Chris O.

I'm a sporadic user of Ebay but my wife has been buying from it for at least ten years (somebody stop her, please? LOL) and has had no bad deals that I know of in all that time.

I got into it I think about 8 years ago and it's changed a lot since then. It's opened the doors to professional dealers of varying trustworthiness, it's acquired PayPal and Skype, it's changed it's rating scheme to make buyers look better and sellers look worse, it's invented Ebay stores and Buy It Now, both fixed price transactions, and it's continuously messed around with the design of members' home pages in an ongoing attempt to make them as unhelpful as possible. The site itself has got gradually more slow-loading over the years too, as more and more Flash and interactivity has been deployed. Currently the front page is trying to be "Web 2.0" by having a word cloud, which slows the page down a bit and really isn't serving any useful purpose at all.

I've mainly been a buyer rather than a seller. I've sold maybe a dozen things and bought maybe a hundred. All my transactions went fine and I had no PayPal problems. I understand this is not everyone's experience. I've always paid promptly and have a 100% rating as a buyer (though this is easier to get now than before). I do enjoy the excitement of the chase in those last few seconds, and if I can manually "snipe" a bid in at the very last moment and win a great deal, it's a great experience. Sadly, people now deploy sniping programs, "bots" that bid for them in that vital last moment and can monitor and bid in multiple auctions simultaneously. Not cheating, but not fair either.

Whatever you're looking for, Ebay is like a landfill, everything ends up there sooner or later. If you think of it just like a physical auction, and remember the golden rules of physical auctions - Only bring as much money as you can afford to waste, and keep your hands in your pockets unless you really mean to bid - then you should generally be OK. Never, ever assume that anything cheaply sold is anything other than cheaply made. If it's priced like a fake, it's a fake. If you don't know how to tell, walk away.

Personally I wouldn't buy anything very large or very valuable this way unless it was specialized enough to be of little interest to your average second-hand junk dealer and the seller was knowledgeable enough to answer questions accurately. Though of course people routinely do, up to and including used fire engines and the occasional submarine. I just don't play in that league.

You're well advised to take with the proverbial pinch of salt anyone who says "I don't know anything about these". That's potentially a dealer who bought the item at either a local auction, estate sale or even thrift store precisely because she knew *everything* about these. People commonly use such expressions to distance themselves from an item, and sometimes in the hope that you'll bite only because you think you've found a bargain that the seller doesn't know about.

Volumes - literally - have been written about trading on Ebay and the temptation is to write another one, because the subject is so complex. Commonsense will take care of many of your concerns, though, and the strength to walk away from a deal you're not too sure of.

What's missing here is the sellers' points of view. Hopefully we can get some regular sellers to tell us about their experiences with Ebay as well, because buying is only half the story.

Web Of Trust.

(Please note that I use Firefox exclusively, so the extension for Internet Explorer is not reviewed here. The service does however provide extensions for both browsers.)

"WOT is a free Internet security addon for your browser. It will keep you safe from online scams, identity theft, spyware, spam, viruses and unreliable shopping sites. WOT warns you before you interact with a risky website. It's easy and it's free. "

That's the official blurb. Is it true, does it really work? Surprisingly, yes it does and pretty well, too. After installation (free) you will be presented with an icon attached to every URL in search engines plus every URL in your email, if you use web-based HTML mail such as Yahoo! In your browser. If the icon is green, it's been recommended as safe by other WOT users. If it's red, you really don't want to go there. If you do go there, WOT will not allow you to enter the site without giving you a full-page warning that the site can't be trusted, so it's your call whether you want to go through with it or not. Sites that have less recommendations but which are still deemed safe, get a paler green icon, and highly recommended sites get a special shiny icon too.

The inclusion of email links also provides a good first line of defense against phishing sites that try to trick you into going somewhere other than you expect. If others have been caught before you, chances are that the link(s) in the email will show up as red warnings.

If sites haven't yet been scored by other WOT users, you're still informed, as a "we don't know yet" icon will be there. Then it really is your call. But if a link purports to be from, say, Bank of America but it has a "don't know" icon, chances are it's fake.

You can contribute to the rating system via an icon in your Firefox toolbar (and presumably IE too, as there is a version for that browser though I don't use it). So if you have a bad experience, or feel that the site is not safe for kids, or won't keep your personal information safe, you can add your warning to the WOT database. On the other hand, you can also praise a great site.

I've been using this for quite a while and it hasn't failed me yet. In fact I clicked through from the sitejabber site to a page described in another reviewer's comments as an internet scam - and WOT immediately warned me not to go there. If the reviewer had installed WOT, chances are that they too wouldn't have taken the risk and been cheated. So, yes, worth the install for sure, and worth contributing to the WOT community.

WOT is sponsored by a variety of web-related businesses and sites which are themselves worth exploring. Best known of them at present is Panda Security, the cloud-based (spot the Web 2.0 jargon? Web 1.0 users read "online") antivirus website. I used the online computer scan once and they've been junk mailing me ever since, so you might want to give this one a miss, but most of the others were new to me and worth bookmarking.

It seems unlikely that a free service that relies entirely on surfers being honest and reliable would work at all. But it does. The price is right and I can't see a reason for not installing it in your favorite browser.

