Disclaimer: I’m being paid to write this review.

Onetime.im — in beta as of this writing — is a Firefox add-on that allows you to chat using multiple Instant Messaging networks. Support will be “available soon” for AOL, ICQ and Yahoo. Note the domain, .IM which stands for the Isle of Man. A bit of a developing trend in the instant messaging area I learned with others including meebo.im, web.im (Yahoo), pidgin.im (formerly GAIM), portal.im, coccinella.im and imo.im. At nic.im you can register tdavid.im for 45 pounds a year. td.im is available for a whopping 495 pounds a year! Pass on both accounts.

Perhaps Oneteam.im biggest competitor in the browser space meebo has the all important dot com where oneteam.com leads to a foreign website that isn’t related. Major bummer. Suggestion #1: use an .im domain name where you actually own the dot com. Most people are going to associate your business with .com, not .im.

Oneteam requires registration which was trouble-free and accepted the + in my email address. They might consider adding OpenID.

You’ll be sent a standard validation link email. After clicking through it’s time to login. My first login on a test Windows XP SP 2 box was met with the unfortunate message:

Suggestion #2: fix this error message. I wasn’t too concerned because the email address given on the review request was from process-one.net, so I connected the dots, but some (many?) new users will be put off by this message. Once logged in a gigantic window opens that I immediately resized.

Suggestion #3: keep IM windows small like the Skype UI and respectful of screen real estate. From here my experience with Oneteam.im was mostly downhill. It doesn’t feel like much more than a prototype in its current form and I decided to list the things it needs to become a complete and usable beta. But before getting to that, I invited a friend of mine, Lestat, to check it out and see if he drew similar conclusions. Here’s a bit of our conversation inside a oneteam.im chatroom.

More suggestions for Oneteam.im
One of the first things I do with sites is update my profile. I like to change the default avatar image — usually something nondescript — with a picture. That leads to suggestion #4:

#4: Fix the avatar upload function with the profile. I tried uploading an avatar picture in JPG and GIF format. Neither was accepted. I was able to update my profile.

#5: Make it a lot easier to add a contacts from the oneteam.im chatroom. With a right mouseclick there should be an option to easily add the contact and yet there isn’t. When you click on the add new contact button in the upper left corner, the two options are Jabber or MSN but nothing for Oneteam? I asked my friend to try adding my Jabber ID and he said it didn’t work. The easiest part of using an IM service should be adding existing and new contacts.

Adding insult to injury, as part of the review I was given contact details to add (an email), but no instructions how to add the contact. Was this a Jabber ID? Or MSN? Those are the only two gateways currently supported as of my review.

#6: Turn off the sounds on the Oneteam.im chatroom by default. While you can easily click on the gears and uncheck the box, that ding sound whenever somebody types a new message in the channel gets old fast. Just start with sounds disabled.

#7: On the Mac OS X Firefox, Oneteam.im tells me I need to use Firefox. Huh?

#8: All new windows launches should open with buttons visible. Some default window sizes don’t contain all the form elements visible on initial load. For example, when I load the add contact window I have to expand the window to see the ‘add’ and ‘cancel’ buttons.

#9: 12 browser validation errors. Lestat took this screenshot using the Firefox add-on Firebug on his Windows XP SP 2 machine:

Overall thoughts
I’m not going to leave a grade for Oneteam.im in its present condition as of this writing like I would with other reviews. It’s just way too early to grade in its condition. Besides looking for suggestions to improve their interface, they mention Meebo and I’d say Oneteam has a long way to go to be as simple to get into as Meebo. They might have some cool features once you get connected, but if it’s not fast and easy to jump into, people will move along and try one of the other zillion IM solutions out there. I realize the browser IM space isn’t too crowded yet, but the IM space in general certainly is. I wish Oneteam.im luck as even if they fix all the things I mention, they still have a lot of work ahead of them to get noticed.

A final suggestion and I mean this positively not as a slam: perhaps it would be better to blend the Oneteam.im feature into another less crowded space.

Disclaimer: I’m being paid to write this review.

I hadn’t heard of the legal EZTakes online movie service, but was intrigued by their business which doesn’t try to get you to watch movies on your computer but encourages you to burn them to DVD that can be played on “most any” DVD player. Sweet, no DRM.

EZTakes self describes their service as:

EZTakes is different from almost any other legal movie download service in that we DO NOT use Digital Rights Management (DRM) and we make it easy for consumers to burn our downloads to DVDs that will play in just about any DVD player. Almost all of our DVDs include the same special features found in the physical retail DVDs. In addition to burning, our customers can also print their own label and cover art by using our free EZTakes Download Manager software. Although we just came out of beta testing in late 2007, we already have over 2,000 feature-length films on-line, including many dozens that won awards at Sundance, Cannes and other prestigious festivals, plus a few Oscar winners.

Once I clicked over and saw they had Troma films, I was hooked! I’m a huge Troma fan seeing The Toxic Avenger and Class of Nuke’em High several times when younger. Haven’t really stayed up with what they’ve been up to in the independent horror film market, but I had my eye on a couple films to check out right away. The fact that they could be burned to DVD and played in our DVD player was a bonus. I was ready for some Troma action.

But first the account registration and software download process.

EZtakes Download Manager Software and account registration
It isn’t required — or even available from what I could see — to register for an account through the EZTakes website, you can do that right inside their software. A bit unusual, albeit a nice touch. The download footprint is 25 MB and the EULA didn’t have any language that crossed my eyes, so I proceeded. The registration information required is pretty minimal: email address which becomes your username, password, first and last name.

I like that “yes” for the weekly email radio button wasn’t selected. Neither “yes” or “no” is selected. I chose “yes.” Fairly quickly I was sent an email confirmation with a validation link to click. Smooth registration and installation process.

Time to go DVD shopping
There are a couple free test videos you can go with but I decided to skip those in favor of checking out some Troma films. I choose the oddly titled Surf Nazi’s Must Die because well, I think all Nazi’s should die and the title struck me as classic Troma. I was also intrigued by another Troma title The Killer Condom, but planned to try the Surf title first. After clicking the download I was prompted to enter credit card information.

It accepted the form with no problem and the downloading began.

Time to download the selected Troma film Surf Nazi’s Must Die with default settings using the EZTakes Download Manager software on my cable connection: 1 hour 40 minutes. Comparable time to downloading movies on Xbox 360 but without the ability to start watching it midstream.

Wait, there’s a better way.

Download TIP: For those with the bandwidth and CPU, you can cut more than half that time by going into TOOLS->PREFERENCES ->NOW DOWNLOADING and moving the slider all the way to the left “Fast” and increasing the threads to a maximum of 5. I didn’t figure this out until about halfway through the first download.

Unlocking
After downloading the DVD, it goes through an “unlocking DVD” phase which took an additional 10 minutes. I’m not sure why it didn’t download unlocked to begin with? Is this some kind anti-piracy measure? The process isn’t explained in the interface anyway, perhaps that’s in the help docs somewhere.

And unlike the download process the unlocking doesn’t give a time that it will take, but does show a progress bar. Suggestion: add some sort of estimated time for end users. We want to know how long it will take, at least an estimation.

Moving the first download broke it somehow
After downloading I realized the default directory wasn’t the one I wanted to use long term. I wanted to use one of our beefier external hard drives. Changing the default drive was easy but when I went to move the file it locked up after about 15% of the progress and I had to close. This somehow hosed the movie and it wouldn’t play once burned or play from the computer.

I downloaded a second time (at no additional charge) and burned a new DVD. This time it froze at the Warning screen in our DVD player three different times. The only way I could eject the DVD was to power off the DVD player, turn back on, and immediately eject. I tried loading the DVD on our newest computer powered by Windows Vista and it froze on the Warning screen there too. The second time, however, it loaded the full menu.

Ejecting the DVD, I looked at the other side. It was clear with no scratches or other blemishes. I tried putting in our DVD player again and, to my surprise, it made it past the Warning screen. I didn’t clean or otherwise do anything to the play side of the DVD, odd.

