Chris O.

I remember when Livejournal began, and so I'm really quite surprised to see that it's still here after all these years. It predates blogging, though the concept is similar, and it has much more of a focus as a site for interest groups and the like-minded than blogging communities in which every blogger does their own thing independently.

Journalling isn't that different from blogging, though a journal is a personal diary by definition, and while a blog may also serve that function many bloggers use theirs to address the public on much broader issues. Livejournal permits both, but has its roots in more personal outpourings. Along with the other venues of its day, notably Tripod and Angelfire, it found itself catering for teenage angst and provided more in the way of safety in numbers than later blogging sites would do.

From my fairly brief look around, after discovering that the site was still very much thriving after more than ten years, it doesn't look so different now than it did then. It's still very much group-oriented, and it seems that a fair few of them are regularly updated.

There is a two-tier structure to the site, with basic free accounts that supply enough features for the average user, and paid premium accounts that offer better presentation, more content options, more photos and so forth. It's usually a good idea to experiment with a free account first, and see how you get along with people around you.

Additionally, you have the choice to allow visitors to comment in your journal, and you can choose which, if any, entries you want to remain private on a per-entry basis.

For newcomers, the site offers ways to find communities and members who might interest you and even a random choice button that picks a journal out of the digital hat if you don't know what to look at first. The one I got was in Russian, showing that Livejournal has expanded far from its American roots. All well worth a look around, if you're seeking something a bit different and more social than Blogger.

BTW the automatic tagging thingy here at SJ categorizes this site as "celebrity gossip", which it isn't.

I love it already. I thought I'd get in early with this one, though there is only the trailer and the textual information about the game so far. It's due for digital download in 2011 and is the much-hoped-for sequel to Torchlight, without doubt one of the best indie games for years.

Coming to this one, as expected, is a multiplayer option as well as the single player campaign, and the game world has been considerably expanded with new, randomly created areas and challenges, and a whole host of new characters.

This is probably going to be one of the best ways to spend $20 on a game next year. I just hope that the developers are going to continue to make it possible to run the game on computers with limited specs. If so, I'll definitely be around if you need a clumsy but loyal member of your party.

Also see my review of Torchlight:

http://www.sitejabber.com/reviews/www.torchlightgame.com

I know at least a couple of people who'll go for this one. More than 5000 old PC games including many classics, many of which have become "abandonware" and have found their way online in their original form. Strictly speaking, most of these games are someone's copyright unless they've officially been released as freeware since they were first published, but many of the software houses that produced them have long since gone out of business, or don't particularly wish to make a big issue over copyright anyway since they're all many years old. And where a software developer is still in business, it's not bad publicity for them to be associated with games so popular they're being downloaded ten or more years after they were first sold.

There are hundreds if not thousands of hours of play left in these games, still, and of course they're ideal for older computers and operating systems. If you've got an old PC running Windows95 in the attic, you should find many of these are suitable.

There is a cost, but it's not steep, and the site owners say it's to pay for the cost of keeping up the site, which is fair enough. You can get a month to download whatever you like, for $8.95. If for some reason you only want a day, that's $5.95, making it much more worthwhile to get the month and download the whole lot if you can.

These are going to be especially attractive to middle-aged nerds who remember playing these the first time around, but there are at least two generations of upcoming nerds, too, who can still be hooked on Duke Nukem or King's Quest if they're given the chance. This is a big chunk of computer gaming history.

More superb female vocal jazz, this time from Bernadette Seacrest, with her current band, "Her Provocateurs" (not to be confused with previous band "Her Yes Men", who presumably stopped agreeing with her). An ex-ballerina, ex-punk, ex-fetish model, she is most often described as a torch singer, and if you find yourself imagining you're in a smoky and slightly seedy basement bar, around 1938, you won't be alone. I wish I were a better writer, as I have to quote someone else to describe this singer:

"With an approach that's sassy, sexy and a little sinister, Seacrest conjures a timeless noir world with her voice, inhabiting songs obsessed with shame, lust, anger, fear, booze, murder and betrayal. Coming from her, it all sounds like something worth trying."

