Review the Market

Thanks to Mashable we discover a nice and cute application to allow users create their own wallpaper for their handsets. The application is named Mobopic,and it is pretty simple and straight forward. The only thing you have to do is to upload the image you want to use, or to indicate the url of the image on the web, then crop it and adapt it to the size of your screen.

Nothing else to say, just try it! You will see a cute and easy service that will help you customize you phone a bit more!

The guys at PCM Telecom, a well known supplier of BT Phones, have made a complete revamp and redesign of their website, and via ReviewMe we are keen to have a look and check out what new features they have included on it.

Landing on the home page and starting to search for a new phone is as easy as scrolling down the screen, for that they have listed on a series of 15 items per page, the latest models of BT phones available in the market  ( you can choose to display 15, 25, or 30 so to go quicker in your product scanning ). If you budget is what matters here, well, then just sort them out by price, which is what I have done to find out a new but not to expensive phone to replace mine.

Every item has its description page, which is basic to know what you are buying, but as I am not simply convinced for the technical description, I always search on the net for product reviews. It happens that they have a page on their site just for that, although it was not clear to me if they are done by actually customers or by experts  ( some are very simple, some are more detailed).

Anyhow, their stock it is not just limited to phones and the shop has several other telecom categories you can browse: from bluetooth devices, to fax machines or VoIp products. I would say that the new design will fit pretty much the needs of every customer looking for clear info about products before we decide on purchasing anything.

Almost time for lunch! Do you know what to cook today? If you are like me, having difficulties to change the home daily menu, the website we have just discovered may help us quite a lot! :).

I am talking about CookingSpot, a website where you will find thousands of free recipes for everyone in every single cooking style I could think of. 

The nice thing about it is that you can search easily the recipe you may like for today with just clicking a couple of links: feeling like some japanese sushi? just go to the Asian category, what about some hot and spicy food, head to Mexican cuisine…. I am pretty sure we can cook everyday something different without repiting a single recipe…. oh gosh, I am so hungry now!

 # Sponsored Post # Another post about business, banks and money, which is becoming an interesting and quickly growing category within this blog because of the many new services and companies launching products on the market.

This time we are writing to talk about recent awards that were given in the banking world in the UK, where Alliance Leicester, a well-known UK-based firm, was awarded the “Best Current Account Provider” in 2006. 

Because I got some friends that do have their savings in here I am pretty sure that was a good new for them also ;-).

A&L is one of the banks that provide premium services for their Bank Accounts holders, their Premier Direct Current Account has been named “Best Current Account 2006″ by the UK’s best selling personal finance magazine, Moneywise - with Alliance & Leicester’s Premier Current Account also taking second place. A&L also has been named as Best Current Account Provider - Credit AND Debit Interest by leading independent finance guide Moneyfacts. It is the fourth successive year Alliance & Leicester has won the Debit Interest award, which is not bad at all.

I guess this is good press for them and their customers, we all like to trust and see the company that keeps our money somehow be one of the best in the market, otherwise, what would us all keep the money there? :-).

Not difficult to introduce this interesting service :-), who in the world does not need a credit card in today’s daily life? :-). Well, now if you live in the UK ( yep, for the moment they are only available for UK residents) you can get some help to find the right credit card from the right bank for your real needs (cool sentence, isn’t it? :-)).

The service I am talking about is called Airaid, and it is a Credit Cards comparison service that in 3 easy steps helps you find the right credit card UK for you in minutes. The only thing you need to do is to set up your needs and put their search engine to work. It will return you a list of a dozen or so credit cards with some characteristics, then you can just apply online through their system to get it. It is also possible to hit the “Compare cards” link and you will find the different possibilities sorted out by type of card.

It seems to me a pretty quite clear and fast service, I did not apply to any of them as I have one since I can remember :-), but should you have in mind to get a new one or to change your bank, give it a try and let us know if you found the best option for you!

I am just back from some days abroad ( went to Singapore to do some burocracy paperwork) and found myself with this site that it would have been nice to discover just a couple of weeks ago :-). I am talking about Hotel Reservations, a service that, as you probably imagine, is about booking Hotels and finding Hotel Discounts pretty much everywhere in the world.

Started playing around a bit and one of the most interesting features I found was the possibility of having the interface in several languages, not that I know more than a couple of the available ones, but I can think of several people that get away quickly if they don’t find the info in their mother tongue always.  Digging in their database looking for hotels in Singapore ( to compare :-)), I found several ones with a cheaper price and same number of stars as the one I’ve been ( damn it! :-)), so probably next time I will have a look here before booking anything.

I have to say that as in many similar pages, not only can you book a hotel, but you can find flights, rent a car o browse through complete holiday packages, so more or less you have everything a couple of clicks away. Summing up, we will put it in our bookmarks and use it next time to organise our trips, I will let you know what interesting savings I do find!

Imagine a wiki-style project where you could find absolutely all the living species in the planet with extense description, photos, videos, maps and location, etc. Well, this is what the new project EOL ( Encyclopedia of Life ) will try to do in the coming 10 years.

The idea has been launched by the Harvard University, the US Field Museum, the Marine Biological Laboratory, the Missouri Botanical Garden, the Smithsonian Institution and the Biodiversity Heritage Library, and will count with an assigned budget of aprox 100 million dolars over the next years. The plan is to catalog about 1.8 millions of known species on the Earth, although it has been said that what we know now is just a tiny portion ( around 10%) of the real number.

If you want to know more about the project, you can subscribe to their newsletter in the website, and follow the evolution of this big and interesting initiative!