World Reviewer blog

Alternative gifts are all the rage for the 21st Century Christmas, so if you’re looking for something to give that the recipient definitely won’t already have (and that isn’t an iPhone) you need to source internationally, and/or from small businesses… cue our ‘Products from Elsewhere’ section – a rapidly (but cautiously!) expanding selection of products that are impossible, or at least monstrously difficult, to find in the shops at home. Expect tasty seasonal treats, enchanting traditional Christmas decorations and products with history and national significance, all available on-line. Some have less-than-slick websites, others don’t have an English translation, but they’re all based in their product’s country of origin and all use original or traditional methods, materials and ideas. So, if you’re too busy to spend Autumn on a truffle-hunting course in the forests of Italy, or can’t quite make it to Grasse to mix your own natural flower perfume, this is the page for you…

Our editors are doing great work building a list of the world’s greatest works of art. This is a really fun project - full of controversy, to be sure, but the point is to put, say, 100 works of art up there, where you can find them, and then get people to rate them or add their own. Is the Mona Lisa the greatest work of all time? Clearly there is no such thing - and there are people like me who can’t stand the painting. But then that’s largely influenced by the bullet proof glass, the reverence given to it, and the fact that you can only glimpse it through a mass of jostling cameras.

But the real value of mapping these works is that anyone with any interest in art might find themselves in a hotel not 200 yards from a really spectacular work - and what better way to prompt them to pay a visit. I have spent many days on visits to Rome, and yet never known that inside the Borghese Gallery is that fabulous work by Bernini, Apollo and Daphne. Now I know, and I’ll make sure not to miss it next time.

We have just added a RSS feed to worldreviewer. For the non-geeks out there this basically means that you can subscribe to the latest experiences posted on worldreviewer, so that you have a list in your browser without having to keep checking back on our homepage (although we hope you do!). The feed is located here: Worldreviewer latest experiences. If you want more information on news feeds, including help on subscribing, here is an excellent introduction.

After the minor success of our first mini travelogue in Bath we have now posted our second video to the site ‘World Reviewer at the Royal Observatory’. Despite the less than glamorous title we hope you enjoy our wander around the grounds of both the newly opened Planetarium and the historic Observatory. Though the kindly security staff allowed us to film inside the Planetarium it’s not really set up well for it and the picture is too dim and grainy so you’ll have to make do with my description. You can check it out here: World Reviewer at the Royal Observatory.

Nathan and I will also be travelling to the Bristol International Balloon Fiesta this weekend to interview our balloon experts and collect some more of our experiences on film. If you’re taking part in anything interesting please keep me posted (at the moment only if you’re in the UK - but that may change?) so we can try and get some footage for the site.

The new design of the site will be loaded up soon - the layout is similar to what we have at the moment but it looks a little more seamless - so don’t get a shock if you go to log in and suddenly things don’t look quite as you remembered them! We also have an RSS and Flickr feed set up (as requested by a couple of our experts) so if you would like your Flickr photos or your blog to appear on your Experts page you’ll be able to load them up. I will be another way for people to find out a bit more about what our experts are doing.

After that we’ll be preparing for the press launch so if you haven’t already got your top recommendations loaded please try and get them up in the next month.