Category: web reviews

Planning to Get Away?

Over at  they have a great online trip planner that allows you to build your itinerary for your complete trip.

Once you have added all of your intended destinations, you can sort out the dates and route that you intend to take.
They also have a great dynamic route map that shows your planned trip in an easy to follow layout.

When trying to organize a trip like this, one of the hardest parts is having to visit multiple sites to find all the information you need.  I’ve used the site to plan an upcoming trip, and the trip planner made the whole thing painless.

And if you are unsure of the place you are visiting, there are plenty of reviews and photographs from others who been there previously.

It even allows you to create your own notes and any other useful links that you find and save them with your itinerary.

Once you have saved your trip, you can email it to friends and family to keep them informed about your trip. (A great idea for young people to keep parents aware of your plans).

UK Rainfall Radar

What with all the recent rain and floods of late, I’ve just only found a great site for checking out the latest UK Weather Radar.

There is one at the UK Met Office but the advantage of the new one I found at Meteox is that they provide an RSS Feed (see below).

They also allow you to define your UK location using a neat Google Map API interface to give a picture of your actual location.

With the weather coming up this weekend, it might be a good idea to use something like this to keep an eye on the rain.

If you want to use the following JS on your site, just cut and paste the following code into your template where you want the feed to be used:

<script language="JavaScript" src="https://yaps4u.net/feed2js/
feed2js.php?src=http%3A%2F%2Frss.meteox.co.uk%2F&chan=y&
num=1&date=y&html=a" type="text/javascript">
</script>
<noscript>
 <a href="https://yaps4u.net/feed2js/feed2js.php?
src=http%3A%2F%2Frss.meteox.co.uk%2F&chan=y&num=1&date=y&
html=y">View RSS feed</a> 
</noscript>

Meteox.co.uk – European rainfall radar
European rainfall radar

Looking at Hawaii This Year?

We are only a few weeks away from this years holiday, but an email from a friend in the US has me thinking about where to go next year.
They are off to Hawaii in a few weeks and he was telling me about the Hawaii beachfront cottages available to view online at Hawaiian Beach Rentals where he found his cottage.

Now to us Brits, a trip to Hawaii seems a bit beyond us, but to most Americans its as common as a day trip to the beach would be for us.  
Hawaii to the Americans is within easy reach even though it could be many 100’s if not 1000’s of miles away from their homes.
It’s not that far away from the UK other than an 8 hour flight and price wise, it can be as cheap as many European holiday destinations.

But when you look at what the island has to offer, it far surpasses anything that Europe could provide. 

And one of the advantage of using Hawaiian Beach Rentals is that you can avoid the large holiday hotels where you often end up fading into the masses that would be staying there.

You can choose between a Maui condo or Kauai vacation rental home, you can find any type of holiday home to suit your needs, and within your budget too.

Hawaii Beach Front Cottage

 

 When you look at something like this home, it’s hard to believe that it probably costs less than most hotels.  It would be like a home from home and yours for the whole time of your stay.

And you get to buy your own food and that can be a lot cheaper than most hotel food, but that won’t stop you from eating out in the 100’s of top class restaurants along the many beach fronts and towns.

It’s something that we are going to seriously look at for next year, and Hawaiian Beach Rentals will be one site we’ll be spending plenty of time on.

Masterseek: Why Google for anything less?

Masterseek | Business to Business Search EngineWhen you search any popular search engine, the results are varied, cluttered and full of results that you generally have no interest in.

Masterseek is a business to business search engine.  Basically it’s a yellow pages of nearly all the business links and information that you would ever need or want.  It’s global too, so you are not restricted to a specific country.  To that effect, it has a nifty little search for quick searches, and a simple to use Advanced search when you really know what you are looking for, but just don’t know where to find it.

 

 

 

To quote from their website

Masterseek® Business Search Engine

Masterseek’s global search engine provides quick and free access to company profiles, contact information, and descriptions of products and services from more than 45 million companies in 75 countries.
You can also search in your own country or worldwide and find business partners, sales opportunities and new avenues to expand your business and increase your company’s profitability
Enter your company profile and showcase your products and services to the global community

Check out masterseek for yourself.

Knockoff Goods, Replica Purses? Legal or Immoral?

I was just about to send out a task to the guy that writes articles for me today when at the last moment I thought I would check out the web site requested.

Basically the job description said something along the lines of :

Ashleysboutique.com sells inspired by handbags of Louis Vuitton, Coach, Prada, Gucci, etc. Our target market is USA fashion conscious women.

Fair do’s said I.  Should be simple for them to complete.
But then visiting the web site I notice that they sell Replica Purses, Knockoff Handbags, Knockoff Wrist Bands and much much more.  I didn’t realize that inspired in the job description actually mean ‘knockoff’ or ‘replica’.  Now ‘knocked off’ in the UK means stolen, but these goods don’t appear to be stolen.

Now admittedly, they do not hide this fact.  And since the site is based is hosted in Canada, perhaps these are legal copies of the originals and what the site is doing is legal too.

When you compare the prices of the goods at Ashleysboutique.com  to those at the original artists sites, there is a big big difference.

Louis Vuitton: luxury leather luggage, French fashion designer

Coach Leather Goods

Prada

Gucci

Now I wonder what these sites think of Ashleysboutique.com.  The site isn’t new, so you would think that if it ‘were’ illegal in the US/Canada, it would have been shut down a long time ago.

Go visit the site and see for yourself.  If it were not for the price, you couldn’t tell the difference. (Can’t say anything for the workmanship, I’ve never seen one before).

Can you really get something for free?

Free Dating SiteI’ve never been a fan of dating sites.  Mainly because I’ve been married for 17 years and I don’t even think the web had evolved back then to support such a concept. (There might have been the odd relationship formed over the old BB net).

But one of my old work colleagues from the US has just emailed me to say she is dating a guy she met via the JustSayHi web site.

I have seen a few sites in the past, mainly mentioned in some spammy mail that I’ve been larting.
But after she had emailed me to tell me about her experience I thought I’d take a peek at this relatively new dating site.

Unlike the others I had seen in the past, this one doesn’t appear to be a cover for some sleazy sex site.  For a start, membership is free.  Absolutely free. 

To quote them:

The features are as a good as any paid dating site yet it is really 100% free. No credit card is ever required. We think a REAL good free dating site needs to exist and we built it.

Being an old fuddy duddy, I don’t have a need for a dating site, but I really admire what they are trying to do.  Far too often, most of the other dating sites are fronts for people searching for one night stands, full of half naked former eastern block girls and send a constant stream of spam mail to advertise their site.

JustSayHi is a fresh new approach and appears to be offering a great service (as experienced by my former work colleague).  In this day and age, gone is the stigma that used to be attached to anyone using a dating site.  With so many people spending more time online in Web2.0 type environments, meeting someone online is no longer considered taboo and is accepted in today’s society.