How not to do product reviews

Reading TechCrunch yesterday I was reminded of a question I'd left in comments on an earlier post there about the Sonos music system.

Unlike the Sonos post, the BlogBurst one rightly included a disclaimer. My question on the Sonos post,

just curious, is the Sonos a loaner, did you get it free? Disclosure please…thanks.

...has gone unanswered, but I think it's particularly important since Michael Arrngton mentioned there that more gadget reviews are likely to come. He knows how to do disclosure, I hope and trust he'll apply it to gadget reviews, an ares where there's just been too many examples in the blogosphere and MSM of freebies and compromised reviews.

See Fred Wilson's take on the same Sonos system or Scoble on other goodies for how to lay it all on the table.

Sonos is smart to put their product in the hands of influential bloggers, but that move will do more harm than good to their brand and that of the blogger if readers have any reason to suspect that the review is less than fully open and honest.