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The software awards scam

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sri:
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.
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Talks about the unethical practice of the so-called download sites which don't even care to review the submissions and blindly issue a "5-star" award to every entry irrespective of whether it is genuine software or junk. Quite an interesting read!

http://successfulsoftware.net/2007/08/16/the-software-awards-scam/

sri:
This reminds me of the case of a prank by some guy who submitted random junk of scientific words to science journals and got them published in few.

mouser:
This reminds me of the case of a prank by some guy who submitted random junk of scientific words to science journals and got them published in few.
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For the page where they did that, along with actual video from them presenting the paper(!), and a paper generator, see: https://www.donationcoder.com/forum/index.php?topic=4876.0

mouser:
Back on topic, we should also post links to some of the software sites whose awards actually matter, because they are serious and done by real people who test the software and know what they are talking about:


* freeware genius - http://www.freewaregenius.com/
* gizmo's list of best freeware - http://www.techsupportalert.com/best_46_free_utilities.htm
* great software list - http://www.anova.org/software/
* SnapFiles is a very big software listing site, and i'm impressed that they actually take the time to try software and write minireviews, and take their own screenshots.  The opinions there are not as informed as on the sites above, but they are one of the only sites i know on this mass scale who are doing this seriously - http://www.snapfiles.com/
What else?

Lashiec:
My vote goes for FileHippo. Tiny site, but you've got the comfort to know the software really works, as they actually test the software on a VM (evident by some of their shots), and they only add quality software. They don't have awards, though :)

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