Let me go back to the DVD burning process for a minute.

First time DVD burning experience
Would you believe this was the first DVD I’ve ever burned? Despite owning over 500 store bought DVDs and several DVD burner drives, I’ve never taken the DVD plunge before. Sure I’ve burned ISOs, lots of MP3 CDs and plenty of backup CDs but never a DVD movie burn — until now. The EZTakes DVD burning process?

Pretty smooth. Just pop a blank DVD into the drive and press the “burn DVD” button and then [sigh] wait. It’s another 10-15 minutes at 4X speed (the max speed my DVD writer would produce).

By now, I was a good three hours into “the process” and somewhat exhausted. I’d have thrown the flag and driven to the store to buy the DVD by now. Easier, less hassle.

EZTakes Satisfaction Guarantee
I like the EZTakes Satisfaction Guarantee from CEO Jim Flynn that states if you aren’t completely satisfied with the service within the first 48 hours of download you can email tech support and they will refund the charge.

No, I wasn’t “completely” satisfied, but not sure if that was because I screwed up the first download by trying to move it to a different drive or if that was a bug in the software, but I’m not going to request a refund. After all, I was able to redownload the movie again without additional charge. I suspect most won’t take advantage of this offer, they will simply try a second time as I had or quit using the service, but I’m glad to see the guarantee being offered.

Note: I was also offered to have the cost of buying the movie reimbursed as part of writing this review but am declining that polite offer. I wanted to see this movie and have no problems paying for it, but I did find it pretty cool that in the review request notes EZTakes indicated that they would still pay the studio for the film even if I requested a refund. These guys are clearly serious about running a legit operation. Respect.

Comparing to DVD purchases
A couple omissions when comparing to buying the DVD in the store:

1. No transfer of ownership rights. You own these movies forever, yes, literally forever. Because the Terms of Use state you cannot resell the material. This makes building a collection for future sale, which we are doing with our store bought DVDs impossible with EZTakes current licensing. They should provide a transfer of ownership clause. Why can’t I permanently transfer ownership to another EZTakes user? Even for a small fee that they could pay the studios again and keep some for themselves.
2. Unprofessional packaging. Printing out packaging unless you are a professional printer with expensive equipment is cheesy. I’m sorry, but even with the coolness of my Lightscribe DVD writer — which I didn’t actually use the Lightscribe function — it’s nowhere close to the DVD you buy in the store.

Summary and grade
Of the many online video download services, EZTakes scores points for wanting to eliminate DRM. They told me in the review comments that their strategy is working and they’re receiving reports they are outselling some billion dollar competitors. For those who like independent films, I believe that.

It would be much better if the major studios would sign onto this service, however the main weakness which I can’t really get past is there being no collector’s value to the deal and the whole “process” to downloading and burning is still a bit clumsy and time consuming. I don’t want to spend hours getting to the movie I want to see. Even on Xbox Live when we rent a movie we can start watching it after it streams for a little while.

Also I can go pick out and buy the DVD from the store (admittedly not many of these independent titles) and be home within 30-45 minutes watching it. While I could pick out, buy and download a movie from EZTakes in that time, there is still the burn and will it play phase and the lingering realization that there’s no resale/collector value. I would like to see EZTakes do more about explaining what DVD players are not compatible with their service and why. Maybe they have that explained clearly in the help documentation but the only thing I saw clearly advertised was that the burned DVDs would play in “most” DVD players. Our DVD player is a newer JVC progressive scan player and as mentioned it did work after some fiddling. The point is that there hasn’t been any store bought DVD that doesn’t play. Perhaps a list of known incompatible players would be a good addition to the site.

For those who enjoy independent films and would like to support a DRM-free online movie service — and I think their mission is a good one — EZTakes, despite the shortcomings mentioned in this review is still worth checking out. Grade: B-

Disclaimer: I’m being paid to write this review.

Some people believe that local search is a space that Google hasn’t yet conquered. I haven’t found that to be the case in our local area as Google occupies like 98% of my daily searches, including local businesses. There is, however, something to the notion that nobody knows local businesses better than the people in the area.

This is where iBegin Source steps in offering yellow pages for businesses around the United States that anybody can update using a wiki-style concept. iBegin source offers a free download license for non-commercial use. Businesses can license a state for $1,000 or the entire US for $40,000. As of this writing iBegin claims to have 10,820,479 total business listings.

iBegin downloadable data
The data is pipe (|) delimited and includes the following fields for non-commercial (free): ID, Name, Street Address, City, Zip, Fax, Category, Website URL, Hours, Time Added (timestamp), Time Last Updated (timestamp)

Those who purchase the commercial license get the following additional fields: Phone, Geocoding (latitude and longitude) and Major Intersection.

Having the fax but not the business phone number for personal use isn’t very useful but fortunately you can search from the iBegin Source website and find the phone numbers of local businesses.

Don’t see a business you know is there? Registered users can suggest updates to the system either through the website or using the automated trackback system. The only fields required to become a registered user are username, password and email address.

Design and interaction
Some of the pages use inline windows that appear and the background fades like the definition for geocoding shown below:

I’m sure this was done for stylistic reasons as the site design otherwise is bland. I happen to like bland though when it comes to getting to raw data. The site is primarily text-based and I encountered no third party advertising. There is a button to click for online support but nobody was available (it’s a Saturday, not surprised) to talk to about the site/service.

Accuracy of data
Our offline business established in town since 1996 was listed under the corporate name but the fax number was about three years outdated. It showed being added on January 23, 2007, so whatever source used was wrong. The street address number was completely wrong — off by one number — we moved from there a year ago to our present location. I decided to attempt to fix/update the data.

Through the web form I edited the wrong information and corrected and then his submit and was treated to a PHP header error:

Warning: Cannot modify header information - headers already sent [server/file details redacted]

By revisiting the page all my changes took, but a keyword search still would not reveal the business either before the change or after. Compare this to Google and I put in our business name which also had our address a year ago with all other information correct. Both iBegin and Google had the right phone number (which has never changed), so that’s positive. Still, I don’t know why our business wasn’t turning up in the search using the zip code.

I tried a couple other searches for local businesses. Data accuracy overall was on par with other business data services I’ve seen, including the phone book, which isn’t that good. I didn’t fix any other data.

Other features
Some attractive iBegin feature for developers: every listing in hCard microformat and has location saved in KML, the aforementioned geocode data which would be handy for mapping mashups and everything is section 508 accessbility friendly using HiSoftware’s Cynthia Says.

Summary and grade
The problem I see with community updated data sources is what’s to stop competitors, vandals and spammers from altering data? It was easy to change our business information, too easy. And I didn’t even get into using the automated system. How do they know the address I put in was accurate? It’s relying on Wiki style monitoring and updates and my experience with public wikis is they only work if you have enough people monitoring the changes and locking out abuse.

Like any directory service, it’s only as good as the accuracy and reliability of the data. I’m not convinced iBegin Source will do any worse — or any better — than competing services that poll businesses to gather the data (like the phone company and local yellow pages).

Pricing? As a small business owner $1,000 for the entire state seems reasonably priced if you market to the entire state, however our primary marketing area is the greater Puget Sound area, so we’d need a much smaller subset than the entire state.

Unlike the Wikipedia iBegin Source is not a non-profit venture and they may find it difficult to get enough people involved to help maintain the integrity of the database. On the plus side the forms and scripts don’t have the annoying Wiki markup. Overall, not something I’d use for personal or business use, but others might find this useful in their local areas. Grade: C-

Disclaimer: I’m being paid to write this review.

In mid December 2006 our two year cell phone contract with Verizon was up and we didn’t renew. It would have been month to month after that, but we talked it over and decided we’d shop around for awhile and maybe go the pay as you go route. We paid OnStar for 100 minutes and as of this writing have 51 left, so we still have the ability to call from our the car, but otherwise we’re shopping.

Enter Wirefly which according to their own about page:

is the leading online retailer of cell phones and wireless service plans, offering more carriers, plans and phones than any other online cell phone store.