-Mel Minter, Crosswinds Weekly

There's a generous selection of MP3s to download on this site, so go listen for yourself. Preferably, with your eyes closed.

Entertainment Earth is well named - its products are all entertainment-related, and it's the size of the Earth, or at least it seems so. It's a huge collection of toys, models, action figures, clothing, and all manner of spin-off merchandise from sci-fi and fantasy movies, television, manga, anime, sports, pop culture, and more. Geek collectors, both male and female, will find something tempting here, for sure. I know I did. Several somethings. The range spans almost every imaginable theme, from Lego to Lost to Lady Gaga. An adult kid's dream toy store and more, it's great fun. And if you have no money, you can always window shop and see if you can find the weirdest or most pointless merchandising. I spent more than 200 imaginary dollars on one page alone. Yep, I am well into my third or fourth childhood and loving it.

The site does not represent a choking hazard to children under the age of 3, so your toddlers can enjoy it in safety too.

Sometimes it's hard to decide which are dumber, the questions or the answers, and there are obviously people who enjoy playing dumb as well as those that don't need to pretend. I've used it, without expectations, and if I get lucky that's a bonus. I expect most users to be on the young side of adolescent, so if I get an adult response, that's a bonus too. It's entertaining, but people have all sorts of reasons for posting to it and not all of them are going to be much help to you if you have a genuine and urgent need for advice.

It is what it is, and people aren't necessarily out to deceive you intentionally, though they might be. You should look around and get a feel for it before you pronounce judgment. Anywhere that's open as a public forum is going to be a source of unreliable information, so you have to make your own decisions on what to filter out and what to believe.

If you use it, try to find someone you can give an honest, informative answer to, instead of just complaining that nobody's doing the same for you. It's good karma.

Vertical, in the case of this website and the commonly-seen term "vertical market" means, as you might imagine, something firm and erect, with only one thing in mind, as opposed to a less focused, more horizontal, general-purpose arrangement. So a vertical market is a market in one product or field, only, and in this case, vertical news is a huge database from which you can select as much news and information as you like, a single topic at a time, without having to read about subjects in which you have no interest.

Aside from hefty weekly newsletters, the company will also give you access to up to thirteen years of archives for any given subject, for a very reasonable personal subscription of around $40 a year. You can of course pick more subjects and get the same service, at the same price, for each.

If you're a corporate user, which is of course considerably more costly, you get much more, including the ability to access a predefined and customized database which limits your employees to only certain information areas.

The database includes news sourced from many different areas, including not just the internet, but company press releases and other databases, news wires and journals. And articles, which are limited to around 500 words, are intended to be concise and deliver the information you need in the most efficient manner.

If you're in business, or simply want to keep abreast of what's happening in the business world but only in one topic area, such as computer peripherals, or something still vertical but somewhat thicker, such as the subject of China as a whole, I imagine this is a must-visit site. Whilst you'll need to subscribe to see any subject in depth and access the archives, there's still breaking news in all areas to read, for free, so you have a chance to decide whether the style and content is what you're looking for.

A personal MEH because although they state that they cover "Silicon Valley" they don't cover San Jose, where I live. Not that San Jose is that significant, in Silicon Valley terms. We only have just about every major computer equipment and software manufacturer there is, not to mention a host of startups, and there are a few other fairly well-known Silicon Valley companies here - Ebay, and PayPal, for example. And Netflix, you might have heard of them too.

I knew nothing about this one until I read the earlier review, and had to go take a look. The concept is that anonymous contributors send postcards of their choice, with their deepest personal secret conveyed in some way on one side. A selection of the family-friendly ones make it to the page, and into assorted books, with more limited showings of the more adult contributions.

