Can You Trust Amazon Reviews?

When you are considering buying a product on Amazon, how much do the reviews matter to you? Most people see lots of 5 stars and assume that the product must be great! Unfortunately, this may not be the best solution for validating Amazon reviews. Often people are sent free products for positive reviews or they are given refunds if they leave 5-star reviews. If I am ever suspicious of a product, I will use ReviewMeta to check how valid the reviews are.

Review Meta allows you to paste in a link from Amazon to verify if the reviews are valid. I recently purchased a headlamp from Amazon that had almost 3,000 5 star reviews. I received the headlamp and it came with a card that if I left a 5-star review, I would receive a $15 Amazon gift card. To see if this was legit, I left a 5-star review and followed the instructions to email proof of the review. To my surprise, I received a $15 Amazon gift card for an $18 flashlight. When checking the flashlight on Review Meta the adjusted rating was 214 Reviews with 69% potentially unnatural reviews. Read More

Roku Now Support Apple Airplay

With a recent update, my TCL 65″ with Roku now supports Apple Airplay. Airplay has been the one feature I’ve wished my Roku TV supported. Only 4K-compatible Roku devices will work with AirPlay, which leaves out the cheapest players. To use AirPlay, your compatible Roku device must be running Roku OS 9.4 or higher. Your Roku device checks for an update every 24-36 hours or you can manually check for a software update if necessary.

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How to Fix NativeScript Issue with iOS14 and XCode 12

With the release of iOS14 and XCode 12, NativeScript apps started crashing. Unfortunately, the timing conflicted with the release of NativeScript 7 which caused lots of confusion. I ran into this issue with a NativeScript app that I built.  Since I didn’t want to update the entire app to NativeScript 7 and wanted to get a quick fix out, I was able to make minor changes that fixed the app. To find this solution, I spent several hours trying different solutions and wanted to write this guide to help others that may be facing these issues.

The error I was seeing before these changes

[runtime executeModule:@"./"];
Thread 1: EXC_BAD_ACCESS (code=1, address=0x2818dd0)

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Ways to Preview Short Links

A short link is a URL with fewer characters that redirects to a longer destination URL. There are several reasons for wanting to shorten a link. They take less time to type, are easier to remember, easier to share, and allow click tracking. You may see short links from services like T.LY, Bitly, TinyURL shared around the web. Shortening a link masks the original link, and its true destination becomes unknown. It’s important to know the destination when clicking on a link, especially if the short link is on an untrusted website or email.

Most popular link shortener services show the final destination by adding a + to the URL. Here is an example: https://t.ly/c55j+ Read More