Ten brilliant things the internet has done

Monday, January 19th, 2009

The news this morning that Belkin has been paying people to write positive reviews on Amazon will inevitably undermine “user reviews” on websites, but for me they’re still a valuable resource – especially for areas where there aren’t any “professional” reviews to fall back on.

The thing is, you need to look out for the pattern of a real review as opposed to the one someone’s churned out for the sake of a few pence (or cents, in Belkin’s case) or – in the case of book reviews on Amazon – where the author, publisher or friend of either has posted the review themselves.

Anyway, to fight back against the inevitable backlash I thought I’d quickly write about ten brilliant things the internet has done. (more…)

The 2008 anti-awards

Monday, December 22nd, 2008

Welcome to Stuart Turton’s 2008 anti-awards. These are not voted for by the public, there’s no free booze, swanky trophy or glittering ceremony, and you better believe they’re biased. Here, in no particular order, are all the things that made my 2008 memorable, whether because they filled my head with happy, or just made my teeth itch.

Most embarrassing event of the year

The will they, won’t they, courtship between Microsoft and Yahoo was just about the most embarrassing thing I’ve ever seen. Yahoo couldn’t resist Microsoft’s bedroom eyes, but didn’t want to appear cheap, while Microsoft made the old lover’s mistake of seeming overeager. Microsoft proposed, Yahoo said no… for a bit, then yes, but it was too late, Microsoft was shunned and not coming back. Yahoo’s share price is now somewhere south of hell, Yang’s out of a job and Steve Ballmer needs a new plan. Worst first date ever.

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Live Mesh vs Dropbox

Friday, July 4th, 2008

Keeping files synchronised across different PCs is, frankly, a pain in the rump. You work on a document at home over the weekend, only to forget to drop it on a USB stick before Monday morning, and end up missing a deadline. Or you’ve got photo libraries stored on two different home PCs, with different albums in each.

Microsoft’s Live Mesh and online start-up Dropbox have come up with similar answers to this problem, offering online services that keep your files in synch across multiple PCs. Both are at the invite-only test phase at present, but we’ve wormed out way into the private betas. Here’s how they compare. (more…)