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FetchBook allows you to search 126 different online book stores for whatever book you desire. Ok well that’s fine by itself but here’s where it gets better. You can put in the country you want it delivered to and your local currency and it will show the -total price- you’re going to be paying. Most of the discounts I’ve seen are 25-50% on new books. Quite amazing and highly recommended.

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Ze has some fun in his hotel room. Those poor cleaners.

So I see that Time are running an online Most Influential People online poll. In theory this is great, in practice it’s horrible. Take a look at the poll or see the screenshot below, it’s been rigged something chronic.

Whilst I’m sure that Bhumibol Adulyadej is incredibly influential in Thailand is he really the most influential person in the world (or even, as Time’s awards seem to be really about, in America)? No, of course not - a group of people have obviously spammed the poll. Just like they would have done for Korean pop singer Rain who has little or no influence in the US.

How easy is it to rig a poll like this? In the days of online social networks, the answer is incredibly easy. One post to Digg took Nintendo guru Shigeru Miyamoto from #153 to #5 on the list in five minutes.

How easy is it to prevent polls from being rigged? Well there’s one thing the person hosting the poll can do that is pretty easy - raise the barriers to entry. Just like from economic theory, if the cost to the person voting is high (where we define cost as money, time, etc. but in terms of the internet you’d have to say time is the big factor) then most people won’t bother. If it took more than say five seconds to go and vote for someone then people would obviously be less inclined to do so. For example, if you had to register first and then wait a week after registering before voting (and you had to remember yourself that you had to go back to the website in a week) then you would get a more representative sample and not a group of flashmobbers deciding the outcome of your poll.

What the marketers inside the companies that run these polls see though is the total number of pollsters. If they can get a million people voting then they’ll be much more satisfied than if they get 10,000 - even if the latter sample is far more representative of the population.

Oh well….if Colbert can make it to number one then not all is lost…

This guy is incredible. If only it was useful!

Will Ferrell (yes, the comedian) has launched a YouTube competitor site called FunnyOrDie. This is the ‘launch clip’ from the site - a quick sketch featuring Ferrell.

Watch it now, I command you. One thing they’re going to have to fix is the embedded player (it should NOT autostart) so I haven’t embedded it here.

There has been some outrage at the dialogue but I bet you laughed at least once - and not at any of the actors aged more than three years old.

Need to procrastinate? Famousr is your answer!
There’s three modes. The first (default) mode is to guess which of two given celebrities is ‘more famous’. The definition of ‘more famous’ is based on the user’s rankings - so obviously if you’re incorrect today it doesn’t necessarily mean that you’ll be incorrect in a month’s time. The second mode allows you to put in the name of two actors and the site will tell you who is more famous (apparently Mary-Kate is more famous than Ashley Olsen). The last is my favourite - Who’s “That Guy”? shows you a grab of an actor (usually not very famous) and a list of movies and you have to pick which was their biggest one.

Great site to waste some time on.
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