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Epinions' Notifiers vs Member Ptiemann's NotifiersMay 13 '01 (Updated Jun 02 '02) Write an essay on this topic.
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The Bottom Line Peter Ptiemann Knocks Out Epinions.Com in Round 1 with 0:34 left!
Free : Get Paid to Play Trivia for Free! Play as much as you want, earn as much as you want. As well, earn $$ for referrals! http://getpaid4trivia.tripod.com Ladies and Gentleman .... let's get ready to RUMBLE! One aspect that I have examined over the past few months is the reliability of 2 Notifying "machines" in the Epinions world that provide members with alerts to their trusted and enjoyable friends on the Epinions website. A notifier is the best way to NEVER miss a review. Yet, I am quite disappointed with the way Epinions' notifier works. Peter Ptiemann (http://www.epinions.com/user-ptiemann) is one of the greatest writers to ever inhabit the Epinions site. Over 200,000 hits to his many informative, debatable, and sometimes controversial reviews are accredited to his name. He is a member here that has delivered us a better notifier overall than that of the Epinions site. 1) The "Reliable" Epinions Notifier There have been two eras of Epinions' notifiers. I do not remember when the previous notifier went temporarily down, but it was sometime last year. This really disappointed me somewhat (ill get to the somewhat part in a bit). I met a lot of people on epinions whose reviews were excellent and I wanted to be notified of each and every one of theirs. I could simply bookmark each of these friends and do a periodic check for new epinions .... but I would rather have an easier way to check all 20 with a simple email alert. ie. Back in the Day Altaloma has written a review on "Scrabble" http://www.epinions.com/content_6732162183 Now here was the situation, I would get an error almost 95% of times when clicking the links. There was an error with this link or something along the lines of that. I would get so ticked off, because she is one of my favorite 10 reviewers on the site. This meant that I had to log into the site and type in her url to her profile page and manually click the review. Why so much work for her?!?! (just kidding Alties --- your new nickname revealed!) This seemed to happen quite a bit, so I gave up with the notifiers and had to manually do everything myself. Hey, it sounds lazy .... but why put a feature on the site that can't even be maintained properly. Another situation that occured with me was late alerts. I recall one day back then when I received over 50+ emails from the Epinions.com robot notifier. This practically snowballed my account and could have potentially archived it. Epinions basically screwed me and I had to sit through 5 quadrillion reviews all at once. Again, most of these had errors. Then the emails stopped ... my friendly notifier was gone, I couldn't believe it. People who had me on notify were not reading my stuff and as a result, my average hits decreased as well as earnings. My 30 cent reviews were only getting 18 cents. This was back in the dayyyy though ....... I'm making BILLS now!! hahaha A few months back, the notifiers came back and covered four categories : 1) Who/how many has/have rated your opinions the previous day 2) Opinions written by people you have on your notify list 3) Comments written to your opinions or other members opinions (which you have requested email alerts for) 4) Opinions on certain products that you have personally selected to receive from It started to go pretty good, until that one treacherous day when I thought everything had been solved -- I got that infamous error of ....... "There was an error with this link" It's happening all over again! It was like a drug that I had been off of for years that had arrived back to taunt me. It whispered "C'mon Richie .... take a little hit, you know you want it!" As a result of this torture, I have 100% abandoned these notifiers. Who needs'em anyway! To conclude on the Epinion notifiers : 1) Slow Notifiers - sometimes weeks for them to come 2) Slow Notifiers - Why can't they simply come in a bundle of 5 as they are written (1st opinion, 1:00pm, 2nd - 1:01pm ...... 