What’s surprising is that what precedes WAE is arguably one of the worst reputations for an electronic goods retailer and yet despite this, Mark King from the Guardian seemingly tried to justify the company’s abysmal track record by the following article found here.

Now luckily I have never dealt with the company in person as I always read the reviews and conduct the relevant searches, though I know a few people who have been stung by them in the past (which is kind of inevitable because my photographic hobby has afforded me the opportunity to meet others who have fallen for the ‘too-good-to-be-true’ prices we often come across from WAE).

It’s apparent that due to the current economic climate more people are falling for such ploys as a consequence of the need to cut costs. Let this be a warning to those who read this that regardless of the current situation, you should never let your guard down.

Anyway let’s talk about their methods of service. The story goes that most of the electrical items they sell is brought over from continental Europe (where things can be a lot cheaper than here in the UK), and import them over here depending on the level of demand. The problem is that if the item is not in stock they will attempt to find another source; which invariably leads to more delays and the high possibility of them not actually being able to get hold of the item in question. This is all never the less hearsay, though consumers must take a pro-active stance when dealing with such companies.

Now many of us already know that they should avoid WAE like the plague (remember I am part of a camera club linked to various others national networks and have come across a few people who wanted to buy cheaper cameras from this company), but I want to just provide some advice about how to avoid becoming a victim yourself.

1: Do your own research on the company that’s selling the product. You can use various tools such as Avast’s WebRep or WOT‘s browser add-on which basically shows you the reputation of the company and/or website. What makes these even easier is that they are colour coded from green to red, so if you type a company name into Google and they have a Red marker, you know immediately it’s one to avoid.

Here is an example of WOT at work on Mozilla’s Firefox browser. Notice the huge warning that comes up as soon as you go onto the website:

If people have had a bad experience they are far more likely to complain about it, and thus these are just some of the avenues you can take before you even consider making that purchase.

2: Though this is a separate point, you can access it with ease via the aforementioned WOT tool. It is the ability to find the registered address for the company’s website. Here’s a picture via WOT’s website:

Notice the 'See Owner at Whois Domain tool'

Notice to the left is the link ‘See owner at whois Domain Tools, this will enable you to access their registered address. The common rule of thumb is that you should be very suspicious if they have had their details hidden, have used some form of proxy to hide their true location, or simply haven’t provided a legitimate address and contact telephone number. If you look at it this way: if you ever had a complaint to make, then how could you contact them with no contact details?

3: Take note of your web browser’s use of web security indicators, learn them and take note of them! This is one thing I have seen many people either ignore or have completely forgotten about. It’s the often colour coded icon when you access a webpage (the following example uses Google Chrome):

Amazon:

We Are Electricals:

Notice the difference? Here are the answers:

4: Be mindful of the fact that many companies use what’s known as ‘microworkers’ to artificially raise the profile of web pages. Similar to Amazon Mechanical Turk and Microworkers, companies employ people to do various micro jobs for a few pennies per task. This may include liking someone’s video, clicking on an advert to get money-related clicks or even writing positive reviews on products (the majority of which they won’t even have tested).

Just be wary that some companies use this technique to make themselves appear better than they really are. You might be thinking that “well can’t it work the other way? Companies employing people to give another rival competitor some bad reviews?” I’m sure it takes place, but I am also quite sure that is it does so on a much smaller scale. It also wouldn’t be in the best interests of avenues like Amazon to tolerate such negative behaviour on their website as it would a/ become immediately obvious to the targeted company, b/ would bring about bad press and c/ work against the original concept anyway.

Just be wary of overly positive reviews you may read, because they are probably the work of a microworker (as seen in the countless replies within ‘Yahoo! Answers’ that concentrate more on promoting products and services than answering the questions).

And that’s it for now. Just take this approach and these things will come easier over time. I’ve never been stung by a company like WAE and I don’t plan on changing that any time soon.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/money/2011/dec/02/we-are-electricals-negative-comments

http://weareelectricals.wordpress.com/

Well here’s some good news to get you in the festive mood. For just a few dollars/pounds/euros you can get 4 delightful games courtesy of Indieroyale.com. Included within the pack are the Blackwell Trilogy Remastered, Dino D-Day, Eets and The Oil Blue.

