review

Matthew Aslett continues to put out one of the best open-source blogs around. Today, his predictions for LinuxWorld made me laugh.

We really are predictable as an industry, aren't we?… Read more

Here's yet another way to harness the wisdom of the crowd for your personal gain: TrustedOpinion, a recommendation engine that creates product ratings based on reviews that are weighted by the writers' proximity to you in your social network.

Your friends' opinions carry the most weight. The opinions of their friends (your friends-of-friends) carry less. Your friends-of-friends-of-friends still less, and so on. The thinking being that you're more likely to trust your friends' takes on product reviews than those of people you don't know. If you want, you can control the weightings even more, individually scoring people … Read more

Years ago, my wife and I used to religiously enter everything from our checkbook into Quicken. Unfortunately, we did very little analysis of how we were spending beyond "too much" or "just right." We knew exactly how much we were spending, but not why or where.

Years have passed, and we have become even worse about managing our money. When big or out-of-the-ordinary chunks of cash (bonus, consulting, whatever) come in, we're good at applying that to car loans/etc. such that we have no debt beyond our mortgage. But we still stink at managing our money, in part because we don't have anyone advising us on how smart people manage their money.

So, today, I gave Wesabe a spin. I've known about Wesabe well before it became a company, having discussed it with Marc Hedlund while he was still an EIR with O'Reilly Media. The basic idea: harness the power of a community to analyze one's spending and to get collective help (tips, etc.).

Open source finance, if you will.… Read more

I spent about 90 minutes Monday night trying to set up an Ooma, a phone system that piggybacks both on your broadband Internet connection and land line. My experience: it was a pain to install, but now it works pretty well.

I've griped to acquaintances about how ordinary folks have had to become first system administrators and now, with broadband and multiple computers per household, network administrators. Setting up a review model from Ooma raised these hackles anew.

There was nothing seriously newbie-deterring like command-line utility, or even setup software. The Ooma system setup had two other afflictions instead. … Read more

We've had an influx of inexpensive RCA MP3 players lately. Jasmine posted her reviews of the RCA Jet and the RCA Pearl last week. Now we've got the RCA Opal, which is probably the most unique player RCA has released. It has a great list of features, including support for DRM WMA and Audible formats. I thought the user interface was a little confusing--not helped by the fact that the control pad is a little slanted.

The claim to fame here is that the Opal supports photo and video playback for under $70. If you're interested, click … Read more

Snooth is a wine review and recommendation service that launched early last month. The idea is simple--provide a few simple ratings of wines you like or dislike, and Snooth will serve up ones it thinks you'll enjoy. It runs on a similar system to the one you find on Netflix, with one to five star ratings, and a bevy of user reviews. The system currently has a listing of over 1.5 million wines, and if you can't find one you've had or liked in the past, you can simply add it.

In addition to showing user … Read more

Matthew Aslett has the latest numbers on open source investments in Q2 2007. The bottom line? Up 33% (over the same quarter last year) to roughly $100 million. Not too shabby.

Matthew: It would be ideal if you could also report the running tally of total open source investments. We're over $2 billion now....

Guiding consumers to products that they actually buy is supposed to be the Web's specialty. Then how come e-commerce growth is slowing down?

In the morning session at Under the Radar on Thursday, four companies explained why their technology would appeal to e-tailers.

The big crowd pleaser was PowerReviews.com, headquartered in Millbrae, Calif. The company aggregates and manages customer reviews. What makes the 26-employee company different, according to CEO Andy Chen, is that it's concentrating on products not typically reviewed on the Web, such as sporting goods, shoes, and backpacks.

"Online stores that want reviews can … Read more

In case you temporarily lost consciousness yesterday, or missed our coverage of the fast-approaching iPhone release day, here's a roundup of Tuesday's Crave-ing of Apple's newest gadget.

• Both The Wall Street Journal and The New York Times' gadget gurus unveiled their reviews of the smart phone.

• Details surrounding the available data plans from AT&T are now available.

iPhone features--some we knew about, others we didn't.

• A new iPhone video demos some new features.

• Apple Stores will host iPhone premieres from 6 p.m. to 12 midnight on the night … Read more