I came to the site because I'd been out of touch with web activities for a long time, and needed a crash course in Twitter and iPhone apps and microblogging and all those things that everyone but me seemed to know everything about. It answered many of my information needs almost immediately and I've been returning to it ever since. One of the top sources for the would-be-web-savvy.

Apparently the leading political blog and venue for a quarter of a million readers, to be honest I'm not sure if this is that cool or not. I'm not American, so although I grasp the fundamentals of politics here, I can't entirely feel the emotions that American people feel when the words "progressive liberal" are used. What I have seen, though, from my very subjective viewpoint in California, is that people on both sides get awfully heated, and polarized, over just about any political or economic matter. And they take it all personally, and then the custard-pie fights break out, leaving me an unimpressed onlooker and wondering whether I should laugh or cry.

This seems to me to be a highly polarized political venue that, as another reviewer has already written here, walks the narrow line between social responsibility and propaganda and leaves you uncertain which way it would like to jump. So in that sense, it fits. This is how I'd expect a polarized political source to work, and though it does lean toward responsibility more than bigotry, there's no doubt where the custard pies would be aimed if the chance arose.

It would be a solid "meh" from me, except that in fairness it will be a lot more attractive to progressive liberals who appreciate its stance and content more than I do. So I'll give it a "cool", which should balance the next conservative reviewer who will take a very different point of view.

A legitimate Chinese wholesaler, this site appears to differ from the illegal fakers and sellers of phony designer goods in that the goods here which might have been passed off as real are not represented as genuine designer brands, but are openly imitations and close copies without the fake branding, manufactured and distributed from China.

Most of the items aren't likely to be confused with quality products manufactured by anyone in the West and they don't really attempt to mislead. However, this is not to say that the manufacturers don't mislead, and they do. For example, I don't recommend you putting a lot of faith in the specifications of the 20 Megapixel web camera, or the 6000 watt stereo system, unless you do some homework.

In the first case, obviously no webcam is going to be 20 megapixels, more like 2, or less. A USB connection couldn't cope with that sort of resolution anyway. And if you can buy a 20 megapixel camera for $10 you go right ahead, because professional DSLR cameras with that resolution cost many thousands of dollars. But the spec is not exactly a lie, because the camera comes with software that takes the already poor 2 megapixel camera image and "interpolates" it (blows it up) to a truly crappy 20 megapixel image which is now ten times poorer than the original. Still, that does match the spec. They even tell you, if you bother to look down the page, what it really means. Not that most people do bother to look. Of course what they don't tell you, is that the camera's sensor is crap and you can buy these cheaper on Ebay any day, and get PayPal protection too. But look, you're only being asked for $10. What did you expect?

I saw more than one person asking questions at Yahoo! Answers. Questions like, "I saw this 20 megapixel camera with dual-core processor for, like, $5. Is it going to be any good?"

Honestly, no offense but if you're asking that question, you shouldn't be allowed out.

In the case of the 6000 watt hi-fi, the figure quoted is PMPO, which originally meant "peak music power output", a meaningless and inflated interpretation of the actual power, but is now often used to mean "peak momentary power", the theoretical maximum the system can stand for a microsecond before exploding. Except that this system wouldn't stand that sort of power, not even for a microsecond, and you'd need to wear protective clothing or stand in another room when you turned the volume up.

And neither of these terms is in any way scientific, nor is there any standard way of measuring these supposed capabilities. The terms used by genuine audio manufacturers and dealers to describe audio power are specific but confusing to an outsider as they are ("root mean square", for example); but the figures here are just nonsense and are of use only by the manufacturers to persuade you to purchase. However, again not strictly lies, since PMPO could mean whatever they want it to mean. Somewhere here there is also a hand-held speaker for MP3 players that's rated high enough for Pink Floyd's PA system. You need to know what you're looking at.

The site, the wholesaler that is, is not and doesn't have to be responsible for what the manufacturers claim. Don't expect it. Actually, being Chinese, the manufacturers don't have to be responsible to anyone either. So don't expect to find anyone to blame, there isn't anybody.

This is mainly, but not necessarily entirely, very cheaply made junk sold at fair prices - for very cheaply made junk. If you buy a $5 MP3 player that looks like an iPod and it turns out not to sound or perform like an iPod, and you really thought it would, more fool you.

Lastly this is not Harrods, or Macy's, or Amazon, it's a Chinese wholesaler of very cheap products and perhaps, cheap products which you could be misled into believing might be quality products. Like any far-Eastern wholesaler, it's a lucky dip, or bargain bin, and you use some commonsense when dipping in. Divide the selling price by three, and that's probably what the product is actually worth, at the very most. Assume you're getting something which is worth that, and no more. If you have higher expectations, and you are rewarded, then you got lucky. It's a lucky dip, after all.

Disregard "discounts" as meaningless, and "reviews" as suspect. It's safer that way. Even the king of customer reviews, Amazon, is notoriously riddled with fakes.

Customer service is likewise. Might be OK, probably not, but then you knew that. Most of the time, most far-Eastern sites will not accept returns, or will suggest you pay the return shipping fees, which often begin at around $50. And then they will make you pay a second lot of shipping fees to send a new item back. If, that is, you are very lucky and they want to help you at all. They'll possibly even add a "handling charge" for good measure. So, often, the luckiest you'll get is for them to be honest with you and tell you to just write it off or give it to someone else.

