Site Review Blog

How many times,when surfing the net do you get to a site where they want your emial address so you can do something?

Yep, heaps - happens all the time.

Well, why not look at a way around this by using a Temporary Email Address

A Temporary Email address allows you to enter a valid email into a website so you can receive a message or even several messages without cluttering up your inbox.  So many times, by filling in your email on a web page, you end up getting heaps and heaps of spam and I am always looking for ways of avoiding spam.

Tempemail is a great site - you simply create yourself an email address that you can use to receive a message, then forget about it!  It is almost the perfect way to avoid giving your email address out to a site that might send you junk later on.

The website is very easy to use - First off, you go there and create a new temporary email address, then you use that address to get mail sent to, and finally, go and check your temporary email for new messages.  At no time, do you need to provide anyone your real email address -keeping it spam-free!

The site is pretty basic looking, easy to use and the service that is offered is free. It is a site that I use all the time and when I have checked, it has probably saved me from receiving thousands of spams! Take a look and give it a try.

Visit www.tempemail.net

With a site called Mr Memory card It is pretty obvious that you will be dealing with  a site that has a fair bit to do wtih memory cards!  A Great looking logo that is made up of a Memory card leaves no doubt where you are.

These days nearly everything that we use has a slot for a memory card of some sort.  The obvious one is your Digital Camera.  Even your mobile phone has a slot for a memory card these days to store your pictures and even music.

Mr Memory Card is a site that pulls together and places access to all sorts of memory cards at your fingertips.  Compact Flash, Secure Digital and XD Picture Cards are all available, to name jst a few.

The best range and the best prices is what Mr Memory Card is all about.

Whenever you participate in an online forum or social networking site you nearly always get an option of uploading an avatar. Firstly, an avatar is simply a small photo or picture that represents you.  Most people tend to use a picture or a photo that they took.

As an avatar is usually a fairly small square image the challenge is turning your photo into an avatar. You will need to resize the photo and additionally crop it into a square as photos you take with your camera will be a 4:3 ratio.

To create an avatar from your photo it no longer has te be difficult -by using an online tool such as the create avatar tool offerred by shrinkpictures.  It both resizes and crops your photo to a square at the same time.  Simply select the size you need and upload your photo.  All you need to do is to save the new photo to your computer then upload it as your avatar at your favourite forum or site.

A simple solution to a common problem and with no software to install by using an online tool.

Are you one of the approx 52 Million who visit the Orlando Area each and every year?

Well, with that many people visiting the area, there must be something that draws everyone to the area.  Well, there is quite a lot of things, but you would have to agree that with Disney World being only 20 miles from the City of Orlando it just might have a bit of an influence as to why. There is more than Disney world including the Universal Orlando Resort.

With this many visitors to the region you can imagine that there is a plethora of places to stay and you are right! When looking at Orlando Hotels you will want to find one at a good price and close to the things that attracted you to stay in the first place . Lets just take a quick peek at 1 of Orlando FL Hotels - and see what makes it attractive.  Well there is more than just a single thing - especially since they have listed  the distance from the Hotel to several of the major attractions.

The Orlando Vacations Hotels website is all about providing information on some of the Accomodation that can be found.  They have put together some great info about each hotel and the closest attractions to them.  You cannot do a booking online, but on every page in the header there is a toll-free 1-800 number to call to arrange bookings or find out more information.  The design of the site is what I would personally call old school - simple mavigation, good content and no fancy gimmick such as flash to distract you from finding out what you want.  Not evey site has to look like a design team spent months on it to be useful - the only time that is useful is if someone is promoting Art!

When you want to be 1 of the 52 million and visit Disney world, Universal Orland Resort, Seaworld or any of the other Attractions then find a week or 2 and see for yourself why the area attracts so many visitors.

Visit www.orlandovacationhotels.com

Technorati Tags: Orlando, Orlando Florida, Orlando Florida Hotels

No matter what it is you are thinking of buying if you are like me then you will be on the lookout to get it for the best (read cheapest) possible price. You could just keep an eye on your favourite discount retailer and wiat until the Item you want is on Special or you could go and do some searches online for what you are looking for.

Now, recently, I was looking at some digital Cameras and one of the ones in my short list was the Sony Cyber shot DSC-T100.  I managed to find a store with it, but it seemed quite expensive to me so I did some further research.  Shopping .com was one of the sites that came up in the search and it provided not only a list of retailers rated from cheapest to dearest who had the particular item in stock, I could also directly compare things like shipping costs etc.

Not only is Shopping.com a great place to find the best prices on the Digital Camera I was looking at, on the search page it also has links to reviews and the ability for me to leave my own review.

