24-Hour Movie Review Contest Throw Down - FRIDAY

Calling all movie buffs, cinephiles and Netflixters...Get in on our 24-hour cage match movie review contest, with cool prizes to boot!

Write Movie Reviews on RateItAll.com and Win Free Stuff.

How do I get in on the action - it's easy!

• Send an email to contest@rateitall.com with your RateItAll Nickname
  
• Start reviewing movies on RateItAll (any movie title is fine, but it has to be a movie)
  
• Contest runs for 24 hours this Friday, April 10th (12:00AM to 11:59PM)
  

What kind of cool prizes?

• Winners will be determined by the total number of qualifying movie reviews (3 sentences or more)
  
• Grand prize is a six month Netflix subscription! That's over $100 worth of free movie rentals!
• Second prize is a $25 gift certificate from Amazon.
  
• Plus, all 1st through 5th place participants win a stunning, RateItAll happy demon star t-shirt!

You get the idea, now rest up for Friday. Tick tock, tick tock...just 24 hours so don't delay!


Official contest rules

• Contest starts at 12:00AM PT on Friday, April 10th and runs through 11:59PM PT on Friday, April 10th.
  
• Participants must have valid RateItAll member accounts.
• Contest participants must register for the contest by sending an email to contest@rateitall.com with their valid and active RateItAll nickname in order to be considered for the prizes.
  
• Reviews must be of movies to be considered. Members can submit only one review per movie.
  
• Each quality movie review will count as one entry in the contest. Reviews must be at least three sentences.
  
• Recycled or reposted reviews will not be considered for the contest, and use of such reviews will be grounds for disqualification.
• Winners will be determined as follows: (1st) First prize and t-shirt - Six month Netflix subscription will be rewarded to the participant with the most entries during the contest period. (2nd - 5th) Second through Fifth prizes - RateItAll t-shirts will be rewarded to the participants with the 2nd-5th most entries during the contest period.
• Prizes are non-transferrable and are subject to change and availability.
• RateItAll reserves the right to discontinue the contest at any time, for any reason. RateItAll reserves the right to disqualify participants if we determine that contest rules have been broken.
• Questions about the contest? Email contest@rateitall.com
• Winners will be notified on or by Monday, April 13th, 2009.
• All decisions made by contest administrators are final.
  

Claim Your Blog on RateItAll

We've recently introduced "claiming" functionality on RateItAll for blogs, websites, and local businesses. If you have a blog listed on RateItAll in our blog directory (as I know a number of you do), click the green button that says "This is my Business."

All sorts of wonderful things happen when you do this:

- You will have editorial control of the pictures, links, and description associated with your blog listing
- You will be able to grab one of our GORGEOUS "Loved on RateItAll" badges, as seen in the sidebar of this blog, or in the screenshot below
- You will be able, if you want to, to buy additional exposure for your blog, local business, or website

Claiming your blog is free, as are the badges. Let me know if you get stuck.

If you have not yet added your blog to RateItAll, you can do so here.

Sweet, glorious comment editing

It has been *suggested* a number of times that people might appreciate the ability to edit and delete comments that they have posted on a review.

This feature is now live.

Try it out! Say something nasty in a comment, take a deep breath, and then edit or delete it.

Movie Review Cage Match - DELAYED

We have decided to delay our 24 hour, movie review cage match until next week so we can do it right.

Stay tuned for more details.

Quick Hitter Movie Review Contest - a 24 hour cage match

On the heels of our Local Biz review contest in which Irishgit walked away with the big haul, we are going to try a slightly different format.

A 24 hour cage match movie review contest. Winner gets a six month Netflix subscription and a stunning, RateItAll happy demon star t-shirt. 2nd through 5th places will also get t-shirts.

The contest will begin at 12:00AM San Francisco time tomorrow (Thursday), and end at 11:59PM the same day.

My suggestion is this: stop what you're doing right now, and make sure the fridge is stocked with Red Bull or other caffeinated beverages (click through for energy drink reviews).

Then, go to sleep. Tomorrow will be an epic battle of endurance.

More details to follow.

Quizzes

RateItAll Compatibility Quizzes are little ratings games that show how you compare to other folks around the world of RIA.

For example, the beer compatibility quiz asks you to rate a variety of different beers, and then cranks out a compatibility score with others who have taken the quiz.

For example, GenghisTheHun and I are 40% beer compatible, with our biggest difference of opinion being around Corona - I think it's a good hot weather beer, and GTH thinks it's "Miller Lite for the upscale moron."



Recently, I've noticed more people taking the quizzes, which doesn't surprise me as they're pretty fun.

We've just rolled out a small, but important change to the quizzes - the paging is now on the bottom of the page, instead of the top, which makes it far easier to find quizzes you are interested in.

We have well over 100 quizzes - hopefully something for everyone. And now they're much easier to browse.

Is Your Town Represented on RateItAll?

One of my favorite features on RateItAll is the ability to rate any business in the world, whether it's already listed in our database or not.

I've been able to rate businesses from the smallish town where I grew up (Villanova, PA), and I've noticed other reviewers taking advantage of this tool to put their own home towns on the RateItAll map - places like Solon, Iowa and New Westminster, British Columbia.

If you want to make sure RIA has a directory for your home town, this is all you have to do:

1) Rate a business from your town by using this link.

That's it. Once the new business is approved, RateItAll will magically build out a directory for your town, ensuring it is represented in RateItAll-Land.

As the kids say.... represent!

My Compliments to the Reviewer

We've just introduced a new feature - Compliments. This is a replacement for the old Testimonials feature, that allows you to give a public pat on the back to other reviewers. This compliment will show up on their profile page.

All compliments are deletable by the owner of the profile page, and retractable by the poster. As we say here at RateItAll's Global HQ Compound, "What have you done for me lately?"

Here are some screenshots:






So go ahead.... reach out and give your favorite RIA reviewer a compliment today.

