I think it’s a very interesting concept that might have its followers in other subjects. The idea is that you can make a profile for yourself with all the unusual and cool gadgets you own. It feels good to collect them and see them nicely lined up. But it doesn’t stop there.

All of the gadgets on the site are added by users, making it a sort of “Wikipedia of gadgets”. It’s possible to start a discussion around a gadget and ask owners questions.

Another nice feature is that you can also note that you want a certain gadget or have owned one. This way you can impress everyone with your 1st generation Gameboy!

I will show you some of the parts of the site and tell you how to get started. If you won’t take my word for it or prefer watching a video over reading than listen to Veronica Belmont explaining.

Make your profile

Of course you start by signing up and making a profile. If you want to use gdgt as just a gadget database, than you don’t need a profile, but of course it’s more fun when you use all the features – and you get to show off your gadgets!

Start by signing up and filling your profile with some information about yourself and perhaps a nice avatar. Find tips for making avatars in this MakeUseOf article.

Find some friends on the site or persuade some friends to join. As a start you can always befriend me of course.

Find and add your gadgets

You can add a list of all the unusual, cool gadgets you have, want or have had to your profile. This makes for a perfect way to get nostalgic over your Amiga console or Gameboy, but also for keeping track of that new SRL camera or Android phone.

You’re able to view reviews of a gadget or ask questions to owners. To find your gadgets go to the gadget finder and search on name, category or company.

If you can’t find the gadget you’re looking for, than just click add gadget to do just that. You can also add companies or tech terms to the database. This way gdgt could become the Wikipedia of gadgets.

Once you’ve made your list, a widget becomes available for you to share your list on your blog or facebook page. See a working example below.

Discuss, ask questions and read reviews

As with any community based website, the site is as good as its community. I haven’t seen growth or user numbers but I can tell there are already enough people around to have a question answered or have a discussion about your favorite camera. But it’s not really crowded yet.

Just go ahead and read some of the concerns of fellow gadget owners. Maybe you can help someone with a question or improve the database by correcting a specification. I really enjoy the way that it’s a central hub of reviews for items too. Users can add reviews from professional sites or write their own review. All in all this creates a great center for the true gadget geek. And I think we all have a little gadgetgeek inside of us.

Did you like the post? Please do share your thoughts in the comments section!

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Usually I rely on my friends now. The word of mouth. It’s amazing how many voluntary test-animals walk this earth, and they’re my primary source of information. That is, until recently.

What’s truly great these days, is the intelligence of technology. No, Skynet is not upon us, but new algorithms are being written and tweaked everyday, to further dissect our characteristics and our very behaviour. Imagine it, a website that knows your every taste in movies. Now that is what I call technology!

Jinni

Jinni is a movie recommendation site, a spontaneous and intelligent search engine constantly trying to quantify your tastes. One might call it StumbleUpon for movies, but it’s much more than that. Jinni isn’t the only one competing in this league, so a little scepticism is allowed, but it’s the only one that works this well.

My account was set up in no time. After we broke the ice a little, and talked about movies I liked, it took over control. Now instead of questions, it’s showing me movie recommendations – and good ones at that. Jinni’s like that movie-geek from college, only this one knows what you’re after better than you do.

Building a Profile

The first thing you have to do after signing up is getting familiar with the interface, and letting the interface get familiar with you. If you want to get something out of this service, you need to demonstrate what kind of person you are – a rather small pain.

Start by searching and rating movies you’ve seen, the great ones as well as the bad ones. Meanwhile, if you encounter any interesting titles, you can tag them for later reference.

Easier still is to take the movie quizzes. There’s one for every taste type – Introspector, Hero, Individualist, Drama Addict, Social Animal, Extremist, Alternate Realist, Escape Artist, Master Mind, Idealist, Strategist and Social Philosopher. Honestly, a lot of my own scores came as a surprise, but that was mostly because I hadn’t thought about it before.

You will be presented with a number of genre-specific movies and you have to rate the ones you know. The other ones, you can tag as ‘likely to see’ or ‘not for me’. Based on those ratings, Jinni will then calculate how big a part of your taste type mix the genre is. The scores are dynamic, which means they will automatically adjust as you continue to rate movies.

Last but not least, you can specify which genres and plot types you like, and further tweak your recommendations. I recommend you not to limit yourself to only one of these possibilities, as we want the recommendation engine to be as accurate as possible.

Recommendations

Once you’ve provided enough information to the website, it’ll start making movie recommendations. You’ll be surprised how many times they hit it right on the head. I almost had to delete the first page in its entirety because it was full of great movies I’ve enjoyed in the past.

You can rate or neglect movies in your list, at which point they’ll disappear from your list. When you click on the titles, you can see more information, as well as an embedded trailer.

