Computer Methods and Applications by THX2

PayPerPost.com - 300/unit

2009-03-14T21:05:00.000-07:00

Payperpost.com somehow tying up social networking and e-business via sort of mixing marketing services with blogging. This site is owned by a company with an appropriate name of Social Media Marketing.

According to Alexa.com, the site has a traffic rank of 37,107 and with a weekly average views of 0.0021% from global internet users, 43.3% of which are from India.

Basically, PayPerPost provides an online advertising service for one's website, product, service and/or company. They allow businessmen and other people to promote to their network of over 265,000 indepented bloggers. They allow these people to connect with their network of bloggers to create buzz (word of mouth marketing), build traffic, get product feedback, connection and linkage to others, create syndicates with others, and a lot more.

Also, the site attracts bloggers who want to get paid in what they do. PayPerPost advertisers are paying bloggers who write about their Web sites, products, services and companies for the sales and traffic they have helped to generate. Basically, they are paid for the opinion on various topics that they write about after getting the content approved.

On the Features. The site has created a marketplace where the bloggers will review, promote and market products, services and websites on behalf of the advertisers. The latter may be done directly because the site also allows one-to-one transaction between advertisers and posties (bloggers). They have also created this ecosphere that allows the advertisers to connect to the site's community of Posties and their readers via a variety of mediums.

Also, the PayPerPost marketplace has turned ordinary bloggers into publishing powerhouses. Videos from the Posties whose lives were changed by monetizing their blogs may be viewed by others, thus attracting more to become Posties.

The site actually looks as good as what it does. It does not bore, it is informative and it is safe (tested by McAfee daily).

Escrow.com - 300/unit

2009-03-14T20:09:00.000-07:00

Escrow.com is a trusted third party people can rely on when doing business online. Basically, it is an e-business site that serves as a meeting place for buyers and sellers who don't know each other. It offers service of holding an amount of money/property granted to somebody and releases it after a specific condition has been set, thus the name "escrow".

According to Alexa.com, the site has a traffic rank of 42,984. Also, it receives an average weekly hit of 0.0026% from global internet users, 43.3% of which are from the United States.

As have been mentioned, this site targets online sellers and buyers and offers trusted escrow services to them, offering a new way of doing e-business.

On the business aspect of the site, Escrow.com gives the following promises to sellers: Knowledge regarding the buyer's funds (that they are already authenticated and held before shipping of merchandise), Opportunity to reach new target markets, Lesser expenses on bad debts, Faster transactions, access to the site's customer service, updates on order status anytime, streamlined distribution, transaction details maintainenance for 7 years, and proactive sequencing deals.

On the one hand, buyers are guaranteed: right to inspect merchandise before Escrow.com's release of payment to seller, fast transaction of orders, lesser procurement expenses, access to customer service center, updates on order status online, early receipt of goods, access to a large number of suppliers and details maintenance for 7 years.

The site may want to tweak more its over-all look (i.e. inclu de pictures of their happy customers and the like). Yes, it may be true that its main purpose is to conduct business and thus made their site look "straigh tforward", but it should keep in mind that business sh ould be fun too.

Moreover, its value proposition is not that clear. By just looking on its homepage, it won't make people think that it does escrow business for people on different goods.

Jooce.com [Matri-6]

2009-03-04T06:21:00.000-08:00

Jooce.com offers ‘power to the people’. The main idea behind Jooce is to provide space where ‘cyber nomads’ – ‘people who maintain a busy online life from multiple computers, none of which they necessarily own’ – may save, access and share their files, watch videos from YouTube, and chat with friends. Simply said, Jooce offers the internet users a web-based application that would act as their own private space in the internet.

Knowing that people who own a computer manages their files in the computer’s desktop, the developers of this website incorporates the features of a desktop in Jooce. Jooce is your ‘private online desktop with public file sharing capabilities’, a virtual state-of-the-art desktop that can be access through any computer (provided that the computer has an internet connection and a flash player, since Jooce runs on Flash Macromedia).

This picture presents the start-up look of Jooce application, i.e., when you go to www.jooce.com, this is what you are going to see. The design of the application is inviting because it looks cool and exciting. Also, it seems like it is fun to use. One good thing about Jooce is that your excitement would not diminish when you are asked to sign-up because Jooce only asks you to fill-up four textboxes, unlike other websites in which you are required to complete a lengthy sign-up form. You only need to decide on your username and password, and then enter your e-mail address.

Another good thing about Jooce is that the application is translated into many other languages, including the Filipino language as shown below.

Jooce invites its users to COMMUNICATE with other internet users, MOVE their files to their own Joocetop (Jooce Desktop), PLAY videos and music in it, and CUSTOMIZE it. These features are represented by the four boxes that are shown at the initial page of Jooce. These features are discussed and evaluated below.

Jooce: Communicate! Taking into consideration the obsession of most internet users in social networking and in chatting, Jooce allows its users to manage their instant messenger (IM) and social networking accounts in the Joocetop. Users may chat with other people who are using Yahoo, MSN, ICQ, or AIM.

They may import their contacts from their accounts in these IM networks. Joocers (Jooce users) may also share files with the persons who appear on their contacts list.

Matri-6: CAN’T communicate. We’ve tried to import our Yahoo! Messenger Contacts into our Jooce accounts so we may chat with our friends in Y!M. However, our contacts do not appear in our Jooce contacts list for days. The control panel keeps on displaying that it is still importing our contacts.

Jooce: Move! Knowing that not all cyber nomads may afford to buy a USB Flash Disk, Jooce provides a virtual storage for their files. Joocers may upload their files to their Joocetop from a local disk drive and also from the web. They may then access these files through other computers. Also, Joocers may share their files among the people in their contacts list.

Matri-6: CAN’T move. We’re very interested in this feature than in any other feature that Jooce offers. We were excited to upload our files into our Joocetop so we’ll have back-ups for the files in our USB Flash Disks (which at any time may fail to function properly due to viruses). Unfortunately, we were not able to upload any file to our Joocetop. Everytime we try to upload a file, Jooce displays a textbox which states that they are ‘not sure of what happened’, and that ‘the system seems to be having a nervous breakdown’. The irritating box looks like the one below.

Jooce: Play! Jooce allow its users to play videos, listen to music, view photos, and play games in their Joocetop. There’s an icon at the bottom of the screen which is designated for YouTube. Joocers may search and play YouTube videos right in their Joocetop.

Matri-6: WE’VE played! Finally, here’s a feature that worked well. We we’re able to play a YouTube video in our Joocetop. As you can see in the preceding picture, we’ve watched the “The Incredibles Trailer”. Joocers may also play the videos in full screen for greater pleasure.

Jooce: Customize! Since Jooce promises to provide a virtual desktop to its users, it allows Joocers to personalize their Joocetop. They may do so by changing their Joocetop wallpaper, and also by setting an avatar. The toolbox for setting the avatar is shown below.