The parent company InPhonic Inc. is on the NASDAQ (symbol: INPC) and a quick perusal of the INPC perfomance at Google Finance shows the stock history as mostly trending downhill which surprised me somewhat considering they were #1 online for selling cell phones and services.

Site design, elements and page loading speed
Along the top of the Wirefly home page seven blue tabs are neatly aligned: home, phones, service plans, family plans, accessories, ring tones and pre-paid. According to the Webwait checker, page loading speed over five tests 60 seconds apart averaged 4.5 seconds. Maybe they were having some maintenance problems when I stopped by because I noticed some inconsistent loading between similarly sized pages with some loading extremely fast and others slow. A couple times I experienced timeouts.

Along the lefthand side of the home page prospective customers can enter their zip code and shop by carrier, phone and/or service plan. I entered our zip to test all three options and the resulting screens were designed well, clean and easy to understand and follow.

Minimal ads are run on the site with a standard banner atop to the right of the logo and smaller boxed mostly first party ads. They shove a lot of information into the pages, but manage to do it very well. A good example of how to get a lot of information into a small amount of space and not look cluttered and spammy.

Shop by carrier
Enter your zip code and choose the shop by carrier option and you’re taken to an additional screen to choose one or more carriers to compare. Wirefly uses J.D Powers & Associates Circle Rating system which showed the best carrier at T-Mobile and Verizon as the runner-up.

There’s a separate rating category for coverage area. T-Mobile received 5/6 and Verizon, Sprint, Nextel and others received 6/6. After choosing one or more you’re taken to a page detailing the plans including the pertinent information. The plan names by carrier are hyperlinked and you can click to have a small popup window tell you additional plan details like how long the subscription period runs, monthly cost and more.

You can “select” the plan and go to a page with phone options. You can search from there by phone that works with the plan. No unnecessary registration screens or annoying login reminders until you actually get to the point to pay for the shopping cart. If you don’t want to fill out the shopping cart forms you can also order by phone.

This is the way to do an online ordering system, I like it.

Shop by phone
For those who want to look for a cool phone first, use this option. Same deal as shop by carrier, enter zip, hit submit and start shopping by: carrier, phone brand or pre-paid phone. I checked out the selection of pre-paid phones from the available carriers: Cingular Go Phone, Liberty Wireless, Virgin Mobile and T-Mobile To Go.

Yes, they offer crack, er Blackberries too.

I didn’t see much in the way of smartphones and became a bit frustrated that there was no easily displayed search form. I know they offer smartphones because their guarantee talks about them (will cover the guarantee shortly). This is one glaring weakness. If you have a phone you are interested in and would like to buy through Wirefly but aren’t sure of the carrier you need to poke around or use Google and hope it’s covered there? Wirefly needs a site search. Anybody else see this anywhere?

Wirefly does offer a wireless wizard for those who aren’t sure what plan to buy.

Shop by plans
This will take you directly to plans by the carrier. Perhaps the least useful of the options unless you already know what company you want to do business with. Like the other two options, just enter your zip code and rock and roll.

Wirefly satisfaction guarantee
Wirefly offers a 100% satisfaction guarantee that basically says you can try out any phone and make a few short calls (no more than 30 minutes) and if you don’t like you can return and get your money back within 15 days. The fine print:

If you are not satisfied with your purchase or any other offers available from the wireless service provider, you may request a 100% refund of your purchase price. To be eligible for a refund, you must contact our Customer Service department within 15 days of your activation date to obtain a Return Merchandise Authorization (RMA) number, and you must ensure that we receive your purchase in original new condition including the wireless device(s) with no more than 30 minutes of usage, product literature, manufacturer packaging and parts shipped with your order within 30 days of your activation date.

You still need to contact the Wireless carrier directly to cancel their service, but most of them have 15 day return periods. This part which Wirefly can’t (or won’t?) help you with sometimes is easier said than done. We tried out a Sprint phone and service once upon a time and it took a couple calls to get them to acknowledge that we cancelled within 15 days and they received their phone back. Despite taking it into the store and getting a receipt, they still tried to bill us and called wondering why we didn’t pay their first and second bill. Buyer return beware.

The ahhhccessories and ringtones
The accessories tab leads to the accessories.inphonic.com subdomain and offers the ability to buy: car chargers, phone batteries, cases & holsters, Bluetooth, chargers, memory & data, faceplates and cover (skin your phone), headsets, value bundles, wireless signal boosters and the clearance items.

I don’t have much experience buying cell phone accessories but poking around at random the prices seemed reasonable and competitive.

As for the ringtones thing, since I don’t get the whole excitement with ringtones, I’m not going to leave that part of Wirefly to readers to decide on the merits. Personally, I think custom ringtones are annoying and not worthy paying extra. I can maybe see buying into software that allows you to make all the ring tones you want. The standard telephone ring works for me though and even when we have had cell phone service I haven’t done much (any?) ringtone customization. Better yet, vibrate mode and not bother everybody else, but keep in mind this is coming from a guy that doesn’t usually decorate his desktop either. I never promised to be a style hound.

I can see why Wirefly has this section though and I did clickthru to check it out briefly. I was mildly interested in their U-DOO service that allows you to create your own custom character and ringtones.

Wirefly affiliate program
Wirefly doesn’t stop at offering a compelling cell phone and service shopping site, they also offer an affiliate program through Linkshare (an affiliate program we like and also advertise here at Hmm). Since we are already with Linkshare I logged into our Linkshare account, checked the terms, and joined Wirefly’s program. We’re going to be running their banners and product text links in the future, if we aren’t already when you read this review.

Summary and grade
I can see why Wirefly is #1 in their niche. They have refined the site and have very few areas needing improvement (site search is one problem area). I bookmarked Wirefly.com and will likely be doing business with them on our next cell phone purchase. Highly recommended you check this site out for your next cell phone/plan purchase. I would welcome any comments on their service — good, bad or indifferent — from others who have tried Wirefly. Grade: A

Disclaimer: I’m being paid to write this review.

Earlier today I admitted not knowing exactly what beer goggles were but something potentially more mind-bending awaited in Flucidity.org which self-describes itself too many times:

“It is a meta-language (or, language of languages) for a lack of a better way to describe it.”
“Flucidity is a new way of thinking.”
“Flucidity is a completely ridiculous idea until you actually begin to use it.”
“You can think of Flucidity as a language.”
“Or, in plain English, we can create a map to what we want by creating a small representation of it, making our own set of rules for it, then letting it loose to interact with our world. Doing this will brings us much closer to what we actually want.”
“It itself is a simple representation of how everything works that we can actually make use of.”

Intrigued? After perusing the mostly text with a few image .org Flucidity website I was somewhat but I was also suspicious. Far from convinced. Dig deeper.

The Flucidity Theory is the work of self-described “high school dropout” A. Sorel:

Unable to focus at school, he subsequently dropped out of 8th grade. Eventually making it to high school he, again, dropped out before completing the first semester. During this time he sought solace in the early Internet and at the library. He also wrote a 100-page manuscript entitled, “The Nature of Existence”, at age 16, which he promptly burned upon completion. During this time he developed the predecessor to Flucidity Theory, calling it the “Chaos Engine.”

Flucidity licensing
Flucidity is licensed with an attractive Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-Share Alike 2.5 License which is interesting considering a “coming soon” category is listed for Flucidity Economics. Does this mean later an ebook or something else will be sold showing how Flucidity can make the author money, but not anybody else? If Flucidity is intended to be completely open, then why not just make the theory open to commercial application?

Aye, there’s the rub.

Is Flucidity BS?
But I’m getting ahead of myself and probably most readers, let’s try and figure out what Flucidity is first and how it can/might be used. The verbose Flucidity website somewhat reminded me of a typical Steve Gillmor rant and pretty much everything that is and was the AttentionTrust.

