This is a paid review of Nicaraguan insurance explained in English for the Expat community.

Introduction

Imaging you being an America or a Canadian living in Nicaragua. Being not a native speaker in Spanish language, you might often find yourself struggle in matters related to the Spanish language, especially if related to insurance policies written in local Spanish. You must be an expert to really understand the Ins and Outs of the policies in case of you really want to maximize your investment and coverage.

In that case, you might need someone who has related experience and local connections to local Spanish speaking society. Here comes CSISA, who claims itself as the ONLY American owned insurance agency in Nicaragua. Read more to know how true the claim is.

First Impression

Having a rather self-explained URL (Nicaragua-Insurance.com), CSISA does provide a good first time impression to the website visitors. As the website purpose is Nicaraguan insurance explained in English for the Expat community, all the pages are in English. I assume the site is currently in second phase judging from the main page title “CISAS WEB HOMES2″. Look closely on the title and you might notice the error e.g. CISAS which should be CSISA.

Insurance fields covered includes insurance for home owners and condo owners, insurance for auto, insurance for health and life and business and commercial insurance coverage. That is basically the website is all about. Each field has its own subpage and I can see that the sub pages are using a different set of layout schemes from the main page, however sub pages page title is correct with “CSISA” wording.

In each insurance field, a detailed description about Nicaraguan insurance on the particular field is shown, together with a related picture.

For example the page on Nicaraguan Auto Insurance. The description on Nicaraguan auto insurance is explained with details. Tips on fleet discounts and types of auto accidents are listed in a point form for easy reading. I like the way they arrange the layout and content following the basic rule, KISS which is an acronym of the phrase “Keep It Simple, Stupid”.

Besides text description and pictures, tables are used in presenting data which allow easier comparison.

A little Bit on Company Background

Besides the four fields covered by insurance in Nicaragua, the website has some additional sections too. In the about us section, we can see how is the structure of CSISA.

The owner, Warren “Mike” Newton in his early 40’s (from the look of his picture) who came from New Orleans, Louisiana is a man with a lot of experience and with his mixture of Chartered Life Underwriters (CLU) degree as well as law graduate from Loyola University Law School, we can assure of his services for clients regarding different perspective of USA/Canada insurance and Nicaragua’s. Beside Warra, there are four core members under his team of management, namely Ms. Ericka Holmann Chamorro who specialized in Nicaragua’s spectacular Rivas coastline, Mr. Oswaldo Baldizon Marin as the experienced insurance broker, Ms. Heidi Arguello Sanchez, the marketing executive who is currently undertaking a graduate degree in marketing. Lastly we have Ms. Josefa Lopez Hernandez, the newest member to the team who is the customer care consultant.

With such an exclusive and experience team, you can ensure that CSISA can provide some pretty good service to its customers. Details contact information includes both Nicaragua and US addresses are available on the contact us page, just in case you need them.

Additional Articles on Nicaragua Insurance (Must Read)

Mike has a collection of very detailed articles explaining the ins and outs of local Spanish written policies. The article “The Good, The bad and the Insured” talks about insurance companies in Nicaragua as well as some insights on homes and autos insurance. It is a must read if you want to learn more about Nicaragua Insurance. The next article talks about the Values Of Insurance Quotes which Mike gives several tips as well as what you should know should you want to get the assured value for your properties.

Conclusion

Over all the CSISA website is a simple yet complete website with plenty of useful information for expats staying in Nicaragua who need to know more about ins and outs of insurance policies in local Spanish. CSISA with a team of experience and helpful people should be able to provide you more information if you need them.

Page navigation is logical and simple, with just some minor mistake such as wrong page title on the main page as well as inconsistent page layouts for main page and sub pages. These are simple mistakes which should be able to resolve rather quickly.

Introduction

Being a Google Adsense publisher myself for some times, I have already familiar with alot of make money online e-books/websites. Some are only meant for beginners with basic information that can be found on most webmaster/money making forums, some are like gems that yet to be discovered, with alot of both basic and advanced useful information, yet only cost little, or even in today’s review, cost NOTHING!

