Almost been a week since I last posted. Not that I've ever been religious about posting my own brand of balderdash online. Read an article a fortnight or so ago in TOI about how there were approximately 3 million posts added every second to blogosphere. This article was about how the web let the unitiated and the clueless post their half-baked and mostly ludicrous opinions online, overwhelming, with sheer numbers, all credible sources of information (the use of the word 'information' immediately excused my scribbles from the maligned pack :). True that there lies a potential for misuse of 'free-speech' by lets say paid bloggers extolling the virtues of products that while packaged to appear like cars/consumer durables/electronic items are in reality round, yellow and sour...namely lemons.
Thats not to say that .coms with a reputation for candid reviews don't sell their souls. cnet.com being one such example, up until a couple of years ago that site would be my go-to for reviews on any new laptop/cell phone/thingamajig. Then it went through a revamp post-broadband where the site was suddenly only about ads in streaming video that played inexorably before taking you to the contents. The real-estate on the site too went through major overhauls with sponsor logos sliding and pirouetting all over the place. The reviews started to get suspect when a couple of laptops I'd seen in action and knew to be expensive paper-weights (and extremely weighty ones at that) were rated as 'Outstanding' with the 'Editor's Choice' accreditation and everything while some very decent models were panned. Today, you see prominent 'Advertisement' panels with makers like Dell and HP right under articles called 'Cnets top ten laptops'...and they're not lying, they are certainly their top ten. Only means more work for the likes of me when it comes to tft-matrix-shopping (as opposed to window) shopping for the latest 9MP reality-captured-breathtakingly-onto-screen monster from Canon(oh yeah...)/Nikon(umm..ok...am listening)/Sony(yeah right!)
Damn! so much keyboard diarrhoea...must be the hangover from singing along to 'chubte kaaten yaadon ke...daaman se...chunta hoon...' in the car on my way home yesterday...god bless ipods and audio-in jacks in car stereos...
Thats not to say that .coms with a reputation for candid reviews don't sell their souls. cnet.com being one such example, up until a couple of years ago that site would be my go-to for reviews on any new laptop/cell phone/thingamajig. Then it went through a revamp post-broadband where the site was suddenly only about ads in streaming video that played inexorably before taking you to the contents. The real-estate on the site too went through major overhauls with sponsor logos sliding and pirouetting all over the place. The reviews started to get suspect when a couple of laptops I'd seen in action and knew to be expensive paper-weights (and extremely weighty ones at that) were rated as 'Outstanding' with the 'Editor's Choice' accreditation and everything while some very decent models were panned. Today, you see prominent 'Advertisement' panels with makers like Dell and HP right under articles called 'Cnets top ten laptops'...and they're not lying, they are certainly their top ten. Only means more work for the likes of me when it comes to tft-matrix-shopping (as opposed to window) shopping for the latest 9MP reality-captured-breathtakingly-onto-screen monster from Canon(oh yeah...)/Nikon(umm..ok...am listening)/Sony(yeah right!)
Damn! so much keyboard diarrhoea...must be the hangover from singing along to 'chubte kaaten yaadon ke...daaman se...chunta hoon...' in the car on my way home yesterday...god bless ipods and audio-in jacks in car stereos...
1 comment:
Ha..don't u mean god bless me for reminding you your iPod existed?
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