Feb 13th, 2012 Posted in Uncategorized | Comments Off
Now before you get too excited let us point out that nothing has been officially confirmed, however if you head over to AndroidandMe.com you will see that a HTC customer service representative apparently stated that Ice Cream Sandwich should hit the HTC Flyer sometime during Q1 2012 given the fact that we are already 3 weeks into Q1 2012 this would mean that Android 4.0 is a maximum of 9 weeks away.
The HTC Flyers 1.5GHz single-core processor and 1GB of RAM should allow Ice Cream Sandwich to run pretty smoothly, we cant wait to see the new lease of life this will bring to the tablet and if you check out this link for Android 4.0 platform highlights you will remember why theres so much hype surround this flavor of Android.
Hopefully we will hear something official from HTC in the coming months, when we do we will keep you posted so keep checking Product-Reviews.net for all the latest news. While we are hear we thought we would take this opportunity to gain some feedback from our readers, therefore feel free to answer any of the following questions below
Which Android 4.0 features / improvements are you looking forward to taking advantage of on your HTC Flyer the most? What existing HTC Flyer problems / imperfections would you like to see resolved?
Feb 12th, 2012 Posted in Uncategorized | Comments Off
Tax-Compare.com Urge Public to Choose Tax Filing Software Wisely
Tax-Compare.com announce fresh updates to their tax software product reviews, while urging the public to choose a package carefully this coming January.
Feb 11th, 2012 Posted in Uncategorized | Comments Off
FDA Misses Deadline in Clash With Device-Makers Over Reviews January 23, 2012, 3:16 PM EST
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Device Makers Said to Double FDA Fees to Get Faster Reviews
By Anna Edney
(Updates with review times in 13th paragraph.)
Jan. 17 (Bloomberg) — U.S. regulators haggling with medical-device makers over how much it will cost to speed up product reviews starting this year missed a legal deadline to submit a proposal for congressional approval.
Under a 2007 law, the companies, led by Johnson & Johnson and Medtronic Inc., were charged $295 million over five years to get products such as hip implants and heart stents reviewed in a timely manner. The law, set to be reauthorized this year, mandates that the agency submit a new agreement to U.S. lawmakers by Jan. 15.
They missed that mark and may not strike a pact by Feb. 15, when a U.S. House hearing is set on the law. The FDA is seeking as much as $805 million over five years to add staff, responding to industry and congressional criticism its’ approval system is too slow. The industry said on Dec. 6 it’s only prepared to pay $447 million, according to the latest minutes available.
If there’s no agreement by Feb. 15, the FDA “will have the wrath of a bunch of exercised politicians on them who are running for re-election and want their pictures on T.V. that night,” said Ira Loss, senior health policy analyst at Washington Analysis, in a telephone interview.
While there’s no sanction in the law for missing the Jan. 15 filing deadline, it is the second the agency has blown by.
Senators Thomas Harkin, Democrat of Iowa, and Michael Enzi, Republican of Wyoming, asked the FDA in July to submit a reauthorization plan by Dec. 31 so the panel overseeing the agency would have adequate time to review the plan before any hearings. Timing is sensitive because current negotiations are the first to occur during an election year, when Congress typically leaves Washington by the end of July.
No Decision Yet
Lawmakers haven’t yet decided what to do if a deal isn’t reached soon, said Debbee Keller, a spokeswoman for Republicans on the House Energy and Commerce Committee, which shares oversight over the process with the Senate panel.
“We have not reached that point yet, but it is quickly approaching,” Keller said in an e-mail.
Loss said the FDA and the industry will probably reach an agreement by Feb. 15 to avoid Congress taking over negotiations.
Wanda Moebius, a spokeswoman for the Advanced Medical Technology Association, the Washington lobby for the industry, said progress is being made in negotiations. She wouldn’t say if the industry had raised its offer, or discuss details of two meetings for which minutes were unavailable.
Last-Minute Requests
Karen Riley, a spokeswoman for the FDA, said minutes from Dec. 13 and Jan. 5 meetings won’t be released until they’re approved by both sides. She declined to discuss the meetings.
The industry has complained that regulators increasingly make 11th-hour requests for more information, slowing review times, even with the fee system.
The FDA took 73 days on average in 2010 to complete less-stringent reviews of devices that pose a low to moderate risk to patients, down from 80 days before companies paid fees in 2001, according to a Bloomberg Government study. More than 90 percent of devices are reviewed under the less-stringent process, known as 510(k).
The FDA most recently proposed a user fee increase between $730 million and $805 million over five years depending on how often companies seek consultations with regulators, according to minutes from a Nov. 29 meeting. The agency may need between 225 and 321 employees to do reviews, according to meeting minutes.
