The ProductCritic Blog

Don't Have Time? Take 60 Seconds To Improve Your Photos

2007-10-15T23:04:00.000-07:00

idigitalphoto.com has a great blog post entitled "Improve Your Photos 60 Seconds at a Time". It's perfect for people like me who really don't have the time to read through a long and thorough tutorial on various photography techniques and skills.

The post is broken up into a number of different sections:

Light
Landscaping
People
Color
Composition
Being Ready

Each section has between 3-7 short "tutorials" in point form (e.g. "Framing the lines") that should take you only 60 seconds to read and absorb. Great job!

Maybe only taking 60 seconds at a time is the reason why I still need to take hundreds of photos to try and get a couple really good ones.

A Cool Way To Find And Compare Cell Phones And Plans

2007-09-26T23:52:00.000-07:00

I stumbled on this site while researching phones - www.myrateplan.com.

The site has a cool gadget to find and compare phones and plans according to the criteria that you care about (e.g. must have Bluetooth, play mp3's, have a camera, be lightweight, look stylish, etc).

From the criteria I punched in (slim, popular, bluetooth, camera, speakerphone), I was really surprised at the phones I could get for free (with a plan) or even get money back! I could get the Motorola KRZR K1 at AT&T and get $70 back!

We're back! Apologies For The Missing Posts

2007-09-18T22:57:00.000-07:00

Sorry about the long time between the posts. I recently had a new baby and that takes all the time and energy that I have. I'm back now and will be posting regularly again as well as adding new products to ProductCritic.

If you are currently doing research for a digital camera, camcorder, or cell phone, let me know and if the product isn't already on ProductCritic, we'll get it up there.

What Tech Support Problems Do People Have?

2007-08-16T06:00:00.000-07:00

As part of our continuing effort to make ProductCritic the most useful site on the Internet for helping you decide if you should buy a certain digital camera, camcorder, or cell phone, we've worked with FixYa to be one of the first sites to support their widget.

If you don't know what FixYa is, they had recently been written up on Lifehacker. In short, FixYa is a database of user-submitted instructions for fixing tech support issues for various products. They have a pretty good database so far and are continually adding more support answers.

We've started adding the widget to every new product that we enter into ProductCritic and will, over the next little while, add the widget to all the existing products that are on ProductCritic. We've already added them to the Top 10 Rated Digital Cameras. I've included a pic of what the widget looks like and you can see it on ProductCritic's page of Apple iPhone reviews.

I like the widget as it adds another level of information for people who are trying to decide whether to purchase a particular product. It provides a quick glimpse at what problems people may be having with a product despite the reviews or scores that professional reviewers are giving.

We will continue to make ProductCritic as helpful as possible a tool so that when you do finally make a purchase of a camera, camcorder, or cell phone, you have the greatest chance of being happy with your purchase.

If you'd like to see a feature on ProductCritic that would help you in making the right purchase decision for you, let us know!

Take Better Flash Photos

2007-08-10T14:18:00.000-07:00

Cheapshooter provides three easy (and cheap!) methods to modify the built-in flash on your DSLR so that the flash photos you take don't look so...flash photo-ish.

I like their first method of using a white film canister to put over the flash and diffuse the light. Looks like I'll have to go hunting for a film canister though...I haven't had a camera that uses actual film in years.

Now You Can Add RSS Feeds To A Rails Site

2007-08-09T06:05:00.000-07:00

We've recently added some RSS feeds to make it easier to keep track of changes made to the ProductCritic site. This is an easy feature to add extra value to your site and with Rails it's quite easy.

There a number of ways to do this but I decided to use a straight forward method of using an XML view.

First step is to create a new method in your controller. For the home page feed which provides updates on the latest product reviews on the site, I added an 'rss' method to the PageController class that looked something like this:

def rss
@products = Product.find(:all, :order => 'created_at desc', :limit => 20)
render :layout => false
end

Now all that is needed is to create a 'app/views/page/rss.rxml' file to create the RSS feed. In this example I used this:

xml.instruct! :xml, :version => '1.0', :encoding => 'utf-8'
xml.rss('version' => '2.0') do
xml.channel do
xml.title "Latest Products from ProductCritic"
xml.link(request.protocol + request.host_with_port + home_path)
xml.description("Recently added products to ProductCritic.")
xml.language "en"
xml.ttl "40"
xml.pubDate(Time.now.rfc822)
@products.each do |p|
xml.item do
url = request.protocol +  request.host_with_port +
url_for(:controller => 'product', :action => 'show', :id => p)
xml.title("#{h(p.name)} (#{p.score})")
xml.description(h(truncate(p.teaser, 500)))
xml.link(url)
xml.guid(url)
end
end
end
end

Ruby and Rails both have some nice helper methods to make creating the feed. Ruby's Time class has a rfc822 method which correctly generates a date-time in the required format and Rails has a truncate method to keep the body of the post a reasonable length.

