Software Awards

17 Aug 2007

Not worth the paper they’re not printed on?

Andy Brice of SuccessfulSoftware.net ran a great experiment where he submitted a fake piece of software to hundreds of software listings and review web sites in order to prove his suspicion that many do not review their listed software at all.

The results, if unsurprising, are still very disappointing. Roughly 7% of the listings sites gave an award to the software (which doesn’t even run). 218 sites listed the software, including the details from its description file “This program does nothing at all. It doesn’t even run…”. At the time of writing, the submission was still pending at nearly 400 sites - perhaps more awards to come.

Read the full story on Andy’s Blog including details of many of the awards and links to some sites that actually did check the software and reject it.

The two review sites that seem to come out recommended as actually doing what it says on the tin are SoftPedia and MajorGeeks. Programmer’s Notepad did get a “Pick!” award from SoftPedia - hopefully not a meaningless one!