Site Review Blog

Do you still know someone who doesn’t have a cellphone? How many people do you know that has more than 1? Well, I can answer these questions - First, hardly anyone I know doesn’t have a phone and a lot of people I know have more than 1.

We have all gone thru the hassle of finding the best phone and plan at some stage, and if you live in the UK and are looking for your first or next mobile phone the logical place to start looking is from the comfort of your own home. You can easily compare the plans, check out the latest handsets such as the LG Prada without getting the hassle and hard sell from a “Sales Assistant” - who really don’t often assist. You can easily compare what the different phone companies such as Orange offer and find a plan that suits your budget and lifestyle.

When dealing with someone - especially someone online it is always a good practice to ensure that they have a solid reputation and easy to find contact info. Well, the fact that they have been around for 11 years is a pretty good indicator regarding their reputation, and there is plenty of contact details to be found on the website.  Now, the website, of course the primary function is to be the online store. They provide a “virtual sales Assistant” (who by the way is not pushy) in the form of articles and information on all the products and services that are on offer. The site is easy to read and gives a pretty good description of what is on offer.  With a header and left colum navigation there is plenty of space to read the pages and see what is on offer.

Visit www.mobiles.co.uk

Now, we were really surprised with the request to review a site for a manufacting company that makes Plastic Moulded Components - but I suppose only because it was the first such request we have had. Now it is fair to say that I know absolutely nothing about manufacturing or even what a Molded Components Manufacturer can and does produce. A look around their website quickly gave me a reasonable insight into what they do and what they make.

Ok, lets take a look at their site and see how it goes about telling us what they do - because we do know a thing or 2 about websites! The site itself is a fixed-width, centered design and it’s purpose is to tell us about the company. It has a small but useful header with the primary navigation. The nav has links about the Company’s products and services as you would expect, along with Company info including Location and Contact information. The site makes extensive use of flash - which I am not a great fan of, but they have managed to pull it off - and have only used it for image slideshows and not done anything stupid like relying on it for navigation.

The site is actually written in 3 Languages - English, Italian and Dutch. When you view the site there is a link to the other 2 languages the site is written in as part of the navigation. The integration of the mulitiple languages is well done. As far as websites go, it is very functional, a little “industrial” looking but overall it is very well done. They have taken the time to do it right and I would guess that this would be their overall company philosophy as well.

Overall, I am quite impressed with the site and how it is put together - a lot of people could learn from it. Like I said, I know just about nothing about the products, but their website means I know know a little about what they do.

Visit www.impa-togno.com

If you are looking for a Broadband provider in the UK and you are continually bombarded by adverts and just want to be able to compare all the Broadband offers in one place with just the facts about what you are getting then you will find Broadbandsuppliers a very useful website. Before you get too tied up in the whole hype you migth want to just find out what Broadband is and the excellent what is broadband article explains and shows it all in very simple terms.

Now that you understand about broadband you might want to go looking for an ADSL Broadband plan. The first thing you need to do is to check out the availibility as not everyone can get ADSL Broadband connected. If you are unfortunate and cannot get ADSL all is not lost as there is an alternative. Just like a normal phone and a cell phone there is ADSL and Wireless Broadband. Now you are ready to look at the best broadband offers and find one that suits your needs for speed!

The website itself has excellent navigation and everything can be found within 2 clicks of the homepage. A heap of good articles and info on Broadband in general, and up to date info and offers from broadband suppliers in the UK. The site does not rely on fancy gimmics and is not loaded with graphics - it is just information which is well presented.

visit www.broadbandsuppliers.co.uk

With Facilities based in Several Canadian Cities, Fusepoint is a leading provider of Managed IT Solutions for companies that demand the highest levels of availibility and security.  When you partner with a company such as fusepoint to manage your IT services, you get a complete package.  The package is made up of many components to suit your needs and can include not only the hosting of your applications, but also extends to disaster recovery.

Now a company can offer a great product, but unless they back it up with great service as well, then your business can suffer.  Fusepoint not only have a 24/7/365 NOC or Network Operations centre, they also pro-actively monitor your, hardware, applications and network.  Who would you rather trust your IT services to?  A company that has a datacentre, or a company that has a datacentre and also manages your services end to end.  Well, if your data is important enough then there is no question about it really is there - you would want to know that there is resources ready in case of problems.

Go and take a virtual tour of one of their datacentres and see for yourself that they have everything covered from physical security of the facility to backup and redundant power to keep your applications available.

