I Review You

photo by Werner Schnell

If you’re from the UK, please take a look at this.

Directline city breaks is everything you need to travel inside Europe. All you have to do is to opt for a city, dates and where you’re coming from, in the UK. The main part of the site is pretty straight forward (which is just perfect): the search box is right at eye-level and contains the regular options: dates, city and rooms needed/people traveling. You could try it out for weekend breaks, but I’d definitely recommend it for longer trips, since the biggest weight in the final price is the plane ticket. Don’t take a night in Vienna for £416, if you can pay £690 for nine nights in the same hotel! The price difference is so small… Also, the flights are from almost anywhere in the UK.

The greatest thing about DCB is that it deals with hand-picked hotels, so you can get really great treats for a small price. Most of those hotels here in Brazil (or worse: in South America) are offline, so everytime something like this pops up to me, it’s a gift.

Wait, all-in-one-tool for short breaks is NOT all that DCB is. They also have city guides and a car hire service. I know, maybe if you’re going somewhere you already know something about your destination. But if it’s brand new to you, you should check it. New info about a trip destination is always good, don’t forget that place you heard about once.

Oh, and don’t forget that any online booking has £50 off the price! Nice treat there.

Photo by Jiggsykeken

 If you want not to get more pain as you grow older, you want to hear about PATH.

I must say, the first time I saw their info, it was a bit shocking. I mean, are we able to do that already? PATH is an abbreviation for (The) Place for Achieving Total Health. Headed by Dr. Eric Braverman, MD, PATH Medical researches ways that we can grow older, while still keeping our vitality as time goes by. Combining conventional and new techniques, their offer is to recognize the most rapidly aging parts on a human body. From there, the work is pretty much focused in the details of those parts. Working with this early detection option, your most fragile parts can get more attention before they even start to fail.

There are different options on what you should do. For the Brain/Mind Assessment option, you can have your brain diagnosed and check four key measures: Brain Power, Brain Speed, Brain Rhythm and Brain Synchrony. Respectvely, losses can cause weight gain, memory lapses, seizures and insomnia.

For a Total Body Assessment, the ultrasound can check the situation on your organs and vascular systems, while other diagnosis evaluations will focus on a neuro-muscular-skeletal review (pretty much like the reviews you find in IReviewYou.com) of your body.

One of the greatest things about this is that we really get to know our body age. For instance, the oldest parts on a 18-years-old body is only three to five years old. However, they can get as old as twenty years old on someone that has passed through 75 winters. Did you really think you’re as old as your birth date says? Hm… Guess not!

PATH Medical also leads to Total Health Nutrients, a resource for products that can help you on your anti-aging campaign. You should check that out.

SavingsAccounts.com should be called SavingYourTimeAndEfforts.com.

Saving Accounts is an online service to help you find the best rates for a saving account. It compares multiple online banks and finds the best suiting one for the specific features you want. I’ve had a major headache when I looked for this same info, but for my own country, sometime ago. I wish there was something similar here in Brazil. The listings also provide what other products this same bank is offering, such as checking accounts, loans or credit cards. Some of the banks will let you start your own account even without a minimum deposit. Don’t think it’s only those obscure small-sized banks offering this, you can name big ones there like HSBC and Citi.

If you’ve ever had or seen a flooded room, you know how important this is.

Water Alarm is one of those life-saving devices that you’ll eventually mention in a “If I had that alarm…” sentence. It’s a water detection system, a flood preventer. Simple, huh? To put it to work is as simple as: 1) place the battery; and 2) put it on the floor wherever you like. Any time water touches the alarm, it sounds. And I mean, any quantity of water. Even a little moisture can set this alarm to sound. Place it near the washing machine or the dishwasher and if one of those leaks, the system will sound. You can also check if a recently-fixed pipe (or …) is okay without having to watch it work all afternoon.

Also, this alarm system can be applied to work environments. This would be highly advised for ones working with fragile material, like the ones who work with restoration, books and other documents.

The most incredible thing of all is the low price of it. It costs only $29.95. (or $25,95 if you order more than five units). There you go: flood prevention with only a couple dollars.

I knew someday something would happen to my account.

Today I got the oh-my-god-so-feared email from Google. My account is suspended because of “invalid clicks”. Okay, my AdSense revenue was low. I mean, very low. But I didn’t use invalid clicks whatsoever. I didn’t pay anyone to click on the ads and I didn’t ask for clicks as you can see. However, only one thing is surely going to happen and that is: death. So today I died on the AdSense platform.

It seems like a big loss, in a first move. I lost $60 and that hurts a bit. But I was already moving in another direction and now it looks like it was the right thing to do. My profits from other types of online activities have been going up and I’ve already recovered half of that loss just tonight. I’m probably moving to AdBrite for random PPC ads and I’m introducing MarketLeverage too now.

Support for this blog has been great and I’ll continue to work on it! Long live IReviewYou.com!

I don’t have the habit of writing about on-development sites, but there’s always a first time, huh?

Content

The purpose of existence of RingtonesFactory.com isn’t that hard to guess. The name says it all. On RF, you can download directly different ringtones to your cellphone. Well, it’s not a download, actually. You must enter your own cell number in order to get a PIN. This PIN will enable you to get some features, such as ringtones, wallpapers, games and others. Subscriptions range from $9,99 to $19,99 a month. Somehow, this is a con on this site. When there are sites providing free content and letting you connect via your own cellphone, RingtonesFactory needs your number and some of your money. Also, if you’re looking for mainstream ringtones, you’ll find a good number of them. If not, hm…

Design

However, and this is one big however, the design of RingtonesFactory.com is pretty cool. Apart the black and white standard colors, blue and orange prevail, giving a light breathe on the design. Rounded borders and the discreet background also contribute to the Web2.0 layout. The bits of degradé also help lighting up the design. I’d say that the webdesigner did a great job on RF, the layout is there, all they need now is to improve their content.