I’ll just point out that the Blackwell series is worth ten times the minimum amount you’re required to pay in itself. Alternatively you may contribute more than the minimum amount so as in order to support these indie developers.

More information on their website: http://www.indieroyale.com/

Merry Christmas to someone…

Link

My first Bethesda Softworks game was The Elder Scrolls III: Morrowind which remains one of my favourite games of all time. However having said that, it was filled with bugs. In fact here’s my youtube retrospective on it:

One infuriating bug was when the game would suddenly have a message appear that seemed to lay blame on the player having a dirty disc. Well sorry Bethesda, but I always keep my discs in immaculate condition so it’s not the disc nor the machine at fault (as all my other games ran perfectly fine).

There was another bug within the game whereby you could create spells that would increase your stats – permanently, as well as creating items that were god-like in status thanks to a bug relating to the use of soul gems (in which you could capture the souls of creatures within a gem to enchant an item). Plus the game would often freeze for no reason whatsoever.

There are many more to add to this but I think you get the point.

Because I hadn’t played any of the others within the series, I asked a friend of mine about his experience with Bethesda’s games and the first thing that came from his mouth was “terribly buggy”. He went on to describe how his experience with the series will always be remembered because of the buggy code and the fact that “they were ambitious in their ideas but their coding was truly awful”.

It seems that my friend is not the only one who thinks of the word ‘bugs’ when talking about Bethesda because on USEP one person implies that their games are ‘accompanied’ by them: “Unfortunately, since the release of Daggerfall there have been a plethora of bugs that accompany it.” (Source).

Well fast forward to 2011 and we find that nothing much has changed. Skyrim for the PS3 has massive frame rate issues which deem the game unplayable (as demonstrated by examples on youtube):

Even after a recent patch it seems that there are still many players who experience the problem:

What’s even more worrying is the notion that this won’t be an issue that’s easy to fix, as it could be something relating to the ‘divided memory pool’ of the PS3 which doesn’t affect the Xbox360 and PC versions – which by the way have no issues.

Strange thing is that Bethesda have again laid blame on something else other than their ability to code games properly. In a recent statement Bethesda seemed to lay blame on the PS3 architecture, though we need to remember that the PS3 is a ‘fixed’ format; users do not have to forego spending extras on upgrading the hardware like PC users do. How then can they do this when it’s easier to create a game for a fixed format than it is for a format that has hundreds of different setups? It doesn’t make sense. Well, it does make sense and I’m back down to earth now – Bethesda’s coding is what makes sense here for it’s crap. Pure and simple.

Before Skyrim was released I asked that same friend whether he would be purchasing the game upon release and at first he again told me that he expected the game to be buggy. However I championed the cause and believed that Bethesda had truly left behind those days where their games were released with bugs and all. Plus you have to remember that for all of Morrowind’s misgivings, it was still one of my favourite games of all time.

I asked him again just before launch if he would buy it and surprisingly, he had had a change of heart and said he was going to buy the game. I’m just glad he purchased it on the 360 for if he’d bought the PS3 version he would probably never talk to me again!

This will probably be the last Elder Scrolls game that I ever buy, but I’m left with the lingering question: Bethesda, when will you learn??

http://www.inentertainment.co.uk/20111205/ps3-users-split-on-skyrim-framerate-issues/

Find out in our forthcoming video!

“Olympus, the beleaguered Japanese camera maker, has come under fresh pressure after two major shareholders demanded answers about controversial deals revealed by its ousted chief executive.

Nippon Life, the Japanese life insurance firm which holds an 8.26 per cent stake, and Harris Associates, a US fund with a 4 per cent stake, called on Olympus to explain the transactions and dispel investor anxiety which has caused its share price to plummet by half since Friday.

Olympus fired its British chief executive Michael Woodford last week, claiming differences in management style. But Mr Woodford told the Financial Times he was sacked for threatening to expose suspicious payments he believes cost Olympus and its shareholders more than $1.3bn.”

http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/5d2a190a-fad7-11e0-bebe-00144feab49a.html#axzz1bMKAi5FK

What Everyone Is Too Polite to Say About Steve Jobs

Old news I’m sure, but here you go: http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-13815225