Fusepoint can cater for your needs from a few managed servers, right up to multi-site high availibilty requirements - a quick look over somoe of the case studies will help you decide if your company could benefit from Fusepoint’s services.

visit www.fusepoint.com

Everywhere you look there is a new electronic gadget or gizmo trying to capture your imagination.  Digital501 is a site that takes a look at a few categories of Digital lifestyle toys and gadgets. While not covering the whole gamut of what is available they appear to cover a few topics. There is only 4 topics listed and these are General, Computers, Mobile and Audio/Video.

The Computer section Looked promising at first, but only has a few topics - and most of these were about Macs! A quick look at them and then I skipped off. While a Mac may be a good alternative, I am not in that space and the articles held little personal interest. Mobiles - the next category We looked at  was more about Music and email on the move.  With An article about managing your Podcasts in iTunes and a review of a Blackberry.  The Blackberry article is fairly lengthy and talks about how easy it is to set it up for email on the go and synchronising etc.  I personally don’t have any sort of Blackberry - I prefer to be able to leave my email at home rather than have it with me everywhere I go.

Onto The Audio/Video - which concentrates mainly on TiVo or PVR (Personal Video Recorder). I have heard of a TiVo and Media Centre Computers but have not yet ventured into making a purchase yet.  The TiVo articles are really pretty good - It gives a decent explanation of what a TiVo is.  Well it is simply a recorder - much like a VCR, but it records video to a Hard disk (like what is in your Computer). At the moment, I am not really convinced that it is worth it - why add another box to record TV when I only actually sit down and watch 3 or 4 shows per week? I cannot justify the cost of such a device.  Well the Author of the Focused TV article reacons it is great - and makes it easier to watch what you want.

Finally, the General Section covers other sort of gadgets and High-tech toys - with Things like portable e-book readers and VOIP to name just a couple.  This section has the majority of items.  The site is created with Wordpress and allows user interaction in the way of comments on the Articles.  Some of the Articles have a lot of comments and others only have a few.  Overall the site has a reasonable number of artiticles, frequently updated and all are based around what a typical middle-class family may be interested in.

Visit www.digital501.com

Are you still watching TV on a 26″ screen or less? Still hire Movies on Video tape? You are considering getting a bigger TV, maybe a DVD recorder or TiVo but just don’t have any idea about all this new high-tech stuff.  you have seen the price of the latest flat panel tv’s and don’t want to make the wrong choice for such an expensive item.  Well, you are not alone in this department at all.  Fortunately, help is at hand with up to date info fom the experience of people who have recently purchased some of these items in the TV Technology Blog.  The guys who run this blog make fairly regular posts on all of the high-tech TV and personal entertainment electronic devices.

You get some down to earth and easy to read info in language that everyone can understand.  The posts are well thought out and provide a question, then a series of answers and some even have a summary saying how or why a particular option was chosen from so many available. If you want to understand the difference between LCD and Plasma technologies then you will find that here.  The Latest buzz is High Definition or HDTV technology and this is one of the key areas of comment and discussion on this site. Learn a little about what DVI and HDMI are before going to your local electrical retail store only to be confused by the slick salesman trying to sell you something you may not want or need.

So, if it is time to retire your aging tv, and put in a brand new flat panel into your lounge room then by reading this blog, and learning a little before you go shopping, hopefully you will get a better deal and understand what the salesman is on about.  I jsut wish this site was around a year ago, before I laid down $3K on a brand new Plasma.

Visit  www.hi-tech-tv.com

For the budding Spy or Security Professional Spy Review should be high on your list of sites to visit.  As their name implies, they provide reviews of all sorts of spy and security products.  The site is based on a wordpress Blog and gets updated with interesting content quite often.  The site is clean and very easy to use making it easy to find information and reviews on a whole range of things.

They have reviews on all sorts of cool stuff that you can buy or make for yourself.  From books to bugs they cover it all. Without doubt, my favourite is a cool gadget - the USB missile launcher!  Yeah, not a spy toy, but certainly cool!

The information is presented in a friendly-easy reading manner which is a credit to the webmaster.  Quite often a website will contain information but the writing style makes it impossible to read - you won’t see that here.  The webmaster is passionate about what is written and it shows, along with his wonderful sense of humour.

So for the budding “James BOND” or the security professional looking for an edge there is something for everyone at Spy Review.

Visit www.spyreview.co.uk