It's not exactly a scam, unless they take your money and keep it, and either give you nothing, or send you something entirely different from what you ordered. It's just more like buying off a total stranger in a bar, than buying over the counter at a store. Think of it like that, and you probably stand a much better chance of not being ripped off.

Completely rewritten, November 16th 2009

A lot of the issues I was originally unhappy about with this site have gone. They must have - I've subsequently written a huge number of reviews here so I must think they're doing something right!

Things are slowly coming together and so far, from what I've seen anyway, the quality and honesty of reviewing are both very high. There are a few self-promoters still, and I guess there always will be, and occasional but very limited spam, but these are minor issues and normally dealt with very quickly.

The new forum began after my original review, and although it's moving slowly still, there's steady interest and it's a good way to answer questions about specific websites.

It's interesting to see that although the vast majority of page views are from the USA, there's much smaller but equally solid support in the UK. It would be good to see that support continue to grow in the next few months.

The admin team are very accessible and obviously serious about the philosophy behind the site. I'm much more inclined now to believe this one has a sound and potentially exciting future ahead of it.

This is one of those websites you'd visit if you were looking for a remote controlled zombie or an alarm clock in the shape of a giant... well, you know what I mean. There are hundreds of them. This one is less tacky than most and surprisingly has some products on show that you might actually want to buy. Some of the tees have genuinely amusing comment, and there are well-known gifts like the Felix The Cat clock or the CIA Factbook alongside less conservative ideas such as the lounging aliens or the Nose Shower Dispenser. Worth a look if you're in the market for harmless fun gifts or unusual slogan tees.

They also have a loyalty scheme called Club WOE (sad choice of acronym there) which customers may join for $30. In return they get about double that amount in special deals or freebies. Should be good value if you're going to be using the site for regular or seasonal gift shopping.

I placed an order with this site for around $1000 worth of disability and living aids for my 91 year old father. The site appeared to be provided by a large and reputable supplier of equipment and I was keen to obtain some safety devices as he'd had a few falls recently and I was worried for his safety. I wanted to get the goods as quickly as possible, so I agreed to pay extra for rush processing and 3-day expedited delivery.

After a week with no goods, I phoned them only to find that the order hadn't been processed at all. I was initially told that because it was a big order, it had been delayed on suspicion of fraud, regardless of my having paid for rush processing and fast shipping. This is allegedly their normal response to being given a valuable order, would you believe.

Then it transpired that the person allegedly dealing with the order wasn't even in the office until the next week, and the customer service person had no idea why the order wasn't being dealt with. But she would phone this person up and try to find out. Later. And indeed I did get a call back to say that this person had been contacted and had now released my order for processing, a week late. And it went downhill from here on.

When placing my order, there was no suggestion that any product wasn't normally held in stock. However, to my amazement I was now told that in fact only a few of the smaller items were stocked, with half the unstocked items coming all the way from suppliers on the other side of the country. So in fact 3-day shipping wouldn't be possible.

Well then, could they just send what they had and have the rest shipped to me directly from their suppliers? Nope, everything would have to be collected in one place before being dispatched, as otherwise they "wouldn't be able to calculate the shipping".

However, I was offered 3-day expedited shipping calculated from the day they had the goods in stock, which wouldn't be that week, a laughable offer under the circumstances and clearly just a way to hang on to the extra fee I'd agreed to pay for shipping.

Oh and contrary to information on the website, I had allegedly ordered three "oversized" items and would have to pay up to another $60+ in shipping for just one of them, on top of the $70 I had already arranged to pay for the expedited shipping and the "rush processing". The customer service rep apologized and told me she had emailed the webmaster to point out their error. As if I cared, by this time.

And to add insult to injury, they didn't even offer to refund the fee I'd paid for the so-called same-day "rush processing".

I canceled the whole order and would strongly advise anyone fooled into thinking this is a large and reputable supplier to place their order by phone, and confirm all the details, costs, and delivery dates before agreeing to pay this company anything. Make sure they can actually deliver the goods and get a firm shipping cost before committing yourself to a purchase.

Finally I took the opportunity to respond to their invitation to send feedback. I wrote at length about my awful experience and my disappointment with their terrible customer service, and dispatched the feedback by form from the website with at least some small hope of getting a response, if not an apology. But I got nothing in reply and for all I know they didn't even bother to read the feedback anyway. Worst experience I've had at an online store, ever.

UPDATE 9/14/09: These people have the cheek to be sending me spam emails now, even though I never bought anything from them and don't ever intend to.

This is one of a collection of half a dozen Chinese sites based in Shanghai and owned by someone called Xiaozhe Zhou. Between them they sell Chinese fashion, bridal dresses, wigs, and more.

So this is likely to be a wholesaler running a dressmaking shop on the side. No way to tell, unless it's verified, as it's commonplace for Chinese sites to use a certain economy with the truth when describing their businesses.

The Chinese often don't run businesses the way we expect, to put it mildly. And even the honest ones assume that you've read ALL the details before handing over your money - who wouldn't?

So in case you don't spot the answers on the site, here are some useful questions to ask yourself before you do business here:

1. Is that dress in the photo one that you made?

Answer: No, we've never seen it. We took the picture from some other website because we thought we might be able to make something sort of like it, more or less.