Matri-6: CAN’T customize. Yet again, whenever we upload a picture that we would like to set as wallpaper or as avatar, the same textbox appear in the screen as shown below.

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Having read our website review for Jooce, you probably know that we are quite unsatisfied with this website. But then……

Jooce & Matri-6: You’re Invited!

Jooce offers internet users like us, many things. Even though we’ve encountered problems while using the site, we still invite you to try it on your own. We know that the intentions of Jooce are great and that we should still give it a chance to prove itself. Jooce is actually one of PC Mag USA’s Top 100 Undiscovered Websites of 2008, so you better spend some time to discover it. According to Alexa.com, Jooce ranks 74,949. For other traffic details about Jooce.com, please refer to the tables below.

The team behind Jooce.com should try to improve the application by addressing the common problems faced by its users. The website is founded on great intentions, and our group believes that these may be attained by the Jooce developers if only they would make the necessary alterations. Jooce addresses the problem of digital divide as it aids internet users who don’t have their own computers, and only uses computers in the cybercafés. Jooce also has business value as it encourages the use of Macromedia Flash. Also, Jooce invites cyber nomads to engage in more internet activities thus increasing the profits of cybercafés. Jooce could serve many purposes for the internet users if it would be revamped.

Scribd.com - review by In-Between Names!

2009-03-04T04:44:00.000-08:00

Scribd.com is a website that allows exchange of information between Internet users worldwide. The site does this by allowing users to publish their own literary works for others to read by uploading their files to the site. It was launched on March 2007 by Trip Adler, Jared Friedman and Tikhon Bernstam. Based on the information gathered from the site itself, Scribed.com attracts more than 50 million readers every month, with more than 50,000 documents uploaded every day in 90 different languages.

It targets people that use it to obtain information of all types and forms. Groups of people that would benefit range from college students to working professionals, from kids to adults, from classical music enthusiasts to literary buffs. Notable users of Scribd.com include President Barack Obama, The New York Times, FOXBusiness.com, among others.

Scribd functions much like a document version of Youtube, and the concept that allows this comparison is the iPaper document reader. iPaper converts regular computer files to a proprietary form for easy convenient viewing. Compatible documents for conversion are the following:

• Adobe PDF (.pdf)
• Adobe PostScript (.ps)
• Microsoft Word (.doc/ .docx)
• Microsoft PowerPoint (.ppt/.pps/.pptx)
• Microsoft Excel (.xls/.xlsx)
• OpenOffice Text Document (.odt, .sxw)
• OpenOffice Presentation Document (.odp, .sxi)
• OpenOffice Spreadsheet (.ods, .sxc)
• All OpenDocument formats
• Plain text (.txt)
• Rich text format (.rtf)

Business value

Scribd.com allows businesses to reduce their research costs for strategic decisions, new trends and methods of production, retail, and other business processes. Instead of spending subscription fees to industry journals, specialty websites, and the like, the research division of a company can acquire relevant information through free and simple registration to this site, which then allows them unlimited access to all documents uploaded at the site.

Independent consultants can use Scribd.com as a platform to popularize their services. Published technical reports bring credibility to the firm or person who made it. Industry journals serve this purpose, but these publications are not accessible to the common man. Scribd.com, as a purveyor of intellectual democracy, is able to provide the information to anyone who seeks it. Writers struggling to be noticed by the reading public and by publishing firms can use Scribd.com the same way as the previous example.

Companies can show innovation in information dissemination of its products and services to the general public via Scribd.com, surely a very unorthodox method. The usual manner of dissemination among is with traditional advertising (Print, Radio, Television). With the advent of the Internet, email became a method for direct marketing, but as email made it easier for entities to communicate, junk emails are as easy to dispose. The recipients of the information via email are limited by the company’s contact list, since these contacts have already previously contacted them. Unlike the traditional method of advertising, prospective buyers, while looking for information about specific goods and services, can use Scribd.com to get the needed knowledge, and hopefully entice them to purchase from the information provider. The buyer only needs to search at Scribd.com for related literature.

A company that uses Scribd.com obtains a degree of competitiveness with respect to other companies by reducing its cost of advertising the products and services it offers to the public. The aforementioned traditional venues for advertising are not cheap. With Scribd.com, information is spread for free. Another benefit it provides is a focused, sharp-shooter method of promotions because it specifically targets those who desire knowing about the particular products and services the company can provide.

Critique:

Scribd.com, though extensive, does not contain all information. Some may possess important information but may not be a registered user of the website. However, this constraint is relaxed over time as the data gathered form Alexa.com suggests that more and more users begin to frequent this site. It is currently ranked Top 200 by Alexa.com. We believe that there is a strong positive correlation between the number of registered members and the amount of information contributed to the site at a regular basis.

Reliability of information gathered from Scribd.com is also a concern for the would-be researcher. One cannot ascertain the credibility of documents available at the site because of what has just been stated – that information is limited by the number of registered users.

Jobstreet.com (99 Stars)

2009-03-03T09:05:00.000-08:00

Jobstreet.com is an answer to both employers’ and jobseekers’ problems. It helps jobseekers to find companies with vacancies, who are looking for possible hires who can fit the job description. It is like an online job fair that is forever open to anyone who is looking to be employed, whether they are students, fresh graduates, unemployed or underemployed, etc. Because of the numerous jobseekers online, Jobstreet.com is given a traffic rank of 1388. The largest share of its visitors come from Indonesia, averaging 27.5% of its total visitors. The Philippines’ share of the total visitors, on the other hand, is 16.2%.

Jobstreet.com is an online and a virtual job hunting and job posting website that, obviously, caters to both employers and employees. It makes job compatibility easier to find and job applications a lot simpler and faster. The site is very friendly and surprisingly systematized in such a way that the jobs offered are segregated among three groups: specialization, location, and low application.

It also makes your job searching efficient because it will let you see those jobs that are appropriate for you. Evaluating your location, years of experience, position sought for, specialization, and job type does this making it more hassle free for any job seeker to find the right and appropriate job for her without spending so much time scanning the classifieds of the broadsheets.

With minimal charges, the site also offers services that will jumpstart your job search. A very good example is the Priority Application service that would make your resume’ more readily viewable to seeking employers. Tie-ups with cellular carriers in the country like Globe and Smart also makes the site more useful than otherwise thought possible. This is epitomized by services such as the SMS Apply and the SMS Alerts that will lead you more mobility and liberty in choosing and applying for the jobs that you really want.

Another beautiful catch about the site is that it does not only cater to professionals and graduates, it also serves the needs of students. It offers introductory courses to job hunting, job interviews, and resume’ writing. It also offers students with possible part-time jobs and internship programs that will boost the experience level of the students for future and more formal applications.

