I’m sorry I haven’t updated my blog lately. I am in the midst of a major family emergency and have not had time to do anything else.
I will start posting again when I can. Until then, I hope you have a happy and peaceful holiday season.
~Susan Mellott
Here is the latest update from Smart Car USA. The Smart Car Dealerships are due to open in January and the reserved Smart Cars will start to be delivered at that point. We know someone who has reserved and is getting a Smart Car, hopefully in January. He and his wife are very excited! I hope to get a ride in it when he gets it and I will take pictures and post them.
Also, here is an interesting article from the Associated Press (on sfgate.com) that is an interesting read in that it contains some rather negative thoughts about the Smart Car. Here is an excerpt:“Some industry analysts are skeptical about Smart’s chances in the United States, where trucks, sport utility vehicles and crossovers still command more than half the market and gas prices, while rising, still don’t approach Europe’s.
Schembri won’t say how many vehicles Smart hopes to sell in 2008, but Aaron Bragman, an analyst with Global Insight, said he doesn’t expect more than 20,000, and sales will probably fall off after that. By comparison, the Toyota Yaris — the most popular subcompact on the market — sold 73,874 units in the first 10 months of this year, according to Autodata Corp.
“I think it will be a novelty,” Bragman said. “It’s a very niche market, and I’m not very sure it has much staying power.”
Bragman said for the price, buyers could get a used car with a lot more space and practicality. Unless gas prices hit $5 to $6 a gallon, he said, it’s hard to picture Smart gaining much ground.”
I think they may be surprised at how popular the Smart Car will be. People were very surprised at how popular the Scion XB is, not only among it’s intended audience - young, hip college kids, but also with baby boomers, older people, active people and just a lot of people in general. We own one and are thrilled with it. It is a very, very practical car and I think that they underestimate how many people want a practical car.
And especially for city commuting, the Smart Car is perfect, as near as I can tell. It exactly fills that spot and does so better than any other car available. It is small, inexpensive, gas-efficient and attractive. Not everyone wants or needs a big, gas-guzzling SUV, although the industry seems to think so. Well, we’ll see.
Also, I apologize for the formatting on this, I cut and pasted it from the email newsletter I received and it didn’t come through as well as I’d like. I could edit it to make the columns a little less wide, but the white space I just couldn’t seem to get rid of. But the information is all there 
Enjoy,
~Susan Mellott
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© 2007 smart USA. All rights reserved.
All illustrations and specifications contained in this email are based on the latest product information available at the time of sending. smart USA reserves the right to make changes at any time, without notice, in colors, materials, equipment, specifications, and models. Any variations in colors shown are due to variations in monitor resolution. Illustrations may include test situations. Some vehicles may be shown with non-U.S. equipment. Some vehicles are shown with optional equipment.
What exciting news! Michael Stephens, noted Library 2.0 speaker, author and creator of the well-known blog, Tame The Web (and who is from Indiana!) will be giving a public speech at the Allen County Public Library Main Library Auditorium on December 14, 2007 from 10:30 - 11:30 on Top Tech Trends. Here is an overview of his speech:
What technology trends are changing the way we work and play? What trends have you tapped into? Join Michael Stephens, Assistant Professor at Dominican University’s Graduate School of Library and Information Science, for an overview of trends and how libraries are responding. Michael Stephens has spoken to audiences in over 25 states and in three countries. He also writes a monthly column, “The Transparent Library,” in Library Journal with Michael Casey. His blog, Tame the Web, is read avidly by many librarians.
If this piques your interest in what Michael has to say, here is a fascinating video that Sean posted on his blog, ACPL’s Innovation Through Technology, by Erik Boekesteijn and Jaap van de Geer, DOK Delft Public Library, who interview Michael Stephens in Chicago about libraries and innovation.
And here is a brief bio of Michael Stephens:
Michael Stephens, Ph.D., is currently Assistant Professor in the Graduate School of Library and Information Science at Dominican University in River Forest, Illinois.
After receiving an MLIS from Indiana University, he spent over fifteen years working in public libraries, where he developed a passion for the practical application of technology.
He published The Library Internet Trainer’s Toolkit in 2001, and two years later, he launched his popular weblog, Tame the Web. Since then, Michael’s writing has appeared in Public Libraries, Library Journal, Computers in Libraries, and a host of other publications.