What we need as human beings at the most basic level to understand something are real world examples and applications. Fortunately — or unfortunately depending on one’s opinon after reading it — Flucidity offers at least one:

George wants to meet a smart girl. So, he starts by creating a representation that signifies his intent. Any will do. In this case, he decides to get a pair of reading glasses for himself. The new reading glasses will serve as his representation. He adds 2 simple rules to this. 1) Whenever he sees a girl he likes, he will put his glasses on and, 2) just before he introduces himself to her he will take his glasses off. Adding this structure to his new representation will focus potential energy his way. Thus, his desired interactions will be much more likely to take place, according to Flucidity theory. The result of this process will be a new represenation which, for George, could be discovering her name or telephone number (both of which are representations themselves) which, if utilized properly, will lead to further and more complex interactions and representations.

I read this example multiple times and thought it would read much better as: George wants to meet a smart girl. He thinks by wearing glasses and taking them off just before introducing himself this will motivate some brainy babe to offer her phone number and address. Loser.

Is this an example of Flucidity or a dating scheme? I figured I’d ask my wife if this would have impressed her if I had tried some cheesy move like this on her.

She responded with great sarcasm: “Oh yeah, removing your glasses would have made a big difference.”

My wife went further offering her opinion on Flucidity which we’ll get to shortly, but first let’s try and analyze the four typers of the universe and how they relate to this theory. Don’t worry, I’ve just begun to make fun of dating magnet, George.

Flucidity four typers of the universe
On the Flucidity introduction page the “basic premise” of Flucidity is described that everything exists with one of the four typers of the universe, with my attempt to shorten the description following:

* Representation - your intent to do something (”George wants to meet a smart girl”)
* Potential Energy - your emotions that compel you to do something (why George wants to meet a smart goal: companionship)
* Measurement & Structure - specific rules and/or guidelines to follow to obtain your goal (what George needs to do specifically to get a date with a smart girl)
* Interaction & Association - the action required to carry out your intent (George taking his glasses off when he meets a smart girl and introducing himself)

The how it works page offers more examples of each of the four typers. Here are merely two that again, I’ve shortened and perhaps over-simplified (intentionally):

Representation
- wealth: read a magazine you think wealthy people read.
- a new car: take pictures of a car you want

Structure and measurement
- wealth: find one interesting article in to do more research on in the magazine you think wealthy people read
- a new car: take five pictures from the driver’s seat, take photos of the color car you want, print them out and carry around with you (Look Ma, here’s the car I want to buy if only I had Bill Gates money).

Potential Energy
- wealth: the bookstore or magazine shop to buy the magazine you think wealthy people read
- a new car: take pictures at a dealership (Just what every dealership wants, dreamy mobloggers)

Interaction and Association
- wealth: company you read about with a promising opportunity
- a new car: test driving the car (and then pissing off the salesman when the hard sell turns up that you don’t have the money to buy the car)

Ok, I’ve had enough and didn’t even get into advanced Flucidity. Wish I was joking about that one.

Let’s skip the Flucidity nonsense and get to the meat of how to create wealth and get the car of your dreams. If you want wealth, go to work, stop reading magazines that Bill Gates reads. Passion creates energy and that creates results. If you or I aren’t passionate about the work we’re doing we won’t create good results. And without good results we’ll eventually be shown the door. In the case of the self-employed that means less customers and less revenue. Less revenue means less profits and less profits eventually means it is time to go back working for the man.

You or I don’t need to practice some long-winded Creative Commons licensed theory in order to achieve what we want to achieve, we just need to find something we enjoy doing and work hard at it. Some over-analytical type will show up in the comments and tell me how stupid I am and that I don’t see the genius here. Have at it, I don’t. Uncle!

That’s right I think Flucidity is exactly what it is italicized in one of the quotes on the theory website: A completely ridiculous idea.

Here’s what my wife thinks:

What an unbelievable crock of crap. A waste of time, instead of trying to apply some idiotic logic to a situation just set a goal and work hard to obtain it. How is flucidity going to help a person say get a new car? The average person is going to find this absolutely laughable.

Another reason I love my wife. She’s real and practical and doesn’t try to be some genius with some not so clever scheme, plan or theory. The only redeeming thing about this site and theory is that it’s not coming from some egotistical professor trying to blind us with his brainpower.

Maybe I should register my own .org and Creative Commons license my own theory. The TDavidicity Theory would be very short on content as I really only have one great theory on getting ahead in life and business:

Work hard, work smart, play hard, play smart.

If you want wealth, a new car or to meet a smart girl like studly George, you don’t need Flucidity, you need a good work ethic and love for doing something, anything. Sorry A. Sorel, Flucidity gave me a headache, but it isn’t a complete failure. Anything Creative Commons Licensed, even a pile of dog excrement doesn’t deserve complete failure. I’m sure this theory — and any theory — will work for somebody in the world and achieve great things and if so, that’s always a good thing. Go tear up the ladies sans those horn-rimmed specs, George. Grade: D-

Disclaimer: I’m being paid to write this review.

iBackup is another member of the overcrowded online backup services field, but are they just another? I set out this afternoon on our new Gateway Vista powered machine to find out.

Company background
From the about page:

IBackup is a service of Pro Softnet Corporation, an ASP and Internet Solutions Provider based in Woodland Hills, CA. Since its inception in 1995, Pro Softnet Corp. has been harnessing the power of Information Technology by providing Internet based solutions and customized Internet Software solutions for many Fortune 100 companies.

On the first site visit I noticed that at wider screen resolution the design didn’t expand and fill up the screen (see screenshot to right). They might want to have their web designer look at making the design create an expanding style sheet. Also, the picture of the woman smiling with her chin on her hands doesn’t really immediately say “backup” to me, although I like the floating file graphic floating through her head.

Is the free trial really free?
To sign up for a free account you must first enter in an email address. I’m very much against free trials that work this way. Let me download the software and/or use the service without giving you any information first. Most netizens are suspicious of this and it may cause prospective customers not to try the service. Offer people a no-hassle way to access your trial.

I entered in my email with a + and an identifier and the system told me my email was invalid. Wrong. name+identifier@account.com is a valid email format.

Regular readers know this test well. Note to iBackup team: please fix. I used a different email without the + in the name and received the message in the browser:

An email containing the link for registration has been sent to the email address you have specified.

Additionally, there was a note that Hotmail and Yahoo users should check to see that the mail wasn’t incorrectly flagged as spam. Nice touch but in my case, Gmail didn’t flag it as spam and it was waiting there almost immediately. The email offers a confirmation link to click to continue the process and explains the different iBackup options:

iDrive - setup an extra drive in Windows or on a Mac that you can drag and drop files to backup: “allows opening and saving files directly from your IBackup account using most applications like Microsoft Word, Excel to name a few.”
iBackup for Windows - downloadable Windows backup software: “Features FAST drag-n-drop, mirroring, incremental options and much more.”
Web Manager - “collaboration features for sharing, Image Gallery, drag-n-drop using WebFolders and search options to search by file names and by file content. You can view thumbnails of the GIF, JPEG and
TIFF images stored in any folder.”
Web Folders - “map your IBackup account as a network folder
on Windows Explorer, provides drag and drop functionality and also SSL for secure
storage and retrieval of your files and folders.”
FTP Ready - compatibility with “most” FTP programs

A nice, convenient selection of options for doing backups.

But.

That’s right, there’s a but. You can’t get access to any of these options with your 15 day ‘free’ trial until you whip out the plastic. This sucks, I’m sorry. You need to fill out the secure form and give them your credit card and other billing information. The 15 day ‘free’ trial option that allows up to 5GB of space needs to be cancelled before the 15 days is up to keep from being charged. I noticed plans that went all the way up to $4,000/year for 200 GB. Overage charges cost a pricey $2 per GB.

Unlike some of their competitors, there are no unlimited plans either for personal, business or both. For example, Mozy, that we advertise in the RSS feed offers unlimited backup for $5/month for personal use.

When looking at something like iBackup also keep in mind that one can get a lowend dedicated server from hosting companies for around $50/month these days, hard disk space is dirt cheap (TB drives are running under $500 now) and there’s plenty of software out there to use to backup files, some of which is even free. With Windows Home Server coming later this year, there will be yet another option for those who want to do local backups.

