A Frisco flop zdnet.com
Recently, Microsoft launched its San Francisco Sidewalk city
guide. I'm beyond disappointed. The site is shallow, poorly organized, lacking in linkage, and full of bad information. And by bad information I mean completely inaccurate nonsense. This stuns me knowing that Microsoft Chairman Bill Gates is a stickler for accuracy. Apparently he's not checking for it much anymore.
...
The New York site is as pathetic as the San Francisco site, with restaurant reviews that are even more pretentious and useless. Send these "writers" a copy of Strunk and White, please! Worse, it seems as if these reviews were dry-labbed -- the technique whereby you really never go to the place. For example, in reviewing the restaurant Daniel, one of only four restaurants to which Sidewalk gives four stars in New York, the reviewer says, "The tightly arranged, softly upholstered room has overhead spotlights which make some diners look downright scary, and the ill-lit paintings are a yawn." From here you can link to the Zagat review (not a link to the Zagat site, but to a page on Sidewalk "quoting" Zagat) where the restaurant is described as having "beautiful decor, "gracious" service and serious "people-watching." I've been to this restaurant and can't understand what the Microsoft reviewer is talking about. And if it's as grim as he/she described it, then how did the place get such as high ranking? I should note that nobody fesses up to writing any of these reviews. They all seem to be anonymous. For good reason.
As it now stands, Sidewalk gets no stars from me.
Oops, another slipup by the New Media Juggernaut, maybe a few more people need to be accordianized here. Or maybe Dvorak is just a sourpuss. Beats me, there's bigger things to worry about anyway.
Cheers, Dan. |
