TrustedPlaces.com: mini review

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Met Sokratis Papafloratos of trustedplaces.com, which I'd heard of before, at the London Firefox 2 launch party. So I checked out his site. This post is more of a first look or mini-review, with a few thoughts, than a full review.

Trusted Places seems a good idea, building on the social networking concept, and involves people rating and reviewing venues (restaurants, bars, clubs, theatres, museums and other venues) in different cities and towns. Of course, as with any other reviews site, its growth will depend on good people writing and continuing to write good reviews - and people increasingly using the site after getting to know which reviewers they trust.

Again, you have to give your postcode when you register, but unlike Zebtab they've got a clear privacy statement on the registration page clarifying that your postcode won't be visible to others or shared.

They have an interesting if slightly complex rewards scheme to try to get people to write reviews and invite friends to register, etc.

It's early days yet, but about 1000 people have registered as I write, which ain't bad as I gather it's not been going very long.

It'll need some sorting out though. E.g. at the moment "Top Cultural Places" includes the Lahore Kebab House in Umberston Street, which has had just one review (click on the pic above for a bigger one to see that). Clearly an independent arbiter is needed if and when differences arise as to what's "cultural"! Though maybe I'm being unfair on the Lahore Kebab House, which may well be the hub of the local community. What do I know.

Plus, there are loads of existing and well-established sites with user reviews of restaurants etc, e.g. London Eating, so they face some stiff competition.

To me the main issue with a reviews system/site (whether of pubs, films, music etc) is how a particular reader can know they can trust a particular reviewer - which depends on how closely their tastes match. This is a toughie because similar tastes in say food don't necessarily mean similar tastes in clubs; even people who are friends don't share tastes in all areas.

Sokratis said they've got something planned to help people find others with similar tastes by tracking their favoriting (my verb, not his!), and to me that is the most interesting aspect of the service and the logical way to develop social networking sites, if it can be sufficiently refined - so I mean to keep an eye on Trusted Places.

If they can pull it off so that people genuinely are guided towards reviews that they will feel they can personally trust because of the way Trusted Places has appropriately "matched" them with others with similar tastes, that to me would be a big step forward.

Tags: Trustedplaces, trustedplaces.com, Trusted Places, review, reviews, Improbulus, Consuming Experience, A Consuming Experience

ZebTab review

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I met Rob Eberstein of Zebtab at the London Firefox 2 launch party last night. So I thought I'd take a look at Zebtab.

Here's a mini-review, with some initial thoughts.



The Zebtab page says it's a "desktop channel to keep you connected to your passions and interests, effortlessly!" Above is a screenshot of the Maxim Zebtab which I downloaded to try.

Seems like another desktop widget thing, and the only downloads available as I write are for lads' mag Maxim and horse racing/betting site At the Races, with a "Zebtab" (or channel) planned for music site TuneTribe.

It's free, with ads, but you have to register, giving them (which I don't like doing for privacy/security reasons) your birthdate and at least 4 letters of your postcode. It requires Microsoft's .NET Framework.

Pity it seems you have to do a separate download for each site you want a Zebtab for. It looks like you can't just download it once, then within it add the channels you want. The Maxim one suggests you can add more Zebtabs (see the Zebtab tab in the pic above), but that tab doesn't display any extra stuff to add, at the moment. Would they be more Zebtabs for sites related only to Maxim, I wonder?

Also, is getting the content you want possible only if the site you want news/pics from cooperates to make their site Zebtab-capable? If so, Zebtab may have to work pretty hard to persuade sites to do it. It may not be easy to get a high takeup rate with limited content.

Plus, it's still a bit buggy. On my PC the Zebtab tab which sticks out of the right of the screen is a bit peekaboo, sometimes you see it, usually you don't. When trying to call up the Zebtab by moving the cursor to the right of the screen or doubleclicking the system tray icon, it kept sliding out from the right, then sliding away again, sometimes repeatedly, oooh my eyes. (Note that I am manfully (or whatever) resisting making any comment about it not being able to stay up once it's out, however appropriate that metaphor might be given the content!) I just couldn't get it to stay in place. The solution I found was to rightclick the icon and choose Show Zebtab, and then it'll stay out.

