Collections and product finding

This one is related to the months-ago previous post about curation, but as it went off for a long while in the tv direction, here is a new post just about online searching.

In addition to the problem of information overload and endless searching that is enabled by extra information, sometimes I think people can become afraid to try a product because of poor reviews. Should I really be afraid to try a $30 pen-type mouse for the laptop just because some amazon reviewers are upset that it doesn't work the same as as a $300+ professional drawing stylus? Well, no. What I think might be useful in this context is a clearer list of similar products in the same price range, because not everyone knows what the appropriate comparisons should be. This is the reason I always appreciate reviews that include the key phrase "pretty good/bad for the money" which indicates that the reviewer actually sees this distinction. We can call this the comparables approach. 

What about those times when you want something, but you're not quite sure of how to find similar but different things that will serve the same purpose? This is a real problem if you don't know the name of the category that is appropriate to the item, or if it is new and so companies haven't started labeling themselves as such. This was a big problem when I was looking for the pen stylus, because although the pen and tablet makers think they're in competition (they are), for a laptop user, the tablet isn't as useful with my work laptop, so I really do just want a pen type input mechanism. I came across some very interesting products as a result of this search, everything from digital pens that remember your handwritten notes to download later (wow!) to high end drawing tablets, but it seems that there is only one company making the pen-type mouse. The big problem was this: how do you search for something that either hasn't figured out its category or has a generic type that will kick up a ton of confusing results.