The major advantage to using services like iBackup is that the backups will be remote in case of local fire and they make the process easier and hassle-free. This service is worth paying for if the price and service is right.

After entering in my signup data, no confirmation or success screen was offered, it simply returned me to the home page. I tried to use my login information and it responded with the following:

Riiiiight, my login just created is incorrect? Maybe my password didn’t get entered correctly so I decided to try and retrieve my password. It wouldn’t take my username or email, simply responding with:

Argh.

Next I was off calling them on the toll free number to try and get some assistance: 1-800-949-3555. To get to sales you use extension 114 according to the machine, but on their support page it says extension 117. At 7:15pm PST this evening the automated response received was the sales help was “unavailable.” The reason why of course is that their support hours are: Monday through Friday, 6:00 AM to 5:00 PM PST, so I was too late. For businesses that work during the day these support hours work, but what about people who want to sign up in the evening and have trouble like I had?

I would like to have been able to review the actual software and see how that compared and also figure out if my credit card actually was processed or not (?). Guess I’ll need to call them tomorrow and watch my credit card statement to unravel this mystery.

Broken.

Unfortunately most, if not all, trust I might have in an organization to backup my important files with a miserable registration experience like this is gone. Don’t think I could envision a worst ‘free’ trial experience if I tried. I hope anybody who tries iBackup has a much better experience than me and that won’t be difficult to pull off. Feel free to write about your experience with iBackup below, especially if it’s more positive. For whatever it’s worth they have some rather impressive customer testimonials. Grade: F

Disclaimer: I’m being paid to write this review.

A couple years ago, on our weekly web radio show, we designated the last Friday of the year as the Official Annual Backup Day. On this day we encourage others to make sure to create and peform regular backups, preferably offsite in case of fire or other local damage. With December 29 a week away it’s timely to review various external backup options. There are basically three remote backup options:

1. backup and sync with an external server (like a webhost) using free or commercial software
2. backup and sync with your own server in another location using free or commercial software
3. use a third party service that offers a complete solution

Data Deposit Box (DDB) fits the third category and offers a trial for 14 days, but in order to tap that you have to give them your credit card information. They call this ‘free’ but that’s not ‘free’ in my book if you have to provide credit card information and permission to charge.

DDB offer a flat price of $2 per GB and this can be used for either business or personal use. One of the services this site is advertising Mozy.com just started offering a $4.95/month unlimited backup plan but it’s only for personal, non-commerical use. Mozypro.com offers service to businesses for $3.95/month + .50/GB. Using this as a straight basis of comparison, DDB seems comparable for smaller amounts of storage but is more expensive with larger storage options, however price alone is only one important factor. Interestingly enough Mozy doesn’t list DDB in their comparison table (includes competing services: Carbonite, xDrive, SOS Backup, Spare- Backup, iBackup in case you want to run your own comparison of services) and doesn’t advertise very well that their most popular plan is not for business use. This is promotional opportunity that DDB should be highlighting more because it’s a significant benefit for their service for business owners.

Signup process
The first step requires filling out a form with a bunch of personal and, if applicable, business information.

Next, you enter in a password and a security question.

The confirmation screen.

The activiation email arrived right away in my email box. I clicked the link and was then required to read the Terms of Service. Seems a little late in the process (after offering the credit card info) to see the TOS?

Analyzing the Terms of Service
Using EULAlyzer I checked out the DDB terms. While this freeware tool is primarily intended for checking EULA in software it also works ok for spotting potential problematic phrases in Terms of Service and privacy policies too. The overall report: “… has a fairly low calculated Interest ID. It’s a healthy read and there were some detected ‘interesting’ words and phrases.”

Looking through, these ‘interesting’ words and phrases included only one item that stuck out to me: Only 30 days allowed for disputing discrepencies:

END USER has thirty (30) days from the date that any discrepancy appears in END USER’s statement or any invoice to notify ACPANA in order to receive an adjustment or credit, after which time, all Fees will be deemed correct.

So check your statements carefully and don’t delay contacting DDB to get these discrepencies, if any, adjusted/credited.

Problems downloading the program
After agreeing to the terms and pressing the submit button it was finally time to download the software.

Wish I could say this part was error-free, but it wasn’t. Had trouble downloading the setupddb.exe file from DDB at the link indicated. It would stop and ultimately timeout around 70-85% of completion. Three times I’d cancel and restart and it didn’t work.

The fourth time I gave up on this link, logged in through the DDB website.

I used the link in the navbar inside the DDB admin area shown below.

Downloaded without incident the first time with this link. They might want to look into the difference between these two download locations or if it’s alias from one location to the other doublecheck the file.

Software installation
When you first install it asks what language you want to use (English is default) with the only other option being French. The next step you need to enter in your DDB username and password. Then it’s onto the screen to choose what files to backup with the following defaut checked:

After a few seconds the software completed installation and asked me to click finish. Next, the application started without error. Flawless installation.

Running the desktop program: BACKUP
The desktop program pauses whenever it detects mouse or keyboard activity by default. It’s a one minute suspend. To disable go to OPTIONS -> settings and disable “suspend.”

With the OPTIONS->Folders settings you can add/remove customer directories to backup. I chose my custom Xbox folder to backup the games I’ve been working on for the Xbox 360 as a test. By clicking on the boxes next to the directory name you can select a check or a check with a plus.

The plus, I assumed, meant to also copy the subdirectories? There wasn’t an explanation. I tried with the plus to see what happened. Data uploaded is encrypted.

It took over an hour to backup the 71.25MB of data. Not an outlandish amount of time, but considering our cable connection is pretty snappy, this seemed a bit slow. Compared to the other service we’ve used, Mozy, DDB seemed a little faster actually. Still, can you imagine backing up many GB of data? It would be an all day affair in the beginning. I’m sure it’s incremental backups after that, but the first backup is going to suck. It is this way with most of the systems so there isn’t much DDB can do about this. It’s too bad we all didn’t have more bandwidth at our disposal. Just wait until the day we have the equivalent of an OC-3 in our homes and offices.

Web interface
From inside the admin area you can download files in your Data Deposit Box. The web menu works similarly to Windows Explorer in that you click to expand the folders. Deleting files is as easy as selecting the directory or file by checking a box and clicking the delete button.

I tested the built-in search function and was disappointed. For example, I tried to locate the file “falling” — which was part of one of the game titles and the search returned results. Then I tried “TD” and it found that because that was a folder name. I tried “Xbox 360″ and it returned a folder but when I tried “Xbox” no results were returned. This feature needs more baking.

You can also share files with other authorized computers. This could be handy for sharing backed up files with both office and home and act as centralized file server, although I think something like Orb (free) would be better. An authorized computer must have the backup software running. Any machine that doesn’t sync up with the DDB server in five days is considered “inactive” and can be removed.

Running the desktop program: RESTORE
After backing up I intentionally removed one of the game directories (I kept a backup elsewhere, just in case of course) so I could test the restore function. Clicking on RESTORE in the desktop client will launch another program. You need to login again and then choose the directory and/or files you want to restore.

Right click on the directory to bring up a “restore” opton and then click. This will launch another window (too many windows), where you can then choose where to restore the files.

This process since it was dealing with download instead of upload speed was dramatically faster. The restore process took less than 10 minutes and the files were back safe and sound. No problems.

A “Clean up” function exists — again it launches a separate window which requires login first. This will let you to deal with files that are stored online but not on your computer.

Customer support
In the admin area there is a self help area with answers a bunch of Q&A. The contact page indicates you can call during normal business hours which were listed at the time of this review as:

+1 (866) 430-2406 – Mon-Fri 9am-5pm Eastern Time
+1 (416) 203-2406

I ran out a test call after after office hours to see what the answering system was like. It was an automated voice. Extension 270 for customer support and ‘0′ for operator, should anybody reading need to call them.