Wrapping Up the Local Biz Review Contest

Congratulations to Irishgit for winning both the quantity and quality scores in our recent Local Business Review contest.

He wrote the most qualifying reviews by a long shot, with over 5000 points, and narrowly beat out Twansalem for the single most helpful review. His haul? A Flip Video Camcorder and a $50 gift certificate to the restaurant of his choice.

Newcomer GinaKristie also deserves mention for her reviews of Wichita local businesses, and we had a number of folks win t-shirts.

I was a bit surprised that more folks didn't make a play for the gift certificate - all it took was a single review of a local business to qualify.

But I guess in these booming economic times, a $50 gift certificate is no big deal :)

We will be sending out prizes today or tomorrow, and Irishgit, we'll be waiting for that Flip Camcorder review.

Please be nice to new members

Please be nice to new members.

Please don't jump down the throats of new members.

Please don't scare away new members.

I know that we are the old hats here, and are experts about everything, and really are never wrong about anything. This is, of course, completely true.

But we've all been on sites where the old guard jumps down the throats of newbies, and those sites suck.

Let's not become that site. Everyone was a newbie at one time. Fresh blood is good for the conversation, good for the discourse.

Please don't make us have to legislate this problem away.

Local Biz Contest Update

We are entering the final 34 hours of our local business reviews contest.

As of this moment, it looks like Irishgit is going to be tough to beat for the grand prize. Two contestants with an outside chance of catching him are Twansalem and GinaKristie.

However, everyone is still in the running to win a $50 restaurant gift certificate just by writing a single review.

The local business review with the most helpful points between the launch of the contest and tomorrow at midnight will win its author a $50 gift certificate to the restaurant of their choice.

Why not review your favorite restaurant / bar / coffee shop in the world and see how it goes? You can review any local business in the world by clicking this link.

Also, t-shirts are still in play for anyone reaching 60 points (15 reviews + item submissions).

Scheduled Downtime: Tonight at 9PM PST

We will be in maintenance mode tonight from about 9PM until 10PM as we make some performance tweaks to our database.

Review any business, in any city, in any country

Just a reminder, as part of our current local business reviews contest, you can literally rate any business in the world.

Just use this tool - it will guide you through the process of adding the business to our database. And remember, reviews associated with businesses you add to our database count double - just 15 reviews submitted this way will get you a free t-shirt.

Write Reviews...Win Cool Stuff!

We're running a new contest at RateItAll for all you folks who love to review Local Businesses!

We have some great prizes in store and there are multiple ways to win. The contest starts tonight at 12:01AM Pacific Time and runs for just 1 week, so don't delay! If all goes well, we may run future contests on other topics such as Travel, Books or Events. In the meantime...

3 Ways to Win!

1. Earn the most total Points, win a Flip Video Mino Camcorder!
2. Get the most helpful votes on a single review written for the contest, win a $50 Gift Certificate to your favorite restaurant!
3. Everyone who earns at least 600 points gets a new and exclusive RateItAll Happy Star t-shirt !

How Do I Join in the Fun?

Register for the contest by sending an email to contest@rateitall.com and include your active RateItAll account nickname. The contest starts at 12:01AM on March 10th, and runs through midnight, Tuesday, March 17th. You can join at any time prior to March 17th, but only Local Business reviews written after registration will be considered for the contest. We will send you a registration confirmation email once you have been set up.

How Do I Earn Points?

Points are super easy to earn. You will get 20 points for each new Quality Review of a Local Business (at least 3 sentences explaining your rating). You can earn an extra 20 points if you add a new Local Business in the process of leaving a Quality Review (Add an Item Here).

Any Local Business in Particular?

You can write about any local business in your hometown or a place you've visited. Here are some ideas we came up with to get the creative juices flowing.

Review your favorite:

• coffee shop for people watching
• sports bar to watch the game
• romantic restaurant for a date
• moving company for fragile items
• farmers market for quality produce
• hair salon for curly hair
• bakery for kid's birthday cakes
• auto mechanic for reliable service

So what are you waiting for? Get started now by sending an email to contest@rateitall.com with your RateItAll nickname and earn points towards our awesome prizes.

Good luck and have fun!
The RateItAll Team

Official Contest Rules

• Contest starts at 12:01AM PST on Tuesday, March 10th and runs through 11:59PM PST on Tuesday, March 17th.
• Participants must have valid RateItAll member accounts.
• Contest participants must register for the contest by sending an email to contest@rateitall.com with their valid and active RateItAll nickname. Points can be earned only after registration is complete.
• Points are earned as follows: 20 points for each new Quality Review of a Local Business (at least 3 sentences explaining the rating), and an additional 20 points if the Quality Review is written on a new Local Business submission. Thus, a maximum of 40 points can be earned for any single Quality Review. Recycled or reposted reviews will not be considered for the contest, and use of such reviews will be grounds for disqualification.
• Winners will be determined as follows: (1st) First prize - Flip Video Mino Series Camcorder will be rewarded to the participant with the most total points earned during the contest period. (2nd) Second prize - $50 gift certificate to restaurant of choice will be rewarded to the participant with the most helpful votes on a Quality Review written during the contest period. (3rd) Third prize - an exclusive RateItAll Happy Star t-shirt will be rewarded to all participants who earn at least 600 points during the contest period.
• Prizes are non-transferrable and are subject to change and availability.
• RateItAll reserves the right to discontinue the contest at any time, for any reason. RateItAll reserves the right to disqualify participants if we determine that contest rules have been broken.
• Questions about the contest? Email contest@rateitall.com

More Happy Star

In a somewhat impetuous and extravagant move, we have hired a rather expensive European male model to showcase our new Happy Star t-shirts.

We are going to be running some contests and promotions over the next few weeks in which the infamous happy star t's will play a roll.

Get your free Demon St.... I mean Happy Star Stickers

Our popular little friend, who we've sadly been seeing less of since the site has been optimized, has been immortalized on a sticker.

