For the past couple of seasons of American Idol I have resorted to an automatic, “intelligent” dialing program to place my votes for me.  The interesting thing about DialIdol is that it “measures the busy signals” to figure out which of the idols are getting the votes.  If it makes a determination that your choice(s) are NOT going to be safe it will start dialing for them while not wasting time dialing those that are getting the busy signals since they are already getting votes.

The accuracy of DialIdol is tied to the number of people that are using it.   The more people, the more accurate the determination will be as to which of the idols are getting the busy signals.  The author has done a pretty good job and building an algorithm that not only factors into the equation the busy signals but overall weighted averages and time zones.  (Since voting begins on the east coast, and this is the first exposure these calls are weighted differently than those that are in the western time zones.)  For those of you that are statistically inclined there is a link on the web page that will explain it to you.

So what are your thoughts.   Do you think the use of tools like this are really changing the outcome of the show?  Do you think that your votes really matter?  I’ve heard the arguments that people vote to keep the worst talent on the show just so they can “stick it” to the judges.  Would a tool like this help in that mission?   Are there other dialing tools that you use to vote for your favorites? 

I encourage you to at least take a look… share your thoughts