In 2004, Michael was awarded an IMLS doctoral fellowship at University of North Texas, where he conducted research on social software and blogging. Named a “Mover and Shaker” by Library Journal in 2005, Michael joined Dominican’s faculty in 2006 and completed his Ph.D. in 2007. Recently, he has produced two ALA Library Technology Reports on Web 2.0.
Michael has spoken to audiences in over 25 states and in three countries. When not traveling or teaching, he resides in Mishawaka, Indiana, and enjoys escaping to Traverse City, Michigan.
Here is the PSA (Public Service Announcement) for Michael’s speech by Sean Robinson, head of IT at the Allen County Public Library:
And here is a link to the ACPL web page announcing Michael’s speech. I am very excited to meet Michael and to hear his speech. And stay tuned for Sean and Kay’s “Conversation” youtube video with Michael. After the speech, Sean and Kay will be interviewing Michael and then will produce a video of that interview as part of their “Conversation” series.
In the “Conversation” series so far is a 2-part interview with Jeff Krull, Director of the Allen County Public Library, and one with Stephen Abrams, Head of Innovation for Sirsi-Dynix. These areshort, professionally and beautifully produced videos, reminiscent of the style of the famous documentary director Ken Burns.
I am really looking forward to this Friday and then later, to watching Sean and Kay’s new video with Michael Stephens. I hope you all can come see his speech if you are in the area, or at least, stay tuned for my post announcing his “Conversation” video.
~Susan Mellott
How many times have you gone to someone’s blog and read one of their posts and then wanted to see what else they had written about that topic? I know I do frequently and I’ll bet you do too. And I’m sure that people have come to your blog and thought, “I wonder what else they have written about [fill in the topic]?”.
Well, a way to organize your posts and help people see what else you might have written about the same topic is to use Categories (in WordPress) or Labels (in Google Blogger). These can also be referred to as tags (or folksonomies…). An example of this is, say you wanted to see any posts I’d written about Harry Potter. You can go to my categories and click on “Harry Potter” (notice that it gives the number of posts that are tagged Harry Potter after the tag - this is an optional setting in your categories widget). Then you would go to this page that only contains all my posts that are categorized as “Harry Potter”.
You will probably end up needing to go back and check your categories and clean them up periodically so they are useful to get all posts from a certain topic and to regroup those that only have 1 post in a category. And sometimes you might want to add a category and then add that category to the posts pertaining to it after you find you have written a few more posts about something.
If you look at this blog or my Blogger test blog Along the Path to 2.0, you can see that I have a huge list on the right of my blog of all my labels (for this blog, click the arrow on the right of my categories list to drop down the list). Especially in Blogger, it is important to file under broader categories so you don’t end up with a huge list that only contains 1 post like I did. That is not how categories/labels should be used. They should group a number of like posts, not just 1 post.
When I first stated my blog, I categorized everything by a whole bunch of specific keywords and so my earliest posts don’t have useful categories. As an example, I categorized some posts under “google” and “analytics” where I should have categorized them either as “google analytics” or “blog stats” or something that puts them in a category that would group them with other similar posts. Doing the keywords separately means that searching under ‘google’ would give all posts about anything I tagged ‘google” (could be google blogger, google analytics, the google search engine, the company, etc). Now that is fine for a category since it does allow someone to find everything I posted about anything related to google, but doesn’t help for finding those posts about getting or using blog statistics.
There really is an art to categorizing your posts and it is a process of refining and redoing them regularly. It helps if you start out on the right foot, knowing some of these things. I didn’t when I started and I now have sort of a mess and really need to go back an correct them. When you have a lot of posts, it is really a pain in the butt to do that though since it is very time-consuming and you have to do each post individually. So if you start with some good categories, you will save yourself a lot of time!
How to create categories/labels:
WordPress
When you write a post, you have the ability to add categories/labels to your post to help identify and categorize it. You can select and add categories to your WordPress blog in the categories box to the right of where you write your posts. This is the same whether using a wordpress.com hosted wordpress blog or a wordpress.org self-hosted blog.