Whether you refer to him as Happy Star, Demon Star, Carl's Junior, or Devil Star, he makes an attractive addition to any smooth, dry surface.

Here are some shots:



And a more somber, menacing shot:



If you want some free HappyDemonDevil Star stickers, please send a self addressed envelope with a stamp to:

RateItAll Global HQ
Attn: Jose Jimenez
2601 Mission Street, #402
San Francisco, CA 94110

Logging in to RateItAll with Your Facebook Account

A few days ago, we introduced something called Facebook Connect.

Basically, what it does is allow you to login to (or join) RateItAll with your Facebook login information. It also gives you the choice if you want to publish any of your RateItAll reviews on your Facebook page.

I use this feature all the time; because A) it's easier to login with one click than to fill out the fields; and 2) Sometimes I like to share my reviews with my FB friends.

Want to try it out? Try clicking the Facebook logo on the RateItAll login / registration page:



Here's what you will see if you are not logged into Facebook already (if you are, it will just log you into to RIA):



And here's what you see if you write a review while logged into RateItAll via Facebook Connect:



If you choose to publish your review to Facebook, here is what your Facebook profile looks like:



And the link goes right to your review on RateItAll - you don't have to deal with any apps.

The only problem some of you might run into is if you didn't merge your RIA account to Facebook back when we were pushing the Compatibility App. In this case, Facebook Connect might set up a second RateItAll account. If this happens, you can just back out.

More Performance Enhancements

Today we've taken what I consider our biggest performance jump to date. The RIA Dev team moved some code from our web pages into the database, and the site seems to have really responded.

This was a major enhancement that touched a lot of pages. Please let us know if you see anything screwy - but in the meantime, please enjoy a site that is seeming pretty fast.

The Return of Featured Lists

Numbah posted an interesting review the other day regarding v3 list discovery that we talked about for a while here at the RateItAll Global HQ Compound and Campus:

Its hard to break out into new topics at times, like you're stuck...

And then Twansalem chimed in as follows:

So I'm not the only one who feels like V3 is telling me what to rate? Magellan had previously referred to the feed as the river, and it sure feels like a river to me. Easy to navigate if you want to go where it's taking you, but hard to buck the current if you don't. In the previous version, it seemed a lot easier to just go rate something else. But a couple of days ago when it seemed like all anyone was talking about was either gay marriage or the economic stimulus package, I got bored and just took a couple days off from RIA. I don't think I would have done that with the older version.

We've also heard chatter from other site heavyweights that the Featured Lists (and also the Hottest Lists and New Stuff pages) were missed in V3 as jump off points.

Well, Featured Lists are now back. You can see them on your home page, in the sidebar.

Please keep the feedback coming. We're listening.

Couple of Optimizations for Site Speed

We've just pushed a couple of site speed optimizations. Your Home page should load much faster now - my account's home page load time has been cut in half.

We've also made some changes to how we manage images that should help site speed on every page. We are experiencing a temporary issue where our placeholder animal images are showing up on item pages for folks who have real profile images - this should be fixed shortly.

Finally, item pages should load a bit faster now as well.

Pushing some performance improvements

We are pushing a few bug fixes and performance optimizations - we should be back up shortly.

Heads Up: Helpful Vote Adjustments

There are about 73,000 "orphaned" helpful votes in our system (out of a total of over 2M). These are either votes from reviewers who are no longer with us, or votes on reviews of items that are no longer with us.

We are deleting these votes as they are causing us some synchronization issues.

There will be some impact in the Hall of Fame rankings, but it should be fairly evenly distributed.

Major Performance Enhancements

We've rolled in a few significant performance enhancements that should make the site noticeably faster.

While every page should be affected, the page that you should the most impact is the list page. I think we have these loading pretty quickly now.

One of the enhancements that I like the most is the inline rating on the list pages. You now don't have to wait for the review field to slide open - it just snaps down. No more happy star here.

We're going to continue to work on speeding the site up over the next few days, and then hopefully move on to some other things.

This Week's Priority: Site Speed

I hope that you'll agree that V3 has been getting tighter and tighter (and hopefully, better and better) over the last few weeks. Thanks again for all the feedback- it's very helpful for us in terms of prioritizing fixes.

This week we will be focusing on optimizations to increase the speed of the site. I'm hopeful that we will see some big performance increases by week end.

New Item Bug Fixed

I think we have solved the problem that was:

- preventing people from suggesting new items
- preventing people from approving new item suggestions
- preventing people from adding new items to their lists
- preventing people from using the global "write a review" link at the top

Please let me know if anyone is still seeing error messages.

Subtle Change in How We Handle Ratings

If you're paying extra close attention, you'll note that you'll no longer see the happy star loading icon after you click on a star to select your rating.

The star just populates now with no waiting.

This has to do with a subtle change we made to how we process ratings.

This should dramatically speed up the inline list rating, as well as quiz taking.

In other news, we are still dealing with some performance issues and general bugginess with adding new items to the site, whether it be via lists, the "write a review" feature, or approving items to your own list. I hope to have an update by the end of the day on this.

Update

We are repairing some indexes in our database in an attempt to resolve the performance issues that have been plaguing the site for the last 48 hours or so.

As of now, no ETA on when we'll be back up, but it shouldn't be too much longer.

Working Through Some Performance Issues

Stay tuned.

Improvements to Item and Topic Pages

We are quietly plugging away on implementing some of the things we had on V2 that didn't make it into the V3 launch.

We've tightened up the list pages, including adding back the precise numerical rating for each item on the list:



We've added "Next List, Next Item" links at the bottom of every list and item, which makes it easier to browse horizontally through the site:






We've added a neat "Also Listed In" feature to the sidebar on every item page that pulls up other places in the site where the same item appears. Here's an example for "Madonna":



Stay tuned for more tweaks and improvements - little by little we are getting there.

