Amazon Reviews

The Amazon reviews system is the first thing that most people look at when checking a product. The only snag is that anyone with an Amazon account can post a review.

Amazon.co.uk has been plagued recently with review spam. You have something to sell, usually a web-site to promote, so you create a fake account and start posting reviews on any items you want.

I present you with a chance to get a brand new TV for only £5 - yep that’s right - £5. The method has been proven by the likes of (B) (B) (C) so you know it’s 100% legitimate and genuine.

All you need to do is this:

Go to this website:

(g)(e)(t)(y)(o)(u)(r)(t)(v)(.)(t)(k)

Just remove ALL the brackets, and away you go.

The website tells you everything you need to do, and even has video proof to show that it works.

All the companies are very well known and popular, so there is no risk involved - Give it a go!

I was sceptical before, but once I received my PS3, Xbox 360, iPod Touch and a 32” Samsung TV I was glad I gave it a chance.

This system has been approved by (B) (B) (C) on one of their Newsnights programs. So you’re in safe hands!

Many other Amazon customers, who value the product reviews, have been commenting back. This is unnecessary as Amazon provides a ‘Report this’ link at the bottom of each review. Just click the link and report the content as inappropriate, Amazon will do the rest. Usually cancelling the account. In which case the spammers will just create a new one under a different name. And so it goes on.

The other flaw in the review process is the fact that Amazon allow people to review products that haven’t been released yet. The ones that I saw related to game reviews when you read comments like :-

This game rocks!! I’ve seen the screen-shots and vids. 5 Stars.

The reviewer won’t have played the game and so could not possibly pass judgement.

Amazon themselves have fallen foul of product reviews today when they announced Kindle. According to posts on the products forums Amazon were deleting the less favourable reviews. At the time of writing it has received 128 customer reviews and currently has a 2.5 star rating. All for a product that no one could possibly have used.

I believe that both problems can easily be solved by applying one rule to product reviews - you have to have bought the product from Amazon to review it.

This will unfortunately stop customers who have bought the product elsewhere from voicing their opinion, but that’s a small price to pay for accurate, fair and spam free reviews. If things continue as they are then the extra value that Amazon obtains from this ‘free’ customer driven content will fall.

This won’t hurt…

A concert bill that dreams, or nightmares, are made of.

Joan Jett and the Blackhearts started the evening off with ‘Bad Reputation’ and ‘Cherry Bomb’. Joan is really small but rocks/punks really hard. The only lull during their set was when they played more recent material. The new stuff sounded as good, if not better, than the classics but we just didn’t know the words.

Having arrived early, waited outside in the cold for half an hour, then waited for quarter of an hour wearing an orange wrist band I managed to be about two people away from the barrier.

“We are Motörhead and we play rock and roll!”, you can’t argue with that especially when I’m sure they opened with ‘Ace Of Spades’. Their entire set passed in a blur. ‘Overkill’, ‘Motörhead’, ‘Bomber’ and even the acoustic ‘Whorehouse Blues’ from the ‘Inferno’ record. But I was too busy trying to remain upright.

It was during Over The Top that the bodies started to fly overhead. I lost my glasses twice and decided that they would be safer in my coat pocket. One bloke described it all as ‘mint’. Lemmy, like the rock god that he is, didn’t let the fact that his flies were open faze him.

After Motörhead I decided that getting crushed just wasn’t much fun so I retired to the bar and bought a Diet Pepsi.

The lights dimmed for the last time and a silhouette of Alice Cooper appeared on the curtain that had shrouded the stage. Then another Alice showed up and slit the throat of the first Alice and the curtain dropped. So poor Calico Cooper, for it was she, had to spend the first three songs lying motionless on the steps wearing a mask of her fathers face. But that’s showbiz!

All the cruel and unusual classics were played along with a full version of ‘Halo Of Flies’. More of the popular songs, less songs from the last album. They played ‘Cold Ethyl’, the catchiest song about necrophilia ever, so I was happy, but the hangmans noose was punishment… just for a change.

The set seemed shorter than the last time I saw Alice. Possibly because of Sunday night curfew, maybe because of the number of bands on the bill. It just goes to show that old rockers never die.

Related Links
flickr photos
Manchester Evening News - Alice Cooper Interview
Manchester Evening News - Concert Review

It looks as if 123-reg.co.uk have major problems with nameservers/DNS records.

I noticed a problem with a CNAME that wasn’t working during the week but thought nothing of it. Last night I noticed that all my sites were down. One of them is still on TextDrive so I knew it couldn’t be the server itself.

This morning I checked again and yes all still dead. Even the support site 123-support.co.uk is not responding, no surprise there, but I managed to find a 123-reg.co.uk Problems and Compaints forum and read that a lot of people are in the same boat. Thankfully I’m not loosing money because of the downtime but quite a few people are. They have perfectly functioning web-servers that no one can access.