The website itself is all about putting customers in touch with Retailers and it does this quite well.  What I also like about this site is that it is not just targetted to US shoppers and covers the UK, France, Germany and Australia as well. Regardless of where you are in the world, you will be able to find similar items.

I actually found something on the particular page about the Sony Digital Camera quite amusing - there was an advert for energiser batteries. Now in itself this is not funny, but when you consider that this particular camera uses a special Sony battery I had to laugh!

No matter if you are looking for a Digital Camera or anything else, then shopping.com is a worthwhile website to check.

Visit www.shopping.com

Technorati Tags: digital camera

Be prepared is not just a motto for the Boy Scouts, but something that applies to almost all aspects of our lives. Being prepared means a lot of things to a lot of people depending on the context. The context that we are going to look at today is insurance. 

Insurance is all about being prepared for an unlikely or untimely event and making sure that if the specified event occurs that you are not financially disadvantaged as a result of the said event.  If we think Motor Vehicle Insurance, we never want to be in an accident, but in the event we are, we would want our motor vehicle repairs to be sorted out - so we insure for such an event.

One of the types of Insurance that we don’t think about too much, especially when we are younger is life Insurance. Life Insurance, just like motor vehicle insurance is planning for an untimely event. Now, there are many  reasons why most people don’t consider life Insurance when they are young.  Well lets face it, when you are young you think that you are going to live forever!  As you get older, start a family, buy a car and a house you have a lot of financial commitments. It is normally around this time that most people consider Life Insurance.

Lets look at a “typical” Family, A husband who goes to work each day, has a wife and children.  There never seems to be a lot of money left each week after paying the Mortgage, Car loan and School fees.  Have you ever considered how your wife and children would survive if for example, you were caught up in an accident and couldn’t provide for them?

It could be a pretty bleak prospect for them just to survivie. With massive debts, no income and just a small amount of savings, they are likely to be in trouble pretty quickly.  They would probably lose the home you worked so hard to provide for them.

This is just one example of why we should consider Life Insurance coverage. Now, I have been looking around to find some additional insurance, and trying to come to terms with all the different types.  What I found was a lot of people wanting to sell you insurance but not many offering solid, easy to understand information about the different types of Life Insurance that is available.  I did eventually find a site that had a a whole section on just that - with great explanations on Term Life, Return of Premium, Whole Life and Mortgage Life Insurance.  After reading each of different types, I then used their “Instant Quotes” page to get an idea as to how much each type of Insurance would cost and with this information, I can work out what is best for me and my situation.

The liefeinsure.com website was unlike most other sites - it was not just trying to sell me a policy, but provided valuable information as well so I could make a sensible and informed decision. The information is easy to find and written in a language that is easy to read and understand.

Visit www.lifeinsure.com

Every website needs a web host and in this field there are a lot of options.  For a new webmaster they often have no idea of where to start or even what they might need.  The best way to understand what the needs are are to follow an example of a website.

Ok, we get this flash of inspiration to create a website.  You spend several weeks researching, creating content and writing the web application needed to manage the site and need to get it online.  You will probably get your site online with a Hosting company that offers shared hosting.  This means your website will sit on a server shared with several other websites.  You will get a hunk of disk space - probably a few hunderd meg to a gig or more to store your files and an allocation of  a few to several Gig of bandwidth for people to browse your site.  You are restricted to the software already on the server, so you need to choose carefully who will host your site.

Now, this is probably just fine for a site just starting out - as you will probably not have very many visitors until the site is promoted.  Once your site starts getting a lot of visitors you might find that you want to customise it or offer more services.  In most cases this will involve moving your website to your own web server so you have the flexibility to install software that you need and provide much more server resources.

Making the jump from a shared host to a full hosting server is both a costly and daunting task.  There is of course another option in between and that is a Virtual Server.  Now, a Virtual Server offers all of the advantages of a full dedicated server such as full root level admin access, ability to install whatever software you need, customise and tune the web server and database to suit your requirements etc.  The biggest advantage offered by a virtual server is the cost.  Dedicated servers usually start at over $100/mth up to several hundred, whereas a Virtual Server costs much less.

A virtual server is in essence a chunk of a very big, powerful expensive server.  By using special software, the big server is effectively divided into several Virtual pieces that for all intent purposes appear to be a seperate server in their own right.  The Virtual server gets allocated an amount of RAM, Disk Space, CPU etc, and within this space a complete Operating system and applications can be installed - you could even use a virtual server to set up as your own shared web host!

Another popular reason for getting a Virtual Server is to learn how to admin a server or as a test and development environment.

VR Hosted offers Virtual servers which you can use when your website grows beyond shared hosting.   They have a range of plans - all of which are cheaper than a dedicated server.  Their website is easy to navigate, easy to find out info on their virtual server plans and includes FAQ’s and contact information. 

Visit www.vr.org