Now this isn't a new website by any means (although it is new to me), but it tweaked my interest. ProductWiki

http://www.productwiki.com/

aims to be "the most comprehensive product information resource supported by a passionate community", and it's a really nice idea: a review site in the form of a wiki. It does look like a fair few of the products are just the manufacturer's blurb with no actual independent review, HOWEVER if that bothers you, since it's a wiki you can go and add your voice.

(And yes, I have added FeedGhost to the list. Feel free to go and be as critical as you like).

Another nice aspect of this site is that it seems to be under active moderation - there's nothing so depressing as visiting a "community content" site only to discover it's nothing more than a billboard for spammers. Not long after I posted my entry, I received a couple of questions from one of the founders of the site, so it looks like someone "official" is keeping an eye on things).

One little feature they might consider adding is "reviews needed": let's say I search for a particular product, and it isn't in their database, perhaps they could tally those and present the most searched for as "needing reviews". They do say there's a hundred times as many content-consumers as content-producers, and that could be a nice way of leading people into creating reviews.

Emma and I are moving house tomorrow (finally), so I'll be out of contact for a while. Hopefully the internets should be re-connected on Tuesday, but it could be as long as two weeks.

In the meantime, if you need to contact me, please email Lee instead and he'll pass on any messages.

I have a real problem with entity-relationship diagrams. I can never remember which way around is which.

Quick, answer me this: which side in the following is the parent ('one'), and which is the child ('many')?

What is the arrow pointing to? What does the diamond mean? There's no mnemonic that I can find there.

(If you can't remember the answer, and I don't blame you if that's the case, the 'parent' is on the left, and the arrow points to the 'child' on the right).

Just to make absolutely sure I can't remember, whoever standardized these diagrams choose to have arrows pointing 'downwards' on E-R diagrams, but 'upwards' on class-hierarchy diagrams.

It's not even as if my inability to remember is from lack of experience; the last commercial system I worked on had perhaps 200 tables, and I had a (minor) hand in the coding of the actual custom object-relational system itself.

I propose the following: drop those dumb diamonds that don't mean anything, and standardize on crow's feet diagrams:

One... to many. It speaks for itself. I'll even let you add bars and zeros to clarify the exact constraints if you feel you have to. Who's with me?