Yes, you are not reading wrongly, Dave Ledoux’s make money online guide is now being offered FREE at his rather catchy DidYouSmellThat.com website. Yes I definitely smell that lovely dollar smells

First time visitors will be greeted with video presentation. The video is hosted on YouTube.com so you do not need seperate software to view it. Dave has done a great deal to explain to you all about his plan in the video. To cut the story short, the video will tell you few things that you need to know in case you are interested on Dave’s make money online program. I like the way Dave made the video, everything you need to know, is inside the video. From what the intern program is, benefits, how much it costs, the catch (yes, he even mention the catch) as well as what the next step after you have completed the program. I will not repeat what is already on the video, so make sure you download the watch the 3.10 minutes video.

Video and register screen

Finding

What I like about the make money online intern program is that it is FREE and everybody is able to join the program, no special skills needed. All you need to do to join is complete a simple form with you name and email, simple huh? Few second after I keyin in the details and I have already received an email from interntasks@didyousmellthat.com. In the email I just click on a link to confirm I have give permission to receive further emails.

In the subsequent email, I am being brief with further details. The program will last for 90 days and one hour per day is all it takes to commit. I was also required to join few dozen websites in the coming weeks. Hmm.. wonder how much Dave has made from affiliate with these dozen websites. One of the is Roboform, a “automated time saving tool” and for first day I am required to join Stumbupon.com. The task for first day seems quite easy as I need to download and install the Stumbupon toolbar. Oh.. I need to surf for 20 minutes for sites I like. That was easy!

As I have already gone through the first day assignment, which in my estimation took roughtly one hour, I foresee the next few days, if not the whole 90 days will be just as easy as mention by Dave. In my opinion, making money on the Internet is all about consistancy. You do not see results overnight(unless you already have a network of estabilshed PR6 above websites). In my previous experience, programs such as Dave’s are really simple to accomplish yet not many people actually completed them. Dave has metioned in the site’s comment section that “80% of the people who sign up to do this work never last past day 3…or they whine and complain like a old hound dog lying on an ant hill.” From what I have read from numerous webmaster related forums and my OWN past experience, you need at least 6 months, if not longer, to actually see any noticeable result from your website. You will then have the own contents, backlinks, page rank, connections and contacts that are all too valueable to your site.

First Day Lesson, Pretty Easy!

Conclusion

So what are you waiting for? It is FREE and only take you 1 hour per day. With cleary defined step-by-step guide by Dave and other who join the same program, you only need CONSISTENCY to complete the program and achive your goal. It is seldom to see such deal nowaday as most will required some fees for e-books or tutorials. However, seems that Dave is having some problems with the email tutorials not received by some of the program attendents. He has suggested few solutions to the problem and hope this will not be the reason to stop you to join and complete the make money online program.

If you want to know how others think about Dave’s program, you can always refer to the comment section below the page, or post some questions related to the program. I think Dave will be glad to help you out.

This is a paid review on The Green Adventures. The website was reviewed using FireFox running on Windows XP SP2, so if you are using other browsers, your experience might be different.

Introduction

What is The Green Adventures? Well, lets put it simple here. Did you ever visit one of those directory websites which either list multiple categories of interest all under one roof or some others that specialized in a particular cateogory?

If you do, then you already know the concept of The Green Adventures. But instead of all text links, The Green Adventures offers a more graphyical interface. Basically The Green Adventures covers an extensive list of sports related websites. From what I see on the website, currently it is only covering mostly on individual player websites and team sites for major sports events in USA, which we all knows include NBA, NHL, NFL and MLB. Hmm.. seems that personal preference of the webmaster plays an important part here.

However, TGA does have plans to include more categories of sports in the future. Some of the planned inclusion includes Tennis, Golf and car racing (F1 or NASCAR?). I think by including more categories of different genres, TGA can attract more users thus making the website more popular (potential more source of income? More on that later).

