Kathy H.

BEWARE! THIS GUY IS A SCAMMER AND SPAMMER!

Most people learn about this site by receiving a spam text message, saying they have won a $500 Best Buy gift card. Of course, it's a complete scam. By the number of people reporting this, he's sending spam texts to 1/2 of the world. Sometimes the spam texts have a "code" to redeem to get your gift card, other times, it won't.

The spam text message will tell you to go to bbcashcard.net. They will then collect your personal information and sell it to other scam companies.

Whois lists this guy as being in Berlin, but the IP address of the site is in China.

If they send you a text, try to block it, and don't go to the site or give them any information. If you are in the US, report them to the Attorney General as a cell phone text spammer, by going to http://www.fcc.gov/guides/spam-unwanted-text-messages-and-email

If you are in the US, and are on ATT, Verizon or T-Mobile, you can send the text to SPAM (7762). If they get enough of those, they block them from sending texts to anyone on their network. Here are more helpful hints for dealing with these spammers. http://www.nytimes.com/2012/04/05/technology/personaltech/fighting-back-against-spam-texts.html?_r=0

Sign up for this ASAP!

This is an amazingly useful service that will provide a previously unheard-of service if your laptop or device gets stolen - mainly, a real honest-to-goodness chance of getting it back!

Anyone who has ever had a computer, phone or tablet stolen, knows that it's normally fairly useless to call the police. Unless the thief left behind some DNA and is already listed in the registry, it's going to be almost impossible to find them... and the police will tell you this.

Enter the Prey software - once installed on your computer or device, (and it is both PC and Mac compatible) with a little bit of tweaking, you will be able to track where your computer or device is, take webcam shots of the person who is using it, view what they are viewing on the screen, (great for seeing their facebook info) and even display a message to the thief's!

In fact, their website is filled with stories of people who were able to recover their property, even out of the country!

To truly get the most out of this software, it's important to use it the correct way. That is why I would recommend thoroughly reading their documentation, and also reading the stories of how people got their property back.

While you get more functionality with a paid account, they even have a free version that will cover up to three devices. Peace of mind, at any price is worth it, but free is amazing!

SCAMMERS!

They are located in China, won't ship your products to you, then won't refund your money.

Don't even bother to go through their refund process. The only way to get your money back is to dispute it with your credit card company. They want you to use PayPal because PayPal normally sides with the merchant.

They have now used domain privacy so you can't tell who owns the company, and have switched their nameservers, so you can't tell they are in China, but they are. If they are that sneaky and deceptive on their website, what do you think they will do with your money?

TMART.COM ARE SCAMMERS AND A FRAUD! Stay away!

I laughed out loud when I saw this. This site used to be niroka.com, (look at my review with detailed experience that I suffered at the hands of these people). They were selling an overpriced, 2 hour class on iPhone/iPad app building for beginners, (and they specifically stated that you didn't need to know how to program) that was complete and blatant false advertising. Many of the students asked for refunds, it was so bad.

So what is their follow-up? Now, they are selling a "how to be a web developer in 8 weeks" course that is $3,000!

Stay away! They are scammers and won't teach you near what you need to know in 8 weeks! Unless of course, you don't mind not sleeping at all! There is no way you can become a competent web developer, from no experience, in 8 weeks. It's simply not possible. They say that your instruction includes, HTML, CSS, Javascript, Ruby, Rails, Git, and more. No way are you going to learn all of that in 8 weeks, unless all you do the entire time is write "hello world" programs. Save the $3,000 and either sign up for some community college classes, or take classes on sites like lynda.com or appsumo.com, or something like that. Hell... there are even free tutorials on the web. No matter what, save your money and stay away from these people!

The hands-down best Project Management/Collaboration/CRM there is! Beats the pants off of basecamp! If you are a freelancer or very small business, it's even FREE!

Start with a free account, (up to 5 employees and 5 external users) and pay only if you need more. Incredibly flexible, (you set it up EXACTLY the way you want), this is the Project Management/Collaboration suite you've been searching for! No more trying to make your business fit your project management system - this thing is completely customizable, (and is the only one that you can customize on this level). Use free packs from the app market, or create your own, (and no coding required!).

Part of Citrix, it is web-based so you have your projects wherever you are. There are also free iphone and android apps, so you can manage projects on the go with a clean, easy-to-use interface.

If you've been struggling with workflow, projects, lead management and clients, you need to try this... and finally get organized!

Fab.com caters to people who appreciate really good design... and deals. Once signed up, you get emails featuring products in specific categories, that have exceptional aesthetics.