It's left me with somewhat mixed feelings. An unique idea, and people who read it regularly and buy the books apparently get some reassurance from reading other people's secrets and identifying with them. It's also inviting people to be imaginative and to some extent, creative, and to get a reaction from other, like-minded folks. None of which is a bad thing in itself in a world which seems increasingly devoid of encouragement to be imaginative or creative, and which thrives on the insubstantial and unemotional transactions of Twitter.

We have no way of knowing, though, if all these submissions are true secrets, or not. I could imagine people creating the most outrageous 'secrets' for fun and publicity, even if it is anonymous. But let's not spoil it. And let's not dwell on the reasons why people feel they have no other way to tell others how they feel, in person.

As you can gather, my mixed feelings stem from the sadness that we need to keep so many secrets, and communicate safely only when we can be anonymous. I also think it's a pity that for reasons of family-friendliness, a lot of secrets aren't going to see the light of day on this site, but it's understandable.

Anyway, having gone through the page, my mood was lightened a great deal when I used the link to go across to Amazon, where the book of the site, "PostSecret: Confessions on Life, Death, and God" is for sale. Scrolling idly down the page to the discussions in the "related forums" section, I could hardly miss that the first conversation on the list was titled "If you eat your own poop what are the consequences?"

Now there's someone with a secret just begging to be mailed in.

You too can have legs like these:

http://www.eurasia-jeans.com/women-jeans/e0033a-women-jeans.htm

Wait, what?

Straightforward Chinese replica jersey site out of Shanghai, unfortunately does not explain either that it's Chinese or that the jerseys are replicas, so I thought I'd just mention it myself.

You will not get the genuine, licensed, quality products at these prices. If you think the authentic shirts are overpriced, you are not alone and these people prey on potential buyers who are looking to buy at more reasonable prices.

But when you see a price discounted from, say, $70 to $25, remember, that's the price for the authentic item, while the one you are getting is worth no more than $25 at best and probably a lot less.

If you're looking for a dropshipper to buy cheap clothing from, to sell on Ebay, for example, this is the sort of site to contact. But don't confuse these with authentic products.

I picked five items at random, one of them was $10 more expensive than on the developer's site, one was $30 more, one was freeware but they wanted $29.95 for it, and the other two were the same price as at the originating site.

I don't see any point in buying software from an agent when you can go to the developer's or manufacturer's website and get it for the same price or less, and maybe find a customer rating or two also. Seems pointless to me.

On the other hand this site has some really obscure software that you might like to poke about in, and then go to the developer's site to buy. Star Trek for Windows 9x, for example, is one you don't see every day. Any day.

Strong entry for Worst Attempt At Convincing Spam on Sitejabber this week:

"I had bought several shoes from this site, and compare with other site, the shoes quality are very good. I live in Ohio, it normally cost 5 workdays for me get them. And they only cost my USD100-300. I think i can bear the lovely shoes. Love them very much Zzzz. – 10/18/2010"

Chinese site, Chinese fakes. Impressive collection of certificates and badges, including one from the BBB, which is remarkable for a Chinese company since the BBB don't have an office there. So, entirely phony.

Chinese fakes. PayPal only (no buyer protection) Not VeriSign secured regardless of badge, nothing much to see here.

Also trades as (at least):
www.newera-caps.net
www.hats-trade.com
www.hats-store.net
www.hellohats.com
www.goahats.com
www.newera-hats.com

Wonderful, wonderful New Orleans jazz. Meschiya Lake started singing - and winning - at the age of 9 and went on to become a circus performer, eating insects and juggling fire. Returning to her first love, this 30-year old tattooed lady sings her guts out in a modern rendition of trad New Orleans jazz that will have you dancing if you can dance and toe-tapping if you can't. Backed with strength by her band, The Big Horns, she has an amazing voice that perfectly suits this repertoire and takes you back to more golden days of jazz. Her new album, "Lucky Devil" is out now. Lovely.

Kit Ballard is your average cat girl. Pink hair, skin-tight purple leather outfit, electric sword, oh and of course, a pink tail. And she does the sort of work cat girls do, namely chasing criminals in mecha suits around from planet to planet as a 'breaker', or bounty hunter. She has a pet called Skiffy, who resembles an inflatable Pokemon, and that's about as far as I got, but it tells you enough.