Also didn’t see any sort of real time live online help through the web. No IM, ICQ, Skype, etc. That would be worth adding as a service for those who find it more convenient. Also didn’t see a link to this page inside the admin area. Shouldn’t these customer support numbers be listed somewhere clearly so customers can call if they have any questions?

As common with many online businesses they list email as the way to receive “a faster response.” At least it’s not a contact form, it’s an actual email address.

Summary and grade
From my testing Data Deposit Box is an ok backup and restore option for home or businesses. Read the fine print of other backup services to be sure they allow business files because many have buried clauses that say it’s only for “personal and non-commercial use” which is a big plus in DDB’s corner. The ability to manage from the web is nice, but some features seemed sparse and one important one — search — didn’t work as expected.

I didn’t like at all that in order to use their advertised 14 day “free trial” I needed to sign up and give Data Deposit Box my credit card info, but fortunately they made the cancellation process as easy as clicking a link in the DDB admin area, providing a text reason for leaving (a form you can fill in whatever) and didn’t make me call them like some services. It is too often easier to sign up for stuff than it is to cancel which both processes should be easy. AOL will be a better company when it learns this valuable customer lesson.

The software uninstallation process was smooth and required an uneventful reboot.

For personal, non-commercial use don’t bother with Data Deposit Box, especially when an unlimited plan through Mozy exists for under five bones a month now and they give away 2GB of storage for free. No credit card required to take advantage of that either.

Neither of our businesses would pay for a third party service like Data Deposit Box because we have plenty of private web space on our dedicated servers, but for businesses who don’t have dedicated servers with extra hard disk space and don’t want to use a hosting company (note: hard disk space is cheap these days) and want a slightly less complicated solution, DDB is ok. I might recommend DDB to businesses on a budget, but I’d still recommend comparing against the other solutions before getting into a long relationship. Fortunately it’s a month to month deal, so a comparison for your business won’t be too costly. Grade: C-

Disclaimer: I’m being paid to write this review.

The single web page Search Engine Marketing Glossary by SEO Book author Aaron Wall seeks to provide definitions for some affiliate programs, AJAX, server status codes (301, 404, etc), people and more. The glossary uses the Creative Commons Attribution 2.5 license meaning others are free to copy, distribute, display, and perform the work as long as they attribute the source. This is a copyright friendly license that encourages mashups.

Wall cites the reason for creating the glossary was because people asked and then explains:

I think our personal experiences make everyone biased, but the bias in any of the following definitions is my own (or at least one which matches my own if I borrowed a definition from another source … like the Wikipedia), thus if there are any faults in the following definitions those faults are my own.

During this review when I use terms that are defined in the SEM Glossary, I’ll enclose them in brackets like this [definition]. When no definition exists in the glossary but might be a nice addition, I’ll use: [no definition].

Glossary page design
The top of the page is the same logo as the seobook.com website. Not even the word “glossary” merged into the title. There is a big RSS button which is visible in the screenshot but that doesn’t provide updates/changes for the glossary, instead it is tied to the SEObook book. Kind of disappointing not providing a separate feed for the glossary.

To the right at the top is a first party advertisement for search engine consulting services. This is the only traditional advertising, no Google Adsense, banners or buttons. I didn’t spot any affiliate links either when there were opportunities (e.g. affiliate marketing [definition]).

The basic design focus seems — intentionally or unintentionally — more like a single page advertorial for the SEO book than a glossary others will want to link to and use, which is a bit disappointing considering the quality of the content on the page. The same header is used for the blog and other key pages in the navigation header. It wouldn’t take much to add the word “glossary” to the logo and would help brand the page.

I like that the glossary fits on one 59K sized page. That should load fairly quickly even on slower dialup connections. The definitions and layout are clean and easy to follow and on the eyes (important). Quoted text is formatted attractively. White background with soft blue headings. Some paragraphs could use an additional line break for clarity like banner blindness [definition] which has two paragraphs sandwiched together (see red arrows added below):

Anchored definitions with 0-9 and A-Z navigation at the top, but not the bottom. Would be nice to see the navigation duplicated on the bottom and maybe even in the middle too for those scrolling through all the definitions.

At the bottom the category header is repeated.

Useful for whom?
When I looked at the glossary for the first time I thought it was a good way for Wall to organize terms used in his ongoing SEO book, but how much use would this page get by others?

At the top of the glossary, above the fold [definition], he identifies the way I search for 98% of definitions on the web (using Google with “define:TERM”). If define: doesn’t get me to a word’s definition then I’ll hit dictionary.com. Even if I bought Wall’s SEO book, I’m not sure I’d return to his glossary on the web.

Just to make sure I wasn’t a super web geek (denial alert!), I decided to ask a few folks in our IRC channel how they searched for definitions of words online. Google was the #1 response. Then I asked my wife who doesn’t spend nearly the time online that I do and a good friend who is what I’d politely call non web-savvy the same question: “when you need a definition for something, what do you use online?”

With a little more pressing from the latter respondents, the same answer: Google. Just another example of a powerful reference niche where Google acts as the #1 proxy [no definition]. Not Yahoo, MSN/Live, Ask.com or even dictionary.com.

I tend to rely upon authors to give me the context of words I’m unfamiliar with, either with a link following the term or on the term itself. In some cases I hyperlink unusual words directly to the definition. The SEM Glossary provides writers and editors an additional place to link to definitions, but admittedly with the exception of this post I’d be less likely to link to a non-dictionary, non-scholarly source for most the words in the SEM Glossary.

How were the words chosen?
The next question that came to me as I looked through the glossary terms were how did these relate to search engine marketing? PHP [definition]? A programming language. Opera [definition]? A browser. I can understand PHP, but Opera? What does the browser have to do with search engine marketing?

Also, the glossary has a definition for “above the fold” but not the converse: below the fold [no definition], which I’ve used and usually explained several times.

Definition quality
While I didn’t read every definition, the definitions overall seemed competent with some definitions providing examples with related, external links and others a single sentence or two. Where relevant there’s some cross linking like with absolute link [definition] which shows an example and links to the definition of a relative link [definition].

There is also some marketing advice within some defintions like the bait and switch [definition]:

It is generally easier to get links to informational websites than commercial sites. Some new sites might gain authority much quicker if they tried looking noncommercial and gaining influence before trying to monetize their market position.

My least favorite definition in the glossary is Black Hat SEO [definition] which never really offers any examples or definitions, save for external links. Wall sort of touches on it with:

Within that highly profitable framework search engines consider certain marketing techniques deceptive in nature, and label them as black hat SEO.

No inline examples of what people consider black hat SEO? It’s a commonly used and highly flammable term in and in a glossary dealing with search engine marketing should carry more depth. If size is of importance, perhaps cut out the PHP, Opera and John Battelle definitions and put some more meat into definitions specifically related to SE marketing.

Tools, tools
This tools link leads to a bunch of search engine related tools like link checkers, spider test tool, common terms ranking, site maps links and much, much more.

Summary and grade
There are three perspectives to consider when grading the SEM Glossary: writers/webmasters who would link to the definitions (limited), people who actually would use the definitions for reference (limited) and finally the benefit to the site owner (great). Clearly the biggest benefactor of the glossary is the site owner.

Perhaps the biggest weaknesses for the SEM Glossary are that people could be apprehensive about linking to it over other non self-promotional resources. The Google Page Rank for the glossary page is currently zero which supports this hypothesis. The first party advertising for the SEO book is minimal and definitely not offensive, but if I were Aaron Wall, I’d either change the design to de-emphasize his book and/or move the glossary to another domain, perhaps a .org. I realize this advice goes against the underlying marketing of his book which pays the bills, but if the goal for the glossary is to promote natural linking and use from people wanting to learn more from the search engine marketing terms I think it would be more likely linked as a standalone resource.

Of course the Creative Commons license doesn’t stop somebody else from registering a domain and doing precisely this which gives back where points are taken away, as long as they attribute the source. If I was rolling something like that out, I’d also create an API with access to the terms so that developers could mash the terms into their other search engines easily. Maybe even plugins for the popular blog engines so that definitions could be flagged. This might seem like too much for a relatively small number of terms, but I suspect as time goes on more terms will emerge. What, no accidense?