Problem with Our Database

We are experiencing a hardware issue with our database. We are in the process of switching over to our backup db now - please stay tuned.

Your Posts now Showing in Your Feed

By popular demand, we now include your site activity in the "My Feed" view. This should prevent folks from having to toggle back and forth to different views to see their own stuff.

And as one reviewer put it, it's much easier to see how your reviews are doing in terms of votes with this format.

Cocktail Party

RateItAll is hosting a cocktail party tonight in San Francisco to celebrate the launch of V3. Anyone who is local is more than welcome to join - ping me for the details.

How New Items Are Approved on RateItAll

We handle new item suggestions in V3 a little bit differently than we did previously.

In V3, any new item suggestion - whether you add it to somebody's list, to a RateItAll list, or using our new "rate anything" feature - the new item is immediately created. You can rate the item, you can share the url of the item with your friends, and you will immediately see the new item / review show up in your "my feed" view. No approval required for this part.

However, there still is an approval process - either by the list owner, or by RateItAll admins. An approved item will show up in search, on the list, and in the My Feed and Everyone's Feed views. As with the previous site, if the list owner does not respond to a new item suggestion within a few days, we will step in and approve the item.

Rate Any Business in the Whole Wide World

Here's another feature that's kind of neat with V3, that we didn't have with V2.

In V2, we had a RateItAll Local section that was limited to about seventy big cities in the US. If you didn't live in one of those big cities, you were out of luck in terms of rating local establishments in your home town.

In V3, we turn things upside down. Instead of folks having to wait for RateItAll to add a city to its directory to rate a local business, we add the the city to our directory WHEN you add and rate the local business.

What this means is that any RateItAll member can add and rate any local business in the world. We have just about every country covered, and we can now build out a local directory on the fly for any city, town, or village, in any country.

Try it out HERE.

Today's Updates

We rolled in a bunch of fixes / updates today:

- The editing profile / account bug is fixed.  You should now have no problem embedding videos and things

- We expanded the length of the feed.  We doubled the number of stories in the default feeds from 10 to 20, and each time you click more, you get another block of 20.  This should reduce the clicking required to see content.

- We enabled video and safe html embeds like YouTube videos into reviews and item descriptions.  We're still working providing editing buttons for things like bold, link, and italics for your reviews.

- We fixed a number of one off bugs

- We tightened up quiz results, stripping out results from folks who have only rated a couple of things within a test.  We also changed the definition of a "match" for the purposes of calculating a compatibility score.  Before today, a 4 was considered a match with a 3, 4, or 5.  We've now put in exact matching for the compatibility calculation.  Because of this, you will no longer see pages of 100% matches, but the results will be more meaningful.

I think those are the big things.

If you bear with us, you'll notice a gradual tightening of the site as we listen to your feedback and squash known bugs.

Thanks for your patience!

Today's Lesson: Configuring Your Feed / Home Page

Hi all, there's a lot of new functionality on the site, and I want to start giving some pointers as to how stuff works.

Today I'd like to cover the Home Page / News Feed view for logged in members.





There are three tabs and two buttons on this page.

The tabs are: Me, My Feed, and Everyone.

The "Me" tab displays your most recent activity on the site.

The "My Feed" is your custom, personalized view of recent activity on the site - more on this to follow. At its simplest level, this view is a combination of the activity of the people that you are following, and the topics that you are interested in.

The "Everyone" feed is the full firehose of ALL recent site activity. You can think of this view like the old Recent Reviews page, but supplemented with other activity like new lists, new items, quizzes taken, and even ratings posted.

So how do you control these feeds?

There are two ways (and these are the two buttons).

The downward arrow is a Temporary Filter on whatever view you are looking at. It's an easy way to isolate certain story types - just lists, just ratings, just reviews, just quizzes, etc. When you click away from the home page, your Temporary Filter settings will be forgotten, and your view will go back to your Permanent Settings.




So how do you control your permanent settings?

It's the Gear Icon. This is where the magic happens, and where you can personalize your permanent feed views to your tastes.



Let's walk through the Gear Icon settings one by one.

Keyword

The first tab on your settings is a Keyword Tool, that lets you subscribe to keywords that you're interested in. For example, if I type in "Mexico," "San Francisco," and "NBA," the site will do its best to include every review from RateItAll related to those keywords in your "My Feed" view.

Using the keyword tool, you can also indicate stuff that you DON'T want to see in your "My Feed" view. For example, if you were sick of reviews about Dingos, you could add the word "Dingo" to your block list, and the site will do its best to filter out reviews related to dingos from your "My Feed" view.




Community

The second tab in your settings is the "Community" tab. On this tab you can specify whose activity shows up in your "My Feed" view. Do you want to see only activity from your friends (people you follow)? Or do you want to push it out a few degrees to show activity from friends of friends, or even, friends of friends of friends. The "friends of friends of friends" setting will give you the broadest view of site activity.

We've also built in a helpful, albeit devious tool for filtering out reviews from particular reviewers here, even if they are your "friends" on the site. For example, if I got sick and tired of activity from "Lawrence," I could add filter out their activity. This feature is perfect for when you feel the pressure to follow someone, but don't actually like reading their stuff.

Like the Keywords tab, the Community tab only affects your "My Feed" view.




Saved Topics

The third tab in your Gear Icon settings is the "Saved Topics" tab. As you browse the site, you may have noticed "Fave" buttons on various pages - items, lists, categories, etc. Clicking Fave on any content page of the side will subscribe you to all the activity from that page.

For example, one of my favorite lists on the site is Mexican Beer. Clicking the "fave icon" on this page will subscribe me to new reviews posted to this list. It's a great way to track the reviews coming in to lists that you made, or to track reviews of a specific item like your blog, or yourself! (if you are on the reviewers list)

Like the Keywords and Community tabs, the Saved Topics tab only affects your "My Feed" view.