Blogger:
In Google Blogger (Blogspot), there is a text box at the bottom of where you compose your post that says “Labels for this post:” and you enter the labels you want to use
Wordpress:
Then just make sure you have included a Categories widget (for Wordpress) on your sidebar so people can use it to search by category. The picture to the left is a picture of my sidebar 2 (right sidebar) for my blog. You can see that under the “Odiogo Subscribe Button” widget is my “Categories” widget. I have it configured so that it uses a drop-down box to display my categories. If I click on the little horizontal lines on the right of the widget, it brings up a box that lets me choose if I want a drop-down box or just a list (which can take up a lot of room on your sidebar if you have a lot of categories), and lets me give it a title and show the number of posts in each category. It also lets me choose to Show Hierarchy which to be honest, I don’t really know what that does. It doesn’t change anything when I check it.
If you are using the default sidebars for your template, it will most likely already have a categories widget. If not, and you want to add it, be aware that if you add anything to a default sidebar, it will remove all the other widgets so you will have add them as well.
Also, the template I am using displays the categories that each post is filed under right
under the title of the post (see example). So someone could read this post about Picnik and if they were interested in more information about Picnik, they could click on the category “Picnik” at the top of my post and get a list of all the posts that are filed under “Picnik”. Different templates work differently, some have them at the bottom of the post and some don’t include them at all. It is something to look for when choosing a template if you want to have the categories for each post listed. Not everyone uses them, but when I am visiting a blog, if I read a post about an interesting subject and want to know more, I will click on the appropriate category in the post list. Of course, if that isn’t available, I will use the category list on the side to see what else they might have.
Blogger:
To add a category widget (which is called a Label Page Element) in Blogger, you go to template–>page elements and click on “Add a Page Element” and choose the Label page element. You can click on edit to edit it but there isn’t a lot you can do in Blogger, basically just list either alphabetically or by frequency.
And to show the labels for each post in Blogger, choose ‘edit’ in the Blog Posts box on that window and check the “labels” box.
Also, the template I am using (and near as I can tell, most of the templates in Google Blogger) displays the categories that each post is filed under right under the title of the post (see example). So someone could read this post about Las Vegas internet access and if they were interested in more information about Las Vegas, they could click on the category “las vegas” at the top of my post and get a list of all the posts that are filed under “las vegas”.
So as you write your posts, think about what category/label would be useful to search your blog for other similar posts and file your post under those categories. It will help other people find things on your blog. And don’t forget to try it out on other people’s blogs too!
~Susan Mellott
“Novel”, “Novel”ties, get it? That is my lame book humor. But these all would make excellent stocking stuffers for the people with an “oblique” sense of humor (to quote Elvis) on your list.
I wrote a post about online shopping sites you may not be familiar with and one of them was a favorite site/catalog of mine called Archie McPhee’s. They carry all sorts of unique, quirky, down-right-fun stuff that doesn’t cost much. In other words, fantastic stocking stuffers for your zany friends and family.
And after writing about it, I decided to go check out what they have since I haven’t visited there for a while. Well they had some new and really cool things! Since two things that go together really well (in a twisted sort of way) are librarians and zombies, to my surprise they had cool things for both!
The first thing I saw (and you have got to LOVE these) are The Illustrated Librarian Temporary Tattoos. They say neat things, like the heart with “Book Lust” and “Born to Read”. This is great for any librarians or book-readers on your holiday list. Be a Wild Thing (at least temporarily) and sport your oh-so-apropos tattoos.
OK, those are pretty cool, but that is not all they have! You can get your own Librarian Action Figure. Each 5″ tall, hard plastic Librarian Action Figure is modeled after Nancy Pearl, a real-life librarian in the Seattle area. Press the button on her back and her arm will move with amazing “shushing action!” Comes with a tiny plastic replica of her most recent book, Book Lust, and a stack of random literature. The card features a brief history of libraries on the back as well as a realistic check-out card in a classic library sleeve along with two bookmarks and a Nancy Pearl trading card! And if that isn’t enough Librarian for you, check out the DELUXE Librarian Action Figure. Each 5″ tall, hard vinyl figure is dressed in a stylish burgundy outfit and comes in a library diorama with a reference desk, computer, book cart, multiple book stacks and some loose books, including a tiny plastic replica of Nancy’s latest, Book Lust 2. Press the button on her back for the infamous “amazing shushing action!”. And here is a link to her “More Book Lust” book.
And while you are at it, visit Nancy Pearl’s very own website. Yes, she’s a real person and right now you can enter on her website to win a trip for two to Seattle and dinner with Nancy Pearl! Her mission according to her website is “To promote and celebrate the written word”.
