Review the Market

If you hate going to YouTube because of all the junk that is also there amongst the good stuff; if you like to watch music videos and are overall a music junkie; if you are all of the above, then this website review is for you.

Muvibee.com is a new service which is a music video search and aggregation tool. The service doesn’t host these music videos, but pulls them from other sources for your viewing pleasure.

What we enjoyed the most and the first is the functional user interface. As soon as you land on their homepage, you immediately see the top 10 videos from US, UK, and Germany. Most people just want to do that. In any case, we wanted to search for a particular video, so we added the song name to the search box and Voila! it came back VERY QUICKLY with a list of videos for our song. We never knew there were so many videos for our song.

Anyway, once inside the search results, you can quickly preview a snapshot from a video by hovering your mouse over it and start viewing it by clicking on the play button next to it. Once a video starts, for some reason it streams very quickly. Now, we know that they don’t host the videos, so we can’t explain how they get such a decent speed. But we are not complaining.

All this is good enough for this site to be highly recommended, however, this is only the beginning. You can create play lists, search for other top 10 charts, search in other lists, or search by genre (rock, pop, or dance). And you can do all this without even creating a login. There are supposed to be some more extended features once you login, but we were in a hurry to introduce this site to our readers, so we didn’t even bother to create that login.

Do let us know in comments what extra features are available if you create a login.

One of the largest enterprises on the Internet is online dating. There are literally thousands of sites oriented catering to people looking to meet other people online. And why not, more and more aspects of our lives are moving online and dating is one of the most common activities that we carry out.

These sites are now becoming very niche oriented however, the site that we review today is as clean as it gets. Online Dating is best done on date.com. Their slogan: "Don’t let love pass you by.". Date.com offers a free registration to let you begin. You can log in and start searching for guys or gals (depending on your interest) and initiate chatting with them on the website.

The best thing about online dating is that your privacy is secured till you decide to trust someone else with it. If you don’t like someone, you can just move on and try to find someone else without any fear. Date.com has a very strong privacy policy which allows the users to use their service without any fear. They allow you to even delete your data whenever you want to. Basically, the industry standard practices for data protection are in place. Of course, if you choose to reveal your data in chat room, then you are responsible for it.

Searching for the right person is very easy as well. Personals are divided by State and then City. You can quickly glance at the initially important stats before you engage: Pictures, Age, Body Type, Faith, Ethnicity, Job, and a description by the person describing himself/herself.

Once you like someone, you can view a fuller profile, send them an email, show interest, engage the in a chat. There is an Advanced Search available which lets you search with a large number of parameters. You have the ability to configure preferences and then the matches are emailed to you. In this way, you don’t have to be always searching on their site. Whenever their system detects a possible match it lets you know and then you can go and check it out.

Another nice feature is a toolbar that you can install which lets you know through instant alerts whenever there is a possible match and also lets you communicate via IM. In addition to that, you can navigate the important areas of the website through the toolbar and you also get the goodies from Date.Info.

Date.com also runs a very informational zine at date.info. Here, you find articles, advice, success stories, horoscopes, interviews, etc. related to dating. For example, you can read about what are the "Online Dating Red Flags" or " Are you Spiritually Ready for Your Soul Mate?" This additional resource makes date.com very useful.

So, for all you singles out there, it’s time that you checked out date.com

Today we review SecondAct.com, an online store for reviewing and buying HDTVs (LCD or Plasma). This store stocks factory re-furbished, and end-of-life products which as as good as new (or new at times). The main thing about Second Act is that it is one of the best in business on the Internet. They have a fare share of Brand New TV’s available as well with considerable discounts.

They make it very easy for you as a consumer to get the best deals available. You can subscribe (through RSS or Email) to there Deal of the Day, which lists special deals on a daily basis. As of writing this review, their current deal of the day is giving an extra $100 discount on a 37inch Sharp LCD (which is on top of their usual discount). So you are getting a factory refurbished TV for $699, which costs $1999 as brand new, with a 90 day free warranty.

