And the same rule applies to bloggers... before letting the effusive praise flow, tell us whether you got the product as a freebie, loaner or early test drive system with some kind of exclusivity attached. Transparent is transparent and Michael was right to call it.
BTW... two big stories on blogging from today's NYT... one with a monster photo of Brian from Gizmodo. The more interesting piece on blogging was buried over in the Style section and looked at blogs staying alive and blogs dying.
Not all fallow blogs die from lack of reader interest. Some bloggers find themselves too busy — what with, say, homework and swim practice, or perhaps even housework and parenting. Others graduate to more immediate formats, like Twitter and Facebook. And a few — gasp — actually decide to reclaim some smidgen of personal privacy...
... Richard Jalichandra, chief executive of Technorati, said that at any given time there are 7 million to 10 million active blogs on the Internet, but “it’s probably between 50,000 and 100,000 blogs that are generating most of the page views.” He added, “There’s a joke within the blogging community that most blogs have an audience of one.”