The site is also bilateral in a sense that it focuses not only on job seekers but also to employers who need to advertise their current manpower needs. It is also one of the most reliable internet-based job hunting module because it has the largest database, it services a huge number of companies, and it provides efficient and clean service.

Jobstreet.com earns money through paid advertisements both commercial and job advertisements. Instead of publishing job ads on newspaper, it would be cheaper for employers to post their ads on this site. Jobstreet.com also partners with different companies to become a link between employers and jobseekers. Partnering with Jobstreet.com reduces the cost of the employers of finding possible hires and at the same time caters to the needs of people who want to find jobs. It would be efficient for the applicants to look and submit their resumes in this site instead of going to the companies. The website earns income through this type of service. Not only that, Jobstreet.com is also an avenue for companies and advertisers to promote their company and attract future employees and customers.

This site is a great way for people to find jobs that will suit them given that this site has features that categorizes job opportunities according to their location and specialization. The reduced cost in finding jobs is further reduced by this kind provision of the website. The faster the people can find jobs, the faster companies can hire people who can fill in vacancies to make their company more productive. With this kind of service, both parties can benefit from this collaboration with Jobstreet.com

Librarything.com: TheDeterminants

2009-03-03T08:34:00.000-08:00

If you are a proud bookworm who wants to brag about all the books you read, then librarything.com is a website for you. Librarything.com, in a few words, is a social networking site with a twist – it relates its users with the books they read. That is, like your typical Facebook account where you collect and add friends, here the only difference is that you collect both friends and books.

A snapshot shown below shows the user interface of the website, specifically the library section where users stack their books.

Founded by Tim Spalding in 2005, librarything.com introduced a new genre of social networking and indirectly created the “largest book club online”. Equipped with its excellent book searching capabilities, users can find all the books relevant to them and post it to their online personal libraries which others can freely view. Once they have added their books, users can also add tags to it for easier searching as their library gets bigger over time. Of course, users cannot access the content of the books they are adding. Although the process of adding books to your personal library is merely adding their cover pages, this is perfectly fine since the site is not about reading books online anyway, but collecting, documenting, tagging, and of course, bragging it.

Adding books into your virtual library is quite easy. Just search for the book you're looking for and the website gets information from Amazon.com, Library of Congress and other libraries around the world.

Librarything.com also analyzes the books its users have in their libraries and recommends books that they might like. It does this by finding other people’s libraries which best resembles yours and then reporting you what they have read that you have not yet. This makes book hunting more personalized and has a better probability of giving its users a better recommendation.

This website, which has a catalogue of nearly all of the books in this planet, is establishing dominance among its kind and boasts 600,000 unique registered users while enjoying a margin of about 0.1% from its biggest rival shelfari.com. Data from alexa.com reveals that most of its users come from the US with 43.9% share of its total visitors, and only 0.8% of its users come from the Philippines..

The site targets avid readers as well as book authors to provide them a venue to exchange ideas. Also a social networking site, it also allows its users to create profiles, comment on other people’s libraries, recommend books, or even warn others from reading a ridiculously boring book. Another cool but quite eerie feature of this website is that one can search for other users with the same library and books as you have. Here, you can find other people with the same taste as yours and add them as your friends.

As a profitable e-business venture, it generates its revenues mainly from three sources: advertising, book store referral fees and user subscription charges (users can register only 200 books for free. Beyond that limit they collect a fee). This site is also a good marketing strategy for online book sellers like amazon.com as it provides a portal where book buyers and sellers can transact online.

The site is easy to manipulate and has many excellent tools, but it lacks aesthetics. Though functionality is more important than aesthetics, the online world however, seems to value them equally. Its lack of aesthetics makes first time users clueless about what the site offers, and in a sense does not give them the incentive to make the first move and click the sign-up button. Based from our personal experiences, though we liked the functionality of the site, we found it difficult to comprehend what the site is for until we read its article in Wikipedia.

Also, compared to its rival shelfari.com as shown below (which is by the way gaining more users), shelfari’s graphics is by far better which makes its functionality better to understand before even the visitors hit the sign-up button.

However, though these problems exist, librarything.com still overtakes shelfari.com in terms of its number of users – providing a better community of book lovers.

Delicious.com

2009-03-03T07:50:00.000-08:00

Don’t you just love seeing the array of foods that you can choose from in a grand buffet? If you want the endless choices of websites whether they are new, old, exotic, exciting or resourceful, delicious.com is here to help you! Delicious is a social bookmarking site, which is ranked fairly high, placing 2695th rank according to Alexa. Main users come from USA holding 26.9%, followed by India, China, Germany and the UK.

This website allows the users to visit different Internet websites that were not know to them or were not able to find them. When the users do not have enough time to surf the site they want, or do not want to lose the information of that website, Delicious.com allows them to bookmark the website and revisit the site anytime in the future when they have time.

The website also allows users to tag, save, manage, and share web pages all in one place. It allows the users to bookmark any site in the Internet and additionally, one can see the same bookmarks that one has made using different computers.

Delicious makes it possible and easy to keep track of all websites and keep them in sync. Users are not limited to the individually created bookmarks but open to the bookmarks of friends or anyone visiting the site. They could click on 'popular tags' to look into sites that are interesting to the other users and they could also look into the sites that others have saved as their bookmark!

The bookmarks arrange themselves according to the tags that they were assigned to by the users. So if one has found a site about Filipino food, and tags it as 'Filipino' and 'food', the website could be found under those tags. Easy! :) loads of sites would burst out per tag!

As you open the website, you see a list of popular bookmarks and a list of popular tags such as art, reference, tutorials, photography to name a few. The list is made as a compilation of the most visited bookmarks, and the most clicked tags by users of delicious.com.

For businesses or for certain people like artists or cooks, having their website marked as a popular bookmark or be included in the list of popular tags may be an advantage since it increases the chance that people may visit their page and of course, see what they have to offer, which may eventually lead to a sale. In short, delicious.com is a tool for sharing of valuable and interesting information, and it may also be used for indirect advertising, which can be viewed as a business value of the website.

Critique

Pros:- Its first and foremost advantage is that it is personalized. You can make your own categories to group your bookmarked websites. You can also edit your profile.

- This website provides benefits of being able to access wanted sites anytime the user wishes to. It is well organized and user friendly in the sense that even the first timers can actually use it without difficulty. There is a demo tour and a “getting started” action for beginners.

- The search engine is also smarter, and more social. (As aforementioned above) you can search within one of your tags, another user’s public bookmarks, or your social network. Now it’s easier to take advantage of the expertise and interests of your friends, not to mention the Delicious community at large.

- The Delicious Team is constantly transitioning Delicious over to a new platform that would be of advantage to users. Delicious.com former website name is del.icio.us.com, which is obviously hard for people to remember, find the site and share it with their friends. The Delicious team is not just hearing out requests and questions of the users but they are putting these into actions. The new website is faster to traffic growth while ensuring that Delicious is still reliable. The bookmarks are sorted alphabetically and categorized into bundles of interest.