Here is a little bit about her: Accomplishments: Director of Library Programming and the Washington Center for the Book at the Seattle Public Library. Nancy is best known for the, “If All Seattle Read The Same Book” project. This idea of one city reading the same book at the same time has been imitated in cities around the world. She is a book reviewer for the Seattle Times, Booklist, Library Journal, KUOW-FM Seattle, and KWGS-FM Tulsa.
And while I’m at it, here are some quotes about librarians:
What can I say? Librarians rule. - Regis Philbin
I have always imagined that
And did you know that Casanova was a librarian? “So famous a womanizer was the Italian-born libertine Giacomo Casanova that, a full two centuries after his death, his name remains synonymous with the art of seduction. But for years he spent in the employ of Count Waldstein of Bohemia as a librarian.” And yes, there is a Casanova Action Figure. I’m not sure what the ‘action’ part of his figure is…
OK, on to Zombies! First of all, do you have your Zombie Survival Guide: Complete Protection from the Living Dead by Max Brooks? If not, you must get this now. No person can feel truly prepared without it.
Next, here is a quick list of all the Zombie related items at Archie McPhees. And here are some highlights.
First off, the game “WWZD: What Would a Zombie Do?” Notice the lifelike (deathlike?) zombie arm spinner! And it is only $4.95. When in doubt, spin the arm and see if you should “Eat Brains”, “Moan”, “Hate the Living” and more.
And next, the Glow in the Dark, Flesh Eating Zombies Play set. “Wreak havoc on your sister’s precious diorama with this Flesh Eating Zombie Play Set! Each set includes nine 1″ to 3.25″ tall, hard vinyl zombies, complete with blank stares, gaping mouths, open wounds and missing limbs! Turn off the lights and they glow! Fantastic undead fun for the whole family!” And for more fun, you can get the Horrified B-Movie Victims and create your own dioramas. Or have hours of fun playing Zombies vs. Victims, especially after a hard day at work. 
And last but not least, coming soon to Archie McPhee - The Remote Control Zombie! “Run! Hide! Barricade yourself in the basement of an abandoned farmhouse! This 7-3/4″ tall, plastic Remote Control Zombie will trudge forward and groan when you activate him by pressing the button on the 2-3/4″ long brain-shaped remote. Horrifyingly entertaining! Articulated at the neck, shoulders and hips. Requires three AAA batteries (not included).” It doesn’t have a picture or a price yet, but it sure looks fun!
Librarians and Zombies Forever!
~Susan Mellott
It is coming on the holiday season and one gift that everyone would love is more memory for their computer. Nothing will revive an older computer better than adding memory and nothing will speed up a good computer better than more memory.
If you are like me, you have at least one computer that seems slow now, although when you bought it you thought you had gotten ample CPU size and memory. A lot of people blame their CPU when really they just need to add memory. I have a Dell Dimension 4400 desktop computer with (believe it or not) 256 meg of memory and my Dell Inspiron 8600 notebook has 512 meg. At the time I bought each of these, that was considered ample memory, but nowadays 1 gig is about the minimum you would want and if your computer can accept more, so much the better.
My desktop can only handle a maximum of 1 gig (two 512 memory modules) and my laptop can handle 2 gig (two 1 gig modules). I plan to upgrade both of them to their max and as a matter of fact, have already ordered it and we are waiting for it to come in. It is my Christmas present and I can’t think of a better present than that.
But when I asked for memory, I realized that I did not know what I needed to get. There is a lot of different kinds of memory and it is very confusing. The first thing I did since I have Dell computers is to go to the Dell website and look up each of my computers by their service tag. The service tag is on each Dell computer. If you haven’t done it yet and you own a Dell computer, sign in to the Dell website and go to My Systems and Peripherals. Then locate your service tag on your computer. If you can’t find it, there is a Find My Service Tag link right below the where you would enter it. Be aware though that it requires Internet Explorer 5.5 or greater. It doesn’t work with Netscape or what I use, Firefox.
When you enter the service tag (and a description, like “Susie’s Laptop”), you will see a wealth of information about your computer. It will give you a complete summary of the configuration of your computer when you bought it. And on the left will be a list of a whole bunch of support and documentation for your computer.
If I click on Manuals, it takes me to the manuals for my specific computer with a “Tell Me How”, “Service Manual”, “Owner’s Manual” and “Setup Diagram”. All very useful, no? In the Owner’s Manual, it has a whole section with pictures on exactly how to add memory (in this case, to my laptop). And it listed the type of memory to get in the Appendix.