Story Types

The final tab is the "Story Types" tab. This is the setting that determines what types of things are included in your Feed views. Do you want to see only reviews like the old recent comments page? You can make that happen. Do you want to see Reviews, Comments, Quizzes, but not Ratings without reviews? Likewise, this is easy to do.

Unlike the other tabs, this setting affects all three tabs (me, my feed, everyone) on your home page.

This is a permanent setting, and the system will remember your choices as long as you are logged in, and until you decide to change them again.





I hope this helps. There are powerful tools in here, and I believe that folks now have the tools to create exactly the experience that they want on RIA.

Thanks for all of the feedback - it's been very helpful, and we're acting on a number of the suggestions already - please keep it coming (feedback@rateitall.com).

Meet The RateItAll Team!

Here is live footage from RateItAll's Global HQ Compound on launch day. Some of what you see may shock you, some may excite you, and some will most certainly confuse you. Enjoy.

V3

As most of you already know, V3 is live. We "soft launched" quietly yesterday with the goal of doing some bug fixing before our public launch today.

We will be doing a number of posts in the coming days about some cool, expert only type features that are on the new site. We'll also be doing our best to explain how basic things work with V3, as well as working hard to eliminate any outstanding bugs - thanks to all who have sent feedback to us (feedback@rateitall.com) regarding bugs, missing features, and the like.

Here are my three favorite new features on the new site:

1) The news feed. The code name for this feature internally was "the river," and I think that's pretty descriptive. This is the home page for logged in folks. You can poke your head into this page and watch all the activity from your friends flow on by. In one sense, the Recent Reviews page on the old site has become the primary metaphor for V3. We have category level rivers for things like Sports, and Subject level rivers for things like Baseball. For the advanced users, you can customize your news feed settings by clicking on the Gear icon on your home page. You can follow keywords for things you're interested in (e.g. beer, art, music, movies, etc.), and you can set your network settings to include friends, friends of friends, or even friends of friends of friends. You can even do things like hide all activity from "My Feed" of particular users (ever have somebody that you need to be their "friend," but don't actually like reading their reviews?) And finally, you can hide keywords like "politics" or "religion" if the droning starts to get your down. I find this feature extremely powerful. I see it as the power to build the exact RateItAll experience that you want.

2) Compatibility Quizzes. These are a fun, quick way to rate a bunch of things and compare yourself to others around RIA. We have hundreds of these quizzes, across many different categories. We will be working on tightening up the quiz results display (so we don't show folks who have only rated one item within a quiz), as well as making the results more precise. We will also be adding paging to the bottom of the quiz pages, and adding in quiz specific search to help with the discovery of new quizzes. This is a fun feature that's only going to get better.

3) "Write a Review" Feature. The internal code name for this feature is "global add." It literally lets you write a review of anything. There's a wizard that walks you through the process of adding new items to the site, and we try to always provide a catch-all topic for your item if you can't find the exact right place to put it. For me, this changes site experience dramatically. I can now rate any damn thing that I please, whether or not a list exists for it. A dish at a restaurant. A taqueria in Mexico City. My friend's blog. You can add anything and everything, and the item will immediately be available for rating and sharing (though it will need to be approved to show up in site search and the list). Try this feature out if you haven't already - it's powerful.

(Forgive me a quick sentimental moment, but I'm really proud of the RateItAll team. These guys really went all out on this - for the last few weeks, the office was full seven days a week, and often until midnight. We're all a bit exhausted (my wife said to me this morning, but feeling pretty good about where things are at.)

That's all for now. As I said, there will be lots more to follow on how this thing works.

Bugs?

It's bug fixing day. If you see any bugs, please send them to feedback@rateitall.com - this blasts out to the whole team.

Data Migration has Begun

Guys, we've begun our data migration in preparation for v3 launch on Tuesday. As of now, we have no eta on when we will be back up.

The next step is to put v3 up behind a password so we can do some final testing before going live with the new site. I may call some of you in to help us test, with live data.

Downtime and Launch Schedule

Guys, we will be taking the site down on Sunday evening in final preparation for Tuesday's launch of V3. There's a lot of data that needs to be migrated and a lot of testing still to be done.

I will share more info when I have it.

New Blog Design

Our little RateItAll Blog with its 850 posts has gotten a makeover, courtesy of our user experience expert, Lena.

It's been pointed out to me a few times recently that this blog looked more like a Lawrence personal blog, than a RateItAll blog.

I can't argue with that.

Hopefully we will be able to mix in a few posts from folks other then me going forward.

Some Top Rated Reviewers by Subject

Guys, we're using V3 with some fairly up to date data now, and it's fun seeing who the top rated reviewers (by helpful votes) are in different areas for the last month.

When V3 launches, we're going to have hundreds of these top rated modules - making it easy to see who are the top rated folks in any area for the day, week, and month.

I think we're going to have a lot of fun with this.

Anyone see any surprises below?

Boxing:




Beer:




Movies:




Hotties:




Military:




Elections:




San Francisco:

Want to be in rotation on RIA's home page?

Hi, we're finalizing our V3 home page and will have a number of our top member's pics in rotation.

But here's the catch:

It needs to be a headshot, and you need to be a Top 500 RIA reviewer by helpful votes.

Big group photos and photos that are not you won't work for what we have in mind.

So if you want your mug in rotation on our home page, please change your profile picture to a headshot (of you), and shoot me a note.

It probably needs to be in the next 30 minutes or so.

Wrapping Up 2008

I hope everyone is enjoying a festive Holiday season. Here at RIA Global HQ, we are still heads down on V3, but are feeling mildly festive.

As we wrap up 2008, here are a few year end lists:

Sports Stories of 2008
Events of 2008
2008 Male Athlete
2008's Dead Celebrities
Things to Ditch in 2008
Number One Songs of 2008
Movies of 2008
2008 Knucklehead Athlete of the Year (aka "the Plaxicos")

There about 80 other lists of 2008 for those who want to rate the year out in style.

