking, we know that the vote giver and vote receiver were operating off of the same Internet connection - in this case, the RateItAll reviewer's home.

This is where we run into trouble. While accidentally creating duplicate accounts via MySpace or Facebook is totally understandable, using this dual account status to pad your account with helpful votes is not.

As a rule, I don't like to make disciplinary discussions public. But in this particular case, the reviewer involved made some pretty outlandish claims that their account had been "hacked" as part of a conspiracy against them, and that the 1,000+ helpful votes that had been padded onto their account were a result of a glitch in the system.

There is no glitch in the system. The only way to access somebody else's MS account is to know their MySpace.com login. The only way to give another user helpful votes is to manually click the helpful buttons associated with their reviews. And our IP tracking tools leave no doubt as to the fact that the votes were given and received from the same location.

So what's the lesson here? Well, the first one is Please Don't Cheat. Our tools will catch you, and it might be embarrassing. The second one is that if you are using our MySpace and Facebook features, it's probably a good idea to merge accounts so that you are not diluting your reviews over two different accounts.

I hope that helps.

Compatibility Detail: Coolness

Guys, we've just launched a Compatibility Detail feature for Facebook that lets you drill down into your compatibility score with someone and see exactly where you are and aren't compatible.

Here's a screenshot of my compatibility detail on the alcohol compatibility test with Genghis. It is suddenly clear that he likes martinis, while I do not.

Some Fun Friday Compatibility Tests

1980's

Monkey Compatibility

Guys' Haircut Compatibility

MTV Compatibility Test Now Live...

.... On Facebook and MySpace.

Bible Compatibility Test Now Live...

.... on Facebook and MySpace. Many thanks to lmorovan for his help and guidance on this test.

Dog Compatibility Test Now Live

Hey dog lovers, we now have a Dog Compatibility Test live on MySpace and Facebook.

Two Quick Housekeeping Updates

1) There's now an easier way to merge your MySpace / Facebook accounts with your RateItAll account. We've added a "Join/Login" tab to the main navigation of both apps - just click that link in the app header and then fill in your RIA login information if you haven't already merged your accounts.

2) We've started backing up the database every four hours.... this should reduce the risk of lost data should we have any more db growing pains.

Actor Compatibility Now Live...

.... on Facebook and MySpace. We're going to try and roll one test in per day.

RateItAll Panel for your MySpace Home Page

Guys, for those of us who use the RateItAll Compatibility App on MySpace, we just added a cool new tool.

It's a panel for your MySpace "Home" page (not your profile page) that displays new compatibility tests as they come on line. Here's a screenshot:






















In order to make this panel show up on your page, here is what you do:

1) Open the Compatibility App

2) In the upper right hand side, click on "View My Apps"

3) Click on the "Settings" link next to the Compatibility App icon

4) Check the box that says "Show on your Homepage" and click "Update"

That's it. This will be a neat way to stay on top of new tests that are getting published. I wish that Facebook had something similar.

Simpsons Compatibility Test

I just pushed a Simpsons Compatibility test live onto Facebook and MySpace.

If you have a Weblist that you think would make a good compatibility test, let me know.... but here's the catch - every item will need to have a picture and description.

Baseball Compatibility Test Now live

Check it out on MySpace or Facebook.

General Compatibility Test

Guys, I made some tweaks to the general compatibility test on MySpace and Facebook. There was feedback that some of the items were too obscure for a general test, so I replaced several items with more mainstream things.

So, if you login to the app on Facebook or MySpace, please take a few minutes to complete the remaining items of the general compatibility test.

This is cool

Trebon is my friend on Facebook and on MySpace. We both took the Star Wars Compatibility Test.

Now when I open the RateItAll App on either Facebook or MySpace, I see my compatibility score with Trebon... it's like RateItAll + MySpace + Facebook is all one site.

Star Wars Compatibility Test Live

The Star Wars Compatibility Test is now live on Facebook and MySpace. Many thanks to Numbah for his advice and counsel in this area.

and we're back...

....

Site Maintenance is Beginning Now...

.... we are estimating 30 minutes.

MySpace Testers - I'm Ready for You

Thanks to everyone who expressed an interest in testing RateItAll for MySpace - it appears that a lot of RIA'ers also have MySpace accounts.

So here's what I would like you to do:

Step 1

Login to your MySpace account and go the RateItAll for MySpace page (we call this feature "Compatibility").

Step 2

Add the app ("app" stands for "application" / feature) by clicking the big button.

Step 3

* Before doing anything, merge your RateItAll account with your RateItAll for MySpace account*

You can do this by clicking the "My Reviews" tab, then clicking the "Join RateItAll and share ad revenue...." link in the right hand column.

Then scroll down and fill out your RateItAll login information in the "merge accounts" section and hit "Merge."