If you’ve got an online NetFlix account, you can team it up with Jinni. Head straight from your recommendations to the rental, or even filter out movies that aren’t available on NetFlix yet.

Intelligent Searches

Nevertheless, one of the best features of Jinni is the intelligent search engine. It’s yet another great way of discovering movies.

When indexing movies, Jinni doesn’t only look at the obvious stuff like genre, actors and producers but also assigns tags of meta-data. Each film will have some of these tags, defining the mood of the film, the type of plot and ideal audience. Using these tags, Jinni can make connections between movies that share certain grounds, or even ambience.

In your inquiries, you can specify if you want to perform content- or title searches. The interesting thing about content searches – which will browse films’ characteristics – is that you can find great stuff without knowing what you’re looking for.

Sample inquiries include ‘Like: title’, which will only show you results somehow related to a specified movie, or ‘Plot: assassination’ which will only return a certain type of movie plot (in this example, films focused on an assassination).

This search lingo is really very intuitive, and not even necessary in most cases, Linni speaks fluent English. Type in ‘movies with animals’, or ‘thought-provoking sci-fi’, and the semantic search engine will provide you with results. If you’re still not happy with the results you’re getting, you can filter them down by assigning other characteristics to the movie you’re looking for, like mood, genre, attitude and time period. That ought to do it!

Private Beta? – Here are 500 invites!

Jinni is still in private beta at the moment. This means it’s still closed for the public and you can’t get in without an invitation. But fear not, because the nice people at Jinni have supplied an invitation link for our readers to sign up right now!

Register via this link to get into the Jinni private beta (500 invites)!

The invites are limited, so be quick! If they’re done for, perhaps you can share a few of yours in the comments section below, because every member gets 10 additional invites!

If you manage to get an invite, please do come back and let us know what you think of the site. How accurate is it for you? What did the site recommend you watch?

MakeUseOf had some other great websites for movie addicts, Aibek’s post on What Movie Should I Watch Next? is one of them. Other articles related to movies can be found here.

Did you like the post? Please do share your thoughts in the comments section!

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• User Generated Content (Episode II) (2)
• The Filter: How ‘Discovering’ Media Should Be! (4)

Flickchart is dead-simple. It shows you two movies and you pick one over the other. It then shows you two new movies, and you pick again. If you haven’t seen one or both, you replace them with new ones. As you go on making your choices, Flickchart builds your own Top Movies list.

If you need to refresh your memory, or make sure which Aliens it means, you can see additional information about the movies below. You can also see other users’ comments, ranking statistics, and watch movie trailers online if you need help to make your choice. Each time you make a choice, your Top Movies list is updated accordingly, and stats about the movie you picked are also displayed.

There are three kinds of choices Flickchart throws at you:

• Easy: When one movie is obviously better than the other, it’s a no-brainer. Godfather vs. Jurassic Park 3? Next, please.
• Neither: Both movies are crap. Shanghai Surprise vs. Speed 2 Cruise Control? You don’t want to pick either one. But in the spirit of the site, you should.
• Impossible: I just got Citizen Kane vs. Casablanca. Can I close my browser? With such choices, you will curse Flickchart, and come back for more.

You can undo a choice you made if you want to rethink. But soon, you will find yourself with a Top 20 list that doesn’t seem right. There will be a few movies that appear just because they came up in your choices sooner. There are three ways in which you can tweak your Top Movies list.

1. Re-rank a Movie

To move a movie down in your Top 20 list, select it and choose to re-rank it. For example, I am not much into chasing tornadoes, and don’t like Twister in my Top 20 list. So I opted to re-rank it, and Flickchart gives me three more movies pitted against Twister.

2. Use Filters

You can filter by top movies, genre, year, or decade. If you’re interested in getting Star Wars in your list as soon as possible, the By Year option helps. Top Movies gives you the ability to pick and re-order movies within your Top 20, 50, 100, and 250 lists.

3. Remove a Movie

You can also remove a movie from Top Movies list altogether. Simply click to go to that movie’s information page and click Remove From My Flickchart. Your choices for that movie will also be forgotten.

Get Social

Your Top Movies list is publicly visible, even to your friends not using Flickchart (see mine). When faced with a brutal decision, you can share it with your friends via Friendfeed (Twitter and Facebook support is in the works).

For each pick, you can add your comments justifying your choice. Certain matchups can lead to hot debates and discussions. Batman Begins vs. The Dark Knight? You can join in the top discussions around popular matchups. Flickchart shows a nice chronological view of both sides.

Recommendations

Flickchart gives you a list of movies you haven’t seen, which are the highest ranked by other Flickchart users. Similar to Aibek’s tips in What Movie Should I Watch Next, Flickchart will give you recommendations based on the community rankings.