2. Well is that the dress I will get, then?

Answer: No. We'll do our best to get it to look mostly the same, though.

3. What do you mean by "mostly the same"?

Answer: Well, for a start we're working from the photo, not the dress itself. And the color might be different. And the embroidery, we can't get that right at all. And obviously, the materials and the quality will be nowhere nearly the same. But apart from that, it will look more or less the same, mainly.

4. Will the dress fit me?

Answer: Probably not. You'll need to get it altered by someone locally, that's normal.

5. But will it at least be the same shape as in the photo?

Answer: mostly. It depends.

6. If I don't like it, may I...

Answer: No.

7. How long will it take to get it?

Answer: In theory, a month, plus shipping time. Or however long it takes to make it.

This part is not a scam, because almost all of the above is right there on the site if you take the time to look for it before handing over your money.

But wait, I could be wrong, so go read some of the "testimonials" such as this one, from Sonia Smith:

"The moonlight Quinceanera prom dress was sent to me in 6 weeks, which was promised as a delivery time of Peridress. I came across the website in chance after thousands webpages was browsed and found no derised simple silhouette in dream. I placed an order immediately but my friends were skeptical about the dress quality worked out from an online dress shop. As result, I was the bid winner for the dress from experienced Peridress seam workers were beyond my imagination from the web-picture, everything was perfect only some wrinkles left on the well wrapped fabric. But it didn't care. All guests at the Quinceanera prom didn't meanly give their positive complements. I love it and will find more chances to wear. Thanks for their deligent work in my dress. "

Convincing, no? No. Everyone in the testimonials department seems to have come down with a case of me-no-speaky-Engrish, such as this one (and note the unfortunate use of the word "woe" instead of "wow", by the way!):

"When I knew I should do majority work of wedding plan, I was very confused. In particular for bridal gowns, I had nothing about it, although Sandra, a bridal-to-be had caught the fancy of different styles on Peridress, She was so excited to decide which is an exactly fit to her. Both of us felt nothing to do, however thank for their professional advisers, whose are so nice to provide with personal service throughout whole of order procedure and manufacture flow.

"They told that simple silhouette, for example a line will flatter me more. And I also said I need the same result of glim beading as picture on their website. Finally they made it. Woe, is the only word when I received my dress package and stand before the mirror to look into myself. Another thing can't be neglected is so promptly they are from the order placing day to sanding dress oversea. Nearly waiting for 40 business days, I got the dreamy dress.

"I couldn't restrain excitement to look forward to wedding banquet coming near. On Sept 5th 2009, almost all the people at this ceremony stared to give comments on my dress. "Beautiful", "perfect fit", and "stunning", all wonderful words swamped around to give a happiest feeling. "

This part IS a scam. The photos of these genuine brides and grooms have been stolen from the web and used here alongside clearly faked so-called testimonials, and this is all as phony as it gets.

If you're still unconvinced, take a look at the reviews, in which someone is threatening to report the site to the FBI. Are we done here yet?

Look, all this is right here on the site. Are you about to hand over $300 to these people? Even now?

Why?

Over a million free e-books listed, many or most of which are available in common downloadable formats such as EPUB and PDF. An international collection, though note that some books are available only in the USA and for those, a proxy or VPN connection or a friend in the USA would be needed.

Books are listed by title, author and subject, there is an occasional blog, and for those who still think the Americans are a laid-back sort of folk, a list of the books they've banned over the years.

There is also a vast list of external links, covering big repositories of foreign language materials and specialized subjects of all kinds which store hundreds of thousands more titles, at least. This alone would keep you busy for hours, and although some of these links are very old, I picked two at random and they were still active. Which is at least 50% more than I'd expected.

It's a very basic, very efficient site with no graphics except in the blog. Although it looks dull, though, you'd be missing out if you moved on in the search for something more flashy. And unlike some sites of this age and nature, it's updated and in touch with the latest out-of-copyright releases. Very good value.

*** If you're reading this before February 5th 2011, visit the following URL to get this $30 app free! Make sure you note your registration number. This is a limited time offer, and there appear to be no strings attached as far as I can see.

http://www.pdfzilla.com/giveaway.html

***

PDFZilla is a useful and quite well known app which converts Adobe PDF files into all sorts of other formats such as text, RTF and Word documents, images, and SWF Flash animations. PDFs, which are the files that most people use Adobe Reader for, are very convenient containers for all manner of documents including images and graphics as well as text and various fonts and effects. And since the acquisition of the Flash file format from Macromedia, animated Flash movies may also be included to create a multimedia presentation.

The problem is, once you've created or downloaded one, there's no easy way to extract or edit content. Unlike a word-processing document, which you can simply edit in a free application, PDF pages are more like paper documents than electronic ones; you can't simply add and delete words or move paragraphs around, or insert images. And once a PDF is created, you can't correct any of your errors without a relatively expensive bit of editing software, or alternatively starting over.

This makes PDF format files ideal for large, multi-media documents and books that aren't intended to be modified, or legal documents that need signatures and a greater degree of protection against illicit alterations. But if a situation arises where you really need to alter or add to one, that's not so easy.

This application converts PDF files into a wide range of other file formats, which can then be edited in the normal way. You'll probably already know if you can make use of it in your line of work or document creation, in which case you might also be impressed that it will batch-process hundreds of thousands of documents in a single run, too.

