Ooh, things just got even more interesting. Viewers following the mysterious tale of Benchmark Reviews and where their fully independent reviews come from will recall that WoSblog's shadowy agents tracked down the text of their glowing review of a $1200 office chair to the website of an online retailer called Smart Furniture. When asked, Smart Furniture asserted that the text was their own original work.
Since then, further developments have transpired. Read on!
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Category
chairs, investigative journalism
Ooh, this gets better and better. Viewers who've been following the thrilling story as it develops will recall the eerie similarity between the content of the Benchmarks Review feature on the Herman Miller Embody chair, and the advertising blurb for it on the site of retailer Smart Furniture.
We were a little curious about this, bearing in mind site owner Olin Coles' strident assertion that, apart from the belatedly-acknowledged passages copied from Herman Miller's press release, "the remaining 99.9% of the article is a fully independent review of a self-purchased product."
(Actually it's the remaining 93.6%, but let's not quibble.)
So inestimable Friend Of WoSblog John X dropped Smart Furniture a line.
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Category
awesomeness, chairs, stupidity
Wow. I got home from a poker game in the early hours of this morning, and idly wondered if busted shill/"executive editor" Olin Coles might have replied to my polite request for his side of the story with regard to his hopelessly dishonest excuse for a website. What I found was that Mr Coles had instead chosen to post on the Benchmark Reviews forum, in a thread entitled "Forever banned: Hall of Shame". The thread describes itself thus:
"Like any writer, our work comes under fire from time to time. Most of the criticism is taken to heart and used to improve future work, but occasionally the critic can go overboard and begin making personal threats and accusations. This thread is intended to show our visitors that their accusations and threats do not remain anonymous."
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Category
chairs, stupidity
WoSblog is internationally renowned for its psychiatric expertise, so I wasn't surprised yesterday when a viewer of the WoS Forum asked me, quite out of the blue, to assess their mental stability.
"I want to know if I'm going barmy", wrote the clearly-distressed reader, whose cause for doubting his very sanity was – of all things – a review of an incredibly expensive office chair.
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Category
chairs, investigative journalism
If you're a member of WoSblog's highly secretive Alert Viewers Society, you might recall that WoSblog recently visited the intriguing city of Gloucester, and in passing mentioned the presence – on the menu of the Varsity Bar pub chain – of an item by the name of the Dirty Dog's Dinner.
It didn't seem fair, though, that WoSblog's beloved viewers should be expected to simply picture it in their minds. So here it is.
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Category
awesomeness, snacks
Anyone who's been reading WoS or WoSblog for any amount of time will probably already have noticed that I have very little time for videogames that want to tell stories.
There are plenty of fields of culture available already for people who want to be told stories. Books, films, comics, TV, theatre and even music are all ideally suited to story-telling, and frequently do a brilliant job of it. You wouldn't hire a footballer to come round and do your plumbing, so why would you look to videogames for storytelling?
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Category
iOS, videogames
Chatting to a chum yesterday, something they said gave me cause to recall a feature from Amiga Power in which former full-time members of the AP team recounted their experiences on leaving the mag for the “real” world.
Sadly the issue in question (AP54, October 1995) is one of those that still hasn’t been scanned for the Amiga Magazine Rack, and only a fragment of it is available in the WoS Archive, so I had to go and get the actual magazine off my shelves, like some sort of caveman.
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Category
awesomeness, remember Spangles?
We're almost done with the politics stuff, viewers. Normal WoSblog service will be resumed shortly, but first I thought I might as well share with you an email I received this morning.
Back on Monday, when uncertainty still ruled as to who'd be forming the next government, the website 38 Degrees invited its users to send emergency emails to Labour MPs, urging them not to block any potential "progressive alliance" by vowing to vote against electoral reform, as many threatened to.
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Category
politics
The momentum behind a Lib-Lab coalition seems at the time of writing to be slipping away, as one braindead Labour MP or grandee after another comes out to argue against it in front of an eager media. If Labour's 1983 election manifesto was the longest suicide note in history, today's collected BBC News interviews could be among the shortest.
Because here's what happens if Labour retards like David Blunkett, John Reid, Tom Harris and Wee Dougie Alexander scupper this agreement.
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Category
politics
1. That the Tories hadn’t offered the Lib Dems anything on electoral reform. The sudden, desperate and resentful least-possible offer of a referendum on the absolutely useless AV (which does almost nothing for the Lib Dems) was a panic reaction to Brown’s game-changing resignation.
2. That Adam “Raging” Boulton is the UK’s unasked-for answer to Glenn Beck. “I just care about this country!”
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Category
politics
At least, it’s statistically probable that you do. The majority – 53% – of votes cast by the British electorate last Thursday were worthless, because they were cast for candidates who didn’t win, and are therefore simply thrown in the bin by the First Past The Post electoral system.
So if you were one of the thousands of people locked out of polling stations across the country on Thursday night, don’t fret too much. Your vote would probably have been completely ignored anyway.
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Category
investigative journalism, politics