However, and here is a marketing lesson...
This type of site caters to people who will make an impulse purchase. You don't go looking for the products, you see something, and say, "I want that!"

Impulse purchase = I want it now!

This is where Fab.com's business model really, really, really falls short. The average wait time to receive the product is approximately 3-4 weeks. The problem is that the "seller" has to ship the item to Fab.com, who then turns around and ships it to you. That's insane! It results in unnecessary delays, especially since it appears that the sellers wait for the sale to be over with before they even begin the shipping process.

When you can get something direct from a manufacturer, or from somewhere like Amazon in 3-4 days, 3-4 weeks is completely nuts!

Although I absolutely LOVE the products they have, I am now just googling the product and finding that I can pay a buck or two more, and get it somewhere where they actually ship it right away.

Fab.com - you seriously need to rethink your business model.

If you're busy like I am, you run across tons of great sites with information that you need, but don't have time to read. GetPocket.com is a site, (and set of apps) that perfectly fits this need.

This handy site allows you to save any url to your "pocket" where you can read it later, (the site was formerly called readitlater). In addition to allowing you to save any url from your web browser, it also has an iPad/iPhone as well as Android and Kindle Fire apps, making it sync across all your devices. As an added bonus, you can even email yourself a link or snippet of information. Add the ability to read the items in your "pocket" offline, and it quickly becomes a truly indispensable tool for organizing all those articles that you need to reference at a later date.

I used to bookmark these, or add them to Evernote, but somehow never got around to visiting them later. GetPocket makes it easy and convenient, in a sleek, beautiful interface that's easy to use, and integrates seamlessly with over 300 apps.

BRIDES - Stay away! Seriously, if you are that good of a DJ, why do you have to post photos on your website of weddings that you did not DJ at! Not to mention violate copyright of the photographer's who took the images.

Dishonest...

Does it get any worse than AT&T? Their website is the worst. Go to your account online, 3 different times in a day, and you'll see 3 different balances... along with fine print that says your balance may not reflect charges and payments for the last several weeks!

What's worse... they completely screwed up an account, disconnected it due to something that was THEIR fault, and now say it's at least 5 days to reconnect?

Goodbye AT&T - thanks for nothing!

Completely FREE to-do list organizer, that allows you to create categories. Absolutely beautiful app that works on pc/mac/iphone/ipad/android

For a more full-featured team-oriented app made by the same people, visit wunderkit.com (or see my review of it).

Awesome!

This site is for a FREE application, that runs on on multiple platforms, (currently mac, iphone and web based if you are on a pc) that gets you organized in a group fashion.

It's kind of a cross between a to-do list, an organizer, and social networking. In other words, it's a collaboration organizational app.

You can have public and private workspaces, (and the ability to follow or get followed), social integration with facebook and twitter, track team progress, add notes... etc.

Did I mention it's FREE?

For a simpler, plain to-do list app that is completely free, and comes from the same company, check out wunderlist.com It is available for iphone/android/web/pc/mac

SPAM - SPAM - SPAM

You've seen this before, under numerous domain names... that whole "I made a million dollars working at home while taking care of my children" scam.

Not only is it a scam... but what they are doing is illegal. They, (or the company they hired overseas) has hacked into MSN accounts to sen out spam emails that direct you to this site. They used to have a "as seen on CNN" image, but that is gone now.

STAY AWAY! headlinetimes2.net is a scam!

Niroka.com is a fairly new site, that has online video classes. I, unfortunately, was one of their first guinea pigs. After seeing a discounted price for a course on appsumo.com, (the original price was a whopping $200 for 2 single hour video sessions) I signed up for an iphone app development course. The course was labeled iOS Development for Beginners, and it was advertised as a course for complete beginners with absolutely no programming experience. Well, I do have programming experience, (although not in Objective C), and I couldn't follow the class at all. The instructor had a thick accent, which made it difficult to understand, I couldn't see his code examples on the screen, and the video stream dropped 19 times in a single hour. More than half of the class were asking for refunds.

Obviously, this was going to be worthless. The instructor could code, but he was severely unqualified to teach. He did not explain the "why" of anything, so I was really amused when this company sent me an email a few hours later, where they stated... we feel the frustrations that some users expressed in the chat room during Part 1 today. I can not stress how grateful we are that you have tried out our service as one of our first users, and we're disappointed with ourselves for dropping the ball this time with a last minute streaming host switch, poor video/audio quality, and doing a poor job of finding the appropriate audience for our course. We didn't get it right this first time, but we have some more exciting courses we're going to teach in the near future.