As for the final group: the people actually using the definitions? I think most will continue to use Google. Aaron is in good company fighting that, if he is even trying (which I doubt). Overall, an average resource that could be improved. Grade: C

Disclaimer: I’m being paid to write this review.

From the folks behind ResellerRatings.com, All Enthusiast, comes Dealighted.com a free, web-based service that launched on 11/15/2006 and bills itself as “a selection of today’s best deals many deal forums combined into one.”

Dealighted aggregates links to online shopping bargains from the following forums: Anandtech.com, FatWallet.com, GottaDeal.com, Slickdeals.net (Black Friday deals), Slickdeals.net (free stuff and hot deals). By visiting the site you’ll instantly get what they are trying to do: save you a step from scouring bargain posting sites directly.

Removing deals once they are no longer valid
One of the first things I saw today when visiting was a link to a Wii bundle pak from Wal-Mart but when I clicked through (twice, once to the forum link, and then again to the actual Wal-Mart ad) Wal-Mart was already sold out. Bummer. This goes with the territory, it’s a tough business doing a deal aggregation like this with time sensitive offers. It is possible by the time people see the deals they are already sold out.

Plasma HDTV giveaway on Black Friday 2006
Dealighted is celebrating their launch by giving away one Panasonic TH-50PX60U 50″ Plasma HDTV (with free shipping to the winner) on Black Friday (a $2,200 USD value). To enter the contest you only need to register for the site where they promise: “we will not spam you.” Registering also provides you with the ability to save deals, post comments, and email deals to friends. The form requires username, password, email address birthday and agreeing via checkbox to the Dealighted Terms of Service.

For a chance to win a Plasma TV, why not? However, since we don’t really know the people behind this site, I recommend using a non-important email address. Just. In. Case.

As a member of a family who believes in and regularly shops online, I’m all for ways to help find good deals and save money with online purchases, but first, are the Terms of Service a dealbreaker?

Notes on the Terms of Service
The section on “Best Viewing Practices” is strangely outdated:

This site makes use of dynamic HTML and is designed to display properly in Internet Explorer 5.0 and Netscape 6.0.

IE 5.0? Um, er, time to get with IE7 (at least 6.x), Firefox and Safari. The site does, in fact, render fine in IE7, Firefox 1.5.0.8 and Safari 2.0.4 (419.3). Otherwise the TOS looked normal, onto the Dealighted Privacy Policy.

Privacy Policy
The important section about how our emails will be used:

From time to time, we may email you to let you know about new site features no more frequently than once per month but generally only a few times per year. Your email address is never sold or otherwise provided to a 3rd party.

Sounded reasonable to me, I continued.

Checking out front page deals at random
Before registering I decided to check out a few deals on the front page at random. The topmost deal was for first season TV series at Amazon for under $10 USD. All listings are bolded until you click them and they look like this:

I’m kind of used to extra clicking with digg but still would rather go directly to the deal instead of a messageboard with a link to the deals, but that’s the way dealighted works. The details were on the forum and when I clicked through to Amazon the deal posted as an hour before was still live. I could get the following complete first season DVDs for under $10 each: ER, MADtv ($8.39), The Jamie Foxx Show ($8.39), Without a Trace ($8.39), Night Court, Murphy Brown, The Wayans Bros, The Fresh Prince of Bel-Air (First Season) $8.99 and The Fresh Prince of Bel-Air (Second Season) $8.99. All the links checked out and worked. I didn’t bother linking those up in this post because the deal is bound to be gone by the time you read this. We already have MADtv and ER and paid well over twice this price, not to mention the gas to go buy them from the store. Good deal.

Checked a few more deals on the home page.

The second link said Best Buy - PS3 so I clicked and learned that it was about how some Best Buy stores had PS3 in stock and explained how to get them to sell you one they were stockpiling for sale on Black Friday. Not sure if this was a deal, per se, more as somebody’s opinion on how you might get a store to sell you a heavy in demand item by talking to the store manager. Not a deal.

Here, see if you can figure out what’s wrong with this “smokin’ hot” deal in the picture below:

At least the shipping is free

A woman’s perspective
I asked my wife, the perennial online shopper in our household to check out Dealighted and provide some feedback. She informed me that 90% of the presents currently under the tree have come via online shopping. She is a veteran online shopper so her perspective was important to me for this review. Here’s what she had to say:

1. duplicates posted, somewhat annoying
2. some links not working
3. positive: links change from big and bold to small and not bold when you have clicked on them
4. if you don’t want to go find good deals on your own this is pretty cool
5. search works good, I put in Amazon and it brought up all related items to Amazon

I asked her if she bookmarked Dealighted and would be returning and if so, how often? She said no to both questions. Why not? She has her “places she likes to shop regularly” and “those places [she] gets deals from directly.”

This struck me as the biggest obstacle for sites like dealighted to get over. Why wouldn’t people just go directly to the deal forums or encourage their favorite sites to notify them of deals directly?

Registered user features
Having the deals mashed up on a centralized page is only marginally convenient. Being able to set email or RSS notifications by keyword is a feature noticeably absent. Why can’t we get notification by deals on say PS3? This would be helpful if Dealighted offered this but they don’t. Instead they offer the ability to save deals you find. Many of these deals are time sensitive so this feature isn’t t very useful unless you want to look through and find deals to email your friends about. For yourself, why wouldn’t you just bookmark the deal page, why save it at Dealighted?

Another cool feature they could add would be the ability to make your own deal pages by keywords and then embed in other pages and blogs. How about sharing deals with friends on personal home pages, myspace, etc.? I found myself the more I looked at Dealighted hoping for features they didn’t have.

Site design, navigation and ad saturation level
The site design is clean, albeit a bit unspectacular. Color scheme of red, white, blue and light gray works. There is really only one ad strip along the right sidebar. As far as monetization I’m guessing many of the links are affiliate links and somewhere in the chain Dealighted is getting a piece, but I don’t know that for certain. I didn’t see any third party ad programs, ad banners or rotators. The page loading speed is excellent with the homepage an impressive less than 12k! This thing smokes even on a dial-up connection. It’s a page optimized for regular visits and refreshing which fits the apparent goals of the site.

Use the Search, Luke
As my wife remarked, the site search is pretty good. Here are two searches for items you might be trying to bag a good deal on this holiday season:

Dealighted PS3 search
Dealighted Wii search

Summary
Dealighted is a site with a good premise, ok execution from a shopper point of view if you are willing to keep visiting and refreshing the site looking for the deals you are interested in. Unfortunately, it comes up short in providing some really killer useful deal notification features. It is marked as beta in the logo so maybe that means they are going to take feedback from reviews like this one and come out with a version that includes features like RSS/email by keyword deal notification, automatic removal of deals that have expired (might be tricky to provide automated, but somebody could keep the list clean manually) and direct to deal click.

I don’t see much point in visiting the forums — from the shopper point of view — to see what someone says about the deal when clicking over to the deal saves the shopper a step and explains everything the shopper needs to know (in most cases). It does generate additional ad impressions and possibly generate some additional forum activity but that seems more helpful to the Dealighted folks than shoppers. I think this might have been part of what turned off my wife. She likes shopping at sites like Amazon and if a third party site can provide something to enhance her experience and save her time then she would probably use it. As it stands for this review Dealighted doesn’t really deliver unless she keeps returning and refreshes the page looking through the most recent aggregated posts or using the search for the deals she wants.

I can see why Dealighted launched early being that this is the biggest shopping time of the year, but the current site version at the time of this review (the day before Thanksgiving 2006) feels rushed and incomplete. At least they could have teased bargain hunters by promising some of the features which would make good sense like targeted deal notification but I didn’t see any “coming soon” features listed. If somebody reading sees a coming soon page or a link off the site that leads to explanation about what is coming when this leaves beta, please let me know in the comments below.

