It is important to consider whether sources are "good" or not when trying to find out more about any particular topic. This is sometimes not as difficult with printed media because it takes a significant amount of expense to mass produce and distribute something. It becomes much more difficult when using the internet, as having a webpage is significantly cheaper and can reach far more people than printed media can. As a result, pretty much anyone that wants can make information available on the web, regardless of whether it would be considered a "good" source. Without the proper precautions, a web-surfer could utilize this information with ill effects.
With that understanding of good and bad sources know, let's look at the world of consumer electronics and try to find some good and bad sources of information. Within the gadget world, the most common types of websites are those that either provide reviews of new electronics or speculate on upcoming products. There are also sites that provide forums where owners of a particular device can chat and help each other learn about new features or solve problems.
There are several well-known gadget blogs that provide news and speculation about upcoming and newly-released gadgets. Two of these I frequent regularly are Engadget and Gizmodo. I feel that they are sometimes good sources to get new information about this topic because they provide information on a wide range of topics. For every particular post, they credit their source, and when there is a mistake in something they have presented, they correct it immediately. That being said there are occasionally problems with these sites. Here is a blog post titled 5 ways gadget blogs fail readers. It points out the fact that sometimes there is false information on these sites. Also, and this is a another point I agree with, these blog sites often post information on company announcements or prototype products that never actually materialize. I know that I have read about several really cool things over the years that were coming "soon" and I have yet to actually see in the marketplace. So in a way, I guess these sites have to be characterized as potentially bad, but with some good information mixed in.
Another type of site that can help learn more about gadgets is one that reviews new products. One site that comes to mind for me is CNET. CNET prides itself on providing unbiased reviews for a wide variety of electronics. In my opinion, it is definitely a good site to get this sort of information. Two sites that may not always provide the best information, in my opinion, are PC World and Mac World. These sites have biases toward PCs and Macs respectively, and tend to only cover news and information about their own products, with news about competitors having a more negative slant.
If you look at this list of recent Mac World stories about the Android operating system, you will notice that many of the articles are negative towards android. Some example article titles are "Android apps on the Galaxy tab may be 'a little ugly'" and "Motorola's android 2.2 rollout: What a mess." A similar list of articles on Gizmodo has a very different tone. Sure there are negatively titled articles, but there are positive and neutral articles as well. There are also a LOT more of them on Gizmodo then Mac World, as many in the past week as Mac World has had in the past few months. There is probably a very similar effect with PC World stories about the iPhone vs. Gizmodo stories about the iPhone. Basically, using a single source to learn about new technology that is biased to one particular company or another would mean you would not learn about the entire landscape of products available, or that you would get nothing but the negative stories. Uninformed consumers that blindly buy products from one company or the other without even taking the time to learn a little bit about the competition may miss out on some things that would really work well for them. Informed consumers can help create competition among businesses, which spurs cheaper prices and more innovation, things that are really important to the tech industry.
In conclusion, the best types of sites for consumer electronics information are probably like CNET, Gizmodo, and Engadget, though with the blogs you do have to watch out for some occasional bad information or useless information about prototypes that will never make it to market. If you truly want to be an informed consumer, you need to consider where your information is coming from, and if the title of the site is something like PC World or Mac World, you may want to take the information with a grain of salt.
Although I myself am not very technically aware (or savvy,) I think that you're completely right on about the importance of having good technical information out there for people like you, who value the information, and for people like me, who need the information. When I see a cool new gadget out, like when the iPhone first came out, I just went immediately to get it without reading up on the possible gliches it was having or reviews by people who know a lot of smart phones, but it's especially hard for people like me to differentiate between good tech information and bad info. I appreciated the three sites you posted and have checked them out. They seem very interesting, and I like how they post on all sorts of toys even if they aren't going to make it into the market place; however, when you refer to them as "blogs," I started feelings a little wary about your sources of information. Engadget I found was the most like a blog in format and style, but who are the blog writers? What sort of credibility do they have to be telling us about these products? The other two, especially CNET, were formatted more as Web sites that I would be more likely to trust. It was good that you touched on this in your last paragraph because obviously it's hard to take any info you find on the web at face value. Did you discover any sites (besides a company site, like MAC etc) that gave information from an uncredited or biased source? I found a few blogs when I did some quick searching where I was unable to get information about the author. Because just anyone can start a blog it's important to do as you said in your post and be able to differentiate between a good and bad source.
ReplyDeleteI agree with you when you say that Gizmodo, Engadget, and CNET are all reliable resources for gadget news. I especially feel this way about Gizmodo because of they way they covered the I-Phone 4 controversy. Somehow they were able to get pictures of the new I-Phone 4 before anyone else was able to and several people were saying that this was a hoax or not a reliable photo. I mean it did allegedly get left behind in a bar if I recall the story correctly. However, ultimately the prototype of the I phone 4 that they got pictures of was in fact an Apple product and we saw this when Steve Jobs and Apple lashed out at Gizmodo for showing the phone. I believe that only a reliable website would have the capabilities to get photos of that nature. And finally only a reliable website would post photos of something so controversial unless they new it was 100% true, which it was.
ReplyDeleteGood points previously made, but I'd like to add one question about the "good" sites. Perhaps a follow-up that requires a bit more research and evaluation is whether these "good" sites can indeed be understood by the non-expert. If not, which other sites do an admirable job explaining some of the things that a non expert needs to understand before he or she purchases a given gizmo? (A classic example is plasma vs. an LCD flatscreen). Perhaps the good sources you cited do a good job providing introductory info. If so, show us some examples. It's very easy for some niche publications to quickly jump to the technical specifications or jargon that the average consumer doesn't understand. Therefore, in this particular case, it's not just credible information that makes a tech site good....it's being able to effectively communicate that information to consumers who want quality but are not geeks. :)
ReplyDelete