negative

Negative Yelp post lands reviewer with $750K suit

The Web is a lovely place to not merely get mad, but get even.

But what if the company you're criticizing thinks your version of "even" isn't even-handed?

A woman in Fairfax, Va., may now have to go to court to prove that her Yelping assessment of a contractor's work was vaguely just.

The way the Washington Post tells it, Jane Perez believed that Christopher Dietz had not merely damaged her home, as opposed to repair it, but also invoiced her for work he never did at all.

And then there's the jewelry.

Perez … Read more

Dentist charges patient for negative Yelp reviews, suit says

Online reviews are sticky little things.

I recently stayed at a hotel that someone on TripAdvisor had described as having filthy--in fact, sticky--conditions and I found it perfectly nice.

So one wonders about all the ramifications surrounding the case of New York dentist, Stacy Makhnevich. She is alleged to have gotten her teeth so deeply into a patient that she began charging him $100 a day for negative Yelp reviews.

The way TechDirt examines it, Makhnevich requires patients to sign a form handing her copyright to any online reviews.

Should the reviews not glow in the dark, she allegedly has … Read more

Report: Twitter users tilt negative on iPhone 4S

I got an e-mail this morning from Crimson Hexagon, which describes itself as "a leader in social media analytics" and says it studied the Twittersphere in "real time" to find out how consumers really feel about Apple's iPhone 4S announcement. Not surprisingly, the results of the analysis seem to echo the sentiments of CNET readers.

According to Crimson Hexagon, here are the highlights:

49 percent showed negativity toward the announcement, with 33 percent expressing disappointment that the iPhone 4s was released and not the iPhone 5. 16 percent shared their feelings that Tim Cook is … Read more

Kindle Fire's shortcomings: Little storage, no Bluetooth?

Often at big product launches, the devil's in the details, and companies sometimes conveniently forget to mention some features that may be perceived as negatives.

In launching the Kindle Fire, the big headline for Amazon was the tablet's impressively affordable $199 price tag. As Jeff Bezos said multiple times, "We are building premium products and offering them at nonpremium prices," and it's hard to argue with him when it comes to both the Kindle Fire and the new e-ink Kindles. But now that some of the euphoria over the launch has ebbed, folks are starting to look more closely at some of the potential shortcomings of the device.

Big on my list is the limited 8GB of storage, with only 6GB usable (and no expansion slot) and the apparent lack of Bluetooth (Amazon does not list it in the specs).

Others have mentioned the fact that there's no camera or GPS. Those feature may be important to some, but you just wouldn't expect them to be there in a product at this price point. After all, the $249 Nook Color also left off the camera and Bluetooth. Interestingly, that device apparently has a Bluetooth chip, but Barnes & Noble has chosen not to activate it, so who knows, maybe Amazon is hiding one, too. … Read more

Canon updates flatbed photo scanner lineup

Canon's CanoScan 8800F has been enduringly (and somewhat endearingly) popular on our site, despite the fact that we've never reviewed it. Though it's closing in on 3 years old, which is practically ancient in many of the other product categories we cover, there isn't a lot of technological development either, so it's refreshing not to be barraged with artificially differentiated products for a change. That said, Canon's latest CanoScan, the 9000F, follows up the veteran photo scanner at about $50 more, with a resolution boost for slide and film scans and improved power consumption.

Here's how it compares with its cheaper sibling, as well as its main competitors:… Read more

Capricorn detailer

MB Capricorn Astrology gives users an opportunity to dissect all the traits that make up a Capricorn. This is a great and simple tool for those curious about astrology.

The program's interface is very limited, which will be a blessing for newcomers to astrology. The simple program consists of 15 tabs outlining different characteristics of the Capricorn. A simple online Help file is available, but we are confident users will not need to visit it. The program's function is amazingly simple. Users are given a glimpse of Capricorn characteristics ranging from Lucky Charms to Financial Habits to Health … Read more

Amazon reviewers slam TurboTax fee changes

Updated December 8 at 9 p.m. with Inuit comment.

Revisions incorporated into Intuit's TurboTax 2008 have led to a bit of a tax revolt by reviewers on Amazon.com.

The tax preparation program, which is a top seller at the online retailer, has garnered an Amazon customer rating of one and a half stars out of five. As of Sunday afternoon, an overwhelming 82 reviewers (out of 90) gave the program the minimum one star, compared with four reviewers who gave it the full five-star rating.

However, it's not the features nor functionality with which the majority … Read more

Adobe toys with standardizing DNG raw photo format

Adobe Systems is discussing potential standardization of its Digital Negative (DNG) format for digital images, a company executive has said.

Most people are fine with plain-old JPEG for their images, but higher-end cameras can produce more flexible and higher-quality "raw" photos that are encoded with camera makers' proprietary formats. Because different cameras produce different formats, companies such as Adobe whose software deals with raw files face a daunting engineering challenge understanding.

DNG is designed as an alternative to the profusion--what Adobe calls a Tower of Babel--but it hasn't caught on widely. Ricoh, Casio, Pentax, and a few … Read more

Can a laptop reduce air pollution?

Everything is going green, as we were just saying, though that doesn't necessarily mean hemp. There are all types of environmentally friendly technologies, of course, and MSI is experimenting with one that releases negatively charged ions to literally clear the air.

Trying to show that it's not just about superficialities, the Taiwanese computer maker is working on a concept notebook that can release as many as 550,000 ions per cubic centimeter, which PClaunches says is "more than if you were right next to mountains and beaches." As a result, MSI claims, the Anion PR620 Computer &… Read more