First Impression/Navigation

First time I see the website, I have a slightly confusion as to what the website is all about. Refer to the screenshot, you can see a man wearing an office suit performing a zen gesture. Hmm..interesting I would say.

Below the funny logo is the main section of the website. The description section has two navigation arrows on both left and right hand side. Navigation is sensible, you press left or right arrow to see the next featured sports related website. Under each description of the website, you can actually go to the said website by clicking on the “Launch Project”. Hmm..maybe “Go to site” would be more appropriate I would say because project sound too serious. Just my own opinion.

If you do not want to use the navigation arrow, you can actually go to a particular site by clicing on an image of the website itself. This is nice for user to navigate directly to the website of their choice. One thing TGA can do more is to have tooltip popup shown when mouse hover over the icons.

Colour scheme is simple and ease on the eyes. The website blend the three colours (blue/green/yellow) well and I dont know you but I feel abit relax by just seeing the webpage. Must be the logo I guess

Choice of website featured is limited. As of time of writing, only 17 websites are features. More websites sure can help to attract more users. One thing I find out is that not all websites come with text description, some only with images of the website which do not tell more about he website. Some improvement perhaps?

Conclusionn

What I Like

Nice colour scheme. Colours blended well. Site navigation is simple but user friendly.

What I Don’t Like

Too much space wasted on left and right of the page. Undescriptive logo. Limited choice of websites featured.

Introduction

“Software as a Service” is the in word nowadays. This new idea roughly translate into some kind of services or functionalities that are offered online. No software to install, no extra hardware required and best of all, time to start using the services is within minutes after you open your favorite browsers. Did I hear you asking “browsers”? Yes, you hear me right, one of the most outstanding features of “Software as a Service” is it only need a normal web browser to work. Some of the most notable “Software as a Service” examples are Google’s Docs & Spreadsheets and Calendar.

But what if you want to apply this new idea in managing one of the most important parts of business: “Customer & Contact Management“? That will be the reviewed product today. This is a paid review but you are welcome to post any comments and questions related to this review.

First of all, some brief introduction of ClientScribe’s Customer & Contact Management. This service is brainchild of a company called Amyntor Limited which is located in London and has a team of people working in Scotia Canada and New York. A little search on Google reveals that this company is specialized in web-based business solutions. Some of their notable products besides ClientScribe are ClearSMS, a Web-based texting service and FaceDesk, a office document system covering newslatters, announcements and pretty much anything else. They did mentioned that they have hosting infrastructures in Toronto and Panama, this sure will help in provide high redundancy and availability in the Customer & Contact Management system provided.

Usage/Functionality

How do I use ClientScribe? Just fire up your favorite browser, be it FireFox or Internet Explorer. Testing on the ClientScribe service was done on both FireFox and Internet Explorer and I found that both browsers work perfectly during the whole review process.

To test the functionality of ClientScribe, one have to really go through the process of using it. First time users will have to perform the sign up process. No worry because it is amazingly simple! You will only need to provide Name, Email, Account Name and Password. Thats all you need to provide and once you press the Create Account button, you will be shown the Account Created page where you can see the details of your account. I suggest you save it for future reference. One thing I found strange is that once you click on the sign up link, you will be directed to hubtext.com website. Nothing major but since I am such a paranoid person, I did a WHOIS on hubtext.com and I found that the URL is registered under George Skondras who is working under Amyntor Limited and situated in Athens. He is the director of FaceDesk.

Once you have login the first time, you are required to add a new customer, follow by any activities related to the customer. Quite logic in my opinion.

Once the customer information is entered, you can start to add in activities such as phone conversations and fax/email sent/received. Here come the interesting part.

Security Bug!

I notice that ClientScribe is using cfm files which I think is ColdFusion. A parameter called URLclientid is inserted behind the cfm file and my URLclientid is 132. Just for curiosity, I tried to change the value to say 100 and I see some interesting info:

I can see other account’s customer information! Wow, this is something Amyntor and its team need to work out ASAP because no one will use something that insecure.