The Charts

Top users have ranked tens of thousands of movies and have hundreds of friends. All rankings are compiled to build Best/Worst Movies of all time lists, which can be filtered by genre, year, decade, etc. For example, you can see the Best Comedy Movies of the 2000s. The more movies you rank, the greater weight your opinion has in building the global list. This is Flickchart’s unique crowdsourced voting model. Netflix integration is planned as well, so you can directly add movies to your Netflix queue from within the site.

The folks behind Flickchart love MakeUseOf readers, so the first 250 people clicking this link will get instant exclusive access. You can still sign up and get an invite even if you miss the boat. A word of caution though: Flickchart is addictive. If you’re a movie lover, it will keep you hooked for just one more pick.

How many movies did you rank? Share your Top 20 list with us and other MakeUseOf readers in the comments!

Did you like the post? Please do share your thoughts in the comments section!

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However, when buying a new laptop, there are always several questions to ask yourself. What size do I buy? Which brand should I get? HP, Dell, Acer, Apple? Reflective versus non-reflective screen? What good is a backlit keyboard? I know, there are heaps to choose from.

Here are 9 sites to help you find a laptop that suits you, your budget and its application. But before you start your hunt, you should read the MakeUseOf Laptop Buying Guide first to know what to look for in a laptop.

Alright, in no particular order, here are 9 great sites to help you on your hunt for a new laptop!

Liliputing

Liliputing has great reviews, has a developing community and reasonable size product database that gives the specification of everything you need to know when comparing laptops. Each laptop is subjected to personal opinions and links to more reviews about a laptop.

Cnet Reviews

Cnet is a very popular site that covers a lot of reviews on a lot of different products from Televisions, Camcorders, Car Tech, Cell Phones to Computers. Finding a laptop is very easy. Just select your budget, manufacturer, notebook type, product line or other options such as RAM, hard drive or weight, and your choice will be narrowed down. When beginning your laptop hunt, you should start off at Cnet.

Notebook Review

Like Cnet, Notebook Review can help you find a laptop that suits your needs. However, there is one advantage. Not only does Notebook Review provides links to buy products online, they also have a database of promotional codes and deals for huge discounts.

ZDNet

ZDNet is another popular site that allows you to search and narrow down your choice of laptops. The specifications that ZDnet provides are good and comparing different laptops are a breeze. Most of the information you find on ZDnet is from Cnet, so you might want to check out Cnet first.

Engadget

Engadget provides some great articles on laptops and on other gadgets. It’s more of a blog so it doesn’t provide you with the comparisons that Cnet and Liliputing provides. However, they provide good images and provide you with their opinion on the device. Their reviews are based on daily and real-life use, something to consider when purchasing a new laptop.

PC Magazine

PC Mag keeps you covered on news, reviews, prices of laptops and computer accessories. Just visit the Laptop compare prices section and you can get reviews, specs and price ranges from different suppliers and online websites.

PriceGrabber

Price Grabber mainly gives you the specification of laptops, their prices and where to buy them. The main aim of Price Grabber is to allow you to perform a comparison between many different products and suppliers. When you have found your perfect laptop, head over to Price Grabber and see where you can pick up a good deal.

Laptop Magazine

Laptop Mag is great because they give a round-up of best laptops for certain group of people. Whether it be students, or for dads. They also publish news about the latest on laptops, when manufactures are releasing products and more. If you don’t know how to do something, then Laptop Mag has some handy tutorials and How To’s which are worth to check out.

Laptopical

Laptopical provides a range of laptops to fit your budget. Although I wouldn’t suggest finding a laptop through this site, but once you have found a laptop that you want, visit Laptopical and have a read what they say.

If you are searching for a laptop, MakeUseOf hopes that you find the right computer for you. If you have any other suggestions for good laptop review sites, let us know in the comments.

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But sometimes, a review doesn’t need to be long-winded or full of adjectives and summaries. All you want to know is this: what is it? Is it worth my time? For such things, check out Blippr.

Blippr is essentially reviews in Twitter-style; short reviews of apps (software and Web), books, games, movies, and music in less than 160 characters. Other than the name that doesn’t make any sense, or the crazy noun (”blips”) that’ll never catch on, it’s a great application that will save you loads of time when searching for product reviews.

Blippr is quickly becoming a popular destination for people looking to read and write simple, quick reviews on all kinds of products. If I’m going to see a movie, I frankly don’t really care what critics say – they don’t appreciate the wonder that is childish humor. What I want to know is simple: do people like me enjoy this? Twitter’s great at this (and Blippr plays really well with Twitter), but Blippr’s a more robust and more put-together version. You won’t get New York Times-caliber reviews, but most of the time you don’t need them anyway. If all you want to know is “should I check this out?” then Blippr’s got you covered.

