The days are getting shorter and the air is getting downright chilly.  With all the rumors of this being an “El Niño” winter, now’s the time to prep your bike for the cold weather commute.  Here at the Buzzillions office in San Francisco, we don’t have to deal with any sleet or snow, but it’s starting to get dark by the time we leave the office and we’re already experiencing some epic rains.

So if you haven’t winterized your bike commute yet, Buzzillions is here to help find the right cycling clothing & gear. We have product reviews on over 3000 cycling accessories from big retailers like Bike Nashbar and Performance bike as well as from your local cycle shop. If you’re not sure what to get, here are some user reviews of their favorite products for winter cycling…..

BIKE LIGHT REVIEWS

These are a must for riding in non-ideal conditions.  They aren’t always legally required and I’ll admit I’ve occasionally cycled home at night without any.  A lot of commuters use just small blinky lights, which may be fine on a clear night but in bad conditions you need real lights.  Our users (including me) love the duo of the Planet Bike Super Flash Taillight & the Planet Bike Blaze 1w Bicycle Light.  They’re small yet very bright.  The miracles they’ve wrought with LED lights these days!

Planet Bike Super Flash Taillight

The best tailight.  Period. Use It!

I was recommended this taillight by a friend and when I saw it on sale for [$] I was sold. All I can say is WOW. I would never trust my safety to any other light. This thing is bar-none the best and brightest tail flasher I have ever seen. I put all three of my red flashers on as a test and this one was by far the brightest …” Mr. Wizard of San Diego, CA

Read Full Review »

Planet Bike Blaze 1W LED Bicycle Light

Fantastic light!!

this light was recommended to me by 2 rei sales people, and i’m not disappointed at all. in fact i’m absolutely geeked that i got such a great light without spending hundreds of dollars. this light has three settings and the highest is really bright, and i have not had to change the battery yet. ……” John Rambo of Earth

Read Full Product Review »

FENDER REVIEWS

You’ve already got enough to deal with with all the rain and snow, why make it worse by splashing up all that muck from the road? I know a lot of people don’t believe in fenders. But I have seen cycling clothes after a couple of months of no fender protection, and believe me, that black stain up the middle of the back from all the road grime is never going to wash out. So protect yourself and your clothes by getting some real fenders. Planet Bike makes some of the most popular fenders (and highest rated), and for good reason.

Planet Bike Freddy Fenders (Hybrid/Touring)

pretty sexy.

i just had these installed on my new marin fairfax, and they look awesome. based on reviews of these fenders, i knew they would be great, but i looked at a few others just to make sure i wasn’t missing out. i’m glad i settled on the freddies because these shiny black fenders look so much more …” nannylu of Atlanta

Read Full Product Review »

GLOVE REVIEWS

Unless you live where it’s sunny and warm all year round, you’ll want to get a pair of cold weather gloves. If you live in a mild climate like we do here in San Francisco you can probably get away with some full length cycling gloves. If you live somewhere colder you’ll probably want something with more insulation. A member of the Buzzillions team from Eugene, OR recommends getting a pair of cross country ski gloves – they’re light, sporty and warm. Of course, if it gets really cold you should probably look for a pair of ski/snowboard gloves. Here’s what one reviewer had to say:

Outdoor Research Gripper Gloves

Nice Product

Purchased for winter cycling road and mountain down to 32 degrees. Nice glove, nice windblockking material. Although sizing is generous, will shrink very slightly first time in dryer so purchase size up if between sizes. Recommend glove down to freezing temps. Happy with purchase. …” Rugbydog of Pennsylvania

Read Full Product Review »

CYCLING JACKET REVIEWS

Ditto with the jackets. You don’t have to wear a cycling jacket. However, most cycling jackets are windproof and that goes a long way towards keeping you warm. They’re also breathable so you don’t show up all sweaty. Of course, if it gets really cold you might want to just wear a ski/snowboard jacket as long as you don’t get too warm while cycling.

Gore Men

Worth EVERY penny, Incredible, versatile

I *love* this jacket. Body temp doesn’t change going into the wind or with the wind. Windproof AND breathes. Tonight (starting temp was 65 and ended at 55) I wore silkweight capilene base and this jacket and was very nice and warm, but NOT overheated. Thank you for gr8 vents. In the Minnesota winter …” SunMan of Wells, MN

Read Full Product Review »

and the Most For Your Money winners are…

It’s been a tough year economically and everyone is watching their spending.  With the holidays right around the corner, it’s going to be even harder than ever.  That’s why Buzzillions has found the best deals in each category to help you with your holiday shopping.  These aren’t just the cheapest products, because what’s the point of getting a cheap product if it doesn’t do what you want?  These are products where you feel like you are getting far more value than what you paid.  These are products that are highly ranked yet won’t break the bank.  These are the Buzzillions Most For Your Money winners.

The Most For Your Money winners are determined based on user reviews.  To ensure the winners are relevant and not discontinued or out of stock, we only use reviews from January to September 2009.  Products in each category are then ranked with a special algorithm that incorporates star ratings, number of reviews and the reliability of the reviewers (reviews by “Verified Buyers” are given more weight).  A price comparison is performed on the highest ranked products to determine the Most For Your Money winners for each category.