If you are a frequent online shopper and bargain hunter Dealighted is worth a look, perhaps even a bookmark for finding some deals, but the lack of features to help you target what you are really looking for beyond conducting manual searches (with manual refreshes — or using a third party program to refresh the page for you) is disappointing. Without adding some/most/all the features I mentioned and if we don’t win the Plasma TV of course, I doubt I’ll be back. Grade: D+

Disclaimer: I’m being paid to write this review

It’s pretty easy to predict that ReviewMe is going to get a fair amount of marketing buzz over the next week or so — or at least until the twenty five grand they are ponying up to pay bloggers to review their site runs out. Doing the math that tells me that at an average of say $50 per review that $25,000 will buy them 500 reviews. That’s 500 links in Technorati in a very short amount of time. That’s not even counting the money they’ll make from the 50% split they keep for paid advertising or the free buzz they’ll get, especially if it fuels antagonists like PayPerPost has done recently.

TechCrunch Michael Arrington is already out saying TC doesn’t endorse it, adding:

we do note that ReviewMe has removed the most egregious aspects of the PayPerPost business model: no disclosure requirement, and a requirement to write a positive post.

Unlike PayPerPost, I signed up for ReviewMe. For those preparing to stone or label me some kind of sellout please consider that I have a long history of signing up for sites and services of all types including affiliate programs. Some things I sign up for work out, but most don’t. I love to get in and check out things early because that’s generally the most exciting time.

Why I signed up for ReviewMe
1. I can choose to accept or decline any review request, which means I’m not required to review websites/products/services that are outside my field of interest. Although I have pretty broad interests.
2. I’m able to offer my raw, honest feelings and opinion, none of that only paying for a positive review BS.
3. Because I like and agree with the ReviewMe disclosure policy which requires that all bloggers must disclose they are being paid for the review (emphasis mine):

At ReviewMe we are going to bypass this entire problem (opportunity?) and require that bloggers disclose posts that are paid reviews (in whatever way they are comfortable with and that is appropriate for their blog’s audience). These sort of disclosures are very common in all forms of media. Business as usual (for us, at least).

Any review I write that I’m being paid for will have the disclosure prominently located and be put in our seldom used adfeed product or services category, this way readers will always be able to tell which reviews we’re being paid to write. Regular readers are used to us identifying affiliate links already, so I don’t expect this will be a problem. Heck, there are ads on this site so in a sense I’m being paid to write anything seen/read here already.

4. Been there, done that. I’ve written reviews in the past on third party sites like epinions which paid significantly less (17 reviews on that site only generated a little more than $5 USD — slave reviewer wages!). I’ve also been paid to write articles and a monthly print magazine column (fortunately for good pay), so ReviewMe is very similar to other paid professional writing gigs. At least for this blog.
5. The amount being paid is fair and reasonable for both advertiser and reviewer. $250 USD for a 200+ word review with my cut being half that. The average number of words for all posts here is around 300 words, so ReviewMe’s minimum word count won’t be a problem. Similar to Text-Link-Ads ReviewMe uses their own algorithm based on Alexa rank (easily gamed, unfortunately), Technorati linkage, a guestimate of number of RSS subscribers, etc to determine how much to charge advertisers.

$250 and four stars was the highest I saw for advertisers, but I’m sure they’ll go higher for a five star reviewer. I saw it going as low as $30 (advertiser, $15 for blogger) for no star sites, so blog mileage, advertising and payment definitely varies.

How to sign up your blog
The company signup form requires the following standard fare fields: first and last name, email, mailing address, PayPal or check payment option. Signing up a site requires: blog name, RSS feed URL, a chosen single category, up to six tags to define the blog and a short description.

I noticed that Hmm didn’t show up for all the tags chosen, only the “Technology” top level category which perhaps stays that way until somebody looks at and verifies the site? Makes sense.

To my surprise, at least for MakeYouGoHmm, there wasn’t any sort of manual approval process — which could lead to splog city for them if they don’t have somebody manning the gate. Upon hitting submit it gave Hmm four stars and said ReviewMe was ready to accept reviews from advertisers. Bloggers can add up to 6 sites to publish reviews on. I clicked on the $25,000 banner and ended up choosing this site for the ReviewMe review offer that you are reading now.

I was given 48 hours to write this review. As it turned out, I didn’t need anywhere close to that generous amount of time, but I am curious how they “know” I’ve written the review? Do they spider the RSS feed and look for a link back to them in a new post and then count the number of words in the post to qualify or disqualify? I don’t see anywhere inside the ReviewMe blogger area where to tell them the post is there so my guess is this is how it works..

Update 9:34pm PST: Doh! After publishing I see there is a spot to copy the URL of the published review. They have two buttons “complete” and “done” which is a bit of a UI mystery. Should there just be a “submit” button? Whatever the case, when you are done fellow ReviewMe bloggers, don’t forget to enter in the review URL.

Depending on the site/service/product I’m reviewing I might need more than 48 hours to look things over. I’m not usually in a race to be the first to write about something. I would rather spend some time looking things over and thinking about how it might fit into our businesses or home life. Some things I can make a faster determination on like ReviewMe but others require more time. I hope that 48 hour figure is flexible. I can see advertisers expecting to see a review sooner rather than later, but I would look more favorably toward 7-10 days for review turnaround. That is, if the advertiser would like a more thorough review for their money. I sure would if I was paying for one. What do you think?

Site design / UI
The site is laid out cleanly and easy on the eyes as the screenshots show, they don’t clutter the pages. There is no third party advertising.

When do bloggers get paid?
Until I actually see money, I’m leery to recommend any money-oriented program, but this seems like a legitimate service. I’ll be coming back to this entry or updating from a future post once I see the money in our PayPal account. They promise to pay on the first of every month.

Good deal for advertisers?
It’s way too early to call if this will be of interest to advertisers on a wider scale but I know it will be useful if it’s targeted properly. Advertisers should read through the archives of blogs they are interested in and look for reviews written by the blogger to help with their buying decision. I like how ReviewMe offers the most recent blog posts, but if they could also provide live published review samples that would be very useful to prospective advertisers.

If any potential advertisers are reading this and wanting additional review samples, then conduct a Hmm search for review and you’ll find hundreds of reviews I’ve written on a wide variety of things over the last 3+ years.

Will there be enough advertising demand?
ReviewMe gets points for marketing creativity and the best launch promotion I’ve seen in awhile. The question is will there be more blogs than advertisers/companies wanting to buy paid reviews? Honest, useful reviews can be helpful to companies so they can make improvements so there is an additional benefit. ReviewMe just launched today and it’s very much a time will tell scenario.

ReviewMe improvements needed
1. they need a privacy policy and terms of service on the site post haste.
2. Add a way for bloggers to share/link to past reviews. It’s too bad that review quality isn’t a criteria in their algorithm. It’s not just about eyeballs if the review quality sucks. I realize that’s a totally subjective determining factor, but making advertisers do additional research might send them elsewhere instead when the price is the same between two blogs, there needs to be something to separate the two. Review quality.
3. a contact form as the only means of contact blows. Yes, they have an official blog but I’m not sure that will cut it either for a business. Heck, our company is essentially a one and a half (wo)man operation and we have a business telephone number. Get a live chat with manned hours or at least use Skype with a presence indicator. Money is involved here, customer support shouldn’t be an afterthought.

All in all, I think ReviewMe is off to a slightly better than average start. They’ve built it, now they need to focus on improving their service and generating advertiser interest. Grade: C+

Update 11/10/2006 9:45am PST: Received notification (pictured above) that this ReviewMe review was accepted. Took them about 9 hours to approve, I wonder if they are slammed?

Update 2/28/07 2:49pm PST: ReviewMe has added an affiliate program where if an advertiser buys a review (from anybody, not just your site) through your affiliate link you can earn an additional $25 USD. You’ll see any link to our ReviewMe listing in this post has been changed to this affiliate link and the ReviewMe Roy affiliate image link is shown to the right as well as an example.

Update July 4, 2008 10:12am PST: Earlier this year, MakeYouGoHmm.com stopped doing paid reviews.