What’s the best digital camera for your needs? Take away the burden of having to comparison shop for consumer products by using BestInClass.com.
A couple of years ago, I wrote a post on the concept of Web 3.0, where I mentioned the idea of the “semantic web”. We’ve seen the web characterized as these distinct generations (or waves, if you will), described and labeled with numbers:
- Web 1.0 was all about static pages.
- Web 2.0 was all about user participation and social networking.
- Web 3.0 is about artificial intelligence entering our online experience to tell us more about the stuff we want and need.
I was inspired to write about Web 3.0 several years ago because of some business ideas my spouse and I had been ruminating over in the past. Well, some of that rumination has led to a project we’ve been working on for a while; not sure if it as yet counts as “Web 3.0” but I’d like to introduce you to a site that tries to perform the job of a personal shopper. You tell it what you want and it’ll give you a response.
Image from Street Knowledge
Comparison Shop With BestInClass.com
BestInClass.com is not just another recommendations site like Epinions.com or ConsumerReports.com or even Amazon’s community of reviewers; its goal is to tell you what you want and need based on sophisticated algorithms that try to match up your requirements to the advice given by experts who review the products you care about. If you go to the BestInClass.com site, you’ll only see a site built for camera shopping, but there are plans for expansion here into other product categories.
The premise is this: make the process of shopping for complicated products like gadgets, electronics or appliances much easier and faster. Through a simple questionnaire, the site hopes to be able to tell you what camera (for example) will be the best fit for you. Most other standard review sites simply tell you what they think is the most popular based on their own criteria (or maybe what the public consensus is). But that’s their opinion. BestInClass takes it a step further by mining what product experts already say, to give you a tailor-made recommendation based on your specific, personal criteria (and not anyone else’s criteria). In particular, if you intend to buy a Canon Powershot camera and you’ve got a shopping budget of $200, or if you’re looking for point and shoot digital cameras for travel purposes, the site will aim to give you the most accurate answers it can muster. You can see here how it works.
What’s The Best Digital Camera?
The idea here is to cut out the time you spend reading all the consumer reviews, and to try to provide you ways to comparison shop more efficiently. Really, who wants to spend forever trying to figure out what the rest of the world is saying about a product (although there are some consumers out there who do enjoy browsing and reading reviews)? For those who want to cut to the chase, then this is one tool that intends to help.
Just because a Sony digital camera is marked as 5 stars somewhere doesn’t mean it’s what you’re looking for, right? So you sift, browse and shop around online until something strikes your fancy. If you are one of those shoppers who wants to cut down on this “shopping” time, and would like a pretty short list of recommendations for a given product, then this site should help you do that. Hopefully you’ll trust it enough to provide you that short list! Well, I can vouch for this because the technology behind this is two years in the making, written by someone whose software skills I highly respect (I say this as a fellow engineer).
A Little Background On BestInClass.com
So why do I take so kindly to this site? One huge reason is that it was founded by my spouse (who wrote the code) and his business partner over two years ago. See, I wasn’t the first one in the family who decided to start an online business!
It’s also one of the reasons I even got started with blogging. Back then, I was an Internet noob and just wanted to learn more about how to create a presence online. As a “techie”, I wanted to understand what it was my spouse and his buddies were working on so I wouldn’t be left out of any interesting conversations. So yeah, I can credit this “project” for teaching me entrepreneurship, turning me into an “accidental entrepreneur” and partially spurring me into entering the wild world of blogging.
So I hope you give BestInClass.com a spin sometime, especially if you need to buy a camera. We’d love to hear what you think about it! We’re excited about some of the coverage this site has already received around the web recently:
- From TechCrunch: BestInClass Tries To Help Consumers Find The Perfect Digital Camera
- From Lifehacker: BestInClass Tells You Which Camera The Experts Would Buy
- From MakeUseOf: BestInClass: Get Digital Camera Recommendations from Experts
Needless to say, we’re taking all the feedback we receive on this seriously, as we work to make the site better.
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{ 11 comments… read them below or add one }
Definitely checking it out SVB! Sounds amazing. 🙂
This is just a couple days too late for me. I recently bought a Canon Powershot A590IS off of amazon. We read consumer reports, though. Thanks for offering some other options – my wife and I both love to max out our research.
That’s great! Hopefully this tool will give you additional perspectives on online shopping. It would be neat to cover many more product categories, and that’s in the works!
Looks pretty good, will check it out!
Bestinclass.com is great! I wonder what the next product will be, after digital cameras. If it turns out to be ‘personal finance blogs’, I’m going to be a bit suspicious.
Best in class.com gives you reviews from the experts to be a guide in choosing the best digital camera
BestInClass.com is really a web 3.0 product. I would recommend everybody to compare various digicams in that site before making a purchase.
I make it a habit to check Bestinclass.com whenever I would be writing reviews and comments about digital cameras we want to feature in our site. The 3.0 features are a big plus for visitor retention.
I see. So, BestInClass.com is among the new web 3.0 generations sites. So they incorporate AI to aid the shoppers in searching and deciding for the type of camera to use. This is a great website and I hope that they will expand their products. I was able to narrow down my choice to Canon SD1100 using this site.
Bestinclass.com is a great site to compare digital cameras. Thank to this article!
I think Bestinclass.com is very thorough when it comes to buying a digital camera, however, I still like to get the opinions of customer reviews before I buy anything.