I have a few friends who own local businesses in the New York City area, so I know how detrimental a bad Yelp review can be on business — particularly when it's not deserved. Still, fining someone for leaving their opinion is taking things a bit too far, I think, but that's exactly what one New York hotel apparently tried to do. According to The New York Post, a hotel in Hudson, New...
I know a lot of people who won’t trust Yelp reviews. The reasons vary: People may be smart, but the public is dumb, and they criticize for stupid reasons. Libelous business owners flock to the site to smear their competition. Others get every relative and friend to praise them, making their rank suspect. The list goes on and on. But one of the most damaging rumors alleges that Yelp...
Remember the tidbit last month about the woman who got slapped with a $750,000 lawsuit for writing a scathing review of her contractor on Yelp and Angie’s List? Jane Perez didn’t just recount her frustrations, she also levied accusations involving missing jewelry and urged people not to hire the company. Ultimately, the judge sided with the plaintiff, granting a temporary injunction...
People gauge their experiences and expectations based upon those of others. It's why such services like Yelp exist. The social review website has for years exposed consumers to new and unexplored restaurants, bars and coffee houses. In fact, the service has made such a name for itself that businesses wear those little red Yelp stickers like a badge of honor. Google, not one to be...
Can you suggest a good flip phone? One of those joints that fit easily into my pocket and can run a week on one charge. You know what I'm talking about. I'm going to be frank: I'm over the concept of having a computer in my paints. Who told you we wanted to be able to use Microsoft Word on our four-inch touchscreen? I sure as hell didn't, though, to be real, I was with the program for a...
Planning a huge road trip this year? If you're hitting the highway this summer, there are tons of applications and tech that can help you get where you're going and find what you need when you get there. I'm a tremendous fan of the road trip, and am going to be going on quite a few this summer- so we decided it would be cool to profile some of the tech you can use on a trip to make your...
Well, we were correct that the new Facebook product was all about location tools, but the surprising bit was that every location based service decided if you can’t beat them, join them. After a weird start to the press event, which involved shuttling people to a second location, Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg took the stage in an un-tucked t-shirt, the typical wardrobe of a multi-...
On May 11th it was reported that a flaw had been discovered in Facebook’s Instant Personalization service that made it possible for a third-party to capture a sizable amount of data about you without you ever even knowing it. For those of you unfamiliar with the Facebook personalization tool, it allows sites to set cookies in your browser so that any time you visit the site again you...