Haggling Over Fees
The industry estimates its $447 million offer would account for 26 percent of the agency’s medical-device review budget by fiscal 2017, the final year of the proposed pact. It suggested the rest could be covered by congressional appropriations, according to the meeting minutes.
Manufacturers paid $35.2 million in fees in fiscal 2007, or about 13.2 percent of the agency budget for reviews, according to a Congressional Research Service report. In contrast, drugmakers fund about 60 percent of the cost of agency reviews, according to the FDA.
Device makers pay $4,049 per submission for expedited reviews typically used for products that post a moderate risk to patients. Companies with less than $100 million in sales pay $2,024, according to the FDA.
–Editors: Adriel Bettelheim, Reg Gale
To contact the reporter on this story: Anna Edney in Washington at aedney@bloomberg.net.
To contact the editor responsible for this story: Adriel Bettelheim at abettelheim@bloomberg.net.
Feb 10th, 2012 Posted in Uncategorized | Comments Off
ProPrint is the leading monthly magazine for the Australian printing industry. ProPrint covers the business and technology issues of print with broad-reaching editorial coverage that includes news, comment, features and product reviews.
Feb 8th, 2012 Posted in Uncategorized | Comments Off
Editors Note: Each month contributor Louis Camassa, a seasoned ecommerce developer, identifies a feature from existing ecommerce sites that is well executed, and applicable to other merchants. Camassas previous installments are Admiring Apples ‘Questions amp; Answers’ Feature and Auto Ship Programs Generate Repeat Sales; 2 Examples. For the installment below, he analyzes quick view windows that expedite purchases by shoppers.
One of the main goals of an ecommerce site is to decrease the time it takes consumers to add products to their cart. By utilizing a quick view feature, a site can remove many obstacles — including clicks — and help shoppers initiate their ordering with relative ease and efficiency.
Quick view is also known as quick look, among other names. It enables visitors to view product details — on a category page, a cart, or any other page — without a page refresh. The product details are launched in a modal (ie pop-up) window, which opens on the page the visitor is on, and typically displays a truncated set of product details.
See the example below from PetCareRx.com showing Van Ness Sifting Framed Cat Pan on a category page and in its pop-up quick view modal window.
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The quick view feature is becoming increasingly popular. It offers a number of key benefits, as follows.
Reduces server load. Since the information on the product is already stored on the page — hidden behind the scene — the page does not get reloaded when the visitor enables this feature. It is simply taken from a hidden state and put into a visible state.
Expedites shopping. Visitors can quickly add products to their carts without having to wait for the actual product page to load. Having the ability to browse through a category page and read expanded product details in the quick view without having to load the product page, will shave crucial seconds off the shopping experience.
Discounts to MAP. Manufacturers sometimes require a minimum advertised price policy that limits merchants in how they list product prices below MAP on their websites. But MAP policies do not typically apply to quick view modals. Thus, merchants can show discounted — below a manufacturers minimum advertised price — product prices on the quick view.
Show discounted pricing, other details. You can utilize the quick view feature to show discounted product prices before the cart page. You can also include other details there. Shown below, for example, is the quick view on Staples.com, which includes the following details.
Price;
Add to cart button;
Product description;
Larger product pictures and images magnify;
Print function;
Tab layout for easy navigation;
Customer reviews;
Link to view full product details;
Facebook Like button.
Staples.com chose to install the Customer Reviews tab within the quick view. This is helpful, since many visitors access this feature. However, due to its small size, the quick view modal does not offer a lot of space to read the reviews. The visitor is required to use a scroll bar within the quick view to wade through them.
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An alternative would be to expand the quick view modal when the Customer Reviews tab is opened, and use the main page’s scroll bar — see example below from AmazingGrass.com. This expands the original modal, and allows the visitor to use a single scroll bar for it and the web page as a whole. Avoiding multiple scroll bars on a single page simplifies the visitor’s experience.
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The PetCareRx.com quick view shown below is a well designed. It has a limited number of features, but has a more simplified layout than Staples.com. Specifically, without the tab layout and product reviews, the presentation is less cumbersome. However, if the visitor wants to know more about the product, or read the reviews, it will require a click — and a page load — to get to the full product details page.
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Quick View Drawbacks
One major drawback of the quick view setup is that many visitors don’t know what a quick view is. It hasn’t been used enough for visitors to expect. Many of the websites that utilize this feature require the visitor to hover over the product image to activate the quick view button.