You can sign in to Blippr with Friendfeed, Twitter, Plurk, Jaiku, Facebook, Google, Yahoo and OpenID. The advantage here is two-fold: you don’t need a new set of credentials, and most of the linked networks allow you to choose to publish your blips every time you review an item. And that’s just the tip of the iceberg.

Blippr’s integration with other services is one of the best parts of the site, and isn’t just limited to the login screen. One of the best, and smartest thing about Blippr is that it integrates with other media-related services. Blippr can add your Netflix movies to your “Stuff,” see what you’re reading on GoodReads, and pull your listening habits in from Last.fm. Once you link these accounts to Blippr, it will automatically create a library for you.

Once you’re logged in and set up, start poking through the site’s categories – movies, books, music, games, and apps. Each of these categories has sections for reviews, “recommended” (based on your reviews, and what similar people are reviewing — something like Last.FM’s artist recommendations), and several other sections that let you look through and add to the database on Blippr. You can search through the site’s coffers to see what people are watching, reading, listening to and playing with. For each item you come across, you’ll see a series of short, 160-or-fewer-character reviews along with the users’ overall opinions of Blippr.

If you bump into something you’ve seen, read, heard or tried; posting a review is easy. You get four options: “I love it!” “I like it,” “I dislike it,” or “I hate it!”. Then, you have 160 characters to explain yourself. This makes the reviews short, easy to read, and easy to sort by people’s opinions – sort of an “out-of-5″ review but with a better set of choices.

The brevity of the reviews is the best part of Blippr – you can figure out what hundreds of people think in the time it would take to read only a few on a site like Amazon or Newegg. Blippr’s like Twitter in that aspect – nothing in-depth, but perfect for figuring out what’s on the tip of everyone’s tongues. If you’re trying to figure out which movie’s perfect for you this Friday, or which album you should buy from the Beastie Boys, Blippr’s a quick and easy way to take the pulse of a product, without tons of leg work on your part.

Every product, book, movie, or whatever has links to buy it and be saved it to “My Stuff”, which will then helps Blippr figure out what you like and tailor recommendations suited to your taste, or look through similar products to the one you’re looking at. It’s a great way to find new products, and to figure out what other people like you are enjoying.

The more you add to your “Stuff” and the more items you review, the recommendations will automatically get better and you’ll have a great organizer of all your media on Blippr. Knowing what you’ve seen, what you’ve read, and what else you might like is a great tool. With these integrations, Blippr works even faster to bring you suitable recommendations closer to your choice in movies, books and lots more stuff!

Where do you go to figure out what to read, watch, hear or use? We’d love to know where you get your recommendations and reviews from. Share them with us in the comments — 160 characters or less!

Like to shop online? Find out how you can save money with 5 saver shopping sites.

Photo: Andrei Z

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So what’s a book review? And what makes a book review good or bad? The first question has a simple answer. A book review is a form of literary criticism in which a book is analyzed based on content, style, and originality. Its length can vary from a single paragraph to a substantial essay. But what makes a book review good is totally up to the reader – personal taste. While some may prefer a short plot summary, some may prefer a long essay on the concepts presented in the book, along with the author’s personal opinions.

That’s why the order in which these sites are presented does not matter.

The New York Times

The New York Times, while some critics say it has fallen from the top ranks, still has capable writers which undoubtedly have the skills necessary for writing book reviews. Writing book reviews is actually very hard and requires the utmost attention to detail as well as an encompassing knowledge of other literary works. The reviewer must analyze even the faintest clues, implied meanings provided by the book author, decide on their importance and meaningfulness to the story. He has to address complex issues such as plagiarism and decide on the validity of the ideas and points expressed.

The New York Times presents us with book reviews situated somewhere in the middle, between a plot summary and a ten page essay, with most reviews situated around 1000 words. The quality varies from writer to writer but most of them provide an insightful view for the proto-reader. They have one of the largest number of reviews, which means you’re going to visit them sooner or later. Overall, The New York Times Book section receives a warm recommendation. Visit it here.

Also worth mentioning – capturing almost the same type of writing and quality – are the Washington Post, Chicago Tribune, San Francisco Chronicle and The Telegraph.

AllReaders.com

Next up is AllReaders.com, with a design stuck in 1999, the apogee of humanity according to the Matrix. Their library is comprehensive and the search engine highly customizable, but the reviews are generally short and superficial. “Gordon invites readers, authors and publishers to enter books and reviews in a process that takes about 10 minutes,” and that’s exactly the problem with the site. Instead of knowledgeable readers and writers, you will sometimes risk finding a common illiterate species: the internet troll. The advantage of reading through many viewpoints is undeniable so go on and visit it here.