A neat offer for reviewers, by the way, and bloggers and webmasters and online columnists, is that the company will give you a free license in return for your writing a review of the product. Currently that's worth thirty bucks. But before you get started, there's a catch (of course). You have to agree to either put the review on your front page, or keep a link to it from the front page for at least two months. Which unfortunately means that SJ reviewers don't qualify. Boo. But if you want a free copy anyway, it looks like you can just start a blog on Blogger for free, and post the link there. Seems like a good deal to me, and it might even tempt you into the wonderful world of online self-publishing.

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.

I have never joined a dating site, which has come as a huge relief to all those women who might otherwise have come across me by accident or worse, intentionally. But after reading some other reviews of this one, I decided to take a look.

Everything about this one seemed inviting enough, it's a friendly presentation and there's no uncomfortable seediness to it. Joining is easy and if you don't get around to filling out your entire profile and posting an image at once, you'll get a reminder by email but that's it. Nobody is pestering you to add more than you want to, or do it faster. All good, so far. You don't even have to be dating, or looking for friendship - distant penpals are also an option, so you don't have to feel that you're getting in too deep, too soon.

There's the expected space to tell the world how wonderful you are, plus the "do you smoke, do you do drugs" list that you would also expect to have to complete if you don't want someone's beer breath in your face. I filled as much of the profile as I felt able to do, without further thought, and I was ready. But from there on in, it started to come apart for me.

The most interesting and an incredibly time-wasting aspect of this service are the three and a half thousand questions you can choose to answer, or not, voluntarily. The core of these is written by the people who run the service, but there's an ever-expanding number of new questions being written by the users of the site too. And some of these are pretty challenging (i. E. awkward to be honest about) and at least as good as the official ones. I had a couple of hours free in the afternoon, and found that I had answered four hundred of them already. It's compulsive, once you start.

So, with more than ten percent of the entire stock of questions answered, I was going to be getting really good matches, right?

Wrong. After seeing a few 'matches', it was obvious that they'd either not attempted to answer any questions, or they'd answered an entirely different set of questions to the ones I'd answered. Apparently, the questions are asked at random, so even answering the first 400 you get, doesn't guarantee that anyone else answered a single one of them. The people whose profiles I was offered had no more than about a dozen or perhaps twenty questions, at most, in common with me. And where there were differences in our answers, sometimes they were so crucial that we would instantly reject each other just on philosophical grounds.

The next issue I had was that the profiles are entirely free-form, aside from the 'characteristics' list. Anyone can write anything they like about themselves, and it seems that none of that is used to assess them as matches for others. I could apparently write, "oh by the way, I eat cats and hate small children (or the other way around)" and be matched with a cat lover with kids. The result of this, was that I was 'matched' with people who had entirely different viewpoints on life to me, different education, different politics, you name it.

Lastly, there is a requirement to show the ages and locations of those whose profiles you want to be shown. The most generalized selection in terms of locale, is for 'distant penpals', and then you choose the widest age range that is acceptable to you. Which I did. The result of this was, that I was constantly shown people who were looking for people not in my age range, or people thousands of miles away who were looking for people nearby, or people outside of the age range I had selected. In two weeks, I saw maybe three or four people whose profiles and requirements matched mine at least reasonably.

Even then, though, this site has a system which calculates how much a person is a 'match', a 'friend' or (yikes!) an 'enemy'. The best I got was one 90 percent friend, but not a match, and several people who were 15% - 25% or so 'enemies'. Why I would want to see the profile of a person who is even one percent enemy, I wouldn't know.

I'm in an age group in which less people are open to 'date', and where most people who think they're worth dating want to tell you about the Masters degree in yoga they're taking now that they've cast off the shackles of marriage and rediscovered themselves. Which for some reason makes me a bit disinclined to want to get them all tied up in one of those unpleasant relationships they've just escaped from.

If the profiles are to be believed, and let's assume they are, there are just an astonishing number of middle-aged women who are taking Masters degrees in psychotherapy, learning to love themselves through Yoga, or seeking a distraction from the stresses of running their small business whilst writing a play with one hand and cooking an authentic Italian dinner with the other. I am, categorically, not seeking one of these people and would likely run a mile if I met one. I'm darn sure they'd run a mile if they met me. So maybe, online dating isn't for me. But then, I'll be honest, I never expected it to be. And maybe that's my problem. I'm just not dating material. All I want is someone rich and not too fussy. Is that too much to ask?

Frankly, I think it's an age-related issue to a large extent and the shortage of decent matches forces the system to do the next best thing, which isn't all that good. There are aspects of the site that I didn't get a chance to use, and which do look to enhance the experience of people who are significantly more dateable than I am. You can chat with people, send messages without commitment, pay people compliments and generally have a good time, if the site fits what you need. Grouchy middle-aged men may need to apply elsewhere, though.

To quote the front page, for: social and economic justice; against: public corruption, corporate malfeasance, incompetent establishment and radical right wing agendas. You know whether you're going to want to bookmark this one or not, already. Either way, it's a generally well-written and thoughtful commentary.

This is a personal experience of this company - others may well have had great experiences and no problems whatsoever, so don't necessarily be guided by my comments, just be careful and be informed.

