Wize Blog

Apple Black Friday Sales Event

Just received an email that Apple's having a big sale online.

Here's the skinny:

"Shopping event is available only at the Apple Online Store on November 23 from 12:01 a.m. to 11:59 p.m. PST and at Apple Retail Stores. Check your local Apple Retail Store for special hours. Sale prices are limited to stock on hand and while supplies last. Some products or promotions are not available outside the U.S. Product specifications are subject to change."

Here's the deals:

Engraving and gift wrapping free for any Ipod you buy.

Save up to $100 when you buy a new Mac with a printer.

Get free shipping on all gift guide items.

Here's the gift guide URL.

The sale site not only includes Apple products, it also includes products from other companies.

Take the 10.1 MP, dSLR camera, the Canon Digital Rebel XTi EOS Digital SLR Camera with EF-S 18-55mm Lens, for example.

Lens and body is going for $799.95 on the on the Apple sale site.

The camera body rates a whooping 95 at wize.com.

Thousand Dollar Sony PC Makes the Grade

Sony's VAIO CR120 reviewed today at CNET.

First, CNET was surprised to find such a high brow company such as Sony would come out with a PC costs about $1000.

The machine looks good, too, making it look more expensive that what you'd think. The VAIO CR 120 uses 1.8GHz Intel Core 2 Duo T7100 processor, is a  1.8GHz machine, has 1GB of RAM, has a 120GB hard drive and ships with Vista Home Premium.

CNET's biggest complaint: bloatware... Just in case if you don't know what bloatware is, here's the definition from webopedia.com.

"(blōt´wãr) (n.) jargon Software that has lots of features and requires considerable disk space and RAM. As the cost of RAM and disk storage has decreased, there has been a growing trend among software developers to disregard the size of applications. Some people refer to this trend as creeping featuritis. If creeping featuritis is the symptom, bloatware is the disease."

The review rates the machine a 7/10.

Other Sony VAIO machines have similar ratings at wize.com.

There's the Sony VAIO SZ Series VGN-SZ370P/C Laptop Computer PC Notebook, which is rated at 78 and costs about $2500.

There's the Sony VAIO AR Series VGNAR230G Laptop Computer PC Notebook, which is rated at 88 and costs about $1600.

And there's the Sony VAIO N Series VGN-N130G/W Laptop Computer PC Notebook, which is rated 87 and costs about $900.

CNet Most Wanted Gadgets Reviewed at Wize.com

I stumbled upon  CNET's Top Five Most Wanted Gadgets at cnettv.com, an engaging video that gives you a quick summary of what people want this holiday season.

Fifth Most Wanted Gadget: I phone, rated 87 at wize.com.

Fourth Most Wanted Gadget: Sony PlayStation 3 (20 GB) Console, rated 88 at wize.com.

Third Most Wanted Gadget: AT&T Tilt, CNET calls it the "most desirable phone."

Second Most Wanted Gadget: Microsoft Zune, rated 91 at wize.com, and CNET with respect to the phone, CNET calls Microsoft a company "on the slow march to dominance once again" with respect to smart phones.

First Most Wanted Gadget: Nintendo Wii, rated 97 at wize.com.

Wii, the Waggle Box, Popular This Year

According to Forbes.com, 13 million people have bought the Nintendo Wii, affectionately called the Waggle Box.

That's the tip of the iceberg. More people want the Waggle Box and might not be able to buy it because the company can't make them fast enough.

And, get this, the Wii is an entertainment hit at retirement homes!

Parents seem to like the Wii because Wisters (the game players) have a selection of games that last only two minutes. On consoles like the XBox 360 games are longer and it's harder to get kids to stop playing.

Wize.com likes the Wii. It rates 98/100, a rating that is compiled by opinions that come from many sources.

Julie, a wizeguy at wize.com says this of her experience buying the Wii:  "Such a revolutionary gaming system! We stood in line outside in 19 degree weather while i t snowed for an HOUR to get our hands on one. I'd do it again in a heartbeat. Any generation can play...our 2 year old nephew loves it, and my boyfriend's middle-aged parents even bought their own!

TiVo's in the News

Is it 1984 in 2007? Could be.

Get TiVo and you'll be watched.

Closely.

TiVo will sell advertisers demographic data about viewers. The information will include age, income, marital status and ethnicity, the Wall Street Journal reported today.

Also today, TiVo announced discounts in their montly fees. The deal is for new costumers only, please. They'll pay $12.95 a month, discounted from $16.95 a month.

TiVo is a digital recording device that lets users record television shows whenever they are on, provides a search engine that finds shows according to user's interests. The box and service also lets you download movies in minutes.

TiVo was ranked 89 at Wize.com.

Wize Featured on Vator.tv

Wize.com's CEO Tom Patterson was recently interviewed on Vator.tv. 

In the interview Patterson describes how Wize is trying to provide those answers to consumers questions around their purchasing decisions, by crawling the Web and allowing the best products to rise to the top based on a collective showing of virtual hands.

Ezra Roizen goes on to write:

"Wize is the Web 2.0 equivalent of Consumer Reports. Rather than covering a couple thousand products each year (Tom estimates that Consumer Reports covers about 1,500 a year), Wize has the potential to cover an unlimited number. At Wize, we are already tracking around 50,000 individual products on the site, and continue to grow in size and scale. 