They also offer add-on warranties for a price, which is still not too much. And they have an excellent Help and FAQ section which can answer most questions that you may have regarding the site or their services. So, if you want a HDTV but don’t want to spend a lot, this is the place to check out.

Today I review the Hotel Reservation Service; an online service for finding and booking hotel rooms. I have used this service many times for personal needs and it has never disappointed. It allows you to search and book hotels free of charge on the Internet. HRS also runs special offers and can get you a very good price. At a basic level, it has a very simple interface which allows you to specify your destination, arrival and departure dates, number of rooms, number of people, a price limit, and a minimum number of stars. Then it will generate a list of hotels that satisfy your criteria. In the advanced search mode there are many criteria that you can define to filter your search (e.g. Internet Access, Pets Allowed, etc.)

The results are listed in a way so that it is easy to compare multiple hotels at a glance:

There is visual indication of important parameters such as Breakfast Included, Distance from Airport, Smoking/Non-Smoking, Internet Access, etc.

There is also the capability for comparing specific hotels on detailed parameters. This detailed comparison is useful to decide between 2-3 hotels that you have short-listed. The site provides user reviews and ratings of the hotels in its database.

All in all, a very good resource for searching for hotels online and booking them with confirmation.

For all those of you who want to start a blog and make it look cool; for all those who hate the outdated interfaces of Blogger and WordPress; for all those who really want to take it easy while starting a blog, we now have an answer: blogonize. This is a completely new and completely free blog creation, editing, and hosting service. It’s very Web 2.0 in terms of look and feel. And to make this a review, let’s dive into the Good and Bad:

Good

• Very quick signup.
• Very pleasing UI because of the nice Web 2.0 look and feel.
• Good Editing UI for writing posts.
• Lots of functionality built-in: Calendar, Tag Cloud, Links, Archives,etc.

Bad

• I kept getting errors whenever I would view the blog.
• A little on the slower side.
• It’s apparent that it is a beta. When I logged in to the Admin Panel for the first time, it was showing me comments on my blog (a number of them). This was when i had just created that Id for testing
• Help is missing.

Other than the beta problems, it looks like a very nice tool and should be a good bet for the long run.

Today we review a solution for conducting online surveys. Vovici is a company which offers online survey software for configuring, conducting, and reporting on online surveys. Their service offers a large number of features and benefits:

• Access to out-of-the-box professional survey templates and also samples for helping you design your survey/questionnaire.
• Import from MS Word to create a survey.
• Or, use a survey wizard to construct your survey.
• Manage survey libraries by adding questions to them. These can then be used in future surveys.
• A feature that lets you enter data into a survey so that your respondents do not need to re-enter information that is already recorded with you.
• Multiple Language support.
• In-depth reporting and analysis available.
• You can even get help from a survey expert to help you design your survey.

To top it all, they have a free 30 day trial period which allows you to test drive the service and publish surveys. This allows you to take advantage of most of the features and see if they suit your needs. This service is already being used by a large number of large companies, yet their offering is customizable enough to be used on a personal blog. So, if you have a need for running an online survey try giving Vovici a try.

This is what it says on the home page of Bix. What is Bix? In essence, it is a platform to create, participate in, and win online contests. You create a contest, enter the contestants, and make the contest go live. Then you sit back and wait as visitors choose who is better amongst the contestants as they are presented each one compared to the other.

There are contests already up there for "Best Movie", "Best Movie Duo", "Best Simpson Character", etc. There are also plenty of Karaoke and Lip Sync contest. You can upload pictures, videos, and audio for people to judge.

All very nice, but I found it to be boring after a very short while. I started judging the Best Duo contest. Now, the way they do it is that they show you two contestants at a time and let you pick one over the other. So, if there are 2 contestants in the contest, you just have to do this once; if there are 3, you need to do this thrice; and this number goes up very quickly of course as the number of contestants increase. So, for the Best Duo contest, there were many contestant entries, and after about 20 clicks to choose which one is better than the other, I made a quick exit from the site.

Overall, it may be a good way to pass your time if you have nothing to do in the world. Or of course, if you create a contest of your own, it might be fun to see the results.