BookPage.com

BookPage gives us a consistent library of well written book reviews, including a section on children’s books, blogs and a newsletter. Nothing remarkable, but still worth a read. Visit it here.

BookReporter.com

Just slightly better organized than the other sites I visited, bookreporter.com hosts reviews about 500 words long, polls, blogs and various contests aimed at the diligent reader.

As always, you’re invited to join the conversation, so post in the comments suggestions on other sites you’d like to read before buying a book as well as impressions on the ones mentioned in this article. You could even recommend us a book!

Did you like the post? Please do share your thoughts in the comments section!

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Opera, today, is closed source and distributed as freeware. It has a very clean and simple interface, while still supporting a wide range of extensions which enhances its default capabilities. Accessing the ‘Panels’, which contain bookmarks, history, widgets, notes and transfers, is a single click affair to the main bar ‘wrench’ icon. If you’re used to keyboard shortcuts like ‘Ctrl+B’, don’t worry, Opera supports most of them.

Opera Turbo is faster at start-up than Firefox 3.1, with an average 5 tab cold start-up at 3.1 seconds compared to 3.9 seconds. Chrome 2.01, by far the fastest, started in just 2.1 seconds. Testing was done 3 times on a Windows XP SP3 machine with a 2,4Ghz single core AMD Turion 64 and 1GB RAM.

Looking at the release notes for this build of Opera Beta, I can tell you that if you’re looking for cutting edge innovation and performance, you might not find it here. The so-called ‘turbo’ mode is just an implementation of their mobile web caching technology that is used for Opera Mobile to slim down download sizes for web pages. And the result isn’t exactly usable in some cases. Graphics intensive websites are literally transformed into something not very eye-catching. While this may help in low bandwidth situations, it’s not where the world is going.

Other features worth mentioning are:

• Speed Dial, familiar to Chrome, IE8 or Safari 3 users, shows thumbnails of your most visited websites when you open a new tab. Opera let’s you manually choose which pages you want to appear.
• Opera Link, similar to Foxmarks, synchronizes your bookmarks, Speed Dial and notes over multiple desktops or mobile devices. “In Opera write a note – copy directions, create shopping lists or jot down anything you need to remember – and access it on any Opera browser by simply logging in.”
• Security also gets a boost, with a 3 step authentication method for websites and phishing/malware protection from 3 providers: NetCraft, PhishingTank and Haute Secure.
• 100/100 score in the Acid 3 test. An improved javascript engine to come in a future version.

Opera, like its open source counterpart, Firefox, is very customizable: extensions, themes and now widgets. However, I think the Opera Widgets should be removed because it duplicates the functionality of more advanced, versatile software, which is integrated into virtually every mainstream operating system.

Opera has come a long way since I first met it, version 6, I remember. It survived on the market for 13 years, and still does have some marketshare. I think it will gradually lose those die-hard fans to Google Chrome or to Firefox. Why? Because it seems to me that they’ve been treading water more or less for the past 2 years, not bringing true innovation to the table. But Opera will still be there as long as OEM’s integrate it in their mobile phones, gaming devices and set-top boxes. An estimate puts mobile versions of Opera at 40 million devices.

It’s your turn now, so tell us in the comments what you think about Opera and how could the developers improve it to win you as a fan.

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Anyways, I have a few sites collecting awesome gadgets in my feed reader I’d be happy to share.

GeekAlerts is a blog run by Robert Birming who is doing a great job reviewing gadgets, design and consumer electronics – “giving you a daily dose of cool stuff you might not find elsewhere”.

GizmoDiva is one of my favorite gadget blogs because her collection caters for female geeks’ needs.

Gizmodo is a highly popular gadget blog and I know many people who love it but for me it has too much clutter, I prefer something more focused and on-topic.

ThinkGeek is an online store serving a market that was passionate about technology, from programmers, engineers, students, lovers of open source, to the masses that helped create the behind-the-scenes Internet culture.

PerpetualKid is another online store worth checking out if you are into geeky online shopping.

Curiobot is a growing collection of the most interesting things for sale on the internet. It is user-generated and therefore fun. I like that it only displays image thumbnails on the home page allowing to view more gadgets at a time. It also allows to view the whole collection at a time and sort it by price range.

Yankodesign features industrial design items, and despite this blog is less known than the above one, I love its style and selections.

GadgetReview reviews cool gadgets daily. Their reviews always contain detailed photos of the gadget in use and often a video featuring the gadget:

WalYou is a less-known gadget blog but it does feature some quite unique finds.

Geeky Gadgets: the only reason I have this site in my feed reader is its weekly round-ups listing past week’s gadgets.