This is manga, of course, but of the Australian variety, produced by an independent software studio called Krome, which has been behind Transformers and Star Wars games and has a string of other successes to its name including Australia's most successful video game.

The site has an online comic, and a video game has been launched recently for the PC and console platforms and captured some high praise already. There's a forum and a blog and a store, too. This is fairly small-scale stuff at the moment, though no doubt they are hoping the game will attract a lot more interest. Australia isn't generally the first place you think of when looking for manga, so it's a cult thing right now.

The online comic is well presented and I liked the option to see who the characters are, on each page, if you're new to the stories. But it does need a good DSL connection at the least, as it's very graphics-intensive and each page of the comic is a single JPG of around 300k and upwards.

The heroine is a twenty-something with a sense of humor that's slightly suggestive, making this a teen comic rather than a kids one, though frankly I can't see anyone being disturbed by their kids reading it. They're either too young to get the message, or they're old enough to pick it up, in which case they might as well carry on reading it. And it's very mild; a huge mecha with horns gets referred to as "Mr Horny" with the odd reference to the size of his sword. There are other characters of both sexes and of a similar age, so there may be the odd hint that they're doing something other than bounty hunting when they're off the page. But that's as risque as it gets. I think it's harmless fun, and I wish them luck with the video game.

[Edit - apparently my review is not "family friendly" and has been censored off the front page and the mainstream list of recent reviews. Third one this month, too. I apologize to any readers shocked and distressed by the adult nature of this review.
Oh, and it also has a tag inserted which I didn't put there, and it's a meaningless word, too, according to Google. Beats me.]

This womens magazine site is aimed at a 20-something audience looking for a bit of escapism and fantasy, nothing more, and it's good at it. Girls who party, or wish they still did.

I couldn't help noticing "Legendary Thespian Penises: The Good, The Bad and The Ugly" which frankly was a bit worrying (not to mention, depressing), but I spent a longer and happier time with "The Top 10 Pairs of Ta-Tas (We Wish Were Ours)" before moving along to "12 Celebs Go Topless With Only Their Hands As Shields".

I decided to skip "Celebrities Are Magnets For Bed Bugs", and "28 Plastic Surgery Fails - Did Their Surgeon Use A Butter Knife?" before deciding to play fair and go to the Money section, where there had to be some serious content.

The first article was about a recent divorcee who had signed up for some plan but still "didn't have a clue about investing her dollars", and the next was a useful guide to selling your engagement ring when the guy who gave it to you was gone.

The third was by a woman who admitted that the last time she bought a car she was ripped off because she was "totally ignorant" and couldn't manage it on her own. I was going to go read the comments about that one, but on the way down the page I went past "I Googled My Crush And Found Out The Worst" and "Dear Wendy: "My Boyfriend Has A Teen Cheerleader Fetish" and it suddenly occurred to me that I wasn't meant to be here.

Still, I went back and carried on with the Money articles, at least to the next one, which I thought was sort of weird. The writer explained:

"I recently saw a billboard that claimed babies cost about $700 a month. I did the math on my 2.5 kids, and holy disposable income; the figure hurt. The billboard was an advertisement to deter teenage pregnancy, but if I hadn't already taken the plunge, it would have made 30-year-old me think twice before procreating."

Is it me, or does anyone else see something odd about this statement? This writer already has two kids and a third on the way, but has no idea how much it costs to bring up a baby? Are you thinking what I was thinking?

Well, it was all a bit of fun, which after all, is what it's meant to be. It's a girly mag for girls, and even if the implication in places is that girls are superficial and not too bright, it's reassuring to readers who worry that they're superficial and not too bright. And to be honest, however immature it all might be, there are mens mags out there that are far, far worse.