***Note that these awards are NOT influenced by any sponsorship or payments. They are based solely on the product reviews of real consumers and price reported to us by retailers.

You can see all Most For Your Money Award winners here.

When browsing for products, look for the distinctive blue Buzzillions Most For Your Money badge, and you’ll know you’ve found a standout within a category.
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Some Award Highlights

Toys, Baby and Kids:

• Most For Your Money Standard Baby Stroller: Graco Glider Stroller
• Most For Your Money Car Seat: Chicco KeyFit 30 Infant Car Seat & Base
• Most For Your Money Ride-On Toy: Little Tikes Rockin’ Puppy

Sports & Outdoor:

• Most For Your Money Ski/Snowboard Helmet: Giro Bad Lieutenant Helmet
• Most For Your Money Backpack: North Face Terra 60 Backpack – 3700-3850cu in
• Most For Your Money Elliptical: Stamina Products InMotion E1000 Elliptical Trainer

Electronics:

• Most For Your Money MP3 Player: Apple iPod shuffle 1GB
• Most For Your Money Digital Point & Shoot Camera: Canon PowerShot SD1200 IS Digital Camera
• Most For Your Money LCD TV: Samsung LN40A450 40 Inch High Definition LCD TV

Home & Garden

• Most For Your Money Dishwasher: Frigidaire 24″ Tall Tub Built-In Dishwasher – White
• Most For Your Money Washer: Haier 6.6 lbs. Portable Pulsator Washer
• Most For Your Money Coffee Maker: Faberware Stainless Steel 8 Cup Yosemite Percolator

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Congratulations to all the winners. You can see all Most For Your Money winners here.

Buzzillions has now made it easier than ever to save and share product reviews content and products using its new ‘Social Stripe’.

This feature lets you:

• bookmark a page in your web browser
• create a link to a page
• post a page to Facebook
• post a page to Twitter
• add a page to your Delicious bookmarks

You can see these buttons on the results pages, product pages and single review pages – both at the top and bottom of the page.  So start sharing your favorite products or any funny reviews you might run across (there are lots of those out there)!

Buzzillions has grown a lot in the past year. We’ve added a lot more features, including:

• Buzzillions Reviewer’s Choice Awards
• Search within Category
• Product Histogram
• Product Q/A
• Similar Products Module
• Review Face-Off
• My Lists
• Review Comments

In order to support all these cool new features while still maintaining site usability, we decided to overhaul the site design.  This has given us an opportunity to strengthen the branding on Buzzillions.  You’ll notice a new color scheme and header, as well as enhanced navgation as you browse the site.  We’ve tried to keep things simple, which is one of the things many of you said you liked about our site, but also added in some more color and pizzazz, another frequent comment about the site (too plain!).

So what do you guys think?

Old Product Page

New Product Page

A user recently wrote to Buzzillions to complain that the reviews for a product were too many positive  (5 star ratings) and seemed too well written to be from regular people.  So how can they be sure that manufacturers aren’t “stuffing the system with their self serving 5.0 reviews of themselves”?

First of all, Buzzillions never pays people to write reviews.

Secondly, all reviews submitted to Buzzillions (most of our retail partners too) are moderated by an expert team.  There is no automatic approval system.  Everything is looked over by a group of real people.  They make sure that the reviews follow our guidelines but they also make sure that the reviews are authentic.  Our moderators would never screen out negative reviews.

One thing you can look for is the “Verified Buyer” badge that appears next to a review.

This means that the review was actually written by a person that bought the product.  What happens is that when a person buys a product online, the retailer will send them an email a couple of weeks after delivery to ask them to review the product.  Note the retailer only asks them to write a review and does not pressure the person to write a good review.  Buyers who click through on the email link to write a review are those we can verify as actually having purchased a product.

Thirdly, you may have already noticed, but people are generally happy with products they have bought.  Makes sense given all the research that they usually do before buying them.  Chances are more than likely that they’ll really like the product they ended up buying.  In the rare case that they don’t, they tend be very angry.  This is a well documented phenomenon called “response bias”.  People are more likely to write a review if they feel strongly about a product, which is why you see so many 5 star reviews, few 1 star reviews and very little inbetween.  When you look at a rating system of 1 – 5 stars you might expect the 3 stars to represent average.  However, in reality the average is skewed positive and is closer to 4 stars.  This has been documented by a study of products on Amazon and you can see it at Buzzillions as well.  You can read more about this in a great article from 2007 by Farhad Manjoo.

Buzzillions provides you several ways to combat response bias in order to figure out the real value of a review.  If you click on the arrow at the top of the page next to “xx reviews” you can see the Ratings Distribution for that product and the Category Average.

The Ratings Distribution will show you if the reviews tend to be towards the two extremes or if they are more likely to be balanced.  Looking at the example above you can see most of the reviews are extremely positive and maybe should be read with a grain of salt.

The Category Average will tell you the average star rating for all products within the same category.  You can use this information to help judge the star rating of that product (or a specific review). In this example, you can see that reviews for all point & shoot cameras skew positive because the category average is 4.2.  Therefore when you read a 5 star review, you should keep in mind that although it is above average, it’s not that much higher than the 4.2 star rating for all digital point & shoot cameras.