Everyjoe’s Gadget Blog publishes multiple updates daily and also sums them up in a weekly round-up.

CraziestGadgets is another gadget blog and I can’t say there’s anything special about it, but I started tracking it after stumbling across “Youtube Addict Stickers” thanks to it:

And just a few awesome gadget lists I like enough to share:

• 20 Gadgets That Innovate Ordinary Things;
• 8 Awesome Upcycled Products for Gadget Lovers;
• Awesome Gadgets for Designers.

I am sure you have something to add – please do

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When the AppStore was first launched, I was one of many who foolishly bought and downloaded any app that caught my eye, regardless of whether I needed it or not. Even though each app costs less than $10, it still adds up to quite a sum of money after a while.

After burning a hole in my wallet, I have grown smarter now. Instead of buying apps out of impulse, I will first check out several iPhone app review sites and decide if I really need them and if they are worth my dollars.

On my journey to find out the most comprehensive reviews for the apps, there are 7 sites I have come across that are rather unique and provide an alternative way of checking out if an app is good. If you are an app junkie like me, I would advise you to check these iPhone app rewiew websites out and probably bookmark them.

1. Freshapps

Freshapps is something like Digg for iPhone apps. You can vote (make fresh) for the app you like and leave comments/reviews for others to read.  If you are an app developer, you can also submit your app for others to vote on.

One thing that I like about this site is that you are able to sort the various apps either by the newest, most fresh or the most discussed. You also can only get it to show paid or free apps and when it was added.

For those who are always looking for good and interesting apps, this is a good place to check out.

2. AppVee

AppVee call themselves the “largest and most extensive resource for professional, high-quality video reviews of iPhone applications”. I am not sure how true that is, but it is a fact that they do provide tons of quality reviews. Every app comes with a written review as well as a thorough video walkthrough of the app. Registered users can also add their own reviews.

There are thousands of iPhone apps in the AppStore, and it is rather impossible for AppVee to create a video walkthrough for each and every app in the store. Instead, what AppVee does is to handpick those apps that are of any value to the end-users and are worth downloading/buying. They then proceed to develop the written review, screenshots and video walkthrough. Even then, they have already covered quite a comprehensive list of apps on their site.

3. Apptism

Apptism provides an easy to use user-interface so that you can navigate around and find your app quickly.

What is unique about Apptism is that they allow the users to write their own reviews, compare different apps, save their favorite apps to a watchlist, send to a friend or even bookmark them in their user account. This is a good way if you just want to keep track of your favorite apps and/or compare with other similar apps.

4. iPhoneAppPodcast

If instead, you like to listen and watch video rather than reading, then iPhoneAppPodcast is the place to go. iPhoneAppPodcast reviews popular and upcoming iPhone & iPod Touch apps.

They update their site daily, sometime even several times a day, so you will never miss out anything new. Their podcasts are always very detailed and give you a thorough walkthrough of the apps, including the pros and cons. Usually at the end of the video, you will have a good idea if that app is the one you want.

One thing though, the video file size is rather big and it can take quite a while to stream if you are watching the video on the browser.

5. 148Apps

Most sites only do the top 10, 20 or even top 100 list, but 148Apps prefers the number 148 better. On this site, you will find several top 148 lists. From the top 148 paid apps, top 148 games apps to the top 148 newest apps, you will find a list that suits your needs. In addition, 148Apps also tracks the top 148 app price drop so you will know when your app is on discount.

On the review side, 148Apps provides in-depth reviews so that you won’t miss out any details. Each review comes with plenty of screenshots and several ratings. You can find ratings for iPhone integration, user-interface and re-user/replay value.

For game apps, there is even the graphics/sound rating, game control rating and gameplay rating. If you are too lazy to read the reviews, checking out the app ratings is enough to give you a gauge of how good/bad the app is.

6. iusethis

The owners of iusethis have a different thinking about apps ratings. They feel that the usual apps ratings are rather biased and based more on personal preferences than the actual functionality. Instead, they feel that a democratic way of of showing how good an app is to see the number of people using it. The more people using it, the better it is.

On iusethis, you can place a vote on the apps that you have used. The number of votes are then displayed on the site with a Digg-style icon. Users can also provide their reviews of the apps they like/dislike.

Iusethis also have a similar site for Mac applications.

7. MacWorld

Among all the iPhone app review sites, MacWorld is the one that I love best. Not only do they provide in-depth reviews, they also list out the pros and cons of the apps. It don’t take long to find out if an app is good, just read MacWorld’s review and you will know it instantly.

Which website do you usually go to for iPhone app reviews?

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Use these sites to warn prospective employees against joining the company. Or just share your experience with others and let them help you solve your problems.

