Take me to Crowdstorm.com

Thank you, Crowdstorm!

The Storm on Apr 19, 2007, in Uncategorized

Word of my departure from Crowdstorm is spreading fast, so I thought I’d take the opportunity to express my thanks to the team, to the users, and to everyone who has helped along the way. It’s been thrilling, challenging, and downright fun.

I’d like to clear up a misconception that’s being floated around about the reasons for my decision to leave. As I’ve mentioned elsewhere, I’m absolutely not “sold on the old way” of doing things at Crowdstorm. I feel very strongly that the site needs to evolve into something completely new and exciting. I wish Phil and the team all the best with the giant development effort before them, and I look forward to hearing about their successes.

As for me, I’m in search of a new adventure. (Will work for chocolate.)

Top 10 stylish and funky cell phones

The Storm on Nov 15, 2006, in Uncategorized

A list of ten hot phones that won’t just get you connected, they’ll get you noticed!

They’re not the most affordable phones on the market, but hey, style doesn’t always come cheap.

Love it? Digg it!

Who’s It For? Part III: The Social Butterfly and the Networker

The Storm on Sep 04, 2006, in Uncategorized

What kind of Crowdstorm user will you be? This series explains what Crowdstorm has to offer to different types of users. In this third installment, people who want to connect with others.

Character Sketch

Charlie likes to chat with his chums. Neil never misses a chance to network. Fiona would like to find new friends online. Social butterflies, networkers, friend seekers. You consider your online connections no less important than your offline connections. You enjoy being part of a community of people who share your interests.

At Home on Crowdstorm

Crowdstorm is not just a site for researching products. It’s a thriving bazaar of ideas and opinions, a place where people gather to discuss the things they love. Whether you’re a cook who could never get bored chatting about copper pots, a music addict who enjoys comparing mp3 players or a gadget guru who must keep up on the lastest in smart phones, you’ll find other people who share your passion on Crowdstorm.

You can join public discussions in the Comment and Talk features, or have one-on-one conversations with other users by writing to their private Mailboxes. You can see what your friends have been up to on the site: their recommendations, comments they’ve written, products they’ve blogged about. And we’re adding more features all the time to enhance the community experience. Let us know what you want in your online community.

As you participate, your reputation on the site grows, making it easier for other people to find and connect with you. You’ll become a trusted and respected member of the community. So come join our family. We’d love to hear what you have to say.

Who’s It For? Part II: The Newbie and the Reluctant Shopper

The Storm on Aug 30, 2006, in Uncategorized

What kind of Crowdstorm user will you be? This series explains what Crowdstorm has to offer to different types of users. In this second installment, novice shoppers and people who don’t like the difficulty of shopping.

Character Sketch

Norbert knows next to nothing about notebooks. Claudia is clueless about vacuum cleaners. For Harry, having to shop is a hassle. Newbies, first-time buyers, reluctant shoppers. Perhaps you don’t know where to begin. Or perhaps you have no patience for the whole research phase of a purchase. You want someone who knows the ropes to help get you started — or maybe to just tell you what to buy. Most of all, you want this to be easy.

At Home on Crowdstorm

Crowdstorm is here to make it easy. We’ve chosen a light, clutter-free design to avoid unnecessary confusion or information overload. Navigate the site effortlessly with the tag cloud or the search box. You don’t need to work your way down a tree of product categories or figure out which category a product belongs to find what you’re looking for.

Most importantly, it is fast and simple to benefit from the expertise of others. You can see at a glance which products have the most buzz from the community of Crowdstorm users. This allows you to narrow the field within seconds. Then you can view each product to see what people have to say about it. And you don’t only have to rely on the community as a whole. You can add users whose opinions you trust to your “friends” list and see what those select few think of the products you’re considering buying. You can even receive your friends’ recommendations in an RSS feed the moment they appear on the site. (It’s easy to do.)

These are great time-saving tools, but often you need more individualized help. That’s why we created the Talk feature. It lets you ask the community for advice directly. “What points should I consider when purchasing a video recorder?” You might not have a clue, but someone out there — or many someones — knows just what to look for.

Crowdstorm takes the pain and the uncertainty out of shopping. What a relief!

Who’s It For? Part I: The Early Adopter and El Aficionado

The Storm on Aug 25, 2006, in Uncategorized

What kind of Crowdstorm user will you be? In this first installment of a series, we’ll look at what Crowdstorm has to offer to different types of users, starting with people who love their stuff.

Character Sketch

Patricia is passionate about her PDA. Raymond raves about his cooking range. Mary has modified her mobile phone. Early adopters, aficionados, hackers. You are the people who don’t merely own your possessions. You take your products seriously. You might be a hobbyist who loves to tinker or a power user whose gadget is a constant companion. You are the person others turn to for shopping advice or troubleshooting help.

At Home on Crowdstorm

Crowdstorm makes it easy for aficionados like you to find and discuss what you love best with others who share the same interest. Every product has a section for user comments about that product. And for discussions that don’t necessarily center around a specific product, there is the Talk feature. (An example of a Talk discussion might be “Bluetooth vs. WiFi”.)

Over time, other users will recognize the value you’ve added to the subject area. The better your reputation on the site, the more influence you will have. Users will be able to filter comments to show only those from highly trusted people. Have three different friends of yours asked you for advice on buying a digital camera or a kitchen mixer? Instead of repeating yourself, you can use the “Send to a friend” feature to point them to what you’ve already written on the topic.

Perhaps the most empowering feature about Crowdstorm is the user’s ability to add and edit the product information. You’ll never need to wait for an editor or a site moderator to add that new game console you’re burning to chat about. See a mistake in a product’s details? You can fix it yourself! On this site, the user community has total control.

The Tech Trance

The Storm on Aug 11, 2006, in Uncategorized

I’ve gotten three phone calls today. I guess I wasn’t holding up my end of the conversation, because all three people said something to the effect of “you’re awfully quiet today”.

Some days are planning days, when I work on projects and build specs for features. Some days are biz admin days, when I deal with correspondence, bills, recruitment, funding, et cetera. Today is a tech day. Specifically, it’s a day for writing code. And that’s when I fall into the tech trance.

If you’re a programmer or an engineer, you probably experience the tech trance all the time. It’s when that little biscuit-goblin in your head stops giving biscuits to the chatty, artsy brain-lumps and instead gives all the biscuits to the logical, mathematical brain-lumps. The logical brain-lumps love it. They calculate, process data and build sophisticated models of how software will behave. The chatty brain-lumps starve and you nearly lose the gift of speech. Until, that is, you pull yourself out of the tech trance by deciding to blog about the phenomenon.