We applied to this company for a wheelchair for an elderly relative whose insurance is Medicare. The company told us to arrange a "face to face" with the doctor, who would then write up a report indicating whether he felt the patient needed a chair or not. We were told that Medicare would then approve the chair, or not, and we'd be informed.

After the face-to-face, everything went quiet for a few weeks. There was no contact from Hoveround at all. Then suddenly we got a phone call telling us that they needed to make a couple of adjustments to the chair and that they would be delivering it the next day. Well OK then, that was great but we would have preferred to have been kept informed in the meantime. Never mind though, because we did have the chair. I just had one comment for Hoveround, while they were apparently setting the chair up for my relative's specific needs: I pointed out that a major problem was with hand-eye co-ordination, due to a slow but progressive condition which left his hands unsteady. That was apparently noted.

The following day, the chair arrived with a guy who explained it's workings to our relative and allowed him to try it out. I was not expecting the chair to be so difficult to steer, which the basic model is; the steering wheels are on the back, rather than the front, so steering it and even keeping it in a straight line is not immediately intuitive. It's more like steering a boat than a car. And my relative found it to be difficult too, unsurprisingly, but he did give it a good try and overall we felt he would likely get the hang of it, though his hand control of the joystick and his co-ordination were poor to begin with.

While he was there I commented to the delivery guy/ rep about being told the previous day that they were "adjusting the seat" especially for the user. He was surprised and observed that the seat was fixed and no such adjustment was possible. He said he'd look into it and get back to me. And that was the last we ever saw of him.

It soon became apparent that although my relative was slightly able to control the chair, the very sensitive joystick combined with having the steering wheels at the back combined to make it a difficult experience. Also the seat (allegedly made for him) was so uncomfortable that his back was hurting after about 20 minutes.

LIE #1:

Hoveround state that: "Your doctor and our Mobility Specialists will recommend a motorized wheel chair or electric mobility scooter that supports your lifestyle and physical needs."

FACT: The doctor hadn't dealt with Hoveround before and didn't know what they wanted from him. He hadn't seen their products and wasn't in any position to recommend a particular model. Their "mobility specialists" had no part whatsoever in choosing the chair - Medicare tells them which model to supply, i. E. generally the cheapest one. They have no say in the process, or so they later admitted to me.

LIE #2: Hoveround state that "A motorized wheel chair comes with a variety of options that allow you to recline, automatically adjust your height and more."

TRUTH: Nope. The chair had no automatic adjustments for height. It did have the option to alter the angle of recline of the back, but only in big steps and that required using a special tool - it was not possible to adjust the seat while the user was in it, and the users themselves would be unlikely to have the strength to do the job anyway.

LIE #3: Hoveround state: "You will be spending a lot of time in your new electric wheelchair and you want to make sure it fits properly, so that it can be as supportive and comfortable as possible. Our Mobility Specialist measures your torso, hips, arms and legs to create the perfect seat height and distance between where the small of your back meets the back of the chair. We also measure your home's doorways and hallways so that you can maneuver easily through your home."

TRUTH: Nope. None of that. Though we were shown how to adjust the arm to alter the distance of the joystick from the body.

Well we did give it a try. We went outside in it a total of three times, and got it a way up the street and back. About half a block was enough, before the backache and tiredness set in, and it still wasn't easy to keep the chair moving in a straight line, but there was a little progress. We couldn't use the chair in the home, because although it would just about fit through the doorways, my relative didn't have the fine control needed to carry out that manuever. Even I had trouble getting it through a doorway because the steering control was so touchy and unintuitive.

So what happened was that the chair went into a corner and was never used again. Months passed.

Then out of the blue, we got a letter telling us that Medicare had denied the claim. Pardon? We'd been told that the chair was ours, it had obviously been approved. No? NO. Everything on the Hoveround website is designed to give the impression that the steps needed are these, in order:

1. Get a doctor's approval in a face-to-face assessment;

2. Do the insurance paperwork and see it through;

3. Deliver the chair.

In fact the sequence is:

1. Get a doctor's approval in a face-to-face assessment;

2. Deliver the chair, without revealing that it hasn't been approved by anyone;

3. Bill Medicare for it;

4. Hope Medicare approves it. If so, fine, if not, tough. Recover the chair.

I have to say that at (4) I assume there is the possibility of appeal, because the rejection letter comes from the appeals department at Hoveround. But when I contacted them, very annoyed that they had misled us into assuming the chair was ours, I wasn't offered the chance of an appeal. I didn't even think, I was that upset. So I said, oh well, I guess you'd better come and collect the chair then, and the person at the other end just said, fine, I'll put it out for collection. No "well hang on a moment, you do have the right of appeal".

The reason cited for the denial was that in the face-to-face, the doctor had failed to correctly document the conversation. This isn't too surprising given that he didn't have any guidelines from Hoveround or Medicare to work with. So it wasn't our fault at all. But all Hoveround would say was that we would have to go back to the doctor and start the process over again.

There are other layers to this story as well.

During the time we had the chair I contacted Hoveround and spoke to someone in their technical support department about the difficulties we were having steering the chair. I'd done a little research and found that other chairs in their range steered from the front, which looked more appropriate. This person tried their best to be helpful but ultimately said that any issues with the suitability of the chair had to be taken up with the sales department, and that it was unlikely that they'd be keen on offering us a different model even if it were better.