Doing a poor job of finding the appropriate audience for the course? You mean blatant misrepresentation and false advertising? You mean the fact that the course was not designed for beginners at all? And since you did such a poor job with this one, you think I'm going to take another course with you?

Save your money, skip this website. Somebody needs to explain to these people that just because someone can do something, does not mean that they are qualified to teach it. In addition, when you advertise something, people have a funny tendency to believe you.

THE POSTER CHILD FOR SCAM SITES!

Ugghhh... where to begin? First off, this guy also runs a bunch of other sites that all begin with endofamerica... com, the current one on tv is endofamerica63.com.

Let me break it down for you... It starts with his website (and commercial) featuring a disclaimer that... Warning: This video is controversial and may offend some viewers... well, it offended me for sure!

The whole thing is run by Porter Stansberry. He wastes about an hour of your precious time, (and no, you can't skip ahead on the video) blatantly lying about how he predicted all the economic woes that were coming and he alone can predict these things, (ummmm... he should know, he's a wall street guy, and part of the problem). He then states over and over that the US economy is collapsing, and he promises to show you how to survive it. Of course, after he has completely wasted your time, at the end of the video, he lets you know that you have to send him money and then he'll REALLY give you that information.

He preys on people who are uneducated and gullible. Basically, if you like pyramid scams, you'll LOVE this guy. Most of what he quotes is either BS or the facts are severely twisted. After he goes through his whole repertoire of scare tactics, you find out that really, this is just a sort of infomercial. I was actually waiting for him to say, "But wait... there's more!"

What he fails to say, is that he was investigated (under another name, Agora, Inc.), and subsequently ordered to pay 1.5 million dollars in restitution and civil penalties for "disseminating false stock information and defrauding public investors through a financial newsletter", although he swears he is innocent. Ummmm... yeah... he was found by a judge to be defrauding people, but I want to send him some money... not!

Your money is better spent on some bogus multi-level marketing scheme rather than paid to him. I do believe the economy would collapse... if everyone listened to this guy.

I don't mind a tv show being biased in their opinion, (even if it doesn't match my own).
I don't mind a tv show giving commentary
I don't mind a tv show trying to influence people

BUT, if you call yourself a news show, and your only goal is to try to make people turn into robots, all believing the same crap you dish out, then you are not a news show.

The news should be unbiased, accurately reported, and without an obvious politically motivated slant. When other news agencies were reporting 24/7 on the situation in Libya, Fox News ran mostly Democrat-Bashing shows. Walter Cronkite - where are you when we need you?

I am not opposed to them bashing Democrats, (I don't like MSNBC either), but this is not news. Just call it what it is... Rupert Murdoch's typical Democrat-bashing propoganda, delivered by people with obvious anger issues.

When I watch the news, I prefer to be given the unabashed truth, allowing me to form my own opinion. The only cable news network that seems to be down the middle appears to be CNN.

Despite some of the comments below, care2.com is indeed a great site. From living healthier to green living, to promoting causes out there, this site is a great source of information, while at the same time, giving you an opportunity to make a difference.

Because it is heavily slanted towards global warming, human rights, civil rights, etc., there is a pretty good chance that you are not going to like them if you are an ultra right-wing person. It is a site that is abashedly and openly towards the left. Most people who make negative comments will find themselves on the other side.

Great gadget and tech blog... heavily influenced by Apple, but great articles, reviews and leaks!

This is the go-to place if you have iphone repair issues. Need a new battery for your iPod, (we all know how long those last!) Dropped your iPad and now the screen is broke? These are the guys who can fix it.

Not only do they do Apple repairs at a reasonable rate, but when something goes wrong, they stand behind their product. My husband had an issue with the LCD on his touch, and we sent it to them for a repair. When we got it back, the wifi wouldn't work. Being a bit of a geek, I assumed that the antenna got knocked off when they opened the case, so I sent it back (and they sent me a prepaid UPS label via email). But it turned out to be the logic board, which they promptly replaced and sent back at no charge.

Most companies do well when things go right, but it's how they handle when things go wrong that really count. They took what could potentially be a bad situation, and turned it into a positive one. I highly recommend them!

While not always the cheapest... if you are looking for electronic products, and want a company that will actually stand behind what they sell... look no further. Great products, (especially if you sign up for their newsletter and get email alerts to the best deals), great prices, and excellent customer service.

Get a great deal of my products here because you know you can trust them.

Not only is there tons of useful information and tutorials for Linux users, but that information is broken down into meaningful categories, so it's easy to find what you are looking for. There is even a complete newbie section!