- The Delicious Team are actually replying to the messages of the users and trying to address their concerns. It only shows that the team is concerned with their users.

Cons:

- One needs to download the add-on first before one can use it. It’s a waste of time for someone who avail computer rentals. He/she can only log in to his/her account but to make use of it, he/she has to download the add-on all over again.

- The page needs some work. The font is too small and the bookmarks look a little crowded. The page should be colored brighter to make it more exciting to look at.

Google Notebook (ONEderful)

2009-03-02T14:11:00.000-08:00

Google Notebook (www.google.com/notebook) is a free online application that helps the user collect notes and information while surfing the net. It is like a social bookmarking site but a more sophisticated one. It allows you to “clip” text and picture just like highlighting important phrase in your book. It is an online electronic notebook for those who need to organize their thoughts while browsing.

Google Notebook’s main function is to help their users to organize their “notes” on the web. This is possible through the creation of multiple notebooks and the division of a notebook into sections. Clicking on the biggest panel, the user can “type, paste or add a new section”. By clicking the “Create a new notebook…” link, a new notebook is instantly created. Notes can be dragged-and-dropped from one section or notebook to another. The user can easily sift through his or her notes by using the search function.

Google Notebook can be used for research purposes. Students can use the site to organize their notes on their different research topics. Through the publish your notebook option you allow your account to be seen by other users. This can help other users through their researches by letting them see what you have researched or what you have bookmarked for that topic. It’s like having group mates sharing you the links on what for them are helpful for your paper. Google Notebook can also help companies to target their audience. Companies can see who uses their product. It can also help them improve their product. When users try to research for example for a car, they will clip those important information about what they want with their car and where they can buy it.

Our say….

Why do we recommend you to use Google Notebook?

Accessible

Google Notebook can be accessed through any computer or mobile phone. Users can make their notebooks public. They can also invite other people to collaborate in their notebooks

Easy to use

Google Notebook is an easy way to gather and organize information. By just selecting images or text and choosing to add them as a note, the images and text are instantly added to the user’s notebook. It is by far more convenient than the old school pencil and notebook whereon you have to write or draw what you want to retain.

WebTrain.com by Electronica

2009-03-02T06:02:00.000-08:00

Web Conferencing. Web Meetings. Live Training. WebTrain.

WebTrain is a leading web conferencing provider for business, education, training, language schools and auction sectors. It was developed in 1998 by Gary Campbell. WebTrain specializes in multimedia web conferencing and collaboration solutions for live interactive virtual meetings, e-commerce, eLearning, presentation webinars, events marketing, educational training, and live auctions.

WebTrain: What's it about?

Nowadays, organizations and businesses with its offices and clients span through different locations around the world. Without being at the same physical location, users can participate virtually, from their home, school, office etc. WebTrain enables the users to present, discuss, interact, respond, vote, upload and download with hundreds of people.

WebTrain targets small-scale and large-scale businesses, training companies, support companies, educators, students, auctioneers and other markets that need effective communication

Traffick rank of: 759,713

Percent of users: 0.00011%

Users come from:

United States 59.1%

France 2.7%

Other countries 37.9%

Businesses use WebTrain primarily for virtual meetings with their clients or with their offices around the country or globe. Since the website provides free web conferencing service, it cuts communication and travel costs of companies. It also eliminates travel expenses and travel time. It has secure SSL meetings wherein it ensures privacy in your meetings. WebTrain provides efficient, effective and convenient services for its users.

Some companies use WebTrain to:

communicate with members from different chapters at the same time

teach and train its employees

pay fees

hold meetings and workshops

and much more.

WebTrain’s web conferencing features permits the user to create any kind of meeting environment it needs. It has high quality Voice-over-IP (VoIP) which ensures crystal clear sound every time. Because their VoIP uses only low bandwith (6300b/sec), you may use WebTrain even with a dial-up connection. It will work effectively with all types of internet connection; a high bandwith connection is not required.

WebTrain Features

Live webcam broadcasting wherein you can broadcast images using any type of webcam
Teleconferencing up to 150 participants for free
Contact group feature which imports data from your email (Outlook, Gmail, Hotmail etc) or you can manually enter your contacts
Outlook, Lotus and Calendar integration sends invitation email and enrollment confirmation; automatically provides schedule of meetings with event reminders through email or SMS
Versatile meeting scheduling (i.e. private, public, scheduled, visible public, webinar, unlisted etc.)
PowerPoint slide show presentation directly from a PowerPoint file or a folder of slides and images
Supports all the major image types, including JPG, .BMP, .GIF, .WMF, .ICO etc.
Streams multimedia content (Flash, .AVI or .MPEG files) and video (from YouTube or similar sites)
E-commerce feature where you can charge enrollment fees and have it directly transferred to your bank account using their PayPal integration
Screen-casting, application sharing and desktop remote control feature to broadcast, share or control another person’s application or desktop
Record entire meeting using the built-in meeting recorder
Automatic virus scanning of attachments when sharing files

WebTrain Critique

We found the layout simple and the site easy to navigate. The links were grouped accordingly and the navigation bar was strategically placed and was easily noticed on all pages. The RSS button on the upper right corner was very noticeable and the incorporation of this technology is very helpful to WebTrain’s users. On the upper right hand corner, a link to the list of meetings was provided. The presence of such a link helps direct users quickly to the most important page of the website. The meetings in this page are grouped depending on whether it is live or upcoming. At the bottom of the page are links to the more frequently visited pages of the website. Though a bit small, the links serve its purpose.

On the other hand, the bookmark link, placed on top of the RSS button, could be improved by making it larger although the blinking image beside it helped attract attention. The login and registration link were small as well. It would have been better to place input fields similar to what other sites do to facilitate easier login.

On a general level, the aesthetics of the site is not something to look forward to. Its simplicity led to a boring site. Furthermore, some pages contain huge blocks of text that are not enticing. The grey text on top of a blue grey background is one of the contributing factors why the text is not enticing to read. Despite these, the site is functional and that should take precedence over aesthetic value. The continued existence of the service is a testament to the website’s functionality. Though plain, it has served its purpose.

udutu.com (99 stars)

2009-02-26T06:19:00.000-08:00

Udutu.com is a website that provides online course authoring software. If you want to make online courses, eLearning modules or training programs, then Udutu.com can offer you a good answer to your needs. Udutu.com’s main product offering is myUdutu™. It is an easy-to-use online authoring software that can be used by anyone. With this software, you would no longer need to rely on programmers to produce for you good quality online modules. myUdutu™ enables any user to create interactive courses rich with visual media which greatly improves training opportunities for students and employees alike. It can be used in all fields and professions providing human resource managers, trainers, professionals, teachers, etc., the edge in making such courses. With its WSIWYG (What You Is What You Get) feature, myUdutu™ attracts more users; Alexa.com gives it a traffic rank of 792, 079.