In viewing hours of visitor interactions with my clients websites — watching visitors interact with the sites — many visitors click on the product image, but not the quick view button. Moreover, visitors that do click on the button appear to do it accidentally.
To help resolve this, websites can install a quick view button below the product image, which is always visible — as shown in the Petco.com example below. Clicking on the button will launch the modal, but clicking on the product image launches the product details page. This is a simple but effective method to help expose the quick view feature, and reduce visitor confusion.
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Primary Quick View Elements
When implementing the quick view feature, be sure to include the following primary elements.
Eliminate confusion. A clear call-to-action — such as a button — for activating the quick view modal.
Keep it simple. Do not try to show all product details on the quick view. Including all attributes will clutter it, as there is a limited amount of space.
Link to the full product page. Include a link to view the complete product page.
Add to cart. Include a prominently positioned Add to Cart button.
Emphasize the product photo. Showcase a larger product image than what is shown on the base category page.
Other elements — such as (a) print page, (b) Facebook Like, (c) tabs, (d) reviews, and (e) zoom — are dependent upon the product, and the ability to customize the quick view window.
Overall, the quick view feature offers many benefits. In time, I predict it will be a standard in website usability.
Feb 6th, 2012 Posted in Uncategorized | Comments Off
Salt Lake City, Utah (PRWEB) January 26, 2012
With RatePoint.coms recent announcement that it is officially shutting its doors on February 2nd, thousands of Ratepoint customers are suddenly left in a lurch, desperately trying to salvage their customer ratings and reviews before everything goes dark.
It came as a shock to many Ratepoint customers, when out of the blue they received an email from Ratepoint informing them that they were going out of business. Heres an excerpt from that email…
As some of you may know, RatePoint’s assets and technologies are currently being acquired. Unfortunately this means that all RatePoint accounts will soon be closed. Effective February 2, 2012, all RatePoint services, including Reputation Management, Email Marketing, Surveys, and Product Reviews will be discontinued. Your ability to access your RatePoint account will end at this time.
In an effort to help Ratepoint customers salvage the online reputation theyve built over time, Shopper Approved is helping Ratepoint customers transfer their customer ratings and reviews to the Shopper Approved platform.
The most trusted type of reviews online are 3rd party reviews because it shows new potential customers that the reviews are trusted and vetted by an independent party. Without being able to transfer their Ratepoint reviews to another trusted 3rd party, all of the reviews that Ratepoint customers have collected to date will have very little value. We want to help these businesses maintain the value and integrity of the ratings and reviews theyve collected by giving them a new home, says Scott Brandley, co-founder of Shopper Approved.
In an effort to help Ratepoint customers make the transition, Shopper Approved (http://www.ShopperApproved.com) is offering a special 50% discount off their services to all Ratepoint customers, in addition to moving over all of their ratings and reviews free of charge.
Feb 4th, 2012 Posted in Uncategorized | Comments Off
One impressive smartphone which showed up at CES 2012 last week was the Sony Xperia S, today we can confirm that this handset is coming to the UK carrier Three and well remind you why so many carriers around the World are keen to add this particular device to their arsenal.
Currently we dont know anything in regards to release date or pricing, but to be honest with you were not surprised as the Xperia S has only just been revealed to the world. A recent article of ours suggests that it will become available SIM-free on March 5 for £467.99 (inc VAT) therefore this gives us some insight as to when it may hit Three and how much it will cost, but nothings been officially announced just yet.
If our previous posts information is correct we would be surprised if the Xperia S doesnt become available from Three in March/April of this year. Its hard to put an exact price on the smartphone as there are many considerations to take into account, but Three quite often give customers high-end smartphones for free when they agree 24 month contracts costing £30-£35 per month.
You can find out why so many people are excited about the Xperia S by checking out the official website, the 12 megapixel camera, dual-core 1.5GHz processor, 1GB of RAM, 4.3-inch 720p display and HSPA+ connectivity are just some of the things that caught our eye, however we would prefer it to launch with Android 4.0 Ice Cream Sandwich rather than Android 2.3 Gingerbread (which it currently runs).
Hopefully we will find out more from Three soon, when we do we will be keeping you posted so keep checking Product-Reviews.net for all the latest technology news. Below we have added Threes promotional video where they roll of a seemingly endless list of desirable specifications Will you buy a Sony smartphone in 2012? If so, will you choose the Xperia S?
Feb 2nd, 2012 Posted in Uncategorized | Comments Off
The ZDNet score represents a weighted average of product reviews from
websites and publications around the world. The score is generated when there are reviews from two or more
sources, and is based on a scale of 1-10, with 10 being the highest possible rating.