In the latest Technology Quarterly in this week’s edition of the Economist , there is an article about reviews online . This piece explores well why people read and trust reviews, and the value of both positive and negative reviews. No one trusts all positive reviews John McAteer, Google’s retail industry director is quoted as saying: For him you need some negative reviews as well as everybody knows that no product could per perfect.

Ratings and reviews lie. And I suspect most people will never know. “Professional” reviews The Thankfully, one of the great things about online consumer-generated Ratings and Reviews is their ability to bypass the bias that could come from the reviewer benefiting from the review. At least that’s true so long as the reviews are honest and any bias is stated. Simple, subtle lies, but lies all the same. The first time I realized what a con ratings could be was when I visited Dubai.

Digital Habitats: Stewarding Technology for Communities by Etienne Wenger, Nancy White and John D. Smith I’m m often the technology steward for communities of practice (CoP). I

Tags: Tech Review Depiction’s what-if mapping software has launched. Much like a "serious game" Depiction is easy-to-use software that runs on standard laptop and desktop PCs. Depiction's powerful mapping technology allows users to quickly depict scenarios that answer "What if" questions. For example: "What if this levy broke?

December 2008: Image annotation and folders Home Solutions Features Pricing Support About us Annotate Documents Online Private or shared review, indexing and discussion with notes and tags Share notes on PDF, Microsoft Word documents and Web pages online. Documents and notes are private unless you choose to share them. You can take a private snapshot of any web page. All documents and notes are added to your personal index.

Just a few minor quibbles, as is the way with a review. Tags: Book reviews Neighbourhood relations Text of the momen Morgan, D. (2009). 2009). Acquaintances: the space between intimates and strangers . Maidenhead, Open University Press.

Ratings and reviews are having a massive impact on our online behaviour. This is the first of a two-part blog about ratings and reviews (a general introduction). Click to read Part2: The lies behind online ratings and reviews . The Growth of online ratings and reviews There They are great for shoppers and great for retailers. But they are also a little bit evil.

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I have reviewed 5 of them and believe that whilst they are not yet fully mature OWBs could become valuable support tools for virtual brainstorming or open innovation activities. The 5 OWB products I reviewed were: 1. Twiddla.com Don't take this as a comprehensive list - there are at least half a dozen other OWBs out there which I did not review - I just picked the Online whiteboards (OWB) aka Collaborative Whiteboards are a new class of web tool, which let remote users interact over the web in real-time using a shared virtual whiteboard. 1. Twiddla.com

The always excellent Trendwatching, which relies on a network of thousands of watchers, has a special briefing (September) on the triumph of transparency, and in particular, it focuses on the role of the ‘reviewing masses’ creating a powerful p2p ‘arena’ in which brands live and die following positive or negative reviews. There are many more research studies, findings, dissertations, and so on that confirm the same fact: reviewing is the new advertising. businesses have to understand and accept that consumers’ decision making processes, which ultimately come down to whether they will buy from you or from someone else, have truly shifted to a new, powerful peer-to-peer arena.