Eyewear Centric Blogs

The blog has been somewhat eyewear-centric lately. But that ok, cause so is stoked's blog.

She did a nice review of the Stungunners, which made me smile and then made me think about reviews in general. You've probably noticed we don't have a lot of reviews in say velonews or other mainstream publications. It's not because we haven't been asked or because we can't. Rather, it's because with few exceptions the whole "review" industry pisses me off. While I am sure there are some fine examples of integrity and expertise in the mainstream review world, I haven't seen them. What I have seen is pay-to-play reviews (I am including straight up paid for reviews and quid pro quos.. I'll review if you buy ads) and ignorant reviews (the Wired review of Tifosi's sportglasses come to mind.. the critique was the lenses weren't good for sunny days when.. well that's cause the reviewer was using the red lenses not the dark ones.. duh). So my mainstream choices seem to be 1) pay and get a good review (that I probably get to write myself) or 2) get a review that may have more to do with the writer's inability to read directions than the product.

So my options tend to be editorial control or no control. What I want is to empower the writer to ask questions and learn about eyewear so the review is both truley informative and still their own. It's ironic that so far, blogs are the only media that seems to work in.