Back to the system. Once a customer information is entered into the system, we can add activities related to the particular customer. Not only that, we can also use the attachment function to attach any files to the particular activity. Some files that I can think of is maybe scanned image of an invoice or a purchase order, or a recorded voice file for the particular telephone conversation. Pretty handy if you ask me.

A customer management system is not perfect if without a reporting function. Fortunately ClientScribe has thought of this and they even come out with a common and my favourity file format, a PDF document. It is a summary activities view for the particular customer that you have selected earlier on. A PDF is convenient because it provides easier way for us to view and print it correctly.

Paid Plans

I notice there is a Setting link on the top of the page so I decided to test it out. As I thought, here you can manage user profile, edit customer groups and import contact list via Excel or CSV file types. As this is a free account, you will have a limit of 10 customers and 25 MB of attachment storage. If that if not enough for you, you will have to use the paid plans, which I think is how ClientScribe makes the money.

Speaking of paid ClientScribe plans, which as be seen here, the plans’s customer limit are 10 for free account (one that I am using now), 1000 for personal plan and 5000, 10000 and 30000 for other bigger plans. Pricing is reasonable in my opinion because even with the largest plan (Foundation plan), you will only need to pay USD $25 monthly. Modes of payment is through 2checkout.com, which offers VISA, Master, JCB, AMEX and Diners as paying options. One thing that I do not understand is that while in Basic plan (free forever) we are allow to manage 10 users, in the Personal plan where we pay USD$5 monthly, we can only have 1 user! Maybe just a typo on ClientScribe website but if that is not the case, I would strongly suggest to change the free plan to single user and personal plan to 10 users, which in my opinion is more logical and fairer.

Layout and Navigation

Come to the website layout, at first sight I thought I am looking at a personal blog. The layout is too similar to Wordpress blog which I think is too casual. A more professional look maybe more suitable for companies looking forward to a customer management system online. One more thing about the logo of ClientScribe, which is just taking too much space. A simpler and thinner logo might give a better professional look for the website. Talking about the colour scheme, the menu of the left is using dark blue background colour and a very light blue font colour, which make the menu font not standing out thus making navigation harder for older people with weak eyesight.

Conclusion

In the conclusion, while ClientScribe’s Customer Management system is using the “Software as a Service” web-based concept which is good and more convenient for the users, the security issue of changing of URLclientid in URL reveals other customer information not under my account sure will affect the confidentiality of potential users. Lack of a professional-looking layout website with poor colour selection for left menu make the navigation harder for older people. Pricing for plans is affordable in my opinion. A proper written online manual and help might be useful for first time users to truly appreciate the functionality of the website.

This is a paid review on EBusinessCables Cat 5e/ Cat 6 cables. As stated on the campaign page, EBusinessCables is a supplier of ethernet cables for home, business, government and education where multiple colors are available in bulk.

Brief Introduction to Cat5e/6 Cables

Oh boy… Lets hope my knowledge I acquired during my networking course back in University time still stand true, here is some brief information. Cat 5e and cat 6 cables are special type of cables that mainly used in data transfer. They uses twisted pair cabling technique which is cheaper compare to fiber and coaxial cabling. Cat 5e is different from cat 5 in the sense that 5e has included specification for far end crosstalk. Cat 6 while provides backward compatibility for cat 5 and 5e, it does more by providing speed of 1000Base-T (Gigabit Ethernet) and even possible to meet requirement for 10000Base-T (10Gigabit Ethernet). This may sound overkill by today’s standard, but if you look at current trend of how people using data transfer for movies, games and entertainment, that 10Gigabit Ethernet may not be that overkill anyway.

Website Review

Ok, so what can we find on Cat 5e/ Cat 6 cables page? Well, we can see lots and lots of cat 5 and 6 cables featured on the product catalog. I cannot imaging that you will not find the right combination of cat 5 and 6 cables that you need given the vast large combinations available. Lets see, we get to choose from various length of cables, type of cables (cat 5e/6), colours of cables as well as type of cabling shields (UTP/molded boot/cross).

