A little bit of research and I came across a page on Jon Hughes' blog, "Notes from Phazm" that provides some evidence as to what is going on with the Alexa redirect function.

For those who haven't heard yet, the Alexa redirect now produces a 404 error.

For those who aren't familiar with this subject at all, allow me to explain. The Alexa redirect was a technique used by many to theoretically increase the Alexa rank of their sites. You would slap "http://redirect.alexa.com/redirect?" in front of any link to your site, and it was believed that would send all link clickers through Alexa to be counted before proceeding to your site. So basically, the redirect was a trick used to make up for visitors who don't have the Alexa toolbar installed.

However, it turns out Alexa never officially admitted the redirect would do any such thing. In fact, there was apparently no official notice along the lines of, "Now you can use our redirect function." But somehow the technique became a fairly well-known practice on the web. Some people are adamant that it served no purpose, while others claim to have noticed a definite benefit to their ranks from using it.

For whatever reason, Alexa has removed the redirect link functionality. Jon Hughes actually went to the trouble of asking them why, and this is the response he got:

"Dear Jon,
Thank you for your message.
We no longer provide support for the redirect function.

Best regards,
Alexa Internet Customer Service"

How fitting that Alexa sent out a legitimate "Dear Jon" letter to let all us bloggers know it's breaking up with us! (At least as far as the redirect is concerned.)

Have you ever been so passionate about an idea, so completely enthused, that you couldn't wait to get to your computer and get your new project up and running? Did you work for hours and hours, trying to get things going as quickly as possible? What happened then? If you're like some people, you may have lost a considerable amount of interest somewhere down the line. Maybe you hit a snag, or maybe you just ran out of steam. But for whatever reason, your sprinting came to a dead halt. "It doesn't matter," you might have thought. "Wouldn't have worked anyway."

But what if it could have? All that passion you had to begin with must have come from somewhere. When you were still going strong, you knew it in your heart that you were working on a winner. "But it never took off." Well, nothing works when we stop working.

Sometimes we have to temper our passion, and make it last. If we use too much of it too quickly, we can burn ourselves out. It's like what tends to happen when the media takes a new hit and shoves it down our collective throats. At first we can't get enough of a new song, or artist, or video, or whatever. We say, "More, more, more!" And you end up seeing, hearing, or talking about it all day long. Pretty soon we get bored. Fed up. Overloaded. That same effect can occur with web development.

You might be so sure, so confident, so absolutely thrilled with your new idea. But you've got to be careful you don't wear yourself out trying to get too much done too quickly. Mind you, it is sometimes necessary to get things up and running in the rough as fast as possible. But as soon as you reach some basic level of functionality, you've got to give yourself time to rest, to recover from the intensity of it all.

Passion is somewhat self-replicating. As long as you take a break before you get too frustrated, your passion will have time to regenerate. But if you use all of your passion up too quickly, you risk losing it altogether.

The beauty of working online is that once we do something, it stays done. Once we create that brilliant image, write that amazing article, or format that gorgeous homepage, it will stay brilliant, amazing, and gorgeous for as long as we want, with no further effort on our part. This means that today we can easily build on the work we did yesterday. If ever you feel that you are losing motivation, just take a break. When you come back to your project, things will be just as you left them.

Your web site is like a castle. Every day you add a new room. When you do a little at a time, you keep yourself in a sustainable work mode. Without risking excess stress, you maintain the freedom to continue building your site up, little by little. It's amazing how much every little bit of effort can add up over time. Pretty soon, you might be shocked at the wonders you've created, simply through pacing yourself. It's no wonder so many people say, "Slow and steady wins the race."