Keep track of the iTunes Giveaway songs-sold count with '10...

[MacBytes]

Category: 3rd Party Software
Link: Keep track of the iTunes Giveaway songs-sold count with \'100MilCounter\' for Mac OS X (http://www.macbytes.com/link.php?sid=20040707114751)
Posted on MacBytes.com (http://www.macbytes.com)

Approved by Mudbug

[King Cobra]

Kinda feels like New Year's, with everyone looking up at the top of their screens for the count[up].

Well, we're into the 2nd half of the countdown...this half should get interesting.

[Kingsnapped]

Damn I didn't realize how fast this thing is moving... just missed out on 97,500,000...

[King Cobra]

It updates at 5 minute intervals, as does Apple's coundown timer in the pink section to the right on this page: www.apple.com/itunes/100million/

I noticed that from the last interval before 97.5 million to the first interval over that, the change was 2968. That 97.5 million is a number divisible by 100 thousand between 95 and 100 million, so people do make submissions to attempt to win an iPod. But I did some recalculating, in which I took the finite change of the number of entries from 12:57est. to the most recent update at 14:57 (the count then was 97 552 402, about halfway between one hundred thousand markers), and divided that by the finite change of 120 minutes. In mathematical terms, I did the following

avg. change in entries (E) = ∆E/∆t

I came up with an avg. 436.108 new entries per minute. That means for every update interval of 5 minutes, on avg. during 12:57est and 14:57est, 2180.54 entries were added. That number is only 73.468% of the change in the number of entries from the last interval before 97.5 million to the first interval over 97.5mil.

This, I conclude that the rate in which the number of entries submitted around every one hundred thousand increases. So if you're going to do the tell a friend, be quick.

BTW: Doctor Q, you're not the only one doing the math around here.

[Bendit]

I doubt that number is accurate even when you get the number right when it changes. I doubt the front page would be linked to their sales database. There's probably a couple of layers of systems it has to go through before it gets there and surely they might have made it so that people can't "cheat" to win.