Before I got round to doing anything else I got a customer satisfaction survey through the mail. I made several comments about our disappointments with the chair and the lack of customer service, and mailed it back. Nobody ever contacted me about this.

Also, I got a phone call from someone at Hoveround doing another customer service survey, and I explained at some length that the chair wasn't being used and why not, and how we really wanted the opportunity to try another type of chair. This girl then told me that there were no such chairs in the product range and what chairs there were, weren't suitable for my relative's weight. I then told her, as I was sitting at the PC looking at the site at the time, that she was completely wrong about everything she'd said about Hoveround's product range. She then admitted that she'd probably been given old information to work from. Did she actually work for Hoveround? Oh yes. But the sales people hadn't given her up-to-date material. So she promised to pass on my request for attention to her supervisor and that was that. Literally, that was indeed that - I heard nothing whatsoever from Hoveround again, until the letter telling us that the chair had been denied by Medicare.

Bottom Line: Terrible customer service with no after-care and no communications. No opportunity to ask for a specific model of chair or try out different models in the range. Misleading information everywhere about the Medicare process. No interest shown in trying to get the best model for the patient's needs.

I suspect that if you go to this company with money to buy your chair, everything improves enormously. And if you get a savvy doctor who knows how to manipulate Medicare, that's going to be a big help too. So you may well get much better service than we did. BUT... even so, our experience shows what this company is capable of, even if it doesn't happen to you.

And remember, Hoveround don't bill Medicare until AFTER you've got the chair and become attached to using it. If you think their website intentionally implies otherwise, then you may draw your own conclusions.

This is a pretty cool idea and I would love to give it more stars, but I have to go with my personal estimate and not a random or easy one. In my case I queried the cost of an alternator replacement on an old GMC van, and the site came up with a price of between $263 and $393. And it quoted the cost of the part as $159 - $261. And perhaps that's correct, well let's be fair and say that's probably correct, if I take the vehicle to a repair shop. That in itself is a challenge since the site helpfully offered me 64 pages of possible shops to go to but at least I'm not short on choices.

However, a trip to the local parts store told me that the part costs only $44 from stock, as it's a very common one used in several different vehicles. I could take that to my local shop and they would fit it in an hour for another $80.

I think this is a neat idea and should definitely be one of your sources of information. But I wouldn't rely on it, solely, especially if the repair is a simple one and potentially D. I. Y, or which you can see is an easy one for the repair shop to get at.

I'd like to see a difficulty rating for repairs, indicating whether the average motorist could tackle the work. Obviously such a rating couldn't be any more accurate than any of the other ratings, but it might encourage more people to learn how to do things for themselves. And ultimately, it would be great to select the symptoms and have the site take an educated guess at the problem, too. It's got a lot of potential for development. At the moment I am a bit concerned that repair shops are going to be using this as a guide, so that if it shows my repair will cost $250 and they normally charge $150, they might be tempted to go with the higher figure. Not that there are many shops out there which would dream of doing such a thing, of course.

Guidestar is a deep database of information about charities and non-profit organizations. Basic searches will reveal basic data, and anyone can read other users' reviews and vote on them. Registered users get access to more financial data, including a charity's reported revenue and expenses, and information such as the charity's web site address, telephone number and mailing address.

If you're a philanthropist looking for more focused financials, there's a membership tier for you which will cost you $70 a month. And if you're a fund manager or other corporate investor and can find $350 a month, there's even more data on offer, to help you make sure you don't make a bad investment with your clients' cash.

The site also allows grant givers to research specific causes, to find and analyze charities working in those areas.

Overall this is a significant resource for anyone who has a professional interest in the business of non-profit organizations, and even if you aren't a financial professional there's the opportunity for you to review your favorite charities, whether you've donated, or been a volunteer, or just want to sing their praises.

My reason for not giving this one a heart is because there can be very limited information here unless you register, and one page I looked at had so little data I think I would have done better with Google. I know people will think I'm nitpicking and I know registration in this case is free, but I can't see any reason for it here. I've never liked being forced to register for a site and it bugs me that they can't just give me the information and be done with it without collecting any data from me.

The largest collection of goods without boxes, boxes without goods, goods with missing cables or instructions, and returned and resealed-as-if-still-working products I've ever seen. Sometimes every single item in an entire product range has been used once and returned by a customer, each to be repackaged and replaced on the shelf with one of those orange labels which you should ideally interpret to mean "stay well away from this one".

If you are looking for a job here, be warned that company dress policy results in only the Mormons being able to field this many ill-fitting black suits in the one place. On the plus side no particular product knowledge seems to be required, which I assume justifies the poor salaries which are rumored to be on offer, and no certain knowledge of the location of any product is required, permitting staff to send inquiring customers to Aisle 5 regardless.

Although the reputation of Frys own brand products was always well known, I did appreciate confirmation when I bought a Frys laptop a few years back. The salesman, who confided that he was leaving the company on the following day, was kind enough to assure me that no more than around 90% of this particular model had overheated within a week of being purchased and had been returned. This was about what I'd expected, but since I couldn't afford anything better, I went ahead and bought it even against his recommendation. The curious part is that the computer, which had been anonymously made in China, then went on to work perfectly, without overheating, and entirely reliably, for at least the next three years. Surprise, eh?

