Good news to everyone!

Starting this month I will be accepting review requests from anyone who wants one for free. If you have a blog or any website, a product, or services that you want to get reviewed by me, I will accept it on case to case basis.

I tend to favor reviewing products, services, and websites related to this blog (since it brings mutual benefit the most). However, I also like to review other things that arouse my curiosity.

Here are the little requirements that I set for a review request to be accepted:

• Any site, products, services or anything related to this website. If you insist that you have something intriguing that you want to get reviewed and my readers deserve to know, then go – send your request.
• I review only legitimate sites, products and services that are intended to bring benefit to humanity. If you ask me to review something for an obscure motive, I may reject it.
• Send your request by directly contacting me through my Yahoo Messenger (YM), Windows Live Messenger (WLM) or Skype accounts. I prefer to chat with you about the thing you want to get reviewed. I don’t prefer emails, they are lousy (well, it’s meant for something else but not review requests).

Before I can write a review, I will need ample time to peruse your site, study your product or try your services (of course, you should let me access it for free). I am willing to establish a mutual and harmonious online business relationship to all the clients I get reviewed. However, it’s up to you.

Is it really free? Well, yeah. I encourage you though to donate as little as $5 to my PayPal account. The money will be used for the continued existence of this blog. You are allowed to donate higher amount though if you want and I will be grateful for it. However, rest assured that it will never influence the outcome of my review. Generous donors might be mentioned or listed somewhere on this website for being benevolent. If you want to give a reciprocal link instead, then go; it is okay.

It’s already been six months of nice Windows Vista experience but it felt like I haven’t played enough with the value added things Microsoft launched alongside Windows Vista. I’ve started to explore recently about Windows Live services and software, and it was quite worth everyone’s attention.

Well actually, Windows Live services are not really attached to any Windows operating system, although Windows Vista may appear to be a “little bias” with the timing of the release. Windows Live constitutes some desktop but mainly web applications that are meant to extend and improve the Windows user experience. These experiences are grouped by Microsoft into three categories where Windows Live services and applications fall in: informed, connected and protected.

The first thing I scrutinized is the Windows Live Messenger, Microsoft’s instant messaging (IM) client previously known in its early versions as MSN Messenger. It is one of the services and software that belongs to the “connected” category of Windows Live. So, without further ado, here are the good, the bad, and the worst things (yes, they exist) of Microsoft’s flagship IM.

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We saw last year how intense the search engine battle was. Big companies like Microsoft, Yahoo and Google spent billions of dollars in efforts to gain market dominance in their online advertising business. At the end of the year, we saw that Google reigned supreme, with Yahoo, Microsoft, and other competitors closely trailing behind. Proofs were evident of Google’s victory: they acquired 17 innovating companies to call their own and with hopes to extend or penetrate further the online marketplace. If you don’t care, bloggers do – and they predict outright that Google’s glory will begin to fade in 2008.

Last year and until now, Google actively wipes out the PageRank (PR) of many blogs and websites they believed to have involved to link farms and other schemes designed to “artificially” inflate PageRank. PageRank is Google’s view on how important a web page is, thus favoring more important pages in their top Search Engine Results Page (SERP). Many observations reveal in totality that most penalized sites are those who joined networks offering paid reviews or links. For bloggers, PageRank is significant because many ad network companies (major source of blog revenues), begin to follow Google’s standards. Higher PRs somehow contribute to the continuous existence of most blog sites in the Internet.

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Last December 5, 2007, online crowds who own Windows Vista was delighted when Yahoo’s Senior Product Manager, Josh Jacobson, announced the preview version (pre-beta) release of their long-awaited Yahoo! Messenger for Vista through its official blog.

As we all know, Yahoo Messenger (YM) is one of the most popular messengers in the world (other important messengers include MSN Messenger or Windows Live Messenger, Skype, Google Talk, etc).

Many YM users who own Vista have been waiting for quite some time. Lots of people dropped their emails through email subscription page provided by Yahoo to acquire the news as soon as it becomes available. I was one of them and I expected a lot.

By first impression, the Yahoo! Messenger for Vista preview version release looks good. Installation is smooth and easy – as usual. When I run the new messenger for the first time, it looks very modern and “Vista.” Yes, it exactly boasts a fresh-looking transparent interface, taking advantage of Windows Vista’s graphics subsystem, the Windows Presentation Foundation (WPF). YM for Vista lets you customize the window theme and list appearance as you desire. It looks pretty much like a widget, which is great. Soon, programs meant for Vista will follow this interface trend.

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