Udutu.com is a website that features online course authoring that helps different people and organizations build their courses and activities online. It is composed of four different services namely, course development, multimedia production, graphic design, and customer service. These services help firms and organizations optimize their e-learning platforms from the building part to the design part. The site also furnishes users with different products (most of them are free) such as myUdutu, which is an online course authoring tool, that helps you build branching simulations and case studies, interactive quizzes, and complex assessments. A nice thing about the products that the site offers is that you can use them without any technical expertise; all you need is an internet access and a computer. Collaborations in developing online courses are also made possible without additional fees. Another breakthrough that the site offers is that it ties up with social networking sites such as Facebook to build up a learning network in which productive individuals can work together.

Its simplicity and its customization is also one of its values. You only have to access udutu.com from the internet, build your course by importing PowerPoint presentations, customize your learning windows, and add videos and audios, and then publish it using the site’s server, and you’re done!

Forums about its products and help sites regarding its services are also in the site to help novice learn more about its value and make users solve certain problems whenever they arise. Tips and feedbacks from other users can also be viewed from the site to know and utilize the site more efficiently.

You can also be sure of the contents and the reliability of the site because it provides several resources where its contents are taken or bases. It is also very progressive and creative because they are able to develop different programs and softwares that can be used in the future and can also develop the world of e-learning for the better like the KoolTool, LOGIC, CEDARLearning system, and the MBA Course. These take e-learning to a whole new level.

Udutu.com creates opportunities for the business using it. It can provide training for their employees with minimum cost. The business can provide orientation training for new staff, brief managers on new product launches, create simulations for customers, provide customer or patient training, offer online learning opportunities for customers, or create preparation courses for face to face training, post training support resources, quick reference modules, et. On the other hand, this (udutu.com) website earns money in four ways:

Udutu acts a host for the finished courses for users, charging a monthly hosting fee based on the number of screens used by the course.
They build or modify courses for certain percentage of the users.
They allow users to build and deploy there own courses in udutu’s servers then the users will purchase the entire system to transfer to their own servers.
They provide training and support services to their installed base.

www.udutu.com is a website that offers E-learning. This website is very accommodating to all users. How? First, it helps people learn courses through experts themselves who upload these courses and not call center agents who, they themselves do not know the questions being asked of them and are not experts.

Secondly, it makes learning fun through different means, by uploading a video, a flash game, java applet and etc. It makes learning interactive and not boring like your traditional college classroom experience.

Thirdly, it makes the experts, who upload courses, utilize different software like flash, java, Microsoft Power point and other media, which even they do not know how to manipulate, so that they can make their courses interactive and fun. How? Udutu offers templates for them to use. They can also, have online quizzes and games for these courses.

Can we trust udutu.com? It brags that it follows SCROM 2004. What is SCROM 2004? SCORM 2004 introduces a complex idea called sequencing, which is a set of rules that specify the order in which a learner may experience content objects. In simple terms, they constrain a learner to a fixed set of paths through the training material, permit the learner to "bookmark" their progress when taking breaks, and assure the acceptability of test scores achieved by the learner. (WIKIPEDIA) Thus, it can be said that udutu.com is trustworthy.

This is a very affordable alternative to enrolling in universities just to take a specific class to learn new things.

Why would the experts do this? First of all, they can make courses on the fly and do them if and when they have time. They can customize the order or arrangement of the topics in the course easily. Also, they are able to achieve the same thing as when they teach in universities and colleges, they get to educate people in areas they are considered as experts in. It also, doesn’t cost much because to use Udutu is completely free. The experts can either upload their courses through their own server or use the Udutu server for a measly fee of $1.

Tellme.com : Tell Me What You Think by electronica

2009-02-26T05:47:00.000-08:00

TellMe about it.

Tellme.com is a companion site to Microsoft’s Tell, a Voice XML platform for mobile phones in the United States and Canada. It is basically an advertisement and promotional tool used by Microsoft for its Tellme service, which allows voice query for stocks, sports, news, weather, and horoscopes. The main purpose of the site is to inform different users of Tellme and its benefits. The website also allows visitors to download the application for free.

Tellme.com can be considered an e-commerce website. Although the website does not engage in direct e-commerce activity, it indirectly relates to e-commerce by fostering an environment of advertising and marketing.

Nice to know.

Tell me is a voice recognition application that provides mobile users traffic information, maps,

business establishments, movie schedules and weather information.

By using keywords such as movies or bank,

TellMe can get you the information

you are looking for.

TellMe who the visitors are.

As an informative and advertising site, TellMe.com is open to different individuals around the world whether or not their mobile phones support the TellMe platform. However, TellMe.com particularly targets potential customers from the United States and Canada who wish to learn more about their TellMe service.

Tellme.com users come from these countries

United States 47.1%

India 25.2%

United Kingdom 4.7%

Canada 3.4%

Other countries 20.0%

Tellme.com traffic rank in other countries:

India 81,828

United States 134,528

Canada 171,694

United Kingdom 241,695

courtesty of www.alexa.com

It must be noted that while the United States comprise almost half of Tell.com’s visitors, majority of Tellme.com’s visitors come from markets that they do not cater to. It then raises the question, “Is TellMe.com really an effective tool in marketing their TellMe service?”

Furthermore, traffic ranking shows that the said website only ranks as the 134,528^th and the 171,694^th most visited website in the United States and Canada respectively as compared to India’s 81,828^th. With other countries such as India comprising a substantial percentage of Tellme.com’s visitors, perhaps a better question to ask would be, “Is Microsoft’s TellMe service ready to be launched in markets other than their traditional markets?

TellMe more.

According to the data featured below, there has been a substantial decrease in the number of unique page visitors from September 2008 to January 2009. Perhaps this can be attributed to the global economic downturn which has tremendously hit the United States hard.

While it can be pointed out that the number of unique visitors on January 2008 and on January 2009 is quite similar, and hence could mean a traditional period of inactivity, it should be noted that any site that has existed for at least a year should generate higher visits from unique visitors.

In a more micro-level analysis, there are usually more unique visitors from February to May. Perhaps this can be attributed to the fact that this period corresponds to the spring break of the United States. Knowing this information, Tellme.com could perhaps make seasonal modifications to its website to make it more appealing during vacation periods such as the one mentioned above.

TellMe how it works.

In general, Tellme.com is easy to use. Unlike function heavy applications such as facebook, tellme.com is like a prehistoric website with a modern twist. It is prehistoric in the se nse that it does not contain a lot of difficult-to-understand functions. As an informative site, it basically contains texts and illustrations. However, the website deviates from its prehistoric characteristic by employing modern twists such as mouse-over functions and employing a clean and sophisticated look. This distinguishes itself as a website apt for the 21^st century.

In lay man’s terms, tellme.com works by just clicking (on the different links, of course).

