I was impressed by the list of ‘non’ awards that someone claims to be the truth with respect to Almeza’s claims to have received quite a few awards. Which was presented in the comments section of the Captain Trays giveaway. There were over 12 sites quoted as being false with respect to the claims that Almeza has made on it’s home page, where if you follow a discreetly placed link you will find 20 or so awards listed. The poster of these comments lambasts Almeza as well as indicates that giving away products from such a company as this will only taint the giveaway projects name.
I have the time to check things out when I’m in the mood and thought I’d do some simple research myself. I checked out six of the claimed awards:
Download2you.com which I found gave this product 5 stars, which was indicated as false by the commenter, who I may add has received over 100 positive votes for his in depth and well researched post. Then I checked Hotlib which the poster claims “shows no evidence of the 5-Star award advertised by the developer” (which also implied that there was none) well he was partially right as it was actually awarded 3 stars. I also checked BrotherSoft which the commenter said the “award is notable only for its complete absence”, which again is totally not true as I found immediately that Brothersoft had awarded it 5 stars as claimed by Almeza.
Shareup.com also gave it 5 stars and global software 4 stars. The only one I didn't find was Geekinfo.com, but it was a legitimate site until it closed down, evidenced by the fact that the page I was taken to said the www.geekinfo.com domain was for sale. At this point I decided to stop, partly because I realized it was getting really late (3am) and I also felt that what I’d found just proved that what has been said has no real foundation. And in my opinion should be deleted from the comments section, or at least the parts that are propagating the badly researched and mainly totally wrong evidence. I believe that the sort of accusation that has been thrown against a company who seem to me to be absolutly squeeky clean would be called libel and could possibly lead to some sort of leagal action by the denigrated party, ie Almeza.
I do hope that the comment hasn’t done too much damage. I wouldn’t be surprised though if Almeza decided to pull out of the project, which would be a great shame. Looking at the scoring with only 4 hours to go it looks like the damage has already been done. 68% of 191 votes were thumbs down to what I can only say is a nice piece of software.
What I did find was that using different search engines to research something such as this was definitely important because using only one would give a negative, whereas trying the same query on another one would yield a positive result.
It wasn’t my intention to try to rip apart what was a really well written and seemingly well researched piece of work; my intention was just one of confirmation and curiosity. It shocked me to find such negativity when there was really no cause for it. . It seems to me that he purposely wanted to make Almeza look dishonest.
What set me off on this was my own experience with the software which was a positive one and also The Bladed Thoths excellent and impartial review.
I can easily post evidence to support my findings in the form of screenshots. (but it would just be as easy for anyone to check what I say is true by going to these sites yourself and searching for Captain Tray Pro) I didn’t think to take them while actually doing the research, but as it only took me about five minutes to search for six positive hits and only one negative it would only take me 10 to 15 minutes to take some captures and post them to my photobucket account. Unfortunately as I’ve already said, the damage seems to have already been done.