Shovelware

Internet vanity broadcasts may be nice for station owner egos or 'WKRP' wannabes without a real transmission tower … But this is essentially audio shovelware, no better than dumping videos or books without interactive elements onto a CD-ROM or the Net.

If you're going to buy eBay software, buy eBay software. That is, don't buy a CD with everything else in the world on it. CDs with everything in the world on them are known in the industry as shovelware. […] Anything offered as part of a shovelware package is suspect. If the eBay software seems to get lost in the hyped benefits of the shovelware package, it's probably not worth much.

Click onto it, however, and you will find a great deal of the content simply reproduces the news reports and features that appear in the printed newspaper – shovelware. […] [M]odified shovelware can also encompass shortened or otherwise amended pieces originally written for print. Such material may be augmented with 'rich' additions like comments, related blogs and suggested links to other stories, videos and podcasts.

The importance given to ‘original content’ for instance comes from the general notion that the online newscast is a new medium and therefore requires original content instead of supplying the user with mere copies of its print version (‘shovelware’). Though this may be a valid opinion, the underlying assumption – online newsmedia are just an arm of their respective print, television or radio bodies – can be criticized.

Perceived by some as a disparaging term, it is used to describe content moved wholesale from one communication medium to another with little or no alteration or adaptation for style, appearance or usability purposes. An example would be moving stories from print to the world wide web without taking advantage of the interactive and hypertext benefits of the online medium[…]. However, shovelware might not always be a bad thing, particularly for those who want to read an exact copy of the print edition of a newspaper […]

Web-based or e-learning technologies may be some of the most misunderstood technologies. Early and continuing efforts to produce online courses have often resulted in shovelware products. That is, instructors transferred classroom materials such as PowerPoint presentations and handouts to the web in an effort to create a course[…]. Shovelware lacks the instructional strategies as well as the complete information needed to develop an adequate understanding.

It also had to make it clear it would not allow publishers to simply port PC titles to the Xbox and pollute the platform with "shovelware."

We're a jaded bunch used to movie-licensed shovelware […]