Unless and until it's further developed, personally I'll stick with desktop software that lets you make use of RSS feeds, like SpringWidgets (there's one in my sidebar for my blog), even though it doesn't have the full contents/pics display that Zebtab does. Particularly given the apparent target audience.

(My Magical Sheep pardner Kirk may like the Maxim one though! The Maxim Zebtab screenshot may be a clue as to why...)

Tags: Zebtab, Zebtab.com, widgets, desktop, review, reviews, Improbulus, Consuming Experience, A Consuming Experience

Minibar London

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I went to Minibar 1 and all I got was this XL Google T-shirt... (me = NOT extra large!):

Well actually I was late and the smaller sizes must have all gone, so I just grabbed what there was - unless Google assumed all London geeks are extra large and only provided T-shirts in that one size, that is.

(I'm late in doing this write-up too, obviously, as it took place on Friday 17 November 2006 at the Old Truman Brewery. I seem to be eternally trying to catch up, at the moment - hope 2007 won't be as bad!).

I spent ages wandering down the back streets of Spitalfields in the pouring rain, and I wasn't the only one - I bumped into a Drupal developer also trying to find the venue (didn't get his name but I'm guessing it was Robert Castelo from the pic! someone correct me if I got it wrong). I wish I'd known there were two "Corbet Place" streets (it's actually some kind of square) . Obviously I'd gone down the wrong one to start with. Man, some alleys can be dark!

When I finally got there, John Buckman of Magnatune and BookMooch had already given half his presentation, but what I heard was interesting. I'm a Creative Commons fan and knew about those sites anyway, so I hope I didn't miss too much. Worse, some may say, was that I was too late for the free beer.

There's an official report on Openbusiness.cc, who co-sponsored the event (and yep that first pic on that post is indeed of me, though I'm somewhat surprised to see it in the post! I'd missed the "social tagging" at the start but after the presentation I found a table with labels to tag yourself with, so I grabbed the most suitable and Jo the official photographer took a pic of m'tags as I was leaving (there's more of her Minibar pics on Flickr). The eagle-eyed may wonder at the "Promiscuous", which label in fact more than one person at the event said they'd wished they'd nabbed too. Let's say I took that as meaning "Open to all (good) job offers". Ahem.

I did manage to chat with a few people, but I hadn't realised that the event was mixed - a lot of people weren't there for Minibar, but just hanging out at their local. Oddly they were the ones who tended to try to strike up conversations with me; mostly the "real" Minibar attendees didn't, unless I talked to them first. Maybe I don't look geeky enough?

Apart from my fellow seeker of the Minibar, I chatted with:

• only briefly, John Buckman himself, someone from Spreadshirt and others who'll have to forgive me for not noting their names
• someone from Ofcom who was there with a colleague, I regret forgetting her name - I sounded off a bit about the TV Without Frontiers Directive and how vloggers shouldn't be treated as TV broadcasters, and in fact they agree. It's good to see a regulator putting itself about and listening to people, yay to Ofcom!
• a couple of people from Excite, based in Italy, who didn't travel to London especially for the event but happened to be here at the right time. We had a good discussion. Amanda Lorenzani writes the Excite blog, Web Twitcher (love the name!). They're trying to build up the Excite Mix personalised homepage, which I've not had a chance to look at properly yet myself. Their aim is to make it easily usable by ordinary people, not just geeks, which is always a good thing in my book as readers of this blog will know - I feel very strongly that things which could be made much more user-friendly and intuitive with just a little bit more thought and effort, should be; and similarly that things which could be explained intelligibly and without exclusivist jargon should be
• not forgetting Jo, official photographer extraordinaire!

It was fun, and to me worth braving the autumnal London downpours to make it there.

The next Minibar is on Friday 8 December, and again there's free beer. . Do sign up to go if you're going to be in London. Would like to go but I've got a prior commitment (though I'm going to the Firefox party tonight). Maybe the next one - I hope they become regular events.

Tags: Minibar, Minibar1, Minicamp, London, Creative Commons, Improbulus, Consuming Experience, A Consuming Experience