
Professor Liu was so gracious after the shoot… he even walked me to my car.. that doesn’t happen everyday.
By DAVID STREITFELD
The New York Times
In the brutal world of online commerce, where a competing product is just a click away, retailers need all the juice they can get to close a sale.
Some exalt themselves by anonymously posting their own laudatory reviews. Now there is an even simpler approach: offering a refund to customers in exchange for a write-up.
By the time VIP Deals ended its rebate on Amazon.com late last month, its leather case for the Kindle Fire was receiving the sort of acclaim once reserved for the likes of Kim Jong-il. Hundreds of reviewers proclaimed the case a marvel, a delight, exactly what they needed to achieve bliss. And definitely worth five stars… Read More

Bing Liu, a computer science professor at the University of Illinois at Chicago, is trying to devise mathematical models that can unmask fake product endorsements. “The incentives for faking are getting bigger,†he said. “It’s a very cheap way of marketing.†Photo by John Gress for The New York Times