Opinion about epinions.com decline

epinions.com used to be a great resource to get real world, vetted and high quality customer reviews for all sorts of products from books to cars.  Contributing to epinions.com was actually minimally lucrative, as you got compensated for your product reviews.  Fellow members of the website would critique submitted reviews to help others improve the quality and review writing skills.  The higher quality reviews earned a larger share of whatever earnings were made.

I was never really sure just how the compensation worked, but over the years, I made less than $100 total from my nine posted product reviews.  My first review was posted in 2002 about my old Acura TL Type-S, for which I earned the coveted "Very Helpful" rating.  Over a period of one decade, that review has earned me a whopping total $20.

In the past, I've endorsed and recommended the use of epinions.com.  I frequently went there for reviews of products in which I was interested.  Then something starting changing in 2012.  I stopped using epinions.com.  I didn't really know why at the time.  It just happened.  Looking back, I believe it may have been because reviews were getting harder to find.  It was not that there was less of them, but rather the structure of the website had started changing for the worse.

Sometime this summer of 2013, I was writing a review for another product on Amazon.com and figured it was good enough to add to epinions.com.  I thought I might as well make my 3¢ a year. So, I went back to the epinions.com website and searched for the product.  It was a book.

I searched for the book and found a webpage that listed a bunch of sites that sold the book.  There was no product page.  In the past, the product page would come up as the search result.  This is where one would go to add a review.  But now, there was just a listing of other websites.  Sure, older products still had product pages, though you'd have to surf through the myriad of links to other websites in order to find them.  Much to my dismay, epinions.com had become an inferior online mall.  There isn't even a rewards program, like with higher quality online malls such as MyPoints.com.  epinions.com made itself completely irrelevant.

I guess some areas on the website are still maintained, such as electronics, where it appears to be a little easier to find the product pages for newer products.  It's just not enough to justify giving the website a second thought anymore.

Malpractice isn't a major reason for healthcare costs in the US, but there is a lot of other stuff that is

Monty Python and the Holy Grail Modern Trailer

William Shakespeare's Star Wars: Verily, A New Hope hits stores

William Shakespeare's Star Wars: Verily, A New Hope is a thing. Someone thought it would be funny to convert the first Star Wars movie into a William Shakespeare style play.  Old style prose is included, including the rather annoying "o'er".  It took me years to learn "o'er" is a contraction for "over".  Really?  Just say the "v".  It's not like you are actually shortening the word by not saying the "v".  It's still two fully pronounced syllables.  But I digress.

The book is is pretty funny (including the use of o'er). They really nailed the R2D2 dialogue!

Toby relaxing

Toby being a good Tobster

It's not necessarily a world invention, but it's a personal invention

Last night, I intended to bake some chocolate chip cookies.  I had the store-bought Pillsbury cookie dough in the back of my fridge for awhile, and it was time to use it...many months too late.  The expiration was back in March.  Apparently, the dough has been at the back of my fridge a bit longer than I remember.  Not to be deterred from enjoying some sort of cookie based after-dinner snack, I start thinking about ingredients I had around the kitchen.  (No way was I going to make cookies from scratch at that point.  Maybe some other day, but not last night.) 

Nillas!  I have Nillas!  And large marshmallows!  OK, I can make a kind of a smore with some chocolate that doesn't need melting.  Chocolate Syrup, I have that too!  Hmm, there's something missing still.  This endeavour isn't quite decadent enough just yet.

Think.  Think harder!

Coolwhip!

I piled these all together and had an awesome treat.

To repeat this achievement, take 3 large marshmallows and tear them in half.  Briefly roast each marshmallow piece, one at a time over a stove burner.  When just slightly burnt, mash the marshmallow between two Nillas just like smores.  After making 6, add a dollop of Coolwhip on each, and then drizzle chocolate syrup on top. 

Glorious!