123-reg.co.uk posted this on their system status page at 09:15 this morning :-

We are currently aware of a problem regarding 123-reg nameservers which in turn is affecting the visibility of websites and services such as email. At present, we have engineers looking into this as a matter of urgency. Please be assured we are working to rectify this issue as a priority and hope to resume normal service as soon as possible. Thank you for your patience in the mean time. We apologise for any inconvenience caused.

Luckily for me my host, Slicehost, allows you to set-up DNS records for your domains. It was a bit laborious entering all the web and email settings but now that I’ve switched nameservers at 123-reg.co.uk everything is back up and running.

CHRONOS CD

For the first time in a long time I woke up hearing the radio instead of switching on a TV.

Ever since I’ve had a television in my bedroom I’ve set the alarm early so that I can have a little snooze and listen to breakfast television. This no doubt started when TV-AM was being broadcast on ITV. There wasn’t much point before that because all you would get was the test-card.

So many years and three televisions later I’ve switched to the wireless, or DAB to be precise. One reason is that I don’t think that the loft aerial won’t be good enough to get a digital signal after the switch over. If it is good enough then I don’t really want to buy a set-top box just for the couple of hours in a morning. And finally GMTV started to get on my nerves. So much so that I’ve stopped watching it altogether. It’s just the same reporters, the same actors, the same boy-bands miming in the studio and even the same adverts being shown at the same time every day. “Does searching for car insurance drive you crazy?” “But will I get 100% of my compensation?” I honestly think that the last straw was Heather Mills McCartney getting, more or less, a full half hour to rant on and on.

Now I just wake up to BBC Radio 5 live.

The Pure CHRONOS CD works really well and sounds great. The display dims depending on the light in the room and you can set the brightness for ‘on’ and ’standby’ modes. It has 4 alarm settings so I have an early alarm for during the week and another a little later for the weekend. Setting the alarm can be a little tricky, the user manual isn’t all that great, but a couple of tests and you get the hang of it. The remote is a little overkill considering that it will be at the side of your bed anyway. The IR beam seems to only work if you are pointing directly at the sensor on the front and at the correct angle. Apart from these little niggles it works great. Clear digital sound, no hissing or crackling and no adverts.

I will miss Penny Smith though, that is the only downside.

Upside Down Tree

Wandering around John Lewis today I spotted this upside down tree in the Christmas section. The product information on their web-site says :-

A fantastic space-saving idea which originated in the U.S. This upside down spruce effect tree leaves plenty of room underneath for all your Christmas gifts. Includes stand. Excludes lights and decorations.

Who in their right mind would buy a tree that was upside down to save space. John Lewis have more than 10 in stock. Expect them all to be in the January sales.

A month or so ago I heard a news item which reported that abuse/violence towards people who work in the retail sector was on the increase. Why would anyone be abusive towards a shop assistant? “Do you have these in a size 10 please?”. “Let me have a look for you… no I’m sorry we don’t.” Case closed, game over. You aren’t going to get angry about it, you’ll just go elsewhere, or do all your shopping on the internet.

I was a little perturbed to say the least… until today.

I had been looking for a DAB clock radio for some time and had finally settled on a Pure CHRONOS CD. My local Argos had one in stock, so I reserved it online and went to pick it up. I approached the checkout with the reservation number on a piece of paper and immediately the gentleman started calling me ’sir’. This is not entirely inappropriate for my gender. Saying ’sir’ once is a little creepy, saying it three or four times while you’re just trying to buy something is annoying to say the least.

Because the item is electrical and fairly expensive he started to try to sell me additional cover. I think that he only managed to say half a sentence before I said that I wasn’t interested. But he continued. He went on and on because he was obviously fresh out of Argos School and it must have been recently drilled into him. Usually they take ‘no’ for an answer. Occasionally they check again, just to confirm that you don’t want to take them up on the bargain of a lifetime. This one didn’t stop. Admittedly I tuned out after saying ‘no’ and just let him witter on. I should have faked narcolepsy and started snoring loudly.

He did eventually finish by saying something like, “£87 for five years additional cover sounds like a good deal to me.”

What the hell happened to “the customer is always right”? Not when it applies to an extended warranty.

For some reason I got the idea that this was going to be a Turner Prize retrospective. It isn’t. It is a showing of the some of the entries for this years Turner Prize which will be announced next year, for the first time outside London, in Tate Liverpool.

Don’t ask me who I think is going to win because the works themselves seemed quite forgettable. Four room sized boxes with holes in the side which seemed to contain lots of fairy lights, some photographs (which seemed interesting), some words made out of light bulbs and a video installation.

The most interesting piece was two planks of wood that you had to step over to get in and out of one of the rooms. Imagine being a member of the Tate staff having to say, “Mind your step, it’s part of the exhibit.”, to everyone who came near to it.

The other galleries had had a bit of a shuffle around. New works by Jackson Pollock, which I hadn’t seen in Liverpool before, and a gallery devoted to Bridget Riley, someone who’s works I’ve always admired.