TellMe how much it’s worth.

While there seems to be no single estimate of tellme.com’s market value, different websites have poorly ranked tellme.com giving it very low market values. This can be attributed to the fact that this website is not a social networking site and hence caters to a distinct set of customers. As mentioned above, the site particularly caters to mobile phone users in the United States and Canada. Furthermore, not everyone can relate to tellme.com’s offerings since Microsoft’s TellMe service only functions in selected phones such as Blueberry phones.

Yourwebsitevalue.com estimate $3,393

Websiteoutlook.com estimate $11,716.5

Cubestat.com estimate $7,601

For a service that caters to the entire United States and Canada, it’s hard to make sense of the estimated market values mentioned above. Perhaps, Tellme must rethink its marketing strategy.

TellMe what’s nice.

Tellme.com’s homepage is very pleasing to the eye. It is clutter-free and rather engaging. By clicking on the translucent circular buttons, one can catch a glimpse of some of the services that Tellme can do for you. Afterwards, visitors can click on one of the orange buttons labeled “Tellme for You” and “Tellme for Businesses” to get an introduction on the uses of Tellme.

Furthermore, by clicking on the circular buttons on the homepage, one can glimpse a preview of Tellme's service. Accompanied by a recorded human voice, the interactive experience makes one want to dig more into Tellme.com.

TellMe what’s not nice.

On the homepage, there are also a few other links to click on. However, the navigation bar, which is found on the lower portion of the homepage, isn’t as noticeable. The font colour is dull and the size is too small. The links are very easy to miss out, leaving visitors confused with what to do and where to go next.

The other pages are still not so cluttered, but the feeling of excitement a visitor feels on the homepage fades away just as quickly as it was aroused. The other pages are too text-heavy that it gets boring navigating and reading through the contents of the website.

What’s more, the different pages are also sectioned into different parts, with links connecting subsections to main sections. Just as it is in the site’s navigation bar, the links are inconspicuous. Tellme.com has too many links on different pages. It needs a navigation menu with dropdown boxes so that the website would be easier to explore.

TellMe the real deal.

Although tellme.com is aesthetically pleasing to the eyes: organized, simple and clean, it still has some issues it must resolve: absence of a unified navigation menu, text-heaviness and external issues.

The experience from this site is not at par with the service it advertises. One is most likely to forget about tellme.com

www.paypal.com - one-derful

2009-02-25T22:27:00.000-08:00

Classification of the website:
PayPal is an online payment service for individuals and merchants. Allows users to send money and bills to anyone with e-mail. It could be classified as an E-commerce website.
Traffic details:
Paypal has a current traffic rank of 1,208. For the 3 months, internet users who visit the site declined by 11.8 percent making it drop in the traffic ranking by 234. Thirty-seven percent of its users are from United kingdom and 30.2 percent are from United States making these two countries the top two countries using this site. For more information, go to:
http://www.alexa.com/data/details/traffic_details/paypal.com
Target Audience
Its market is the users who want to pay or get paid online. This website could also cater to other e-businesses and people who purchase items through the net.
General features/ functions of the website:
Make secure purchases without revealing your credit card number or financial information, shop using PayPal on eBay, get access on a growing user database and accept credit and debit cards with low transaction fees and allows you to get eBay tools.
Products and services available:
To pay online is the major service provided by paypal.com. Since it is prone to cyber crimes, paypal.com provides its users a purchase protection feature that would help them distinguish those real purchases from the fraudulent ones. Some of these features are:
· 100% protection against unauthorized payments sent from your account
This is to ensure that you are really paying for what you have bought. They do this by sending a confirmation of your transaction through your email. If ever you don’t recognize the said transaction, you can call their customer support team to check its authenticity. And if it is discovered as an unauthorized payment, they can file an unauthorized activity claim
· Dispute resolution on PayPal purchases
Paypal offers a Resolution Center – forum for dispute resolution- for you to directly communicate to the seller. This is if in case you haven’t received the good that you have paid or you got a different good.
· Purchase protection on eBay — PayPal Buyer Protection
PayPal buyer protection offers you a protection up to the full purchase price, including original shipping costs. This is not available for all products sold on eBay. In case the product is not covered by the program you can still access the buyer complaint policy.
Other services offered by PayPal are sending money and shopping online. For the companies it allows them to offer and sell their products online.

Business value of the website:
It lessens transactions costs due to the fact that payments could be made using the web. The privacy of the customer is protected because it does not need a customer’s financial information, it assures 100 percent protection from unauthorized payments and gives businesses and promises a 24/7 monitoring to help prevent fraud. Users will be able to utilize an efficient method of paying or receiving payments.

Critique of the website:
Located in San Jose, California, PayPal was founded in 1998 and was acquired by eBay in 2002.PayPal claims that it is a safer and easier way to pay and get paid online. The service enables global commerce by making payments feasible across different countries, currencies and locations. PayPal boasts that its’ service could provide a way to pay in any way whether it be credit cards, bank accounts, buyer credit and account balances without revealing financial information. The service became a global leader in online payment solutions having 153 million accounts worldwide. PayPal is available in 190 markets and 18 currencies around the world. And if its market will continuously grow, the available currencies will increase fostering a more efficient way of paying.
In early 2007, PayPal introduced an optional security key as an additional precaution against fraud. A user account tied to a security key has a modified login process: the account holder enters their login ID and password, as normal, but is then prompted to press the button on the security key and enter the six-digit number generated by it. This two-factor authentication is intended to prevent an account from being compromised by a malicious third party without access to the physical security key. If a user loses their key, they can alternatively authenticate by providing the credit card or bank account number listed on their account.(Wikipedia)
The key comes free with business accounts, but currently costs US$5.00 for personal users, with no ongoing fees The option of using a security key with one's account is currently available only to users registered in the United States, Germany and Australia. (Wikipedia)
This scheme that was introduced help the costumers to trust the site more and helped the site to gain more users. Not only this showed that a more secured site for money transactions but it also showed that they value the welfare costumers.

PayPal has won awards such as the 2007 Webware Awards for productivity, 2006 Webby Awards for best finance service site and People’s Voice Award and the 2002 SIIA Codie Awards for best e-commerce solution to name a few.
PayPal is a great service provider for its’ main purpose is to make payments be possible globally. Garnering a traffic rank of 1,208 in alexa.com, it is clear that PayPal has caught the attention of a lot of users that might be interested in the online payment services done by the website. One of the key features that attracted so many people around the world is the ability of the service to provide payment solutions without consolidating the users’ financial information. Another key factor that PayPal has tapped is the flexibility of the methods of payment that customers could use to make their payments. The website itself is simple, elegant and not that hard to navigate enabling easy access to information, easy online payments and non-threatening online procedures. The tabs at the top of the webpage are very accessible and it navigates to the different needs of users and it provides good accessibility on what PayPal has to offer. The site also posted Top Questions on their website to address popular questions that might be asked by first-time users. This is extremely helpful in the side of the users for it gives them an idea of what the site is and the prerequisites of availing the service that the site provides.

