review · MaisonBisson

Restaurant Review: Cotton

First Impressions How much is too much for an entree at a place that plays the kind of anonymous Muzak that Kenny G calls jazz and is decorated like Applebee’s? Trust me, I like renovated mill buildings, but why confuse it with faux grecian columns and too many pictures of dead celebrities? I mean, the […] » about 400 words

Sweet Sumolounge Omni

A Sumolounge beanbag chair is a beanbag like a Maserati is a car. But even that doesn’t properly characterize the difference. For starters, it’s big — over five feet on one side. Not big enough for the whole wrestling team, but big enough for cuddling. A bit bigger and I’d go looking for sheets and […] » about 200 words

MacBook Pro Reviewed

Jacqui Cheng likes her new MacBook Pro and loves the performance, but gives the MagSafe power adapter mixed reviews. Why? She says it disconnects when it shouldn’t, and seems to stay connected when it should disconnect. Well, I think I still want one. Apple, Jacqui Cheng, laptop, MacBook, MacBook Pro, MacBook Pro reviewed, portable, PowerBook, […] » about 100 words

Reviews You Can Trust

Cameron Moll (via Ryan Eby) wants “weight” customer ratings to reflect how two products of the same rating might have wildly different numbers of reviews.

At first glance I agree with him, but after a moment of thought, I begin to wonder if I want the ratings weighted by the number of reviews, or the number of reviews I “trust.”

Amazon keeps huge amounts of data about all its customers. So how hard could it be to correlate my purchasing behavior with the purchasing behaviors of the reviewers along with the details of which reviews I’ve previously checked as “helpful.”

Ars on Video iPod

It’s old news now, but ArsTechnica did a really thorough review of the video iPod. I especially appreciated reviewer Clint Ecker’s opinion of the video playback capabilities. Now I’m curious about what this does to enable more video podcasts. tags: ipod, ipod video, review, video, video ipod » about 100 words

PC World Pepper Pad Reviewer Doesn’t Get It

David Rothman pointed me to Michael Lasky’s PC World review of the Pepper Pad. Lasky bangs on Pepper, saying he can’t recommend it. Too often, I think, technology reviewers approach a new product without understanding it. Lasky tells us how the Pepper performs when playing music or videos before comparing it to “notebook computers available […] » about 300 words

Disobey

Gary Wolf wrote in the June issue of Wired about how smart mobs in New York’s World Trade Center outbrained the “authorities” and enjoyed higher survival rates because of it. Wolf is talking about the NIST report on Occupant Behavior, Egress, and Emergency Communications (warning: PDFs). There’s also this executive summary and this looks like […] » about 300 words

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