It pretty much spells it out for me. Once I had this information, I could go anywhere and look for two 1 Gig 333-MHz DDR SODIMM SDRAM (PC2700) memory modules. And as it states, my laptop comes standard with 256 meg (I have 512) and can go up to 2 gig (1 gig each slot).
But what if I didn’t have a Dell?
Well, thank goodness, there is a very easy way to tell what memory you need for your computer, thanks to Crucial, makers of very fine computer memory. Crucial provides a system memory scanning tool for your computer that tells you exactly what memory you have and what you need. You do have to either be using Internet Explorer (why does everywhere require that?) or to download their system scanning tool which takes a second and pops the scan results up in your regular (in my case, Firefox) browser just like you ran it from there. It identified my exact computer type, the type of memory I needed and how much I had and what I could use. Here are the results of my scan.
Pretty easy to figure out what I need now, that is for sure. Of course, I would not necessarily recommend buying through their website, it is generally cheaper to go somewhere else. I ended up buying mine from Newegg because they were selling the 1 Gig modules for $70 with a $16 rebate for each module. They don’t have the rebate now (and the price is now $80) but looking up PC2700 on Dealcatcher, I see that now Buy.com has the same 1 gig Crucial memory for $58 with no S&H.
Crucial memory is considered very good and reliable and it guarantees that it is compatible with your computer when you run the scan to determine what kind to get. That is especially important with Dell computers since they are known to be somewhat picky.
I ended up getting Kingston memory for my desktop. They were sold out of that particular Crucial memory and the Kingston memory got good reviews. That is one thing nice about Newegg, they list reviews for each of their products. And Kingston has a list on their website of what computers their memory is compatible with and what type of memory to get. It is good for a double-check, but doesn’t actually scan your system the way the crucial website does.
Kingston also provides some Memory Installation Guides. They are pretty generic though. Better to go to the website for your particular computer and see what online manuals or help they have. Or you can always look in the manual that came with your computer I hardly even think of that, I am so used to looking it up online.
So if you are thinking about what you might want for Christmas (or holiday of your choice) or what you might get someone else, think of the gift of memory! It isn’t as hard as you think and it really will make a big difference to how well your computer will run.
~Susan Mellott
There are many online shopping sites. Most people know about the big ones like Amazon, Overstock, Dell, Buy.com, Half.com and the online version of actual stores like Best Buy, Circuit City, Walmart and Sears. Most all of the stores you might visit in person have an online presence. And the store catalogs you get in the mail have online sites too, like Pyramid (unique new age type items), Archie McPhee (extremely hilarious and unusual novelty items) and Chadwicks (women’s clothing).
But there are other, less well known sites that offer good prices as well and are equally trustworthy.
A place I have shopped lately is NewEgg (electronics, which may also be an actual store, but we don’t have one here). We bought computer memory and printer ink at a nice discount. Another place is Deep Discount. They carry items like DVDs and video games. I’ve purchased DVDs for people for Christmas and video games for ourselves. I actually ordered Guitar Hero 3 from them a few weeks ago, but cancelled the order since we are trying to save money and didn’t really need it. But it was cheaper there than anywhere else I could find.
And while you may have heard of Cafepress for a wide variety of interesting t-shirts, mugs and related items, you may not know of Printfection. Printfection has the same sort of shirts, mugs, etc related items, but the prices are cheaper and the quality is better. If you are looking for a unique t-shirt or small gift, I definitely recommend Printfection. The ACPL used a t-shirt design for Library Genius 2.0 as part of their Learning 2.0 program and it is now online at Printfection. I think it is pretty cool
And speaking of cool t-shirts, I have one that I really like (actually a tank top) that I got from Cafepress. I do aikido and wear tank top under my gi. So I found this one that says “I’m tougher than I look” and has a cute little picture. Since I am somewhat small and non-threatening appearing, this seemed very apropos.
However, Cafepress is very annoying in that it is extremely hard to find anything. I had to go to my last order to find the store I got this from in order to find it. No other searches worked. Seems like a poor shopping website design. Unfortunately, Printfection seems to have gotten big enough that it is getting harder to search too, although if you get more specific in your search (such as “Van Gogh”), you can find items.