Get Your Leopard Themed Widgets

We made a change with our list widgets today.

Our friends at Musestorm, who had been powering our list widgets, have decided to go in another direction.

Enter our friends from Widgetbox, who have helpfully stepped in.

Now if you click on any of the "add this list to my blog!" links all over the site, you will see a Widgetbox tool.

If you already have a RateItAll list widget on your site, we will be providing instructions as to how to update it.

One of the unexpected, and pleasant, surprises associated with this change is that we now have a leopard themed widget.



These widgets work exactly the same way - there is an option for embed code (just like a YouTube video), and there are handy dandy buttons to add to Facebook, add to MySpace, etc. Take them for a whirl!

V3: Messaging 2.0

RateItAll currently has a messaging system that allows you to send and receive messages to and from other RateItAll members.

It's pretty lousy.

It uses pop-ups.

You can't track your sent messages.

The formatting is pretty tough on the eyes.

It tells you that you have new messages even when you've already read them.

Well, V3 is going to address these issues, and will finally give us a proper messaging system. Here are a couple of screenshots.

Here's a peek at the v3 message center:

























And here's a look at a v3 message exchange:
























I'm hopeful that along with some big new things, V3 will bring incremental improvement to a lot of basic things about the site.

V3: Your Activity is Your Profile

One of the subtle differences in V3 over the existing site is in how we treat profiles. On the current site, if you click on somebody's user name you get taken to a profile page that shows links to a user's activity, and stuff like "favorite music," "favorite books," etc.

















The problem that I have with this page is that it's stagnant. Folks fill in their profiles once, and then forget about them. It makes for boring reading (with the exception of some of the embed stuff that folks have done to give their profile pages some flavor).

V3 is going to take a slightly different approach. When you click on a user's name, you will get taken directly to that user's activity stream. By using the filters, you'll be able to isolate that member's most recent activity in things like ratings, reviews, quizzes, comments, lists, etc.

























In other words, you are what your activity says you are.

Of course, everyone's old profile format will still be available with things like embedded videos, testimonials, and the like - it's easy to toggle between a member's activity stream and their profile.

25 Great Holiday Presents You Can Buy Through RIA

As many of you have noticed, we've been working really hard at expanding our coverage of things to rate on RIA. In the process of doing the research to build out our DB, we have come up with a list of gift ideas of things that are not only just flat out awesome, but handily, available for purchase via a link from RateItAll.

Without further ado, here are 25 gift ideas for cool stuff that you can buy through RateItAll:

Amazon Kindle - it's like an iPod for books!
Flip MinoHD Digital Camcorder - incredibly small, affordable, easy to push video to YouTube
Canon Powershot A590IS Digital Camera - save 40%, only about $110
Women's Slippers - I bought a pair last year for Mrs. Magellan they were a big hit.
Bodum Chambord French Press - for the coffee snob
The new JK Rowling book - Harry Potter stuff, I guess
A snowblower - I have no idea why, but people buy a lot of snowblowers through us
Dark Knight DVD - One of the top selling products in America
Ugg Tall Boots - People love these things
The Twilight Soundtrack - flying off the shelves
Munchkin Mozart - top selling toddler toy
Bare Essentials BareMinerals Foundation - top selling cosmetic
Silpat Baking Mat - No stick thingy for pans, one of this year's top selling products
Logitech QuickCam Pro - best selling web cam
A Netbook! - Super small, super cheap laptops. I have one and love it.
A Messenger Bag - another item that I sort of collect.
An Ice Cream Maker - mmmmmm.... ice cream
GPS Device - makes driving directions easy, Garmin Nuvi is top seller
Apple iPod Touch - Music, photos, wifi.... nice (if only it had a camera!)
A book by Stephanie Meyer - not my thing, but they are wildly popular
Outliers by Malcolm Gladwell - dude has a cult following
Paul Krugman's Return of Depression Economics - A nice uplifting Holiday read
Night Vision Infrared Goggles - Badass
Scene it? Seinfeld - Seinfeld trivia board game for adults

I think that's 25 - hope that that was useful.

We've Gone Stats Crazy - Part Three

In the third, and likely final, installment of our "we've gone stats crazy" series, I'm going to show you a third way that V3 is stats heavier than V2.

We will be giving logged in users daily updates of accumulations of helpful / funny / agree / disagree votes.

Check it out.

























As mentioned in earlier posts, there will also be other ways to see how you rank against the day's top performers.

We've Gone Stats Crazy - Part Two

Along with the local leaderboards covered in the previous post, V3 will bring with it a significantly beefed up Hall of Fame page that will allow you to track top users in various time periods (day, week, month, year, forever) in the following categories:

Helpful Votes
Funny Votes
Disagree Votes
Agree Votes
Most Followers
Most Reviews
Most Total Contributions

We will also display exactly where the logged in user ranks in each category for each time period in relation to each of the respective leaders.

For those of us who are a bit competitive about this stuff, this should be a big step up. Here's a screenshot (it's running off incomplete data, so don't take these rankings as gospel):

























(btw, I'm tagging all v3 related posts with the clever tag "v3" for easy access)

We've Gone Stats Crazy - Part One

One of the things I'm really looking forward to in V3 is the ability to track top reviewers in hundreds of different categories.

Currently, we have one Hall of Fame, which tracks cumulative helpful votes across all categories.

What we are doing with V3 - in addition to maintaining a beefed up Hall of Fame (more on this to follow) - is tracking top reviewers (by number of helpful votes), in hundreds of different categories and sub-categories, by different time periods like day, week, month, and forever.

For example, with V3, you will be able to tell who the top rated Sports reviewer is, or on a more granular level, who the top rated boxing reviewer is (my bet is professional boxing writer Randyman). You'll also be able to see who the top rated Politics reviewer is (guesses?), or action figure reviewer, or music reviewer, or reggae reviewer, or travel reviewer, or pets reviewer - get the picture?