With this method, we've added feeds for:

The main site - provides updates on the latest products added to ProductCritic
Digital Camera Reviews - provides updates on the latest cameras added to the site
Camcorder Reviews - provides updates on the latest camcorders added to the site
Cell Phone Reviews - provides updates on the latest cell phones added to the site

Finally, we added a feed for every product that is on ProductCritic. This means that if you are interested in one specific product (e.g. the iPhone), you can get a RSS feed for it and get updates whenever we add a new review specifically for that product you're interested in.

If you have requests for any other feeds from the site send us some feedback and we'll see what we can do.

Not Sick Of iPhone Yet? A Ton Of iPhone Links

2007-08-07T01:03:00.000-07:00

Mashable has once again produced one of their huge resource links, this time for the iPhone.

This one has 75+ resources for the iPhone.

I'm again bored of the iPhone stuff but am starting to wonder if I'm getting tired of these long lists of resource links too. Do they just get written to be dugg? I wonder if it's working.

Anyways, we've made some additions to ProductCritic to make it easier for people to view all their product reviews. Look for posts about the recent changes we just made over the weekend.

This Camera Was Really Dirty

2007-07-31T00:32:00.000-07:00

A friend of mine sent me this picture (not of him) of someone cleaning their dirty camera. Looks like I've been using the wrong method to clean my camera.

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Will It Blend? Camcorder Episode

2007-07-26T10:54:00.000-07:00

I think the Will It Blend? videos from Blendtec are a must-see. One of the best uses of YouTube I can think of...dangerous stuff with appliances that you wouldn't want to do at home.

Since we have camcorder reviews on ProductCritic, I thought I'd post a link up to the Will It Blend? video where they blend a camcorder. The results are amazing (as are all the results from anything they blend).

What is even funnier is that they actually brought the blended results back to the store to try and get the warranty back on it. Unfortunately, they had to remove that video from the actual Blendtec site but it can still be found on YouTube.

Does anyone know what model of Sony camcorder is he blending?

Almost 100 Online Photography Resources

2007-07-22T22:51:00.000-07:00

I don't know why I didn't post this when I read it but last month Mashable had a great post for photography buffs like us that listed 90+ Online Photography Tools & Resources.

Read their post for the full list, but here are my favorites in each category:

Online Photo Editors:
Fauxto - The closest you can get to Photoshop online because it provides support for layers.
Phixr - Not just editing but supports uploads to Flickr, Fotopic, Livejournal, Photobucket, and others.

Photo Sharing:
Flickr - Everyone is using it anyways...
SlideShare - I love how easy they make it to embed a slideshow on your own page.

Free Photo Hosting:
Photobucket - MySpace's favorite.
AllYouCanUpload - Like the name says, no limit to image size you can upload.

Photography Blogs:
DPreview - One of the sites that ProductCritic summarizes reviews from. Still good after being bought by Amazon earlier this year. Not exactly just a blog.

Mashups:
Colr Pickr - Allows you to search Flickr photos based on their color. This one is fantastic!

Mobile:
Shozu - Upload to Flickr from your phone.

Photo Mixing and Slideshows:
Mixercast - All the ones listed in the category are good but this one stood out for me.

Photo Printing/Book Creation:
I didn't like the ones Mashable listed. I prefer Blurb and MyPublisher.

Photo Search:
Besides Google's Image Search, these ones stood out for finding stock or public domain photos - Yotophoto & EveryStockPhoto.

Stock Photos:
Alamy - Over 9 million photos to search through.
Stock.xchng - Only 300K photos but they're free.

Guy Gets Kicked Off From Amazon. Loses $400.

2007-07-19T23:54:00.000-07:00

Just read this really simple post about a guy who just got booted from Amazon's Affiliate program and lost out on the $400 in commissions that he had already accumulated.

Although ProductCritic participates in Amazon's Affiliate program, it is not a material part of the sites revenue. How unimportant is it? How about less than $20 in affiliate commissions so far this whole year!

I'm not sure why the revenue (and clicks) from Amazon is so low. To be fair, we have mainly put in Amazon links because they have a lot of good general information about each camera, camcorder, and cell phone and is a good place for our visitors to view the features of a product (but not necessarily the reviews).

Because we think the Amazon links are helpful for our visitors, we're going to keep the links available but I'm seriously thinking about using a different affiliate partner.