While Consumer Reports employs a staff of 450 to perform product tests and comparisons, Wize takes a technological approach. It combs the Internet for product references among bloggers, commentators, and reviewers in the open-media community. Wize’s algorithm then interprets these online reviews and creates a single score between 1 and 100 for every product. Wize also aggregates consumer comments from other leading sites like CNET, Amazon, and Buy.com—which adds a nice qualitative touch to the quantitative scoring."

For more information on Wize.com please feel free to contact us.

Early Reviews Roll in for the Canon EOS 40D

That's right, Wize.com now has some first rumblings of reviews flowing in from those eager to get the word out about the new Canon EOS 40D.  So far the consensus is sounding fairly positive for the $1300 upgrade (that price is for the camera body only, no lens).

Overall, people are saying for a SLR camera upgrade from the EOS 30D, the Canon EOS 40D is faster and smarter giving users 1/8000 shutter speed and a 6.5 frames per second in RAW mode.

See the reviews for yourself:

CNET Asia - 8/10

Cameralabs ("If the 40D's price and feature-set suits your requirements, you'll have few if any complaints.")

Bob Atkins ("It's a very good camera and I can recommend it.")

The World According to Roland ("A nice feature upgrade over the 20D and 30D and at an attractive price.")

DP Review (Preview)

Fox News Declares Ipod Touch "The Best Media Player Ever Made"

Well, it's official.  The iPod Touch reaches stores only 8 days after being announced and already a slew of positive reviews are pouring in.  Fox News took the biggest stand, stating that this new generation ipod Touch is "The Best Media Player Ever Made." 

Bloggers and reviews alike have yet to find anything wrong with the slick new iphone second cousin. 

Here are just some of the first reviews from experts that will likely go into an upcoming WizeRank:

Fox News

USA Today

TechSpot

PC Mag

Wize gets Wiser

This week’s Wize.com update includes: improved Wize Ranks, a popularity index, and updated product filtering capabilities. Read on to learn more!

Improved Wize Ranks.

Our ongoing work with researchers and statisticians has yielded some terrific results, and we’re pleased to release the next step in our evolution of the Wize Rank. As it says on the Wize Rank page:

Our data analysis shows that people are most inspired to review products when they either love or hate a product (on a scale of 1-5, the numbers 2 and 3 are rarely used). This means that, when a Wize Rank is high, it generally means that there are a lot more positive reviews than negative ones. When a Wize Rank is low, it generally suggests wide disagreement about that product, or as many negative reviews as positive ones.

Click here for a complete explanation of the Wize Rank and our new rating scale.

Popularity index.

In response to the needs of customers who want to know not only the best products, but also those with the most “buzz”, Wize has added a popularity index to each product, letting customers know which products are the most talked about on the web. Customers can now sort products in every category by price, Wize Rank, brand, and popularity.

Improved attribute filtering.

Another thing we heard loud and clear from customers is the need for improved attribute filtering. As a result, we’ve just launched the ability for customers to filter on multiple attributes at the same time, including prices and brands. This improvement provides yet another way for customers to use Wize to zero in on the products that are most relevant.

Thanks for reading. We’d love to hear what you think.

Time magazine's Person of the Year

... [W]ho actually sits down after a long day at work and says, I'm not going to watch Lost tonight. I'm going to turn on my computer and make a movie starring my pet iguana? I'm going to mash up 50 Cent's vocals with Queen's instrumentals? I'm going to blog about my state of mind or the state of the nation or the steak-frites at the new bistro down the street? Who has that time and that energy and that passion?

The answer is, you do. And for seizing the reins of the global media, for founding and framing the new digital democracy, for working for nothing and beating the pros at their own game, TIME's Person of the Year for 2006 is you.

Time Magazine, December 2006

It's always an event when Time announces its person of the year, and this year's announcement was met by more than a few slaps on the head. Of course! It's us! Brilliant! And so true. According to Jon Fine at BusinessWeek.com, "2006 was the year of YouTube". The year of Wikipedia and lonelygirl15. And 2007 promises to be more of the same, as internet businesses find new ways to wrangle true value from the enormous -- and rapidly growing -- amount of  user generated content on the web. In this context, it's worth reviewing what New Yorker columnist James Surowiecki wrote in his book "The Wisdom of Crowds":

... in most [experiments] the members of the group were not talking to each other or working on a problem together. They were making individual guesses, which were aggregated and then averaged ... the group's guess will not be better than that of every single person in the group each time. In many (perhaps most) cases, there will be a few people who do better than the group.

In other words, in order for the wisdom of crowds to work, each member of the crowd has to think (or vote, write, review, rate, etc.) independently. It's independent and unique content that makes the web useful and compelling, not the law of averages. In her blog "The 'Dumbness of Crowds'", Kathy Sierra points out that:

By "crowd", [Surowiecki] was referring to a collection of individuals. Individuals whose independent knowledge (and "independent" is a key word in what makes the crowd "smart") is aggregated in some way, not smushed into one amorphous Consensus Result.

Which brings us to the year 2007 and Wize.com. By collecting more independent product reviews from more sources, Wize is committed to leveraging the wisdom -- not the dumbness -- of crowds. We are convinced that using these independent reviews to generate ratings is a better way to do product research. And while we're actively looking for ways to improve our Wize Rank algorithm -- and our customer experience -- We've already used the wisdom of crowds to make better purchase decisions fast. We'd love to hear what you think.