For example, here is a screenshot of the Beer sub-category page of V3. You'll note that this sub category page has it's own "river" of recent reviews (like the recent reviews page, but just for beer), as well as a module in the sidebar that shows who are the top rated reviewers of Beer by day, week, month, and forever.

While I don't expect this particular category to be very competitive - word has it Magellan plans on running away with this one - perhaps there will be other categories where others will shine. I mean, we're all experts in something, right?

Flagging Reviews in V3

A feature that people have been asking for forever, that we're finally going to be adding is the ability to flag reviews that violate the site rules. When V3 launches, it will be easy for RIA members to bring inappropriate reviews to our administrators' attention. Here's a pic:

See Me Interviewed

Hey guys, I was recently interviewed by Search Engine World - in this ten minute clip, I talk a lot about what we're trying to do with V3. Those of you that have played with the demo site will probably see a lot of what I talk about reflected in the new site:

Fun Article about RateItAll from Providence Journal

We stumbled across this article today from the Providence Journal - it basically takes a look at how Rhode Island stacks up against other states in the RateItAll State Rankings.

Demo

OK folks, I'm going to start letting a few of you onto our new demo site.

Here are a couple of things to keep in mind:

None of the data (reviews, comments, profiles, etc.) that you post on the demo site will be saved, or linked to your regular rateitall account. This is only for testing purposes.

You will not be able to login to your real RIA account on the demo site. Please create a new test user.

Also, there is still some important functionality missing. Specifically, "quizzes" and some aspects of "sharing" are not yet live. Some of the pages still need to be optimized for speed as well.

Here are some things I suggest checking out:

Try posting a review from both the item page and the list page.

Try commenting on a review

Try making a list

Try configuring your home page by clicking on the gear icon.

Check out Community < style="font-weight: bold;">

What Browsers do we Use?

Here's a look at what Internet Browsers RateItAll users have hit the site with over the last 30 days:

Internet Explorer - 62%
Firefox - 27%
Safari - 8%
Google Chrome - 1%

I'm currently using Firefox, after a brief trial with Chrome.

Need Your Help

For the past couple of months we've been working very hard on a new version of RIA (code name: v3) that incorporates many of the best things about the current site, a number of your suggestions, as well as a number of new things.

Over the next few days, I'm going to be reaching out to some of you to hammer on a demo version of "V3." It will be running on a test database, so anything you post will not be saved.

Here are a couple of things you can count on for V3:

- A return to RIA's original blue / green color scheme
- An emphasis on the format of the Recent Reviews page throughout the site
- The addition of a "disagree" button
- The addition of our compatibility tests / quizzes to RateItAll.com (many of you have tried these on Facebook or MySpace)
- Significantly improved publishing and sharing experiences
- More in depth hall of fame / member stats tools
- Significantly easier ways to add things to the site

And lots more.

Stay tuned - if you'd like to be included on this early sneak peek, please message me on the site. If I know who you are, I will give you access.


- Lawrence

Back in Business

Thanks to Automatt for his hard work in bringing us back up on schedule.

Scheduled Downtime Tonight: 10PM PST

Guys, we'll be going down tonight for about an hour to do some memory upgrades on our servers.

Coverage

One of the things we've been working very hard on is improving our site coverage of things to rate. With a name like RateIt All there's a lot of self-inflicted pressure on us to have a bunch of things in the db.

We've already built out things like video games, movies (and actors and directors), and startup companies. We are now in the process of blowing up our music coverage.

If there are obscure albums or bands (or not so obscure ones) that you've been meaning to rate, try running them through our search engine. Our coverage is getting pretty good.

New Rules

Guys, I've made some changes to the RateItAll Site Rules.

For the most part, we are loosening the rules a bit. We have gotten rid of things like "no personal attacks" (replaced with "no threats, menacing behavior, or harassment") - "no personal attacks" was often very difficult to moderate and there was rarely a clear bright line between a disagreement and a personal attack. For example, did it really make sense to consider "you're acting like an idiot" to be allowed and "you are an idiot" to be a personal attack?

We've also changed our wording on what sort of profanity is off limits from "excessive" to "extreme." Basically, any mainstream curse word should be ok as long as its not hate speech or really, really gnarly (our call). There's still an annoying filter on the comments section which disables all comments with certain curse words. This is going away soon.

We've clarified my feelings about hate speech in terms of who is protected by site rules - my view is that if you choose to be something (a San Franciscan, a liberal, an agnostic, etc.) you are not protected from getting hated on (e.g. "San Franciscans are liberal wusses!!" is fine). But if you don't choose to be something (a race, a heterosexual, an old person), we should do our best to keep people from hating on you (e.g. "Whites are a dirty stinking race who enjoy keeping everybody down" is off limits, as is "young people should be drowned in a well!"). And if you want to use our publishing tools to say, talk about racial stereotypes, there are probably better places to do that than RateItAll (read: I don't want that crap on my site).

Which brings me to my final point. I've been doing a lousy job at site moderation recently. I've grown way to comfortable with the site regulars, and have been lazy in differentiating between who I am as a reviewer, and who I am as an enforcer of site rules.

As such, we have some new policies in place. Unless someone is speaking to you from this account - RIAAdministrator - you should consider them a fellow reviewer, and not an admin.

Nobody will be moderating the site from a personal account any more - not me, not Automatt, and not Jose. It's too confusing, and sends mixed messages about what is a disagreement between reviewers, and what is a violation of site policy.

To hammer this point home, I will no longer answer messages from my Magellan account regarding site policy. If you want an answer from me in an official capacity, you will need to email me (lawrence at rateitall.com) or message us through the RIAAdministrator account.

Note that I say "us." There will be multiple people operating behind this account. We will do our best to be consistent, and I will decide all internal RateItAll disagreements.

Sorry for my recent moderation sloppiness of late - it's been busy.

