Tech WizardTechnology Reviews in the Coolest Way!

On October 28, gamers will be anxiously awaiting the release of Fallout 3 across the United States from Bethesda Softworks. There is big buzz around this game and we will not surprised to see campouts and lines at the local video stores when the game is released. People are talking about it. Fallout 3 seems to be the cool kid on the block so we thought our savvy readers would be interested and here we are.

For those that are new to the game, we provide an overview of what it is and why gamers are so excited. The setting is 200 years following a nuclear war in the ruins of Washington, DC (fanciful arent we?). This post apocalypse world allows the user to pick any number of characters and weapons to take on mutants, wild beasts, cyborgs and a variety of other dangers in this world. Anyone that has watched the Terminator movie will feel that they know the characters and basic plot of the game.

Whats different from the old Fallout titles? You can play in the first person or the third person so this allows you to continuously switch perspectives. They have an improved VATS system. The is the Vault-Tech Assisted Targeting System. It allows the player to zero in on a target and body part and add some flair to the annihilation of your opponent. You can literally blow your opponents head apart or shoot their weapon out of their hands which is a different spin from other role playing games. You can program VATS so that you blast a whole series of opponents and lay waste to an entire army of monsters.
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This week we review a new tech site, GadgetAdvisor.com. It was launched in Sep 2008, but is growing rapidly. The focus of this technology blog is to be “best of the best” category blog. They don’t want to review every trend or every piece of news that passes by. Rather their modest, yet laudable objective is to focus on the product releases and/or news that matter the most or are most useful to readers. We agree with them wholeheartedly, there is too much noise on the internet and blog sites contribute their fair share!

Some of the recent articles on the site include a universal remote review, evaluating backup online services and a networked media player post. These will give you a flavor for the quality of what they do. I read some of the articles and as a writer at a tech blog feel that we have a grasp of what makes a good blog and think this one looks promising.

GadgetAdvisor.com could be compared to CoolWizardz.com but with more specialized content focusing on gadgets and hardware at least from what I can see in their archive. We devote significant amount of time to gaming and tech tricks to maximize your PC and online efficiency. By comparison at CoolWizardz.com we are established site serving gaming communities, PC wizardz, web designers, IT professionals, hackers, open source advocates, gadget lovers, make money onliners since July 2007. We are admittedly ambitious with such a broad agenda and will do our very best to serve our readers. In any case, we will keep on eye on GadgetAdvisor.com in case they catch a trend that we miss!

We are taking a risk with this article of offending our die hard Windows Vista and Windows XP fans. But regardless we think there are enough open source movement advocates in our readership and visitors that on balance our user base will be receptive. If you are already a Linux fan, then we are preaching to the choir. If you are not, then we ask you to have an open mind about this operating system and listen to what we have to say. Hear us out! Dont assume that this operating system is for heavy duty geeks because it is not. We think its cool in fact.

What if I told you that you could eliminate hundreds of dollars worth of Mcrosoft licensing fees both for the operating system and also for the Microsoft Office Suite? The new distributions of the Linux from providers such as Redhat comes with an Office package as a standard option. In this era of tight corporate budgets and lean times, corporate managers and IT departments are looking to cut back where they can to help the bottom line and slashing software costs is definitely one way.

Furthermore what if we told you, we could offer you an operating system that rarely ever crashed and that was practically virus proof? In fact it is well known hackers dont normally design bugs for Linux platforms. What if I told you this secret operating system could run all of your heavy duty analytics in the C++ language, the R statistical package and the mySQL database for your most demanding computational and server applications? What if I told you that this same operating system can bring back to life that old computer in the attic that is too underpowered to do anything with todays modern Windows operating systems. This is because it is lightweight with lower memory and capacity requirements than recent Microsoft operating systems releases.
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So you want to do a leveraged buyout (LBO), but you dont have $1B in your pocket and your friendly banker won’t cough up the $10B? Well, we might just be able to help you to achieve your dream, albeit on a smaller scale but with the same sense of pride of ownership of property all of your own. We have done enough of these internet web deals that we feel comfortable giving guidance on how to do them from start to finish. This weeks strategy series is dedicated to the entrepeneurs, big thinkers, savvy traders and other constituents comprising our readership who we feel will get something out of this, perhaps a new hobby or even a new source of income to supplement their day job which exploits their knowledge of technology.

Define your Objectives. Before starting something like this, you need to ask why I am doing this? What is the point? Is this for entertainment? Do I have the technical know how to do this? Is this a serious money making enterprise to supplement my monthly income? As part of this soul searching it is necessary to assess how much you can afford to invest. Generally speaking you will buy a better business for a higher purchase price, but there are exceptions to this rule. You can buy a quality business for $1,000 or for $10,000. I think of a quality website the same way that I think of a stock with heavy dividends, except that with a web business you have full control of the business and the ability to increase your dividends as you improve the underlying business.

How to Identify: The locations with the most inventory of websites for sale are EBay.com, Digital Point Auctions and Sitepoint Auctions. There are other places on the web, but you really need a large marketplace with lots of properties in order to find an undervalued property with the potential for growth. Some of the types of situations that I find promising: 1) undermonetized property, e.g. a property with high traffic that is not monetized effectively, 2) scalable property, e.g. a real estate site with strong back end infrastructure that you can expand into new countries, 3) established property, a property that already has a online presence with an economic moat, e.g. the #2 forum site for a given niche with large membership and corporate sponsors.
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We came across a unique software whose purpose is to increase the traffic and monetize the online properties of their respective owners. How is that? Patience our friends, patience, we will get there. First, how do most web tycoons increase traffic? They buy links on social book marking sites, submit the site to directories and optimize key words with long tails to drive free search engine traffic. More expensive methods include spending money on targeted keywords (e.g. AdWord) or banner advertisements on external sites. The problem with all of these methods is that they cost significant money or time. In a recession we really need to conserve our cash as we grow our web properties!

