Sometimes honors bestow a lot of clout. Other times honors are entirely worthless. If you download software because it has a 'top rating' you might be surprised to they're often handed out blindly, so beware!
Andy Brice, UK-based software developer, writes that "I put out a new product a couple of weeks ago. This new product has so far won 16 different awards and recommendations from software download sites. Some of them even emailed me messages of encouragement such as 'Great job, we’re really impressed!' I should be delighted at this recognition of the quality of my software, except that the ’software’ doesn’t even run."
Doh! Sixteen awards for a plain text file that Brice renamed with an .exe extension!
When you read Brice's blog about this incident you'll quickly realize why downloading software just because it has some sort of 5 star or equivalant rating could be begging for trouble. In fact, such a decision making process could readily lead to a serious security problem on your network.
Head over to Brice's Successful Software blog and read his article, ".
