Wednesday, June 29, 2011

It HAS to be true ... it's on the internets....

... the rise of 'content farms' which provide content for web sites has led to your searching for information to be a rather precarious thing. How do you know the information is 'right' or 'correct'? Or even truthful?

My first encounter with a content farm generated article was when my pre-installed version of Vista for my laptop crashed. No worries I thought. I will simply take my XP installation CD and use that instead (plus I can also install a dual boot Ubuntu OS as well). When I tried to do this I received an error message (I forget the exact message) indicating this was not possible with a 'bus installed HD' (or similar). So I went to eHow and searched for "install winxp asus aspire 7720' and got this page here. Clearly this was a bog standard 'how to install WinXP' with NO background information and no real relevance as WinXP prompts you for installation anyway i.e. the article has little value as it provides no additional advice when you KNOW this is incorrect.

And, guess what, search for a different Asus (or other brand) model number and... the information looks eerily familiar with a couple of minor tweeks so the article looks 'different'. The content is , in the politest parlance, CRAP. Why should you care? When you search for something you should at least get the most relevant results returned providing the best information available. If not, then you are unable to determine the value of the information returned.

Well, it would appear that one of the content farms is AOL... read the rest here.

The truth is out there.... it is just getting difficult to find...

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