For the past 3 months, its users dropped significantly. Since it is an E-commerce site, the global recession that is experienced may be associated to this decline.

PayPal is a great website offering a simple yet effective solution for e-commerce and e-business transactions. Costumers can save time and effort by not having to go to places to pay certain bills. The service it provides not only gives a cost-efficient solution for businesses today but a much faster and reliable way of conducting payments and transactions through the net.

ReviewMe.com : Money Thru Blogging (The Determinants)

2009-02-25T07:10:00.000-08:00

*Funny thought: I'm writing a review on a website that utilizes reviews.

Part of the MediaWhiz Advertising Network, ReviewMe.com is one of its websites that utilizes the Display Advertising approach in online advertising. Though it has never received even 1% of the global traffic (courtesy of alexa.com), it still proves to be a promising e-business for the common blogger, and a marketing platform for the aspiring company.

According to Jeremy Schoemaker, who is quoted at the front page of the site,

"ReviewMe has allowed me to generate great revenue reviewing products I find interesting."

This is what ReviewMe.com is in the fewest words.

Bloggers all over the world love to write for things they're interested in; that's why they're blogging in the first place. So why not give them more reason to write: Make a review about something you like, and get paid for it! Seems like the perfect deal, right?

For the company on the other hand, they would like to promote their product, get feedback as soon as possible to improve on it when they can, and get people to go their website to get more traffic, and do all these with minimal cost. So why not give them a solution: Hire someone to write stuff about them, and make sure they're compensated if they do a good job! Again, it seems like a good deal.

ReviewMe.com acts as the middleman between these two entities, an intermediary, if you will. Bloggers go to their site and signup, afterwhich they get to choose which products would they like to review. After choosing ones that they like, and make a review about them, they get paid from $20.00 to $200.00, depending on how much their review has impacted the company.

The concept proves to be very profitable on the part of the blogger. As for the website itself, I can only assume that they're making money through cuts from the money received (so the company pays a bit more extra). If this is so, then it is a bit risky on their part, because you wouldn't know when will a blogger pull enough traffic for the company to generate traffic.

For the website's advantages, I can say that it is indeed a great and very innovative way for someone to make money, even in small amounts. To review something you'd love to talk about will beneficial in the sense that you as a blogger get to continue your passion for writing, and will also allow you to improve your technique as a writer. And get paid for it.

Its disadvantages on the other hand would be the lack of people who know about it. Most of it's traffic comes from India, Indonesia, and the United States, but the total number of users doesn't even reach 1% of the global population. (The Philippines was listed; I bet that's our group browsing the site.)

In closing, ReviewMe.com is a great way for you to write about what you like, and then get paid for it. Signup, write, and get rich.

2009-02-25T06:29:00.000-08:00

BrainStorm is an educational website used for e-business at the same time as a resource provider. The website provides software training services with certain attached costs. Although it is not a very frequently visited sites by most internet users (not included in top 100,000 according to Alexa), it is a very unique and useful website to big businesses and organizations. Their target users are organizations who wish to upgrade their users. Industries such as automotive, business to business, computer and technology, education, arts and entertainment, financial and government are the major users of this website.

The prime objective of BrainStorm is to offer the best software training courses with master instructors, training materials, hands-on training and customized curriculum that are designed to fit the needs of the organization.

a) Increasing the eagerness of users and learners- Things that the training does are to increase eagerness of end-users, make them actually remember what they have learned and personalize their experience. BrainStorm's master instructors know every aspect of the programs they teach, their excitement about the new features will influence users thus users will be eager for the software roll-out.

b) Follow up computer training- Under traditional training, students only remember a little more than half of what they learned. A day after training, retention levels fall even lower. However, users remember more of what they learned using BrainStorm’s on-site, hands-on corporate computer training because they actually performed tasks that they would be performing in reality.

c) proper topic selection- To make on-site training even more efficient for the users, BrainStorm lets the organization decide what the end-users need to learn. The organization will choose topics it wants for the trainer to focus on and which ones it wants him to leave out completely.

d) software education - There are different types of software training products that the website offers designed for all types of customers and software providers. These training products and services can teach the organization and its users how to get the most out of their Microsoft, Novell, Corel, OpenOffice.org, or other custom software.

The website gives software and on-site training programs for enterprises. The hands-on computer training provided by BrainStorm enables people who have undergone training to increase productivity by having the capacity to maximize the utility of the software they have at work. After the training, the employee may already be aware of the advantages and be able to perform the task in a more efficient and productive manner. Besides the increase in productivity, the opportunity cost of training the employees decreases because of the reduced time that is needed for training. This could be allotted for other activities such as their main work or other projects. The two reasons we have indicated above may contribute greatly to the increase in productivity and further increase revenues of a company. Some of the life examples are United States Pharmacopeia, New York State Education Department, and US Department of Justice.

Aside from providing IT training and creating efficient work force for interested companies and individuals, BrainStorm also is a place for employment. It currently seeks individuals for various positions such as IT Systems Engineer, Internet Marketing Analyst, and Sales Associates. It has unique descriptions for the qualifications for the said positions but it all boils down to the need of forming the best team of employees because having excellent employees leads to having an excellent company.

Pros:
§ It is organized enough and it really caters to the need of the end-users by making available of materials that will cater to the learning of a user. This includes training, e-materials, workbooks and quick start card.
§ It has abundant application for end-users to choose.
§ Productivity of employees will be further enhanced and they may develop a faster way of working to save time and effort
§ In addition, contact information is disclosed in case there are questions needed to be entertained.

Cons:
§ The software and applications are expensive. Everything has a price. An employee for example may just want to ask for assistance from his/her co-employee instead of utilizing this service. Besides, workbooks can also be generated from online document sharing websites (ex. Scribd) wherein it’s free to download them.
§ The website itself does not contain a feedback portion where comments and questions of end-users should be written. This is very important since they are self-acclaimed providers therefore, opinions of users should be disclosed too.
§ Advertisement should be improved. The users of the website usually come from developed countries like USA and Australia but very few from Asia.
§ Moreover, high-class institutions (i.e. New York Education Department and the US Department of Justice While) were the only ones who made positive comments. We notice that at least very few of institutions that aren’t highly recognized made comments or used this training program. This is maybe because of its expensive features and services. IT may also because of digital divide. Not everybody has access to internet and not everybody has an extra budget to sustain this service.