(make sure NOT to join RateItAll again by filling in the info at the top, only fill in the "merge" section)

Step 4

Have at it. Try a compatibility test. Try the search engine. Try reading and writing reviews.

Anything you post on MySpace will show up on RateItAll under your regular account (and on the recent reviews page), and you can accumulate helpful / funny / agree votes on MySpace from friends who have the Compatibility App that go to your RateItAll totals.

Once your MySpace friends add the Compatibility app, you'll be able to see their reviews (and award helpful votes), via the "Friends' Reviews" tab.

Stuff that does not yet work

Currently, none of the invite tools work (MySpace hasn't turned this feature on yet). So if you finish a compatibility test and check the boxes next to the names of your friends that you want to invite, they WILL NOT receive your invitations. The only one to invite them currently is to manually send them a message with the link.

We also don't yet have a Profile Module to display your reviews and compatibility tests - that should be coming in the next few days.

Please give it a whirl and let me know what you think....

Scheduled Maintenance Tonight: 1:30AM EST

Guys, we're dropping some more memory into our new database server late tonight. This shouldn't take more than 30 minutes. Really.

Video Game Compatibility Test Now Live on Facebook

We've just launched a Video Game Compatibility test for our Facebook app. Many thanks to RateItAll member ILikePie who contributed many of the suggestions for this test.

How to Merge Your RateItAll account with your Facebook RateItAll Account

1) Go go Facebook and open the RateItAll Compatibility App.

2) Click on the "My Reviews" tab

3) In the right hand column, click on the link that says "Join RateItAll"

4) Scroll down and fill in your RateItAll login information in the section that says "Merge your Facebook account...."

That's it, your done.

Back Up!

OK, we're back up.

At about 7:30AM this morning we tried to replace a damaged drive on the database and the system would not detect the new drive. When we went back to the damaged drive, it wouldn't detect that one either.

So we had to replace the whole database server. What was supposed to be a 15 minute exercise turned into an all day affair as we scrambled for and configured new hardware. Data was restored up until about 27 hours from the time the site went down - anything that was posted after around 2AM EST yesterday has been lost.

We will also be running the db on 2GB of memory for the weekend (it was 4GB), but will be ramping up to 8GB on Monday or Tuesday. The site might be a little sluggish until then.

We're taking steps to ensure that this doesn't happen again, including refining our db backup process.

Update

What was supposed to be fifteen minutes of downtime has turned into a larger exercise. We're still working on swapping out the failed drive on our database. It might be a while.

Down for Maintenance

Guys, we're replacing a faulty drive on the DB. We should be back up shortly.

Have a MySpace account? I could use some testing help

Hi All, we are very close to rolling out a RateItAll feature for MySpace. It might be as early as tomorrow.

If you have a MySpace account and would like to try out this brand spanking new feature, please let me know... by messaging me on the site, sending me an email, or commenting on this post.

The new feature basically allows you to do RateItAll stuff - rate things, read reviews, accumulate helpful votes, take compatibility tests - all from your MySpace account.

New RateItAll Group on Facebook

Guys, I've found a better tool for us RIA members to find each other on Facebook - it's the RateItAll Group.

It's an open group - anybody with a RateItAll account can join.

Join Us.

Music Compatibility Test is now live

We've turned on a Music Compatibility test on Facebook. It's a long one - 28 items I think - but should give you a good idea of who your musical neighbors are.

As always, to check your compatibility, add the RateItAll Reviews App on Facebook, and become a fan of the app on the same page so that other RIA'ers can find you.

Fix to Compatibility Tests

We've just rolled in a fix to the compatibility tests. There was a problem with how we displayed compatibility test results - if somebody "skipped" an item on the test, our system was not processing a friend's compatibility score. So even if you finished a test and your friend finished the same test with a skip, the compatibility score was not being generated.

We've fixed this now so that the system is smart enough to accept "skips" and still crank out scores.

However, in order for this fix to take effect on tests that you've already taken, you have to go back and finish the tests you've already taken - choosing the "skip" option is fine now.

More Tests!

We now have a Spain compatibility test, courtesy of Jose the Wonder Intern, and a St Patrick's Day compatibility test.

Movie Compatibility Test Live on FB!

Check it out.

This link will only work if you have joined Facebook already and added the Reviews feature.

RateItAll on MySpace

We are working very hard to build a RateItAll feature for MySpace that will let you do cool things like post reviews, read your MySpace friends' reviews, and check your ratings compatibility against your friends.

In case you haven't figured it out yet, my goal is to make RateItAll available on ALL of the sites that folks spend their time on - blogs, Facebook, MySpace - it shouldn't matter. I want you to have access to all of your reviews, and to be able to accumulate helpful votes wherever you spend your time on the Web.

Stay tuned....