Anyone have any good ideas?

3 Kinds Of Successful Adsense Sites? At Least ProductCritic Is One

2007-07-16T21:38:00.000-07:00

Eric Giguere (the author of a couple Adsense books that I haven't read yet), has a post up on his Make Easy Money With Google And Adsense blog entitled "The 3 Kinds Of Successful Adsense Sites".

In summary, the three types he lists are:

The Experience Site - a site that describes your personal experience with something.
The Clarification Site - a site to better explain a topic.
The Compilation Site - a site that organizes information and links to relevant websites.

ProductCritic is definitely the third type of site that Eric lists. To quote his post,

"The best compilation sites have lots of links to other sites. They're not afraid of external linking, and they're all the more useful because of it. It may seem counterproductive because each link out is one more chance of losing the visitor (and hence any potential ad clicks) but it’s the links that make the site valuable to the visitor in the first place and that draw in the traffic."

I can't believe how well Eric describes our philosophy for ProductCritic (even though he's probably never visited the site). Although we are making some money from Adsense and from Chitika ads, we're actually more focused on making ProductCritic the best consumer electronics review summary site that we can. After all, we created it because we wanted a site like that for ourselves! We're not worried about losing visitors to other links...that's why they're supposed to visit the site in the first place.

Remember, you can make the site more useful for everyone by letting us know of reviews that we've missed or products that we don't have review summaries for yet.

ProductCritic Has Most Extensive List Of iPhone Reviews

2007-07-11T14:17:00.000-07:00

ProductCritic's Cell Phone Reviews now lists 18 reviews for the Apple iPhone. I think we have the most extensive list of reviews you will find anywhere.

Currently, the iPhone has a ProductCritic score of 87 which puts it tied for best rated phone on the site along with the Sony Ericsson K800i and the Sony Ericsson W810i.

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Super Cool Do-It-Yourself Tripod That's Better Than Mine

2007-07-08T21:36:00.000-07:00

I have one of those cheap bendable tripods that you can get for your point-and-shoot camera. I've seen the Gorillapod which looks to be a pretty good improvement on my cheaper version.

I saw this video on creating a cool do-it-yourself tripod though that doesn't look as pretty but would do a much better job than my cheap tripod and would also work for my camcorder. Even better than that is that it costs about $1 in materials and about 10 minutes of your time to make (if you're not very handy with tools).

ProductCritic's Apple iPhone Review Roundup

2007-07-03T00:27:00.000-07:00

We've just posted all the current Apple iPhone reviews up on our main consumer electronics review site. At this time, not surprisingly (given the hype surrounding the iPhone), it is the highest rated phone on ProductCritic (just barely edging out the Sony Ericsson K800i).

Most of the reviews are from the main stream press (like USA Today, Wall Street Journal, and CNET). Over the next few weeks, I'd expect the real in-depth reviews from the more tech-centric sites.

Don't Get Scammed By Online Camera Stores

2007-06-28T00:10:00.000-07:00

We've posted about being scammed by online camera stores in the past but yesterday we received an e-mail from a visitor of our digital camera reviews warning us about an experience with one of the worst online camera "stores", bestpricecameras.com.

I just wanted to warn your readers of a "supplier" of digital cameras that I regard to to be highly suspect: bestpricecameras.com
I found that they had the best price advertised anywhere for a new Canon Rebel xti 400d and for the lens, a 17 to 40mm L. All for around $960+/-. Sounds too good to be true? That's because it is. Please post this on your website so that others do not suffer the strange tactics of this company. I cannot imagine what they hope to obtain from their methods.

I ordered the camera and lens (which I suspect will be of outstanding quality). After waiting a couple of weeks, I called them and they said it was on back order and that I should receive it within a week. After 2 more weeks, I called them again and got some surly jerk who mumbled something about "Chinese" or something and hung up on me. I called back and finally got a salesperson who was honest enough to tell me that they did not even have a distributor for the camera. Why were they selling something they could not even supply? Don't know.

Maybe they hoped people would just let their order ride and forget about it? I didn't. At least they had not run my card so I cancelled the order, bit the bullet and paid the extra 30% and ordered it through Amazon.com, and got it a week later. Forget thinking that high-class equipment will come to you for cheap prices; it ain't gonna happen, and something bad may result. Go with a responsible business that is known and trusted. For me, that's Amazon. Oh yeah, Bestpricecameras.com can kiss my grits.

