Bush Mackel

Turns out that it’s news to many that November is Alzheimer’s Awareness Month. And in fact, next week on the 13th is National Memory Screening Day.

Now even if you don’t currently have any connection with Alzheimer’s, that’s not an excuse to not become familiar with the disorder because though there’s currently no cure, early detection can me slowing the progression of symptoms if the order DOES present itself…

For you or your loved ones.

What Really is Alzheimer’s?
Alzheimer’s disease is a progressive and degenerative disorder that attacks the brain’s nerve cells resulting in loss of memory, thinking and language skills, and also behavioral changes. And while the disorder is the leading cause of dementia for people over 65, it’s untrue that Alzheimer’s is part of the normal aging process.

“Ok. So What’s this ‘National Memory Screening Day’”?
Basically, it’s a day that promotes early detection of Alzheimer’s disease and related illnesses and to consequently promote appropriate action and intervention. As was stated earlier, early detection can mean significant improvements in someone’s quality of life as there’s a greater likelihood for the slowing of symptoms.

Thankfully, if you’re interested in participating by helping someone be screened, (of if you’re interested in screening yourself), the Alzheimer’s Foundation of America (AFA) has made it the process simple by providing screening locations on its website here. And of course all the screenings are confidential and provide easy access to follow up resources on the disorder AND caring for those with Alzheimer’s.

What You Can Do Today
Even though we’re still a week or so away from National Screening Day, that doesn’t mean you can’t make a difference now in the fight against Alzheimer’s. Here are some things you can do today! And remember, whaever you do - Just do something.

• Visit http://www.alzfdn.org/index.shtml and learn more about Alzheimer’s Disease and the AFA
• Go to http://www.nationalmemoryscreening.org/ and learn more about National Memory Screening day
• Think about contributing to the AFA by purchasing a holiday gift or just making a standard donation.

I remember the last time I was our local bookstore Barnes and Nobles that my sister-in-law kept going on and on about how she had to pick up the latest book of some series named “Gossip Girl”.

Being me, I didn’t take too much stock into the book so I was stunned when I heard that the Gossip Girl books were made into a series on the CW!

My sister-in-law was ahead of the curve!

The Story on Gossip Girl
The short of it is Gossip Girl focusues on the lives of a bunch of teenagers who deal with common teenager things like sex, drugs and school. And then there’s this blog that covers it all run by you guessed it, Gossip Girl.

Now even though I’ve tried to keep my own blog out gossipy affairs, it too has entered those waters. Remember the DMOZ Scandal I wrote about not too long ago? Not only did that cover something I thought was really interesting that was happening on the net, but it really seemed to fire some people up and certainly passed the … *sigh* … DMOZ gossip around the blogosphere.

Ch-Ch-Ch Check it Out!
Unless you’ve been living in a van down by the river, you know that there has a been a ton of buzz about this show. And fortunately for CW, that buzz seems to have carried over into some pretty good reviews. So in conclusion, just remember that if my sister-in-law likes it, it can’t be wrong! Check out Gossip Girl on The CW which airs at 9 p.m. EST on Wednesdays!

I don’t know much about stocks and investing. In fact, calling me a rookie would probably be a gross overstatement.

Which is why it seems that I’m just the kind of guy who needs to review MyWallSt, a “…financial social network for those interested in investing”.

…Honestly, I didn’t even know that there were such things as “financial social networks”.

Wait a tic - Maybe that’s what “make money online” blogs are. Ha ha ha. Anyway…

First Impressions
If you’ve ever been interested in stocks but were fearful about committing your own money, MyWallSt may be the spot for you. The site allows you to track stock picks as if you bought them with your own money, track them over time plus it provides a community with other members allowing you to leverage your own knowledge of the industry with others.

So the site looks decent and clean, and that’s certainly a good thing. Registration is also free which is smart since that will undoubtedly foster a sense of community (if people decide to embrace that part of the site).

The Rookie Challenge
Now I’m thinking that most of you up ’till now don’t care much about this site. Well here’s why you may want to perk up. MyWallSt offers a contest every week known as the rookie challenge where you can win a $1000 weekly prize! You’re given $100K in play money to build your portfolio where the person who has the biggest growth in their portfolio at the end wins. Best part about it is you’re all put on an even playing field at the beginning of the week so even if people have been there longer than you, they shouldn’t have a decided advantage other than outside experience.