My last successful purchase here was an HD TV for a relative, and I benefited from Frys notoriously poor stock-keeping and store service. Initially, I picked a model that was already discounted on the day. Then, as I was kept waiting about a half hour while various salesmen searched for the package, I got a further discount. And since the packing never did turn up and I was prepared to accept the TV just as it was, I got another discount. A fair deal, that one. But not the first time I'd had a similar experience; I'd bought a digital camera a couple of years previously and despite going through every box they had, they couldn't find one single camera that still had its lens cap, instructions, battery and so forth. Nobody seemed able to guess where all these accessories had vanished to but since they were unable to put a complete set together a nice healthy discount was on offer for accepting whatever they had.

If you watch the local newspaper for the daily bargains, you can do really well here - if you're buying a product that's good quality to start with. The special sales on vacation days can also yield some good buys. But Frys does also stock some pretty cheaply made products, in fairness at very low prices, so if you're trying to save every cent do look carefully before you buy something at the bottom of the price range. It may not be worth the amount you save.

As others have observed, the returns policy here has always been great and this explains the sometimes astonishingly long line of customers returning goods that didn't work. Frys makes no attempt to conceal it, placing the large Returns section right next to the front door in the lobby, which is unusually honest for a retailer.

The only thing that just about everyone has a complaint about, at least at the Campbell store where I shop, is the limited parking. Not that it's a limited parking space, it's just not big enough to cope with the phenomenal volume of business that Frys does here. And over at the other local store, which is somewhat bigger than your average aircraft hangar, you could probably land a medium sized airliner in the car park but there still aren't enough spaces on a busy day.

Overall it's true to say there's nothing else quite like Frys in this area. It can be incredibly crowded, making it a fun place to just hang out and people-watch even if you don't want to buy anything; it can yield really great bargains if you know what you want and choose the right day; and it has an eclectic, unrivaled product range. It is also a pain to shop here at busy times, you should be knowledgeable about the brands you buy, and you may have to deal with missing packaging and accessories especially with discontinued products of which there may only be a couple of examples left in stock. The company slogan is the unimaginative "Your best buys are always at Frys", and although I'm sure it's not literally true, if you're careful and your visit is well timed you could definitely find your best buy here.

The product on offer here is a vacuum hair cutter for use at home, which works by sucking the hair up through an adapter called a "styler" into a set of blades. The cut hair accumulates inside the device, and the length of cut is governed by the adapter of choice. The filter needs to be cleaned of loose hair regularly, and the blades of the device need to be oiled before each use but otherwise no particular maintenance is needed.

What is needed, though, is the skill to wield the device in the best possible way to get the result you're seeking. It's not just a matter of running the device through your hair and finding yourself with a great haircut at the end of it, and I would say that judging from the user manual, it's not hard to do but it will take a little practice. You are most definitely urged to read the manual, since it contains safety warnings, and inappropriate use of the device without an adapter fitted can result in you cutting your ears. You need another method of cutting the hair around your ears, sideburns and at the hairline at the back of your neck, and the manual indicates that you may need to vacuum up some loose hairs after you're done.

There are other devices based on the same principle, most notably the Flowbee® and the Robocut®, which work as attachments to a standard vacuum cleaner or come with their own vacuum cleaner attached. The most obvious advantage is that there's no need to keep cleaning out a tiny filter in the device itself, as you have the whole vacuum cleaner to fill before needing to empty it, and the more powerful the cleaner, the better the cut.

Not being American I had to do a bit of research here and it seems the Flowbee and Robocut have a major feud on, check this out:

Http :// www.flowbee. Com/flowbee%20vs%20robo. Htm

Wow, this is a serious fight here. And these guys have apparently been going at it for many years. I also found an article at Discover Magazine, which you can read here: http://discovermagazine.com/2007/sep/google-taught-me-how-to-cut-my-own-hair/. It's an amusing article which may put the whole home-haircutting idea into context for you.

Anyway, back to the Aircut. It doesn't really seem to be bringing anything new to the table other than self-containedness, but that may be a disadvantage in terms of the frequency with which you need to clean the filter. It's more expensive than the competition, and there's no warranty on it either:

"www.aircut.com DOES NOT MAKE ANY EXPRESS OR IMPLIED WARRANTIES, REPRESENTATIONS OR ENDORSEMENTS WHATSOEVER (INCLUDING, WITHOUT LIMITATION, THE IMPLIED WARRANTIES OF MERCHANTABILITY OR FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE) WITH REGARD TO THE WEB SITE, THE MATERIALS, ANY PRODUCTS, INFORMATION OR SERVICE PROVIDED THROUGH THE WEB SITE, OR ANY SITES LISTED THEREIN, AND THE WEB SITE WILL NOT BE LIABLE FOR ANY COST OR DAMAGE ARISING EITHER DIRECTLY OR INDIRECTLY FROM ANY SUCH TRANSACTION."

This is probably a solid enough enough product which does what it is claimed to do, but you do need to read that manual to find its limitations and you'll need to practice the technique. There's no indication of how successful it is with anything other than straight hair, nor is it shown as being used for anything other than male haircuts. It's expensive, and without a warranty or any sort of trial period I personally wouldn't buy one, especially as it's not the only player in this field.