Please, please, please keep in mind the old adage, "if it's looks too good to be true, it probably is". These scammers prey on people who really, really want the camera but don't want to pay the price. If everyone else is selling the camera at about the same price but you suddenly find it for $200 cheaper, don't let your desire for a good deal overcome your common sense. Some online store in Brooklyn will NOT have it $200 cheaper than Amazon.

At ProductCritic's main site, we are constantly looking at the individual ads being shown in our Google Ads box. We block out any ads from stores that have a history of scamming people so that they never show up on ProductCritic. If you run a site, you should do the same and do your part in helping to curb the scamming of innocent people, and more importantly, the visitors to your site.

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A History Of Cell Phones - In Pictures

2007-06-25T00:01:00.000-07:00

MSN has a nice slideshow of 15 pictures showing a history of the cell phone from the initial Motorola's (still an amazing achievement) all the way to the soon-to-be released iPhone.

Makes me feel both a sense of nostalgia and awe at the amazing achievements of all the engineers that have created something many of us now just for granted and couldn't live without.

Learn To Use Scene Mode On Your Digital Camera

2007-06-21T00:04:00.000-07:00

Most Point & Shoot cameras these days have a large number of "scene modes" that set up your camera automatically to take a variety of pictures in a variety of locations (e.g. "fireworks", "beach").

While you might use "landscape" or "portrait" or "night shot" once in awhile, it would be helpful to learn what the other modes do. TeachMeToShoot.com has a summary of some of the scene modes:

Night Portrait/Night Landscape
Sports Mode
Sunrise/Sunset
Copy Mode
Beach/Snow
Panorama
Party/Indoors
Backlight

I've seen some cameras with as much as 50 pre-programmed scene modes. My bet is that most users never use more than a handful.

What's Happening To The Popular Camera On Flickr?

2007-06-18T01:04:00.000-07:00

Since one of our main focuses is Digital Camera Reviews, we regularly look at the popular cameras owned by users of Flickr and we've blogged about these popular cameras (and their ProductCritic Scores) in the past.

I was surprised when I recently looked at the charts on Flickr and noticed a distinct drop in the use of the most popular cameras. Is there a simple explanation for this? Are people just replacing their cameras with newer models and those models have not shown up on the popular charts yet? Are they switching to other brands that also don't have enough market share yet to show up on the top lists? This is happening for both DSLR's and point and shoots though.

Anyone think they have an explanation?

Armor For Your Camera. That's Hardcore.

2007-06-13T00:01:00.000-07:00

For the photographers who either travel in war zones or are really worried about keeping their gear in pristine condition (so you can sell it when you upgrade to the next hot DSLR?), get this camera armor from cameraarmor.com.

I think this is so cool. The "body armor" is customized for a variety of cameras and includes a clear shield for the LCD and a hood that stretches over the lens for protection.

The following cameras are supported:

Canon 30D
Canon Rebel XTi/400D
Canon 5D
Nikon D70/D70S
Nikon D80
Nikon D200
Nikon D40
Sony Alpha A100

If you get one of these, send me a picture of how it looks being carried around and used.

How Long Will Your Shutter Last?

2007-06-08T00:02:00.000-07:00

I worry a lot more about dropping my camera (or losing it) before worrying that the shutter on my Canon 20D is going to malfunction and die on me.

Oleg Kikan has a cool user-contributed database of average shutter lifespans for tons of different cameras. Looks like my Canon 20D should average at least 45,000 shots before the shutter mechanism dies. If I make it that far, I'll probably be buying a new camera. Then again, with another kid coming, I just might hit that 45,000 mark sooner than expected.

Definitely take some time to go to Oleg's database and input how many shots you've taken on your camera so far.

Have You Lost Your Cell Phone In The Toilet?

2007-06-05T08:15:00.000-07:00

I found a cell phone in the bathroom at a FAO Schwartz the other day so I looked up how many people have lost their phones in this way.

I'm not sure how much I believe this "research" done by SimplySwitch.com but the Telegraph in the UK reports that in the study, 885,000 people flush their cell phones down the toilet every year. Does that sound right to you? I find it hard to believe that nearly a million people don't notice their cell phone fell in the toilet before they flush it. Still, with the increasing use of automatic flushers when you stand up, maybe people just don't get a chance to realize that their phone fell before the flush happens.

In addition to the loss down the toilet, 810,00 lost their phone in a pub, 315,00 lost theirs in the back of a taxi, and 225,000 lost theirs on the bus.

Finally, 58,000 phones were chewed up by pets and 116,000 went through the laundry. I definitely can believe both of these numbers!

As phones get smaller and lighter, they become easier to lose. Have you lost yours at some point? Where do you think you lost it?

What Type Of Camcorder? MiniDV, Hard Drive, or DVD?