Conclusion
If you’ve always wanted a comfortable and safe place to learn about stocks and trading this might be the place for you. From my perspective though, I’m very curious as to whether the community feature of the site will really take off. But I guess time will tell.

When I originally took this opportunity, I thought it was to review a straight forward Web Design company called Boston Web Design.

After I was given the details of the gig, I thought the link url, (www.brandidentityguru.com) looked really familiar. And as soon as I hit the link, I had to chuckle since I had already reviewed this site before, er at least its blog anyway.

“Hey, hey, hey! WHAT is going on here?!” - Mr. Belding
Well some of you may remember my previous review on this site was all about its branding blog and most of what I said was positive. Now it seems to me (at least by way of anchor text) that the company is now turning its marketing efforts towards their web design services which is fine by me. Here’s what I think!

First Impressions
If you hit the jump for Boston Web Design, you’ll see what I believe to be a pretty attractive landing page with some Flash on it. Despite its attractiveness though I think it presents some problems right off the bat.

If I’m looking at this from a consumer point of view, the big problem imho is that I don’t see a Web Design company. Let me explain. If I were to find this site from Google by typing in Boston Web Design, I would be more than a bit confused. Why? I don’t see anything here that says “Web Design” or “Development Services”. As a consumer, I need things to be easy not hard. This is a big problem. Furthermore, I think most consumers will see this as some sort of advertising/marketing company FIRST so any web design services may be lost.

Diving Deeper
After a bit of digging, I found what I believe to be the site’s web design page here at : http://www.brandidentityguru.com/NewPortfolio/interactive/interactive.php.

Frankly, I don’t know why this isn’t A)At a simpler URL and B) why I’m not linking to that URL for this review. But maybe that’s neither here nor there. This section of the site while getting the job done is still a stark departure from the Flash intro we saw earlier. Personally, I would think we want to see that kind of…flashiness on the web design side of things and not just the intro to the site. But maybe that’s just me.

Conclusion
In any event, I guess the real question is what this site is working towards. If it’s just search engine love, they’ll probaby get some from all these reviews, but as we all know it’s not going to do much good if users leave the site as soon as they get there because they don’t see what they want.

The web site design is a process of planning; conceptualization, modeling, and executing electronic media content delivery through Internet. The web design sites are available on internet to serve the customers. Beautiful website design always appeals a customer and draws his attention. It requires wide range of skills. Various web design books help the professionals in their work to design a website. Now domain registration is also very easy a developer secures a domain name as per choice given to him.

A lot of us bloggers are serious about what we do. As such, we treat our blogs like our business and need tools to help our business run effortlessly, smoothly, and professionally.

iContact is a website (and probably more to the point) a set of tools that gives webmasters and business professionals the ability to easily take care of common marketing tasks such as newsletters and mass e-mailings.

First Impressions
As I start with most of my reviews, I had to take a look at the website. Most of the sites I’ve been reviewing lately have that “fresh and clean” look and iContact Email Marketing Software is no exception.

Everything that you want to find in regards to the product is right at the top, so finding what you need is a breeze.

Features That You’ll Smile About
Depending on your level of computer proficiency, you may find some of their tools beneath you, but for regular business folk who are still getting up to speed with computers and the net, a lot of these are sure to peak their interest. Check out a few of them:

• WYSIWYG Newsletter Editor
• Mass E-Mailings take the load off of YOUR server!
• Contact Management System and Follow-up System
• Make surveys, web signup forms and more…

Is This Right for You?
If you’re a business professional who does a lot of salesperson like tasks, I could see iContact being gold. Especially considering you can use it for as little as $9.99 per month and you have the ability to access it from any computer. For others, you may not immediately see the need for something like iContact but then again, sometimes you need a set of tools to remind you that you should be reaching out to customers (and not just the first time) but months down the line. Sure, with a little elbow grease and knno how, a few of us could create a set of tools like iContact Email Marketing Software for personal use, but as they say - “Time is Money” and it looks like iContact could’ve already put in all the time for us. *nod*

As a guy who seems to spend more time online than in the real world, you know I had to take the opportunity to review a site called, Web Hosting Unleashed!

