American Idol 'Crush' Votes - Can they be Balanced out? Creator of New Software Thinks So
Adding to the American Idol voting controversy, one idol voter launches software supposed to help parents and adults to out-vote what appears to be teens and tweens voting for their new celebrity crushes. The new software works for American Idol as well as Canadian Idol and allows voters to use their computer dial-up modems to cast hundreds of votes without having to manually redial, misdial, or trudge through busy signals.
(PRWEB) April 22, 2005 -- American Idol is in the middle of its 4th season
with now 6 remaining singers competing for audience votes. Wednesday evening
American Idol sent home one of the more talented singers, Anwar Robinson,
instead of whom many would probably think should have gone. It's an ongoing
problem that one Idol voter thinks he has a solution for.
Each season,
American Idol prompts criticism with its strange voting system, one that
encourages viewers to vote 'as often as you like' for the contestant they want
to stay. "With all those teens who sit in their rooms for two hours redialing,
parents and adults who watch the show and participate in the voting really have
no way to equal out the vote. Now they do," explains Kevin Shaper, creator of a
new PC American Idol voting software at http://www.speedvoter.com and http://www.idolvoter.com.
What Shaper is referring to
is the strange phenomenon where some of the thought-to-be better singers go home
early while the lesser talented, but seemingly adorable to a growing number of
loyal teen fans, stay past their point of a classy exit. By the time they leave,
most of us regular viewers are breathing sighs of relief.
To combat this
frustration, which is expressed in many of the chatrooms on the web devoted to
idol, Shaper designed the new PC software to simply and quickly use a dialing
modem to be a repeat dialer for adult Idol voters who can't sit on the phone for
two hours. "Most people vote less than ten times right after the show and get
tired or watch another show. We need something to balance out the teen vote and
this is a cheap, fast and simple method that just might start to influence the
show's results," Shaper states.
Though his SpeedVoter software, also
called IdolVoter, is not the only software for this purpose, he claims it is one
of the fastest, clocking a new vote as fast as every 10 seconds. The software
requires a dial-up type modem used by many AOL subscribers which can dial phone
numbers. Just enter the contestant's number and how many times you want to vote
and click 'vote'.
"So easy to use, even parents who couldn't program
their VCRs can do it. It's easier than hitting redial, too," Shaper adds while
mentioning that during the past Tuesday night's two-hour window he recorded 486
votes with his new SpeedVoter software. Not quite his best, he reports, but with
more and more people voting each week for fewer contestants, not a bad effort.
And his 2 contestants are still in the show.
If anything is going to
balance out the strange voting results other than the show's producers changing
the voting methodology, it just may be getting the right tool into the right
hands.
Shaper's SpeedVoter software can be downloaded from http://www.speedvoter.com and
requires a credit card. One more way he aims toward adults.
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Source: http://www.prweb.com/releases/2005/4/prweb231805.htm