Notorious spammer Christopher “Rizler” Smith was sentenced to 30 years in prison by a federal judge on Wednesday.

Under the spam companies Burnsville Internet and Xpress Pharmacy Direct, Smith allegedly sent more than one billion emails through America Online. The FBI claims he made approximately $18m during his final year as a penis pill pusher. Federal authorities raided Xpress Pharmacy and Smith’s home, seized $4.2m in assets, including a $1.1m house and 17 luxury vehicles worth $1.8m.

Philipp Lenssen at Google Blogoscoped posted yesterday about how the accuracy of Alexa data is really poor. The specifics of his post are really a spoof as all the “data” is made up. Philipp is in fact spoofing the Alexa methodology itself as he indicated that the data: “uses gut feeling from a selected sample group (me) as data source”. Alexa’s accuracy problems are well known.

The underlying problem is that the Alexa data is derived from users who use the Alexa toolbar. At the end of the day, the audience is just not large enough, and the dependency on a willingness to install the toolbar introduces a natural bias into the date. My own experience suggests that these problem become worse and worse as you deal with lower and lower traffic level sites. Have a site that gets 20,000 visitors per day? You are not really on the map with Alexa at that level.

Because your competitors are in the same business as you are, the bias problem no longer is a factor to worry about (because the bias will affect all the compares sites equally). For most businesses this will provide a quick way to compare the relative web site traffic levels in their industry. So the accuracy problems are real, but there is still a way to use the tool to extract useful information.

We all know by now that Firefox is a great tool, what most people don’t know is that Firefox works with the so called Extensions (small pieces of software that add features or small tweaks to you Firefox). Using Extensions is a blessing and they make your life on the internet a whole lot easier.

Here is a great collection of Firefox Extensions for webmasters:

1. Web Developer 1.1.4

This Extension adds a toolbar with some great features for easily editing the CSS, work on the accessibility of your site and other cool features. Get it here!

2. Firefox Accessibility Extension 1.01

Firefox Accessibility Extension makes it easier for people with a disability to view and navigate webpages, but it also helps developers to check the accessibility of their pages. Get it here!

3. SeoQuake 2.0.4

SeoQuake is huge, i use it every single day and it saves me a lot of time. This Extension basically adds a toolbar in the corner of the websites and with the push of a button it expands giving you almost instant information about the way search engines view and index that website, along with statistics from Alexa and other great features for the webmaster that works with Search Engine Optimisation. Also every time you search for something in Google, Yahoo or Msn you’ll get the same statistics under every result. Get it here!

4.Total Validator 4.1

Provides true HTML validation (HTML 2.0 to XHTML 1.1) using the official DTDs, plus added attribute checking. So you no longer have to put up with the limitations of the W3C validator (no type checking) and tools like HTML Tidy which interpret the standards incorrectly (they don’t use the official DTDs).

Also performs accessibility validation (WCAG, US-508), broken link checking, spell checking (5 languages), and takes screenshots using 24 browsers on Windows, Linux, and OS/X. Get it here!

5. KGen 0.2.1

KGen retrieves every words of a page and lets you know how many time they appears on her and their weight in the page (a word in the title of a page has a stronger weight than a word in a paragraph).

So, you can easily know how to optimize your pages, know what’s the secret of your competitors or simply know what’s the main subject of a webpage.

You can also select some words and transfer them to your clipboard and paste them on tag fields on your favorite social network or fill meta-keywords of your web pages.

To open the KGen sidebar : View>Sidebar>KGen. Get it here!

6. IE Tab 1.3.3.20070528

We all know how frustrating and time consuming is to edit your page especially the CSS file to make your site display correctly in IE as well as in Firefox, this Extension gives you an embedded IE in a new tab!

This is a great tool for web developers, since you can easily see how your web page displayed in IE with just one click and then switch back to Firefox. Get it here!

7. Yet Another Window Resizer 1.1

This Extension helps you view your web page in several resolutions. Get it here!

8. MeasureIt 0.3.6

Draw out a ruler to get the pixel width and height of any elements on a webpage. Get it here!

9. Clear Cache Button 0.5

Adds a clear cache toolbar button. After installing the extension, find the clear cache button in the toolbar customization panel. YES, this is an extension for the very lazy webmaster! Get it here!

10. Font Finder 0.5a

Simply highlight a single element (e.g. a paragraph or a strong tag ), right-click and select `Font Finder`, then marvel as the full CSS text styling of the selected element appears. Get it here!