I’ve been with a couple hosts myself - Interland, 1and1 and now Web Intellects. And personally, I feel that if I had a place to get good reviews before playing “hosting Russian roulette” I would’ve saved myself a lot of pain.

WHU could be such a place.

Need a Host?
Web Hosting Unleashed is a site that where anyone can go and find multiple reviews on many popular (and non popular) hosting companies submitted by regular people just like you and I.

First Impressions
Right off the bat I love the interface. It’s clean, easy to read, and everything that you want is immediately there on the nav bar or in the right side of the content at your disposal. So for that, the site gets an A+. I also really like how the top nav is already divided into common types of hosting (dedicated, reseller, vps, etc) that you would search for. The interface really makes diving in to everything ridiculously easy.

Diving Deeper
With a lot of these sites I review that are looking for a community or user support, initial feedback can be a problem but I was pleasantly surprised in this case. In the right content, you can search for hosting companies by letter, and you’ll notice that for each letter you a click on, a TON of hosts are listed and a good bit of them have a few reviews. The bigger ones have more obviously, but more importantly perhaps is the fact that all these reviews seem to be genuinely from real users, not the authors of the site trying to get their company off the ground.

Comparison Tool
The only thing so far that I’m not 100% thrilled about is the comparison tool. Don’t get me wrong, it’s not bad per se. But because the hosts are really only rated by users on support and value (and then positive or negative), how much are you really comparing? I mean if your decision is down to two sites and one is clearly good and one is bad you’re fine. But how about if the decision is between two decent sites and it comes down to OS, or bandwidth or something else like that? Not much help.
Conclusion
Generally, I’m happy with the site. The reviews are from other webmasters so if you read enough of them, you’re sure to have a pretty good idea of what’s “real good on the streets”. Of course with more people finding the site and submitting reviews things will certainly only getter better - I just hope that the real reviews will outweigh those who will undoubtedly abuse the system to push their own host.

In this high tech digital world, e-mail is something that we all encounter and use on a daily basis.

It’s also something whose security we take for granted leaving us highly exposed to some very bad things including (but not limited to) trojans and viruses.

Thankfully, there are precautions we can take and GFI MailSecurity 10 for Exchange/SMTP is one of them.

Note: The following is a sponsored review.

Product Summary
One part e-mail content policy and one part anti-virus, GFI MailSecurity 10 for Exchange/SMTP protects individual users by working on the server level. Compare that with ordinary consumer products that go on individual machines protecting one user at a time.

But that’s not the only thing that separates this product from typical consumer solutions.

• GFI MailSecurity uses multiple virus scanners ensuring an unbelievably fast and efficient reaction to incoming threats.
• E-Mail Exploit Detection prevents NEW attacks on your system using old methods.
• Unique Trojan & Executable Scanner detects malicious executables without the need for virus updates.

Is This Right For You?
If you’re in charge of maintaining and servicing an Exchange or Domino mail server, you should certainly look into this product. For full system requirements you can go to this page: http://www.gfi.com/mailsecurity/msecfeatures.htm, but in general if you deal with any kind of SMTP or POP3 mail server, you should give some serious consideration to this product. After all, NASA thought enough of this product to use it. I’m sure it could do wonders for you too.

Note: The preceding was a sponsored review.

If you’re looking to do something good for a change, maybe you should think about becoming a Team Captain for an Alzheimer’s Memory Walk!

Whaddya got to lose?!

Not only will you get a little bit of exercise, you’ll more importantly be doing something good for a worthwhile cause.

What is a Memory Walk?
Before this opportunity came along I wouldn’t have been able to tell you! But after visiting the site, http://www.alz.org/memorywalk/ not only do I know WHAT a Memory Walk is, I know WHERE they are, and chances are they are around you. The Alzheimer’s Memory Walks are 2-3 mile walks usually held in Fall that raise a tremendous amount of money for Alzheimer’s. The walks are happening all over the place and for people around me near the nation’s capital, there’s a walk in DC on the 27th of October.

