PC World has released a list of the 100 Best Products of 2007 and despite the fact that it feels a little premature seeing as it’s not even June yet it makes interesting reading. Whilst a lot of it is too geeky even for me, I though I’d pull out a few of the more interesting suggestions.

First place goes to the Google Apps Premier Edition. This is Google’s attempt to enter the business market by offering a bundle which includes email, spreadsheets, word processing and other services. Whilst it’s a neat little bundle which will, I’m sure, appeal to the home user, I just don’t see why business would use it. As I wrote elsewhere, I can’t imagine any major business using externally hosted systems to store sensitive data.

Another interesting choice is Pandora at #17. Pandora is a site which aims to provide users with a personalised radio station, by checking the music which you like and matching with music it thinks that you will like. It does this using something called the Music Genome Project which breaks down music into its component pieces (rhythm, melody, beat, etc..) so that it can find common themes.

Whilst it is undoubtedly very clever, I’ve found that sites such as last.fm and Yahoo’s LAUNCHcast, which offer the same service but uses their listeners’ music tastes to choose songs for you, rather than a scientific examination of the song’s make-up, do a much better job.

The New York Times gets a mention for its TimesReader which allows subscribers to read a digital version of paper, on multiple devices, and in a ‘print’ format. The idea here is that you can keep up to date and also enjoy the benefits of a more readable newspaper lay-out. At this point I have to paraphrase a recent correspondent to The Guardian who responded to another reader’s question on whether there were “any portable reading devices that aren’t too heavy?“, with a comment along the lines of “Buy a book!”

Surely if people want to keep up to date, but want to enjoy print lay-out, the easiest thing to do is to buy a paper? After 7 years in the publishing sector, I realise that the industry is desperate to find ways to stave off what many see as its inevitable obsolescence, but I really don’t think that this is the answer, just as digital editions weren’t either.

Overall it’s a very interesting list, which has already provoked a lot of comment across the web. And at the end of the day I’d say that was the primary aim of this list, which is a perfect example of something which would come top of any list of the 100 Best Marketing Techniques of 2007 - linkbait.

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