Compatibility Test Results Now Displaying on FB Profile Pages

Check it out

Lots More Compatibility Tests on FB

We've launched a few more compatibility tests for our Facebook App:

• March Madness Compatibility
• Test in Men Compatibility (I did not make this test, not that there's anything wrong with that)
• NBA Compatibility
• Web 2.0 Compatibility

We have more in the works as well.... Star Wars (thanks for the suggestions Numbah), Movies, Music, etc..


To check them out, add our FB app.

I am 64% Politically Compatible to Wiseguy

That seems to be about right.

Want to test your own compatibility against me or Wiseguy? Go get the RateItAll for Facebook App, find us here, and challenge us to a compatibility test.

We also have compatibility tests for beer, the NBA, San Francisco, Taste in Women, and more....

If you are on Facebook....

.... please become a "Fan" of the f the RateItAll App here. This way RIA regulars can find each other on Facebook.

Also, feel free to post your RateItAll nickname in the thread so that folks can decide whether to add each other as friends on Facebook.

Why would you want to be friends with RIA'ers on Facebook? Because we have these cool Compatibility Tests on RateItAll for Facebook that allows you to check how compatible you are with other folks in things like Politics, Taste in Beer, etc.

Wiseguy is completing the politics compatibility test now... and we'll find out once and for all how politically compatible we are. I'm not overly optimistic that we're going to be very compatible :)

Tampa!

Is going on live on RateItAll's local business review directory.  Here is the Tampa Directory.

Let me know if anybody else has city requests - Twansalem has been adding stuff to Iowa City and it's starting to take shape.

Changes to Recent Reviews Page

Have you noticed that they Recent Reviews page looks a little different?

We trimmed down the time stamp that was displaying seconds, we reduced the breadcrumb trail to show only the item name and the list, we put the item name in bold, and we've added the image of the reviewer to the review.

Looks better, no?

We have one more tweak in the works as well....

Database Clean-Up (with some collateral damage)

Guys,

I'm sorry to report that any ratings / reviews / and lists posted yesterday are gone. We had to revert back to our backup db that was updated through Monday at 1AM.

Here's what happened:

A long time ago, we set up our system so that non registered users could rate and review things. These reviews would not post live on the site until the person registered, but we had to save user information about EVERYBODY - registered or not.

Well we quickly realized that people found this system confusing, so we scrapped it. However, we did not scrap the process that "remembered" anonymous users. So every day, we were accumulating thousands of these "anon" users in our database, that were just taking up space.

So as of yesterday, we were up to MILLIONS of lines in our database of worthless anon info. We kept putting it off, and putting it off, because a clean up of this magnitude is a big exercise.

RateItAll's CTO last night made the call that it was time to clean this stuff up. In the process of removing all of these anon listings, there was a problem with the db. We were forced to go back to Monday morning's backup (this is why we do backups every single day).

The good news is that all of those ANON listings are out. The bad news is that we lost a day's worth of data.

We're making a concerted effort to get our technology in order, to make the site faster and better. This was a very unfortunate side effect, of an initiative that in the long term will improve site experience.

San Antonio is now Live

We just turned on our San Antonio directory in RateItAll's local business review channel.

Add your city to RateItAll Local

Twansalem recently suggested that we add Iowa City to our local business directory. Unfortunately, I didn't have the data. So what we've done is added a skeleton Iowa City Directory with a couple of categories - Iowa City Pizza, Iowa City Restaurants, Iowa City Bars, etc.

Twansalem can now add his favorite establishments at his leisure, and if is participating in the RIA economy program, get a rev share on any any local business listing that he adds to the directory.

Let me know in the comments if there are other cities that you'd like to see represented, and I can see if we can work something similar to what we did for Iowa City.

Two New Cities in RIA Local

We've launched two new cities as part of our local business reviews section: a Richmond, VA Directory and a Madison, WI Directory.

You can now rate restaurants, doctors, hotels, mechanics, bars, and much more in both Richmond and Madison.

Best Song from the 1990's?

I don't know what it is, but you can probably find it on Jamie McBain's Music from the 1990's list.

I was speed rating this list, and I couldn't get through it. Nearly 800 song titles, all with descriptions.... incredible. Remember, on these song lists, you can actually embed the track by grabbing song widgets from Imeem.

Found that Phoenix News Story about RIA

Here's the link.

Weblist on Phoenix Local News

I've heard from a couple of reliable sources that HistoryFan's weblist "Worst Valentines Day Gifts" was featured on the Channel 10 local news in Phoenix.

Nice work HF.

Check out RateItAll

Don't burn yourself....

... on RateItAll's screamingly fast web pages.

RateItAll's new CTO, Mathew, was up most of the night working on our database. He upgraded some software that allowed us to fully use more of the machine's memory, and he fiddled with some settings.

In poking around just now, the site is flying like I haven't seen before.

Nice work Matt.

Scheduled Maintenance Tonight: 12AM PST

Guys, we're bringing the site down tonight at midnight PST for no more than 2 hours while we drop in some new db software that should help performance.

Thanks for your patience.