[ic] ZdNet Review Of Interchange...

[David Adams]

I was particularly irked by the review of Interchange, because this guy
interviewed me for the review and he essentially disregarded a lot of what I
told him.  Here are some jottings that I made after reading the review.  I'd
appreciate everyone's feedback.  Unfortunately, there's not much we can do,
since the review is already out (I mean, if they caved to every company's
complaints about bad reviews, then the technology trade press would just be
a big scam to sell advertising....oh yeah).  All we can do it register our
differences of opinion with eWeek, I guess.

My response:

   "In contrast to AllCommerce, Interchange offers product discounting
   rules (but only by number of items ordered, not by date or shopping
   cart contents) and broader database support."

It depends on what you mean by "offers."  There needs to be a distinction
made here between what's implemented in the construct something demo and
what's supported in Interchange.  The documentation for the discount tag
clearly explains how many different types of discounts can be implemented.
Some of the high end framework-based packages that we're competing against
often have NO "out of the box" functionality, so it's unfair to judge us on
our demo alone.
See http://developer.akopia.com/cgi-bin/ic/docfly.html?mv_arg=tagref03%2e15

   "Interchange doesn't support auctioning (Akopia is working on adding
   this to an upcoming release) or coupons,"

We clearly support coupons, again the demo vs interchange issue.  Coupons
are not as well documented as discounts, but they have been implemented in
many different ways.

   "and it has very limited
   personalization capabilities. We could personalize using attributes
   from a customer's profile--greeting the customer by name, for
   example--but couldn't provide custom pricing or custom catalog
   views--common business-to-business features--without coding logic
   directly into templates. "

Again I protest this statement strongly because building templates is a
necessary aspect of building a high-end ecommerce site.  I'm curious to know
how other systems do it so they receive credit for the functionality while
we don't.

As for the letter grades, I don't see any justification for them.  Where
does the C in performance come from?  What does it take to get a B in
capability?  Miracles?


> From: John Beima <jbeima@reality.palb.com>
> To: interchange-users@minivend.com
> Date: Wed, 13 Dec 2000 02:00:51 -0700 (MST)
> Subject: [ic] ZdNet Review Of Interchange...
> Reply-To: interchange-users@www.minivend.com
> 
> G'Day Folks,
> 
> I must say I was very dissapointed at this recent review that ZDNet did of
> Interchange. It was more than evident they just installed the product, if they
> even did that, and they reviewed it based on the demo without even looking at
> one line of the documentation.
> 
> You know there is nothing worse then a hack doing a review.
> 
> I couldn't just even leave it alone, I had to write him, the editor, and their
> public relations department back.
> 
> They made statements like they were facts of features thet Interchange doesn't
> have that it in fact does.
> 
> God give a guy a review to write, and he thinks he's god!
> 
> Anyways I have ranted enough, if you feel like it, you can read it at...
> 
> http://www.zdnet.com/ecommerce/stories/main/0,10475,2661750,00.html


David Adams
www.akopia.com
703-456-2924 Office

"Don't blame me, I voted for Kodos"