Just added a few new pics to the RateItAll group on Facebook

If you are interested in seeing the RIA team, join our Facebook group - we're only 68 strong right now, so there's plenty of room for more.

My Favorite Pages on RateItAll

Like most obsessive RIA'ers, I spend most of my time on the recent reviews page. When I'm really bored, I'll sit there just hitting refresh until new stuff comes in. As RateItAll has grown, I usually don't have to wait very long to see new stuff.

I like that this page is always fresh, and I like that it's a good drop in point to catch "discussions" in the comments section, and to get ideas for things to rate.

Another page that I like is the new additions page. Recently, this page has been a little slow, and we've had to cap it at 1,000 items as so much new stuff has been getting added recently.

And finally, I also like to drop in on my favorite reviewers. I'll go to their profile page and then click the link to see their review history. For example, Abichara is one of the guys I like to read - especially around political season. If I miss his posts on the recent reviews page, I can go to his profile page to check them out directly. You can check out his reviews HERE.

Over the last few months, I've been obsessing over this so called "river" of content format. This is exactly what you see in the recent reviews page - a stream of reviews that starts at the top page, and slides down as new reviews appears at the top.

I like reading reviews this way. And I'd also like to see more things included in this page - maybe new stuff that is added to the site, reviews from my favorite reviewers, and maybe even topics that I'm interested in like basketball and beer and mexican food and san francisco and internet and the world champion philadelphia phillies.

I think it would be really neat to have a single feed - a single river if you will - made up of just the stuff that I was interested in. Posts from people that I find interesting, posts about topics that I find interesting, new site additions, activity on interesting weblists, new reviewers that others are discovering - and the key aspect of this river that it is totally tunable by me. So that my river doesn't look yours, and no two rivers look alike.

I also don't want to lose the global aspect - as annoying as some of the hit and run posters and MSers (IDK!) and FBers and Grizzlers and Dog Food Fundamentalists are that hit the site, it's nice to feel part of a larger community and to be able to discover new opinions and people outside of your regular realm.

Those who read my posts closely on the site may have seen hints that we are working on a big new release. I may pull some of the RIA regulars in to take a look at some stuff in the coming weeks. Stay tuned.

Calling All Gamers

We just added a boatload of new video game titles to our db.

If you are a gamer, please help us in getting these new sections off the ground.

Post of the Day

From Irishgit:

As is the case with Obama, McCain is undoubtedly polarizing, and moreso since his campaign became home to so many former Bush aides and operatives who have brought their style of campaigning with them.

This is not to say that polarization is intrinsically evil, but for the long term good of the nation it is the responsibility of all activists to keep it in check. The kind of extremist language and outright hatred used by partisans on both sides in this election has reached a disturbing point. Neither side is free of guilt in this, and neither occupies some kind of moral high ground.

It is a despicable thing when it has become politically acceptable to call the opposing side anti-American and unpatriotic because they happen to disagee with you. Both sides have been guilty of that, and of other extreme language, both on the campaign trail an on this site.

I remember a particularly good review someone wrote on here back in closing days of the 2004 election. Speaking as a GOP partisan he said:

"This (becoming a united nation after partisan strife) is the responsibility of the republican/conservatives. Dems will be able to be good losers if rep/cons are gracious winners. All such responsibility now for unification of the country is on the winning party. Don't expect amicability if you are spiking the ball in their faces, in their endzone. No touchdown dances, ok? At least, not in public."

The reviewer was Eschew Obfuscation, and the same applies this election. Those people some of you are spewing hatred at? Those are your neighbors.

You can react to the post HERE.

I'm looking forward to the end of election season

The political rhetoric, my own included, is starting to give me a headache.

I miss dog food and grizz reviews, and ratings of "4-Good!" with the review "three."

Any RIA'ers on Twitter yet?

If so, you can follow us here: twitter.com/rateitall

Those that click through can check out pictures of the fire that grazed our office building today.

Fewer Crap Reviews from MS and FB

You may have noticed a slow down on one word nonsense reviews from FB and MS.

This is intentional.

Irishgit, this one's for you.

The Passing of a RateItAll Reviewer

Harlock (formerly known as SpanishGonzo) has apparently passed away. She wasn't one of our community's most prolific reviewers, but she made an impact. From my limited interaction with her, I thought she was a sweet and nice young woman. She will be missed.

There are some memories being posted HERE.

All Time Record Traffic Day Yesterday

According to Google Analytics, we eclipsed our all time traffic record yesterday, finishing at over 42K visits.

I'm happy to say that our servers handled the load without even a hiccup.

Movies, Movies, (directors), Movies, Movies

Guys, we have recently added MASSIVE amounts of movies, directors, and actors to our database.

Our friends at Netflix have made their entire catalog of movies, tv shows, actors, and directors available to us (and other sites) via what's called an API.

We've loaded much of this stuff in - and are still loading.

So I challenge you to try and find a movie, a director, or an actor that we don't have. Seriously. Use the search box and search for anything. Click through to check out the Netflix Movies or Netflix Directors.

Oh yeah, this is also cool.... if you look in the margin of movie or director or actor pages, you'll find related items - movies that the director has directed, or actors that have appeared in the movie.

For example, check out this listing for the classic surfing movie Big Wednesday. Here's what you'll see in the margin:























For you movie buffs out there, I think it will be fun to follow the trails of actors, movies, and directors around the site.

Lots of New Categories

Those of you hitting the "browse" link in RateItAll's header will notice lots of new categories. We are in the middle of spring cleaning / re-categorization of all of our lists. As the number and diversity of the lists has grown, so has the need to create more specialized landing pages for various themes, such as religion, military, the arts, pets, and relationships.

The other thing you might notice is that RIA lists and Weblists are all mixed together now - this is a sign of things to come.

We are managing this project on the fly, so you may notice some odd and/or wrong categorization of things for the next week or so... please do not be alarmed.