See Details link, while useful if you want to see a bigger picture of the product, do not provide more useful information, only the same information is display. See example below for yourself. I guess some additional information such as other available colours, length or packaging can be provided.

The website is a little plain for my liking. A blue/grey and white colour scheme is adopted which is clean and not overwhelming. But I found that they lack a feature: a compare function which enable users to select multiple products and do comparison side-by-side. I found that this will help users to make better selection in purchasing the correct product that suit them.

One more thing I found not too user friendly is the long list of product under ONE page! For example, on the Cat 5e/ Cat 6 cables page, there are 108 products listed on one single page. I don’t know about you but I found that I lost interest after looking through like 20-30 products. So if the webmaster can put just 20 to 30 products in one page and the others on page 2,3,4….last will make navigation simpler.

Once you have made your decision and put the amount of items that you like, you will be redirected to CartServer.com to select your destination and method of courier. From the same page too, you can manage your shopping cart such as increase, decrease and remove your product selection. You can preview the total amount before checking out. After you press the check out button, you will be redirected back to EBusinessCables.com to view the terms and conditions which you need to agree before you can proceed further. From there onwards you will be sent to CartServer again, you can select the payment methods, which I think pretty covered almost all popular methods. Here is a screenshot I take:

Conclusion

I found that EBusinessCables’s cat 5e/6 page contains many selections of cables. Users are pampered with choices. Each product is clearly labeled with pictures. Payment methods pretty much covers all popular methods online. However, some improvements can be done, such as a more professional done theme for a more serious look, a next page navigation because currently too many products listed on a single page. Hope the webmaster will take note to make this already good website to a better design.

This is a paid review on SwitchPlanet.

I remember when I was young, I have a collection of Hong Kong kungfu comic books. I have a group of friends that share the same passion with me, so we often share our collections together. My problem was within the small group of friends around my area, the small number of comic books collection wasn’t enough to satisfied our needs. I believe many of you share the same dilemma like me.

So when I have the opportunity to do a review on SwitchPlanet.com or SP, I was thinking what a great idea! Now fellow fans who share the same passions can switch their old DVDs, CDs, Games and Books with other members for free.

SP website is using a green colour theme, I guess that matches their way of showing support for green way, which in their term is when you switch your old media, such as DVD, CD, games and books with other people, you get to save the planet resources by reusing the old one. Emm.. I guess that is correct in some context actually.

SP was in close beta testing and since they have improved their system a lot, they now offer open beta for you to invite your friends and family to join them. You can click on the beta logo to join now.

First impression I have on SP website is the site is done in a orderly manner. Navigation is simple and straight to the point. All the basic stuff, such as about us, mission statement and contact page links are situated on left panel. All switchable stuff are categorized accordingly and displayed in the middle of the page. Under each category, for the ease of locating the title you need, you can use the search bar. Or if you do not sure what title to look for, like I do, you can always select from some predefined selections, such as Most Wanted, Most Switched, Most Available or Newest.

A brief look on the available titles shows that a huge selection is there for members to browse to. If you do not find a category that your title should be belong to, you can always use SP contact page to request for the category to be added, which I doubt you ever do, because the selections are HUGE!

Beside switching your stuff, one can do more with SP. You can add friends to your friend list ala friendster way. This way you get to share information and make friend with someone who share the same interest. One thing I like that distinguished SP from other site is that SP allow you to make donation to various organizations, such as American Red Cross, Boys and Girls Clubs of America, The Nature Conservancy, American Cancer Society and Child’s Play Charity. For the detailed list, you can refer here. You can make donation every switch or just any moment you feel the need to.

Switching your used stuff with others that share the same interest is ever easier with the advance of the Internet and websites such as SP. With other unique features such as extensive list of collections, friendlist, online blog and forum, with good deeds such as making donation while your making switches, SP proves to be the next big thing in online switching, further more it is FREE, you just have to pay for the postage. That is good enough reason for me to use SP.