No strings attached

Well the whole of teh intarweb it would seem is running hot with the whole M$ Ferrari free review unit ethics debacle.

As I’ve said elsewhere, I don’t think there is a problem with microsoft doing this.  Their ethics are only questionable in that some bloggers then have a hard time dealing with the equipment (too time-consuming to return with a no thank you note).

The ethics question only really comes into play with regard to disclosure. An ethical blogger will disclose the fact, no question.

To me it’s more a question of credibility.  If a blogger posts on their site that they have received a shiny ferrari laptop running vista, and it was the best ever user experience they have had, and go on to say how they came to have it and in fact they still own it, or gave it to their ex, or the homeless shelter or whatever, then that’s all dandy.  People may even rush out and buy one based on their recommendation.

If in a month’s time they mention the new office chair they have, and how great it is, and how wonderful the manufacturer is for sending them the chair, unsolicited and allowing them to keep it, or give it to their kid sister or the kid dumpster diving out back, that’s fine too.  i may even check it out, my wife needs a new chair.

Then say, hypothetically like, they post about this great cell phone that arrived in the post, unsolicited, and how vodafone sent it asking for a review, and how, by the way they are allowed to keep it.

If one were an astute reader, and perhaps even a conspiracy theorist, then one may believe that they can see a pattern forming.  The blogger’s ethics are unquestionable – full disclosure every time – great – fantastic even – stand up guy!

But would you buy a used car from this man?

I’ve read bloggers that do this often, many times they don’t disclose, certainly they didn’t in the days before the practice was widely known.  Their ethics suck.

I’m sure most of the people MS chose were good solid bloggers that have a good history of disclosure and well thought out reviews.  It would be a huge PR blunder not to.

Most will probably finish up with reputations intact, but it is up to us – the readers to let them know we don’t like being duped.
 

Geek Violence

Ed Bott really has got his nickers in a twist now. He

“calls BobH on his bad manners”

by saying

Well, Bob, %!@# you. And of course, by “you” I mean the generic “you.” Which is to say, you.

Even after BobH apologised to him and begged forgiveness. Now Ed says he would have punched Bob in the nose, given the opportunity!

Well Ed, your exception taken to Bob, was that he prefaced his comments with a generic “you” that you took personally (Disclaimer: I don’t know Bob).

I see Bob has plastered his same original comment on other blogs too. Perhaps you should go back to reading comprehension class and note that I used the clearly generic “one”, in a hypothetical sense.

The fact that you (specific, not generic) are so obviously pained by these comments suggests that perhaps you do have niggling doubt in the back of your mind somewhere about accepting/keeping/giving away/smashing etc the review unit.

If you truly seek to comprehend what I wrote in my previous comment, then you may notice that I did not mention ethics, but rather reputation and credibility.

Surely it is ethical to disclose that goods or services have been provided free of charge for the purposes of the review. The question for your readers then becomes one of whether or not there is bias in the review.

Would you donate the laptop to a charity anonymously, and not post mention of it in your blog? I doubt it. Somehow the posession of that laptop no matter how brief is likely to be used in way that elevates your social status.

On the question of ethics, would you consider it ethical to accept an unsolicited laptop, even to donate it to a worthy charity and NOT do a review about it, either good or bad?

Whatever…

OSX on a Zune?

So are the A-list blogs still “citizen journalists”? Or have they crossed over into becoming mainstream media?  Is there any requirement for them to verify claims made, or can they just post any old drivel?

Engadget, another one of the top blogs seems to be so hard up for news that they posted a rumour about the M$ zune being hax0red to run linux. No pictures, no source code, no verification. No shit?

That’s all very nice and all but at least I have an actual picture of OSX running on a zune. Yay me.

It didn’t even void the warranty

Yeah right…

Y’all are seriously sick

I just checked out the latest post on BoingBoing, reviewing their stats for 2006.  Given that this is supposed to be *THE* A-list blog, for the sWANKy hipsters of web 2.0, the list of top search keywords makes for telling reading.

The web is more than just pr0n

Yeah right….