Telonu is a new website that invites anyone to “Rave, Rant, and Rate” about their business thus informing prospective employees as well as providing co-workers a place to gossip anonymously.

WorkRant is a site that invites users to “release your job stress and have a workrant”. The site interface is dead simple. What’s really great about the site is that you do not need to register: just provide your name, location, job title and rant! Beware: the site is full of obscene words.

BossBitching is similar to the above one. You can post your sad workplace stories with no registration required. It remains unclear to me how to rate the stories though (each story has some ratings but I couldn’t find where to put them).

JobVent invites people to post negative (and positive) experiences on their job allowing thus for the stress release and also warning people who are going to start a new job. Company reviews are submitted along with ratings that are used to calculate the rank for each company submitted.

The site participants are asked to keep in mind that:

• no company deserves the lowest ratings in every category;
• negative ratings should be adequately grounded;
• profanity is not allowed;
• do not post names or initials, just the company name;
• each company can be reviewed only once by one individual.

Axelist invites people to share negative experiences with any kind of possible contacts with bosses being obviously the most popular of them.

Apart from the detailed complaint, the website provides some of the offenders’ details: their age and location. The site explains its benefits the following way:

File your complaint and watch Axelist expose and put your villain on the spot. We will post and promote your story and even go beyond the Internet to help you make your case.

HateMyJob category at a social voting site allows you to share stories about you getting fired or read other people’s negative experiences and thus release your job stress.

RateMyEmployer is a Canadian site offering users to rate their job places based on a number of criteria: values and corporate culture, work space (layout), teamwork and cooperation, schedule, work load and holidays. To rate or add an employer you even won’t have to register.

Criticat offers to “rate your company and share your workplace experiences”. Unlike others similar sites, it seems to promote a bit of a different concept that appeals to me: it offers not just to aimlessly rant but to try to improve the situation:

Do you feel you have a great solution to a problem in your company but not sure if everyone else will agree with you? Come to Criticat, create a poll anonymously, build consensus and cause the change.

JobBite allows you to post job reviews and rate your overall work experience and your salary. You are also invited to describe the workplace culture. The site requires no registration, so a job review won’t take you more than a few seconds.

HowsThatJob claims to provide “job reviews from real people”. The site allows you to post anonymous reviews with no registration required.

Note: I am not 100% advocative of the above services. My main concern is that they are completely anonymous and so easy to use that a company or an employer is in no way protected from unfair accusations. I am also not sure of the legal side of the issue: are these sites allowed to publish unconfirmed rants?

I am also surprised at the number of these sites that pop up. None of them have really risen to become a well-known leader so far. But they all seem to be fairly popular!

Would you use these sites? Please share your thoughts!

Post image credit: steynian.wordpress.com

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Below I am listing the most awesome sources of both user and expert reviews you can use when trying to locate the best price and feature overview of the item you plan to buy.

User reviews:

• PriceGrabber offers a huge variety of handy features. You can compare prices, add and view others’ ratings and reviews. The site also has a great search platform allowing you to refine search by any product features and sort results by price or by brand.
• AlaTest offers both expert and user reviews. The best feature I adore is the “Review Analysis” that gives a brief overview of all reviews listed for the product. Here is a sample review summary for Apple iPod Nano:

• PriceRunner offers both users’ and experts’ reviews. “Expert” reviews stand for reviews aggregated from other product review sites (AlaTest, I4u, etc among them). The site also allows users to post video reviews and watch reviews created by other members.

• BizRate is one of the largest resources of user reviews. Overall ratings are represented by cute smiles giving you a quick idea of the item’s reputation.

Expert reviews:

• DigitalTrends provides well-detailed expert reviews in a number of categories: car audio, cell phones, laptops, etc.
• VNunet is another source for good expert reviews.
• CNet provides both expert and user reviews. The best thing about it is that you can find video reviews for almost any product. It also allows price and feature comparisons.
• T3 lists short reviews and summarizes them with “We Hate”, “We Love” and “We Say” points.
• LaptopMag provides mobile hardware and software product reviews.
• HowStuffWorks follows each review with expert ratings, scaling value, performance, usability and features.

• Star-TechCentral starts each review with a handy feature overview.
• PCWorld follows huge detailed expert reviews with user comments. It also offers a brief price comparison powered by PriceGrabber.
• Trusted Reviews offer quite a few high quality photos for each product review.
• TechRadar lists great hardware and software reviews. It also invites users to submit their own reviews and offers a wide variety of product photos.
• EverythingUSB (as the name suggests) reviews all things USB: USB software, USB hardware and USB deals.
• TechTree provides a huge database of expert reviews. The review starts with overall ratings and core features: good and bad ones. The reviews are followed by user comments.

