Don't Buy That Book. The Bloggers Hate It
from the ah,-blogger-power dept
At the end of 2004, one of the trends that seemed worth watching was the gradual linking of the analog to digital worlds -- specifically with the cameraphone being able to act as the conduit. The idea that the cameraphone could provide the window to get the same sort of information you find online while out and about still seems like a powerful concept. Already, there are plenty of offerings where you can snap a photo of a product cover or barcode and get back comparison shopping info or reviews -- but the folks at Toshiba have added a twist. Snap a photo of a product barcode and get back up to 100 blogger posts about the product. It's not clear how Toshiba is finding this info or picking the blogs, but it's an interesting idea. The real question, though, is how useful and or valuable blog postings are. They might not be real "reviews," meaning they could be a lot less useful. It would seem like picking the info off of various review sites would be a lot more handy (though, it wouldn't generate buzz in the blogworld, like this story is likely to get).
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Clue
http://www.techdirt.com/books/000201/1218207_F.shtml
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No Subject Given
Blogs are over rated anyhows. 'omgz0rz buy this its neat !'
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Re: No Subject Given
Amen, brother! With the rise of weblogs, the internet has truly become a million monkeys with typewriters. And if you thought those were bad, try sifting through the hundreds of miserable podcasts out there. There's a damn good reason these people don't write (or broadcast) for a living.
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Re: No Subject Given
I agree you shouldn't trust what any Schmoe says on the net since blogs and posters are filled with shills (If you want an example, go browse the articles recently at Penny Arcade where they talk about "stealth marketting"...its goddamn insane).
Just because a site is big doesn't mean the review wasn't paid for in some way.
Unfortunately because on all this lack of ethics in the corporate world and the rise of stealth marketting, no one knows who they can trust unless they spend time digging REALLY deep for everything they need to purchase...and the big guys know we poor working slobs don't have time to spend hours researching each little thing.
Ol' Billy S, got it wrong..it wasn't kill all the lawyers, its kill all the marketers, maybe we can get back to reality.
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Just a thought
This company that's doing the scanning is obviously going to be handling the process for reading the pic of the barcode, then looking that item up in a database. Why not partner with someone like Consumer Reports to put the info into that database?
If I'm specialized in peanut butter, and you're specialized in jelly... hell, we could make some great sammiches together.
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Re: Just a thought
-Not without the bread you won't :)
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Re: Just a thought
Everyone alread has the bread (phone). We- the two companies doing the service here- are supplying the stuff to put on that bread. I'm Jiffy Peanut Butter, you're Smucker's Jelly. Neither one of us makes the bread.
See? My analogy still works!
And no, I'm not going to expand this to figure out who's the knife with which the PB&J are spread on the bread. I'm not stoned enough for that level of thinking. ;)
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Thank god for blogger opinions
Hurrah, I want their experiences guiding my decisions.
(Disclaimer: I read a few intelligent and down to earth blogs... I've also travelled across countless idiocy. They're not all bad, but they sure seem to be disproportionately so)
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Curb Stone Roses
But then again, just build barcode scanners in to phones, some phones come with an e-wallet which have built in RFID such as Nokia does, forgot what model but its a 6XXX one .. a fatty..
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