Scrapblog.com: Making your very own Virtual Scrapbook

2009-02-25T04:40:00.000-08:00

Scrapblog.com is a new online, flash-based multimedia scrapbook editor for creating a virtual scrapbook using one’s very own personal computer. This website was founded by the fonding partners of Nobox, an award-winning interactive agency with clients like Toyota, Procter & Gamble and Mozilla (Firefox). It was first introduced back in 2006, briefly went offline, and was relaunched in March 2007. Currently, it has grown to nearly 2 million registered users who have created over 4 million scrapblog pages. Scrapblog.com has also made partnerships with major media sites including Disney, Discovery, Photobucket, and ABC. In fact, it has already received Series A-1 funding from Steamboat Ventures, following on $2.5 million raised from Longworth Venture Partners earlier in 2007.

Scrapblog.com enables the creation of online multimedia packages like photos and videos. It aims to deliver a degree of versatility that’s similar to what a user can get when building a real-world scrapbook, and taking one's blogs into multimedia dimensions.

What’s nice about Scrapblog.com is that a user is given the chance to showcase his/her creativity and artistry in creating personalized photo or videos slide shows that could be an instant gift for his/her loved ones. This website is really becoming popular especially to moms who love documenting the experiences of her family particularly the growth of her kids.

What makes the service even more incredible is that its use is free in charge! So no more to expensive expense on buying scrapbooks, art materials and printing pictures, Scrapblog.com definitely would help a user save money! And if one has no experience in creating online scrapbook, there’s no need to worry because Scrapblog.com also offers an 5 minute Help Library and Help Tour, which makes it so easy for users with little designing skills to grab professionally designed graphic elements, customize them to their needs, and create impressive photo slide shows and presentations.

TRAFFIC DETAILS

Scrapblog.com has a worldwide traffic rank of 23,107 (average in 3 months) according to Alexa.com.
In the Philippines, the site ranks 1,998.

BUSINESS VALUE

Scrapblog.com is linked with many designers in the scrapbooking world. Among them are Anna Griffin, Eric & Julie Comstock of Cosmo Cricket and JJ Harrison of Bam Pop. The designers allow their designs (clip arts, speech bubbles, etc.) to be incorporated in the srapbooks of the Scrapblog users, thus adding more choices and attracting more users. In exchange for this, Scrapblog created the Scrapblog Marketplace where the designers may advertise their products. Links to the designers' own websites are provided in the Marketplace. (www.scrapblog.com/marketplace/)

Scrapblog and the Designers gain competitive advantage by employing the alliance strategy.

Here are some of the pros and cons of using Scrapblog.com.

Pros of Scrapblog.com

Users can create a profile after signing up in the site and by using one of the pre-defined themes or templates, or can start with a blank page and completely customize layouts with backgrounds, shapes, frames, text, and stickers, almost like a real scrapbook.

Users can upload photos from their own personal computers, and/or saved images from their accounts in Flickr.com, Webshots.com, Yahoo Photos, Facebook.com and Photobucket.com. And it's so easy to place photos anywhere on a page, by simply dragging it on the desired location. One can also enjoy the fun of resizing, rotating, cropping (in star-shaped, rectangular, ovoid), and editing (by adding reflections, drop-shadows), and layering their photos too. All these can happen because Scrapblog.com has a simple interface for quickly "side loading" the images into it.

Users can also enjoy adding video clips to their scrapblog pages. But so far, users are only allowed to get videos using Youtube URLs.
Users can also set music to their presentations from a selection of soundtracks.

Users can also sequence the pages in any order they like, and add impressive-looking transitions between each page.

Users can drag-and-drop each of the graphic elements (stickers, text shapes, backgrounds, frames) into their scrapbook page. They can do almost anything on a page layout, for these elements can be easily dragged, dropped, deleted, resized and rotated.

Users are also provided with privacy otions. They can freely choose to either share their scrapblogs with their friends (by sending them the link to the scrapblog), or they can share it on their personal blogs, and/or on their social network pages. Or else, they can make it totally private.

· Users can save their scrapblog presentations anytime unless they delete it.

· Users can create as many scrapblogs pages as they want. They can also edit their scrapblogs pages whenever they want.

Cons of Scrapblog.com

Unfortunately there are some disadvantages I found while using this site. Sometimes the Scrapblog Builder takes a lot of time to load. One cannot just copy-paste the text or message directly to the scrapblog page; instead one must re-type it all over again. The speed of uploading photos is also limited to the internet connection, so it can be frustrating to wait for all of them to load. When done creating a scrapblog presentation or slide, it also takes a lot of time to publish it, especially when it’s more than 10 scrapblog pages.

So if you’re one of those scrapbook addicts looking for a website where you can create beautiful slide shows and presentations, or make a scrapbook in a very short time, Scrapblog.com offers almost every tool that you need.

Review by: Matri-6 Group

Alexa.com (In-Between Names)

2009-02-23T19:43:00.000-08:00

Founded by Brewster Kahle and Bruce Gilliat in 1996, Alexa.com provides a great source of information about internet traffic of different websites, as well as their specific rankings relative to the others. Its birth was due mainly to the vision of the founders to create continually improving web navigation with the participation of its users, so as to eliminate the stress in navigating and finding of information using keyword searches that only gives vague results that are really not what the users need and interest. Its name was derived in honor to the “Library of Alexandria”, the largest repository of information in ancient world. Alexa.com’s vision then resembled this idea, in which it also attempts to maintain and preserve information available in the internet by committing itself to internet archiving.

As soon as you open the site, Alexa.com will give website traffic comparisons of three different sites by means of a line graph, top 10 sites according to various categories and a list of the hottest websites that is updated every five minutes. At the right side corner, it has three categories of traffic rankings-globally, by country and by category. Also, it has a site info search button that will give you an overview about any website with its corresponding statistic over the past few months. Sponsored links are also located here, in addition with the advertisements. Anyone can advertise in Alexa.com by just availing their offers. Alexa.com also provides widgets, toolbars and other services for users to download and avail. Bloggers could also post their opinions and insights about the different websites and used the statistics they gathered in Alexa.com using the Alexa Blog. The website, being neat and clutter-free of any unnecessary advertisements and links didn’t forget to provide its users information about the company itself and help feature that can be visibly seen at first glance.

Since it provides statistics of website, it is evidently a good marketing tool that can be used by website companies to track how their business is doing relative to its competitors. It thus then promote healthy competition among websites so they could enhance their features and services, improving internet convenience. Furthermore, Alexa.com, being user-friendly provides features that can be easily utilized and offers choices that are easily understandable by users, even if it is your first time to use the site.

For some however, using the site is lazy and inaccurate. Inaccurate because Alexa.com gets its information only from those who install their toolbars, which may not be a good sample of the entire internet population – therefore, their statistics may, to some extent, be considered only as an estimate. From their disclaimer, “Generally, traffic rankings of 100,000 and above should be regarded as not reliable. Conversely, the closer a site gets to #1, the more reliable its traffic ranking becomes.”

Interesting factoid: Alexa.com does not rank its own website.

TEST POST

2009-02-18T23:38:00.000-08:00