Why Should You Care?
More than 5 million people currently are afflicted with this brain disorder and with more funds for research, it’s possible that we can make a difference with this disease. According to alz.org, most of what has been learned about Alzheimer’s has been discovered in the last 15 years, so with continued funding for research we can continue to learn about and someday cure this disease that so many are forced to deal with.

Note: The following in a sponsored review.

Today I checked out a site called ShopWiki. Honestly, previous to this opportunity I hadn’t heard about the site so I really needed to take a minute to look around and see what was going on.

First Impressions
The first thing you’ll probably notice about the site is it’s clean appearance and its mission statement of sorts: “Discover a smarter way to shop with wiki buying guides, created, edited and moderated by the ShopWiki community.” Now that’s a pretty cool concept I think. I mean - How many times have you wanted to buy something but really didn’t know anything about it like personal audio, digital cameras or even home theater? For me this happens quite a bit with digital cameras. I know a decent bit about the technology, but it seems that every year there’s something new with it….dSLRs and face recognition technology are just two examples. BUT I digress.

The Guts
Now for this review I wanted to see how good this wiki was so I figured I should check out a subject I at least know SOMETHING about, home theater. To get started I navigated to this page (pictured below).

Eh…I’m honestly not floored by the presentation here. For one it looks like there’s pictures missing. For two, it seems that the equipment that I would think makes up the whole of home theater (such as receivers, speakers and subs) are buried in the page. And what if you don’t know anything about home theater? Oh, I guess there is the “Television Buying Guide Basics” link at the top. Only problem is, this link looks the same as all the others normal links on the page! Where’s the prominence!? I completely missed this link the first time around and only found it after I hunted on the page for it.

Receivers in Depth
So you know I had to click on the receivers link. The page that came up was decent, but the information provided seemed a bit out of date. For instance on the description about receivers, the article says top of the line receiver functions include, “most powerful, more channels, greatest number of s-video inputs and inputs for video components, on-screen dislay, direct digital AM/FM tuning, compatibility with all of the following: Dolby Digital and DTS (Digital Theater Systems) decoding, Dolby Pro-Logic”*sigh*

No mention of XM, component or HDMI/DVI connections, or THX sound decoding (to just name a few). But wait! -Scroll to the bottom of this screen and you’ll see descriptions of receivers with all of the above! What the devil is going on?!

Conclusion
My theory that while this site is great in principle, and to an extent in practice, the user base is probably too small for information to be edited and updated regularly which is obviously a problem. Furthermore, the design needs to be smoothed out a little too. But you know what? It’s still a cool site and definitely worth a look. I just hope more users find it and help it along before it’s too late.

Note: The preceding was a sponsored review.

Note: The following is a sponsored review.

Today I’m Promoting prepaidpro.net. On it’s front page you’ll notice the claim, “PrepaidPro is your source on the internet for prepaid cellular news, reviews. and comparisons.” Now personally, I don’t know too much about prepaid cell phones and the like, so I figured that I could check this site out from the perspective of a consumer who’s really looking to jump in the arena without too much knowledge.

First Impressions
The site has a decently clean and readable layout which is always good. On the left sidebar you can see the various providers that Prepaidpro promotes. I’ve personally had experience with T-Mobile before (I have a soft spot for them) but I’ve never done anything with their prepaid cell phones. So I figured I’d give that section a once over.

Into the Reviews
Clicking on the T-Mobile link, I’m taken to another page which basically lists some common “features” of prepaid cell phones. My favorite one of these is probably “credit check” because I know a lot of younger people who are interested in prepaid cell phones may find this question very important. Scrolling down the page, you’ll see more important info including plan information, phone information as well as an “editor review”.

Conclusion
All in all, this looks like a decent site to get some basic prepaid cell phone information. Plus, along with the provider information they provide, Prepaidpro also has a blog on their front page which offers some news in the mobile phone market. Only complaint about the site that I have is clicking on the “Jump Mobile” link in the sidebar took me to an area to leave comments. Where’s the review of the service? Hopefully, Prepaidpro will fix this little error soon.

Note: The preceding was a sponsored review.