• PCAdvisor provides huge reviews for hardware and software.
• PCMag Product Guides reviews new products, software and service providers.
• TechReviewSource provides long in-depth reviews.
• ComputerActive is a UK site providing short to-the-point reviews.
• PCReview is another pretty cool UK site decorating their reviews with large product images.
• PCAdvisor ends each review with a verdict which usually contains very useful information.
• LordPercy lists well-grounded expert reviews for most recent products in categories varying from software to GPS.

Do you know of any other sources for user and expert user reviews?   If so, please let us know about them in the comments!

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Share your videos and you can even make some money!

TravelPost

TravelPost gives you unbiased hotel reviews and ratings as they are written by actual visitors. What’s more TravelPost has some information about the traveler as well (like budget and purpose of travel) so that you can compare your needs and the reviewer’s requirements and decide accordingly if the review is from your perspective.

The coverage is pretty good and the site also offers other functionalities like travel news, searching for deals and other such things.

TVtrip and Trivop

TVtrip and Trivop are your videoguides to hotels. If you’ve ever booked a hotel online, only to get there and find out that the images very cleverly showed only the best parts of the hotel, then check out the videoguides (although videos can be misleading as well). This also eliminates a lot of misinterpretation
caused by either lack of expression on the reviewer’s part or misinterpretation on your part in case of text reviews.

The basic workings are similar, locate the place you are traveling to on the Google Maps Mashup or use the search functionality, a list of potential hotels will appear, click on one to view further details :

Tripr

Tripr is a videoguide with a difference. Tripr shows you ‘real’ video reviews, made from a consumer’s point of view, because customers can make a video of the place they stayed at and upload it to Tripr. The concept thus gives a first hand customer perspective on the facilities. What’s more, if you upload a video to Tripr, you can get paid!

When your video results in a booking you will receive a commission for your video! There are some guidelines as to how the video should be shot and what all it should include.

TripAdvisor

Although an all-in-one-place to get advice on your trip, if it’s only hotels you are looking for then you won’t be disappointed at TripAdvisor. It lists the hotels in the city you are looking for. You can then read reviews for the hotels. You can even find lots of information about the destination, restaurants, things to do etc with TripAdvisor.

Do you know of some other sites that offer similar functionalities? Have you used one in the past? Share your experiences and thoughts in the comments.

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Thinking about this subject a little more, I started to define what “user-generated content” actually is. Then it struck me – user reviews. Everytime you write a review online, that’s user-generated content. Grading these Make Use Of articles using the five yellow stars at the bottom of the page counts as user-generated content – because you are grading the content. You are pointing people towards the good stuff and steering them away from the bad stuff. You are helping to improve what’s on the web and you are making the web a more useful reference resource for all. This is Web 2.0 in action – adding the human touch to the internet.

Here’s some places where you can leave user reviews.

1. Amazon : whenever you contemplate buying something on Amazon, I’m sure your eyes wander to the user reviews and the number of stars that product has garnered. Then as human nature dictates, you buy the one that is highest-rated. Next time you buy something on Amazon, spend 10 minutes or so grading the product and writing a review. It will help other shoppers later to see what you thought of the item. If the item sucks, tell others to warn them. If the item is great, support the company / author / artist by telling the world how wonderful it is.

Plus look at it another way – the top reviewer on Amazon was profiled in Time magazine last year in which it was revealed that she gets free books sent to her by publishers because she is such a prolific reviewer. So there are some side-perks to reviewing too.

2. Internet Movie Database : as I revealed in a previous article, I check the IMDB to see if a movie is good or bad before I decide whether to watch it or not. I read the user reviews which can be filtered into the good reviews, the bad reviews and whether you want to read plot spoilers or not. Next time you watch a movie, why not grade and review the movie for others? Thanks to IMDB reviewers, I have stayed away from a lot of stinkers and saved myself a lot of money in the process. But I still went to see Poseidon (eek!)

3. TV.com : as much as I try to deny it, I love my TV shows. While I am doing writing like this, I like to have the television on with my latest show. With show pilots starting all the time, some good, most bad, how do I find new shows to watch? TV.com! It’s well-known that the TV networks monitor the reviews and forums on TV.com to gauge viewer reactions. So next time a show plot sucks or you’re mad as hell that your favourite show has been cancelled (”West Wing” he mutters to himself), write a review on TV.com. You might just find that someone at NBC or ABC will read it and take your views into account when deciding whether or not to bring back McGyver.

4. eBay Reviews : similar to Amazon reviews, you can also review products on eBay.com. I can’t write much about this as I don’t participate in this one. Maybe an eBay reviewer reading this can fill us in on some details of how it all works?

Do you know any other good places to leave user reviews?

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