And then there are the “One Day, One Deal” or “One Deal at a time until its Gone” type sites. The Big Daddy of the One Day One Deal sites is Woot!. Woot offers one deal at midnight each night and sells it until it is sold out. It is such an institution that there is a whole culture around Woot! such as whenever a bluetooth technology item is sold, the podcast is about Bluetooth the Pirate. The podcasts, contests and product descriptions are well worth a look, regardless of whether or not you are interested in the item. The writers are incredibly innovative and funny. Here is the wikipedia entry about Woot!. And every so often, they have a woot-off which is one deal after another. They frequently have very, very good deals on items you very well might want. I’ve gotten all sorts of things from them such as a Dyson DC07 vacuum cleaner for $299 (the absolute best sweeper, I will never use another kind and I have 2), an Acer 22″ widescreen monitor for $199 and much, much more such as a blood pressure monitor for my mom, a couple of cool flashlights, a wireless router, a travel mug coffee maker, 2-pack wireless controllers for Playstation 2 and more. I check Woot every morning when I get up just to see what they have and if there is a woot-off on I am at my computer checking until it is over.
And for the One Deal at a Time until it is Gone type site, I like Steep and Cheap and Whiskey Militia. Both of these deal with sports/outdoors/recreational related items. Steep and Cheap seems more geared towards outdoor sports and recreation and Whiskey Militia is a little more towards the extreme sports, skateboarding younger generation. Since my husband is very active and likes all kinds of outdoor sports, these sites are great for getting good deals. Both of these are operated by BackCountry.com , an outdoor sports and recreation website. I guess they take certain items that they have overstocked or whatever and put them on their discount sites.
Here is a good site for tracking all of the DOD (deal a day) items and the like in real time. It is called the DOD Tracker.
Ebay is another good place for bargains. While you do have to be very careful on Ebay, you can greatly mitigate your risk by checking the rating and reviews of the seller. Here is a seller that I particularly like for cool, arty t-shirts called AlohaVintage. If you click on feedback profile for them you get this page. As of today, they have 5815 reviews and 99.8% positive feedback. In addition, they have had no negative feedback in the last 12 months and only 6 neutral ratings. The rest were a good ratings. You can also read the comments about them on their feedback page. So I can recommend them without any hesitation if you like interesting t-shirts and other items with an art theme. I’ve gotten very nice long sleeve and short sleeve t-shirts with overall prints by Dali, Van Gogh, Klimt and more.
Some other interesting and unusual Ebay sellers that I would recommend as having exceptional items and a good reputation are Chinese Antique Wholesalers who offer an amazing range of authentic chinese items, many of which are antiques. The chinese do not value their antiques and it is good that someone is taking care of them and that they are not just getting destroyed in the wake of “progress”. We got a large carved wooden bin with legs, an old tea caddy, a very intricately carved side of a chinese wedding bed that makes a great archway and more. I love what they have and if I had the money, I’d buy a lot more of their items.
Another ebay seller with unusual and quality items is Aristophanes Murals. When we remodeled our bathroom, I wanted a large japanese art tile mural on the tiled wall. I found Aristophanes and they had just what I wanted. Here is a list of all the japanese/asian themed murals that I had to choose from. The picture on the left is the one we settled on, although it was very, very hard to decide and again, if I had the money I would have these all over.
This picture is actually from our bathroom after we finished the remodel.
Another thing that you should consider doing whenever you make an online purchase is to do a search for the store name and “promo” or “code”. Frequently stores will have some promo code that you can enter to get a certain percentage off or some other savings. You should also check Dealcatcher whenever you are looking for something. Dealcatcher has all sorts of information about sales and coupons and specials listed by store or by item type. You can also do searches or create email alerts on particular keywords. When I was looking for a Garmin GPS, I put a deal alert for Garmin and it emailed me whenever a new deal was added that said Garmin. It also has a weekly newsletter of deals that I highly recommend. And you can also search for prices of items under their “Compare Prices” tab (that uses PriceGrabber). This includes product reviews and very helpful seller ratings and reviews. It doesn’t matter if you don’t know the online seller as long as you verify that they have good, recent ratings and reviews.
And last but not least, BizRate is a site that lets you search for good prices on items and also provides a lot of information about an online store. Here is the link to the BizRate Store Ratings. From this page you can also put the online store site (such as amazon.com) in the search box. If I am unsure about an online store, I will search here for information as well as in Dealcatcher/Pricegrabber (if available).
So that’s a little more info for you this shopping season.
Happy Shopping!
~Susan Mellott
