I've found Quantcast to be fairly accurate. I run a website that gets about 1 million unique US visitors a month, which is what Quantcast has always reported. And that before we added the Quantcast tracking code, now the count is even more accurate.
In addition, spot checks with 20 other webmasters in my industry found their numbers to be +/- 10% of the actual traffic. This was true even for sites with low traffic - less than 25,000 uniques a month.
That's certainly good enough for comparison and relative ranking questions.
OK, I'm supposed to get excited about FM radio now? Give me a break - I've had an XM Radio for 2 years and I will NEVER listen to commercial FM radio again. Silence is better entertainment. There used to be good radio, but it's very hard to find - and not worth the effort. The almighty dollar has driven everything to the LCD - except when the dollar pays for quality like HBO, and the satellite radio services.
One thing that puzzles me is the number of angry postings in this thread. No one is being forced to buy satellite radio - why the hate?
Anyone interested in XMRadio should check out this fan site - www.xmfan.com. It has an active forum, plus a database of songs played across all the channels. You can search on an artist and see when their songs have been played and on which channel. They also have a variety of hardware hacks and homegrown code to get more out of the service.
I like XM's attitude to the audience. I'm not a 13-year-old boy, and that seems to be the target audience for FM rock stations. It's nice to hear great music and be treated like an adult.
I have two units, a xmpcr for the office and a Delphi for car / home use which I've used for the past year. The variety of music played by the XM programmers is the best reason to subscribe. It's impossible to recreate that on your own with MP3's, CD changers and the like - they have over 20 terabytes of music on tap at XM headquarters. Let them manage it, I have other things to do - that's worth $10 / month
A small budget, science-fiction movie from New Zealand...the special effects were low-rent, but it has a great story, great acting and a real "Sense of Wonder". The Quiet Earth is one of my all-time favorites.
I have the XM radio SkyFi unit - which means I pay for one subscription and can have XM radio at home, car and office. Between those three locations, I listen about 12 hours a day.
It's all about the music - this is a service designed for true music lovers. All genres are covered and the depth of programming is simply amazing. For example, one of my favorite stations, Deep Tracks, just ran through the top 4000 songs in their library. It took 4 weeks. Then they spent another week playing through suggestions from the audience.
That's just one station - this quality of programming is repeated across all genres. Most of the stations are commercial free - a few have ads, but only 3-4 minutes an hour.
The other thing that keeps me listening is the attitude of the hosts. They treat the audience as adults, not immature 14-year-old boys, which seems to be the target audience of commercial radio.
For me, $10/month is a bargain, I would happily pay more.
Thank you - for putting into words the thoughts and feelings I have this morning. I agree with you on every point.
Re:How big a TV are you watching the game on?
on
Superbowl XXXVII
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· Score: 1
I'm watching on a 55 inch HDTV - a rear projection Mitsubishi. It's picking up an over the air signal from an antenna in my attic. The picture looks great! They had a little problem with the sound sync at the beginning, but it's fine now. Not that it matters - I keep the sound muted until the commercials come on.
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I've found Quantcast to be fairly accurate. I run a website that gets about 1 million unique US visitors a month, which is what Quantcast has always reported. And that before we added the Quantcast tracking code, now the count is even more accurate.
In addition, spot checks with 20 other webmasters in my industry found their numbers to be +/- 10% of the actual traffic. This was true even for sites with low traffic - less than 25,000 uniques a month.
That's certainly good enough for comparison and relative ranking questions.
OK, I'm supposed to get excited about FM radio now? Give me a break - I've had an XM Radio for 2 years and I will NEVER listen to commercial FM radio again. Silence is better entertainment. There used to be good radio, but it's very hard to find - and not worth the effort. The almighty dollar has driven everything to the LCD - except when the dollar pays for quality like HBO, and the satellite radio services.
Anyone interested in XMRadio should check out this fan site - www.xmfan.com. It has an active forum, plus a database of songs played across all the channels. You can search on an artist and see when their songs have been played and on which channel. They also have a variety of hardware hacks and homegrown code to get more out of the service.
I like XM's attitude to the audience. I'm not a 13-year-old boy, and that seems to be the target audience for FM rock stations. It's nice to hear great music and be treated like an adult.
I have two units, a xmpcr for the office and a Delphi for car / home use which I've used for the past year. The variety of music played by the XM programmers is the best reason to subscribe. It's impossible to recreate that on your own with MP3's, CD changers and the like - they have over 20 terabytes of music on tap at XM headquarters. Let them manage it, I have other things to do - that's worth $10 / month
A small budget, science-fiction movie from New Zealand...the special effects were low-rent, but it has a great story, great acting and a real "Sense of Wonder". The Quiet Earth is one of my all-time favorites.
I have the XM radio SkyFi unit - which means I pay for one subscription and can have XM radio at home, car and office. Between those three locations, I listen about 12 hours a day.
It's all about the music - this is a service designed for true music lovers. All genres are covered and the depth of programming is simply amazing. For example, one of my favorite stations, Deep Tracks, just ran through the top 4000 songs in their library. It took 4 weeks. Then they spent another week playing through suggestions from the audience.
That's just one station - this quality of programming is repeated across all genres. Most of the stations are commercial free - a few have ads, but only 3-4 minutes an hour.
The other thing that keeps me listening is the attitude of the hosts. They treat the audience as adults, not immature 14-year-old boys, which seems to be the target audience of commercial radio.
For me, $10/month is a bargain, I would happily pay more.
Thank you - for putting into words the thoughts and feelings I have this morning. I agree with you on every point.
I'm watching on a 55 inch HDTV - a rear projection Mitsubishi. It's picking up an over the air signal from an antenna in my attic. The picture looks great! They had a little problem with the sound sync at the beginning, but it's fine now. Not that it matters - I keep the sound muted until the commercials come on.