We are sure that many of you reading this tech blog are website owners, content designers, webmasters, database experts, graphic artists, etc. Individually and collectively, you have a vested interest in your online properties gaining traffic and increased monetization. So without further ado, we would like to introduce Happar.com - Monetization Engine. What is this software and what does it do?

Well, the Happar.com ME software is a proven tool for increasing Page Rank (PR), traffic and keyword rankings. The tool automates many of the manual, repetitive tasks that website owners must engage in to drive the growth of their sites. First, there is a blog manager with functions for exploiting your blogs. You can easily create, add and remove advertisements from leading companies (e.g. Chitaka, Adbrite, Adsense). In addition, the blog manager pings over 22 diferent websites when new content is added on the blog such as Technorati, Syndk8, Feedburner Newsgator, Feedster, MyYahoo, IceRocket, NewsisFree, TopicExchange and RubHub. Of course you can do this on your own, but this is tedious.
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DONGLE, DONGLE, DONGLE, Do you or don’t you DONGLE? Everybodys doing the DONGLE

We normally don’t revisit technology companies a second time. But when they are offering a freebie to our users and they are sitting on a booming technology such as mobile broadband we think its worth a second look. Given a free laptop offer for comparing broadband deals and an attractively priced deal on dongles, we felt this was too good to pass up for our CoolWizardz.com subscribers and new readers.

What are dongles? A dongle is a small piece of hardware that connects to a computer and is typically used for digital rights management (e.g. to prevent unauthorized duplication or copying of expensive software). For mobile broadband applications a dongle is a USB modem that you can plug into your desktop or mobile PC which gives you broadband access anywhere with 3G coverage. This functionality is especially useful for lap top users that are always on the move which is practically every one in the business world nowadays, business owners, sales people, consultants, bankers, teachers, engineers, etc. These services are slower than fixed line broadband which means that multimedia intensive applications such as MMORPG gaming will not work so well. But for typical corporate warriors running Excel and Powerpoint on their PCs and sharing files, this broadband service should work just fine.
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Today we review MyMustangSite.com (MMS) which is a niche social networking site for owners and enthusiasts of the Ford Mustang automobile. With the growth of sites such as Ning there is an explosion in social networking sites in specialized niches. MMS just hit 9600 members after just over 2 years on the web so there must be something unique about this mustang community to grow so fast in a crowded space.

What makes this site different from other Mustang communities? Well, the first observation is that Myspace community users will feel at home here. When you go to the site you have the ability to use the same codes that you use to build web pages on Myspace. Of course, you can install your radical dance tunes on your online stereo player, make new friends and promote your blog! Many of the other Mustang community sites run on bulletin board software such as vBulletin or phpBB are forum based and these packages simply don’t offer you the level of customizaton that MyMustangSite.com offers you.

We learned that MyMustangSite.com is a site for car lovers with a deep level of passion for Mustangs and disarming respect for one another. Just browsing the profiles for recent new members, I saw one new stanger (as MMS members call them selves) that is on his 6th Mustang in his 30s! How can that be? There was another member that joined recently that currently owns 3 Mustangs and is in his late 50s with the first one purchased over 30 years ago. Its clear that he knows far more about Mustangs than most of us ever will! I spent some time on the forums and didn’t see any of the flaming or foul language I am used to seeing on other boards. The tone on the forums is welcoming, friendly and helpful. New MMS members that post on the Newbz forum are greeted with a near avalanche of messages and my impression is that new members are embraced by the community.
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We are fascinated by small, high tech devices that fit on our key chain or that have secret agent appeal. Maybe its in our DNA. but we love gadgets! Today we talk about the GPS tracking key from LandAirSea Systems. The advantages of this product versus other competitor products in the marketplace is that it is easily concealable, offers a high degree of position accuracy and provides compatibility with Google Earth.

How is something like this used? We read about the use of a GPS tracking device to solve a difficult criminal case that would have been impossible to solve otherwise without the vehicle tracking technology. The GPS device showed logs of the crime scene and investigators were able to recreate the murder scene and land a successful prosecution.
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Do you find yourself pulling all nighters at the last moment to write essays? Are you time constrained? Do you wait until the last day to hammer out your school assignments? If this describes you, then we have the perfect service for you! The service has been designed for the busy student that has more money than time. We figured that some of the readers of CoolWizardz.com are students in undergrad or graduate programs.

This buying essays service guarantees that the assignment will be completed within 3 to 12 hours which is perfect for all of the serial procrastinators out there and I am sure there are milllions of us like that. If services like this had existed when I was a student, I am sure I would have been all over them especially around finals time when my friends and I would rather be out carousing than studying and writing essays.

There are a number of essay writing companies in the market place for these services, but this is one of the few that specializes in short notice customer writing which is why its so ideal for students who are eternally behind and leave projects until the last minute.
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The Bang & Olufsen A8 Earphones are a great iPod accessory. The first you thing you notice is that they are stylish and trendy. They will fit right in with the Wall Streets crowd, the impossibly thin models, the Silicon Valley tech wizards, street punks, athletes, anybody really. The sound quality is outstanding, you get better clarity on the bass and treble than you would with standard ear phones. Not only this the fit is excelllent. You can be running, biking, climbing or any active sport without fear that they will fall off even in the most strenuous conditions. I take mine everywhere I go and switch it between my iPod Shuffle and Nano products.

Well, who is the buyer of this product? You appreciate style and design, You buy few things, but the things you do buy are high quality and durable. Not only that you would rather spend $160 on the earphones rather than the $8000 to go all the way and get the full Bang & Olufsen home stereo system.
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