Working in a place were the peer pressure to purchase new stuff is overwhelming, we have finally found a way to capitalize on our reluctant materialism. The silverorange stuff website is a collection of reviews of stuff that we at silverorange have owned and used.
As the “about silverorange stuff” page describes:
Sites like CNet and DPreview offer extensive and helpful review of thousands of products – we certainly aren’t going to replace sites like these (you’ll notice some of our reviews linking to these sites).
Our reviews will consist mostly of things we research, bought, and have used ourselves. While professional journalists can provide extensive specs, professional photos (we’ll do our best with photos), and review a far wider range of products, we feel there is also value in reviews that start with lines like “I’ve owned this camera for three years?”.
The idea for the site came from already-avid-reviewer and president of the internet, Dan James. Only two days later, we have site a filling up with reviews.
My first contribution is a review of the Salon Premium subscription service. A review of my car and a few others will show up soon.
What a great site, so clean, simple and friendly.
One question: how do you think the blogging format compares with a traditional hierachical content indexing format in terms of useability (in that you presently have a single layer of topics only—or do you plan to subdivide these as necessary?)?
Is the idea that the user will rely on the search facility to locate reviews from sub-categories (i.e. “sports cars”)?
I’m currently considering weblogs versus bulletin board for a web project, you see…
I think the difference between ‘blogging format’ and the ‘hierarchical fomat’ is the same as ‘chronological’ and ‘by topic’.
It’s relatively easy to implement a system where both are present, simply by adding the ability to add a topic to each entry.
A bulletin board is principally the same as a weblog+comments, especially if one enables a ‘by topic’ view of the weblog. The first post of a BB thread would be the main entry of the weblog, and the rest of the thread would be equal to the comments. The only real distinction between the concepts Thread and Log Entry + Comments is a visual one: it would take zero effort to put the comments on AOV in the exact same format as the entries themselves, making it look like a BB thread, and the user would see no difference.
Weblog systems like LiveJournal have taken this a step further, and treat the comments of an entry as a tiny forum in itsef, with threads and ‘reply to this’ buttons.
The advantage a weblog+comments has over a BB system, is simplicity. It’s relatively easy to set up a weblog, compared to the installation of a fully workable BB.
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Note on Stuff:
Why do ads break the articles? I’m on 800*600 and kept thinking none of the articles were longer than what was displayed on the front page.
Putting ads in my face isn’t going to seduce me into clicking them any more than putting them in a sidebar would, it just makes them more annoying.
Is my humble opinion. 🙂
Great feedback – thanks.
Interesting points regarding the weblog/chronological vs. hierarchal/topic layout and format of the site. We’re not too concerned about the issues, as we expect most of the visitors to come to a particular review page via a Google search. The weblog format is really one of convenience – we have the platform already, and the site was really just put together on a whim, so the quick development time and simple setup was key to the project actually getting beyond the idea stage.
Willem, your point about the ads breaking up the articles is one we’re aware of. We’re not too happy with the way the ads are fitting in there yet. We originally wanted to use the much shorter horizontal layout that 37signals uses on their weblog (example). However, it turns out that they are too wide to work in our layout at 800 by 600. Google offers a set of different ad formats/sizes, but you can not adjust their size.
We’ll keep working on it – for now, I’m going to try a smaller ad format in that same location. Let me know what you think…
Might be nice to have a rating (say out of 5) for each product reviewed; so long as this could be consistently awarded by each reviewer of course. Then again, that could all be getting a bit CNet 🙂
Yeah, Tony, we’re strying to stear clear of the CNet-effect 🙂
See my comment on Signal vs. Noise regarding ratings.
Fair points Steven. If you do ever do some kind of rating, ratings illustrated by silver orange segments would be pretty nice.