Indiefixx is a lifestyle blog belonging to Jen Wallace, another one of those people who seem able to do everything you'd like to, if your time wasn't already filled with too much you'd like to walk away from. She explains that it all started as a crafts and design blog, but although she is still clearly a craftsperson and designs a mean website, she's since expanded into broader lifestyle and household topics. On top of the blog, she's tacked on a book club, free art, and a galleria which showcases the work of independent craftspeople and artists. And she also does PR for other independents, helping them into business.

The site is light, decorative and cheerful. It's very feminine too, but in a female-arty style rather than a female-mommy style. It's clearly intended to be fun, entertaining, and inspiring and to engender a community spirit amongst the like-minded.

It doesn't entirely work for me, as a man, even though I can certainly appreciate the quality of the design work here and the amount of care that goes into the whole project. But I think if I wanted to look around, I'd be told, in the nicest possible way, to wash my hands and take my boots off before coming in.

If you're female, though, and you're down with the indie lifestyle and want to commune with the like minded, this may well be for you. Especially if you want to step outside reality for a bit and leave the cares of the day behind you. It's an afternoon tea and scones on the terrace sort of site, if you know what I mean.

Yet another venue for video gaming news and culture, Escapist magazine has a bit more of a claim to being the best of a big bunch because it won a Webby, back in 2008. And it's a huge, sprawling site with a great deal of news, reviews and other gaming content, including a magazine in there somewhere with several columnists and a comic and movie clips and a forum and plenty of reader comment.

Membership is optional, but signing up allows you to "enter contests, post comments, and simply be a more awesome person." No guarantees on that last one, though, I guess.

It tended to be a bit slower than I would like on my old laptop, but considering most of the pages are three to four screens deep, I can live with that.

Anyway, you've got to like it, just for the name.

Google launched its new URL-shortening service to the public a couple of weeks back and it offers some current and potential features that are likely to encourage many users to leave services such as bit.ly, which claims that Google has simply copied most of their ideas, anyway.

A URL-shortener helps people cope with the awfully long addresses generated by sites these days. In fact, you may notice some pretty long and mysterious addresses here on SiteJabber too, sometimes. Whilst there's nothing intrinsically wrong or bad about them, try fitting one into a tweet, or a forum posting. And don't even bother suggesting that someone copy them down by hand. Sharing them by any means is a pain, even if it's practical.

Enter URL shortening. The concept is simple: type any URL (web address) into a box, hit the button, and back comes a different, and much smaller URL that still takes people to the same place when they click on it. In other words, the service creates an index of new URLs that point to the old ones. And an infinite number of new URLs may point to one address, since many people all around the world may be asking for short URLs that take their clickers to the same final destination.

USER ---> short URL -----> translation ------> original long URL ---> destination

Or

USER ---> short URL a ------|
USER ---> short URL b ------| ----> translation --> same long URL ---> destination
USER ---> short URL c ------|

All this has to be transparent, too, so that using a short URL is no slower than going directly to the original address.

You're relying on the URL shortening service to be around a long time, of course, and you're also trusting them to keep their service up and running 24/7, reliably. So the first thing commercial users of a service are looking for is a reliable brand name. And the second, is some history to prove that the administrators of the service can keep it running.

Now then, let's think. What would be a hugely popular brand, with a history of running servers efficiently 24/7?

Enter Google, with their new service at goo. Gl. And they have some added value services, too. Every time a person clicks on one of their links, the data is saved, and the person who created that link can see how many people have used it. Very cool. Now, I can get the sort of data that only webmasters once had.

I gather goo. Gl is also going to be offering data on the operating systems and web browsers of goo. Gl URL clickers, once again, very useful data if you're a web designer.

But what people will be waiting for is to see how far Google will take this in integrating existing services such as Google Analytics. It seems unlikely that they can screw this up, unless people decide they don't like the goo. Gl /xxxx URL format.

At the moment, all click statistics are going to be available to the public. So anyone can see how popular anyone else's links are. Whether that remains the case, if there are businesses out there willing to pay for secrecy, we shall have to wait and see.