Content

zdiaz.com is the first all-in-one blog I’ve reviewed here. Zigfried goes from money management to faith subjects as fast as you go from your room to the kitchen. The subjects cover money (online and offline), internet matters (SEO), faith, personal development and any other subject that pops in his mind. This is what makes a blog personal, instead of the niche “professional” ones out there. This is the type of blog that makes you relate much more to the owner’s personality than to a specific subject. This approach works in the long run, it’s easier to get loyal readers, I mean, the REALLY loyal ones, however, it’s harder to build the followers line up.

Design

The three-column WP style looks fine. I’m not a fan of the three strips, but this one is very smooth and doesn’t push the text of the posts too tight. However, I should say that I’m a little annoyed by so many ads. The light blue one is destined to ads and only to them. Good points, however, are the RSS icon right on top of the page and the Spottt and Entrecard widgets just below it.

You might have noticed that IRY hasn’t been updated in a while. Yes, I’ve noticed that too.

I’d like to apologize for the readers and reviewees. For sometime, I was having problems with my workstation. Don’t think you’re the only ones who were affected by this. I lost about two weeks of work (almost everything I have to do is PC-based), which could only increase the headaches and stress (and inumerous emails, feeds and messages unanswered).

Enough ranting. Here are the ones getting a review in the following days (in order):

1. Zdiaz.com
2. Valerie Joy
3. Business Leaps
4. Blue Trick
5. Jean Costa
6. Bucks from Internet
7. Time for a Smile
8. Life of Marie
9. Information Technology Blog
10. Search Engine Panel

I’m sorry it took so long to get over these problems, but I truly believe they are all gone now. I intended to post this earlier but I wanted to make sure that… I was sure of this.

Have you ever wondered if that web software works well? You better check MyTestBox. MyTestBox is a web software review site.

Design

There are a lot of pros on the MyTestBox design. I like the way it’s “all there”. The three columns theme works great, with the main sections right on top of it. Categories and Archives pop in a first glance, while the Popular and Recent Posts show up later, after you’ve scrolled through a post or two. I wonder why the subscrition options are separated. At first, I thought “shouldn’t there be a RSS icon near the subscription-by-email option?”, but, when you think about it, feedreaders usually look for the famous little orange icon, while the ones who want to subscribe by email look for a form field. Getting it a bit afar from the search field is a great option. I’m no fan of the “black-gray-primary color” style, but I can’t argue it suits perfectly the MyTestBox theme. It does get things apart. “Ok, here’s the main post, here’s the categories menu”, you think. So: it works.

Content

It was a bit back when Mircea Goia first contacted me about writing a review for MTB, so I’ve been reading the site for a while now. It’s so hard to highlight two or three posts from this site. The reviews are incredibly exhaustive, although they are very objective. Each review comes with an installation/configuration guide and a bit of background on the softwares. Their choices for what to review are great: (links lead directly to the reviews) open source softwares range from the new e-commerce soft Magento to well established scripts like WordPress; and - if someone thinks that OS is the only way - there are reviews on paid products like AbleSpace and AbleDating (social network/dating software).

The Widget
One of the things I love about this widget is its name. It’s THE Widget. The MyTestBox.com Widget displays the latest web software reviews on your site. It’s easy to configure and to install. A good thing about it is that you don’t have to use a WordPress based site to display it, you can use it in whatever webpage system you want. If you use WordPress, just download and install the plug-in. If not, just tweek the configuration on The Widget page, copy and paste the code on your site and you’re done.

My Mobile Adventures won this free review from our contest. Stay tuned for the next one!

The first time I got on Tink’s site was via Entrecard. I thought it was awkward. A really wide banner with a small and simple logo picture, posts in huge font sizes and all this general idea of “big simplicity”. And then I saw its title. That explains the…

Design

MMA is a blog optimized to be seen on cellphones (mobile anyone?), so there you go: big fonts, not too complex imagery to be loaded, primary colors. It all makes sense if you forget you may be browsing the site on a PC/Mac. (if you still want to read the blog on a big screen, reduce the font size twice, it will be a perfect fit)

The primary colors of the design are great for these small screens on smartphones. It’s easy to suffer from low contrast while browsing on them, so it’s a great call.

Content

My Mobile Adventures is a travel blog, a tourist journal. Tink claims the posts place are most oftenly SW Florida, Orlando and New York. Sometimes, something outside of those boundaries does pop up. Like ranting from texting on a non-smartphone, Tink, be sure you’re not the only one that hates that.

Small tips on blog tools also helps keeping the freshness of her blog: talking about RSS or about a Photobucket feature make a good break from the usual pictures and travel updates. Also, I’m a big fan of people that bring some good tips about something that they don’t talk about usually. It helps to spread the word out of the niche.

Her repertoire of photos is just great. The shore pictures deserve a honor mention.

What else deserves a mention is the destruction caused by MMA on our contest. Competing against 10 bloggers, Tink got 68% of the votes. Yeah, 68%. That’s what I call a major victory.

Congratulations, Tink!