2007-05-29T06:00:00.000-07:00

One question I get asked quite a bit (and one I see being asked on many forums) is what kind of camcorder to purchase? One that uses older MiniDV tapes, or the newer Hard Drive and DVD-based camcorders?

MiniDV:
These are the small tapes that are currently the oldest form of storage in new camcorders. They are quite cheap and each tape will hold about 60 minutes of footage at the highest resolution settings. The data is still stored in digital format on a MiniDV (so transferring to another tape won't degrade the original footage). My current camcorder uses this type of storage and I like it because I can keep a lot of blank tapes with me, and they are generally easier to find and purchase when you're on vacation. They store well and have a shelf life of about 10-15 years. The are two huge negatives about MiniDV's. The first is the same problem you find with any tape-based format...you can't easily jump to any footage you have recorded. The second problem is that, because the footage isn't stored as a "file", to transfer it to a computer, you have to play back the whole video in order to copy it to a computer.

Hard Drive:
The latest camcorders coming on the market contain an actual hard drive. The footage you shoot is stored as a file making it very easy to transfer to a computer. Also, this type of storage allows you to easily jump to anything you've shot. The problem with Hard Drive based camcorders is that you can't easily just take out the media and put it on your shelf for storage; you first have to transfer it onto a computer and burn it to a DVD (at which point you can erase the hard drive and begin shooting again). Finally, a problem with Hard Drives is that you can't easily switch between shooting different subjects (e.g. business and pleasure) as both subjects would be stored on the same hard drive (vs. switching in an out a tape).

DVD:
These camcorders record directly onto DVD's (of various sizes). They typically hold a lot less minutes of footage than either MiniDV's or Hard Drive-base camcorders. They share some of the positives of MiniDV's (easy storage) as well as Hard Drives (can jump to any point in the footage, video stored as files). While it sounds like DVD's save you a lot of time (in that you can give the DVD directly to someone else), practically, this isn't true as you usually won't just give someone all your raw footage (you wouldn't do this with any of the other types of media either). Finally, these types of camcorders, in order to store more footage onto the DVD, compress the video you shoot. From the reviews, typically, this means that the results from these camcorders are not as high quality as the other types of camcorders.

Conclusion:
Here is what types of camcorders I recommend people get in order of priority:
1) MiniDV
2) Hard Drive
3) DVD

Still, people should try out all three types and make their own choice as you will have different criteria than I do.

Don't Get Scammed From Online Camera Stores

2007-05-25T07:23:00.000-07:00

The Wise Bread blog has a post entry titled "DO NOT buy a digital camera online until you read this". The post is a detailed account of exactly what happened when he tried to purchase a digital camera from one of the most notorious online camera stores, Bestpricecameras.com.

The usual way these Brooklyn-based online camera stores scam you is the simple Bait-and-Switch tactic. They lure you to make a purchase by showing cameras that are well below the prices you see elsewhere (as much as half as much). That's the bait. Then, once you place an order, you'll get a call or an e-mail saying that your order is backordered or you find out it's for the camera body only (no battery, manual, box, or anything else) and you'll get pressured to purchase a bunch of different stuff (or a different model of camera).

In a previous post, I talk about how I look for these scam stores advertising on ProductCritic via Google Adwords. The only way to ensure that the visitors on your site don't go to one of these scam stores is to block those ads from your site.

Sponsored Text Ad

Google's Doing Something About MFA Sites. Finally!

2007-05-23T00:36:00.000-07:00

As I've written about before, I hate MFA sites! They are such huge leeches on the Internet but I certainly can't blame them for taking advantage of a legal, money-making opportunity.

Given my hatred for MFA sites, I was ecstatic to hear on Monday that Google has sent email out to MFA publishers that their accounts will be disabled starting June 1. This is great news. Although Jen from Jensense.com stated that both MFA publishers and arbitrage publishers are getting their accounts disabled, Shoemoney has a video blog post refuting the news that arbitrage publishers are getting disabled.

I don't mind arbitrage publishers (that's where you buy ads for a low price and get people to visit a site where you hope they click other ads that get you a higher payment than you paid to get the click) because it's a legitimate strategy in many traditional markets (not just online ads). Although part of MFA sites strategy is arbitrage, the fact that they have absolutely zero value (they don't even try to put up some useful content) makes me really hate them.

I can't believe it's actually taken this long for Google to do this (what happened to "Don't Be Evil"?) but at least it's finally happening. This won't completely get rid of MFA sites (since they'll just switch to Yahoo or Microsoft ads) it hopefully will put a big dent in them.....I'm getting tired of continually banning them from ProductCritic.