5th 1:05pm BOOM! Send me the Email 3) Broken Links Epinions.com Grade : D- ************************************************************ 2) Ptiemanns Notifier First things first Site URL :www.preview.org/cgi-bin/notify.pl "This site is too hard to remember!" Well, you can go to the mirror site which is located at http://newepinions.com. To obtain access to the site, you will need to register. You won't need to fill out a whole lot of fields and I was very happy with this. When you reach the homepage, there is the fields for existing members and new members. Existing members simply have to enter in their registered email address and provide the password (which is generated randomly). After this the cookie will allow you instant access. New members simply have to enter in an email address to signup. After this a confirmation will be sent and you are on your way to generate your list of favourite writers. One thing that I would like to see changed with this site is the ability to change your password after it has been generated. The password will grow on you but for new members, a check back into the email will be necessary. For example .... a sample password "Y7HD63H9" Log Out Function Let's say you are at the library and want to check out some of your favourite reviewers opinions. If someone happens to go back to this site, they will be able to tamper with your subscriptions. Simply log out and your done ..... a password must be entered the next time. My Reviews This function simply displays a list of your most recent opinions. I don't know the timeline that is involved. I have checked this out and I have around 11 opinions displayed from March 23rd to present. With this function you can post up past opinions that did not do too well. You can edit those SH(SR) or NH(NR) opinions and give that bad opinion the recognition it should have gotten. Just-In I love this section. Similar to the New Opinions section on the Epinions site, Peter has created categories to separate each new opinion into I believe 54 (Am I right Peter?) categories. A few examples are : All New Opinions, Home and Garden, Sports, Community Center, etc; -- all of your favorites are all there! The Suggestions Category On this particular area, you have a listing of the top reviewers who have the most subscriptions. ie. conter7 (profile) has 57 subscriptions. *subscribe* There is also a part which shows the lowest subscribed members. This seems like a way to help out the newbies gain some hits; at least in my opinion. Ok, ok how easy is it to Subscribe and Unsubscribe to another member Easier than you think. To subscribe to another member, simply type their name into the field and click subscribe. See that wasn't hard! Well, you ask now ... how do I add 10 people at a time? Separate by commas! ie. altaloma, leafsbabe01, bryan_carey, ptiemann, psugrowler, mike24, photogirl814, adjensen, sharkie, nanct ...... -- 10 Epinionators, HINT HINT! :D When you subscribe to a member, there will be a listing of them at the bottom of the page. To unsubscribe simply click their name and KAZAAM they are gone, never to be seen again! A New Feature Released Just in the Past Few Days! The Who Subscribes to You Section. Maybe there is that one person who subscribes to you and has actively or recently added you and you want to return the favor. With this new feature I just noticed that lisaatucla added me, yet I was not on hers. With the simple subscribe function, she was added in seconds! (Look forward to reading more of your reviews Lisa!) Along with this feature you can see a list of people who you have on your notify list but they aren't subscribed to you. Why not send them an email. I don't really want to bother anyone, so I don't think I will use this function, but I hope a lot of them return the favor. Setup of the Members adjensen : highlighted in yellow Bring me the head of a record executive: Space Rock for Telynor, part two : underlined link (2001-05-13 by adjensen): date of written review. What is also very handy is that if you go on vacation for 2 weeks, you can set the review list to 2 weeks (that's the maximum) and read all the ones you've missed. Considering I read all of my favorite reviewers within 2 days, Im not sure if the reviews that are 2 weeks and a day old are excluded or whatnot. I'll have to ask Peter himself or he can leave a comment on this. The options are : Today, Last 2 Days, 3 Days, 4 Days, 5 Days, 6 Days, 1 week and 2 weeks Reliability of the Site In two and a half words : Quick and Easy The reviews are noted on Ptiemanns site almost instantaneously of submission of members. Links are never and I repeat N E V E R broken. I would like to thank Ptiemann for designing such an easy and effective site to help the little people at Epinions. I suggest you take the time to sign up for this free service; believe me you will find it much better in all aspects than that of Epinions.com's. Note to all Members on My Epinions Notifier : I either am missing your reviews totally (due to my abandoning Epinions notifiers) or I have added you to Ptiemann's notifier!) Good Luck and Make a Wise Decision when Selecting a Good Notifier. Free : Get Paid to Play Trivia for Free! Play as much as you want, earn as much as you want. As well, earn $$ for referrals! http://getpaid4trivia.tripod.com  |
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