We use gadgets

Join Neobux

2009-12-04T14:03:00.000-08:00

My recent achievement is $300 per month on this site and my realistic goal is to earn $600 every month in a few months.

I wanted to write this post only when I was sure that the initiative I am writing about is totally reliable and it's really a good tool to earn some money online.

Neobux is a PTC (Paid-To-Click) site. Basically what you are doing is just clicking advertisements and I do not think that this is something that can make you seriously rich. Life is not that simple, you won't live on it. But for those who due to their work are spending a lot of time in front of the computer which is my case, too, Neobux is a real opportunity.

I spend every morning about 15 mins with this and after 7 months just reaching the ultimate I started to have a reasonable profit for this efforts.

Before I explained already how PTC sites are working, you can read it here.

Now I wanna share you my personal experience how much money you can make here and what kind of work you have to do for it.

Though there are some guys that keep reporting about $2500 per month as an income from Neobux I am not at this level yet. Recently I am earning about $300 a month and based on my calculations when I will reach the targeted 4000 rented referrals on my account I expect to have $600 as a net monthly profit. This is the level I find realistic and still reasonable recently with this daily 15 mins attention.

How to start a blog?

2009-10-25T11:17:00.000-07:00

At times I have to remind myself that not everybody is blogging. Those who just start are very unfamiliar with the technical backgrounds and opportunities. To start a blog is based mostly on an idea. I wanna write my journal online, I want to share my photos and stories of my vacation with my friends, I have poems, writings to share, I wanna sell my artwork, my products, I build a community, I support a movement etc. etc.. Several motivations and of course all of them go for the content.

When it comes to implementation and the required technical background even the first step seems to be so difficult and hopeless that it destroys enthusiasm easily.

URL, template, layout, html coding, tagging, SEO, adsense, tracking....."ohh my god I just wanted to share my favorite recipes, shall I deal with all of these nonsense?"

My answer is definitely NO if you find the right sources that can handle all the technical background for you. Basically I am never afraid of technical terms. Somehow I learned that even behind the most complicated terms there are very simple things all you have to do is just getting closer to them. But I totally understand if someone doesn't want to spend his/her days in a world which is described with these ugly words.

For these people BLOGGER provides a perfect, simple solution to start blogging without dealing too much with the technical details behind.

I wouldn't say I know all the relevant platforms for blogging. I personally use blogger for this blog, for some other projects of mine I use WORDPRESS. I used to have a trial with blog.com, I like TUMBLR, I know some social media sites that offer inserted blogging, too (stumble upon for example) and for my Hungarian blog I use a local platform called blog.hu. Among these I find blogger the most simple and most user friendly for users that are not IT experts or computer freaks.

What makes BLOGGER that simple?

Almost everything is available just by pushing some buttons. To push a button is not that hard, is it? Its amazing if everything is done by the system automatically behind the scenes. All you have to do is to make your decisions on the given options. Of course given options are always limited to compare to the whole possible varieties of the universe, but here we go for "the simple the better approach".

When you go to www.blogger.com in order to start a blog you will see this feature. If you want you can enlarge the photo but the main point I tried to explain is very visible here, too.

A big orange button is screaming here: CREATE A BLOG. Just push it and you made your first step to have your own blog.

Ok, things are not always as simple as the promise. Corporate interest always overwrite the pure intention of being simple. Since BLOGGER is owned by the Google to start a blog they force you to create a google account if you still don't have any. (If you use a gmail address for e-mails you definitely have a google account already).

It is not nice from Google but I promise this was the last pushy part of the story. A few more buttons and we are ready. The most exciting part is coming. Giving a name/title for our blog.

Its very important that the title/name of the blog is not necessarily the same as the URL (internet address) of the blog. The URL has to be unique just like every postal address. But the name of the blog can be anything. Of course its always good to have an outstanding title/name, but its not a disaster if yours will be the 10000000th blog titled "my poems".

Since the blog address has to be unique you have to give a name which isn't registered yet within the system of BLOGGER. Every address will be ended by blogspot.com, this is not an option, but the middle part of the address is only yours. Even if its hard to find a unique address I recommend you to choose a simple word that people can easily memorize. The address http://www.myfirstblogaboutmyboringlifewhichreallysucks.blogspot.com is very informative but the good news is that you don't have to summarize your life within your address.

When you have your name/title and your address you can design your blog. Some years ago if someone wanted to start a blog he or she had to be into programming or with the help of the geocities (my God its already a retro) you could create your own panels. BLOGGER provides you prepared design patterns called TEMPLATES which are perfect for a start. Just pick up the most suitable for your style and push CONTINUE.

Choosing the TEMPLATE was our last step. In fact your blog is ready. You can start to write your first blog, you can add 1000 gadgets to it, you can track your visitors, you can look for a more personalized template or whatever. We will write about it in a next post. The main job...to create our very first blog is ready! Keep blogging!:)

SeoBlogReviews - is it reliable?

2009-10-02T09:15:00.000-07:00

Just like many others we also received an e-mail from The SeoBlogReviews.com team.

Hello,

I'm Joy from SeoBlogReviews.com.

I would like to know if by any chance you would be interested in getting paid to publish reviews of products and websites on your blog http://breathtakinggroup.blogspot.com/.

If you are interested please let us know the amount of money you want in order to publish a review by clicking the following link:

http://blog.seoblogreviews.com/default/index/1c422ecbbaabdcdd5bef156819e108ad

As soon as you do that we'll start sending you paid review proposals from our customers.

Thanks,

The SeoBlogReviews.com Team

Its not the first time we meet initiatives looking for bloggers that are willing to write paid reviews. Review me, blogvertise, sponsoredreviews, just to mention a few. Basically I do not mind the concept of paid reviews. If I am not forced to lie, I can write my real opinion, even the bad ones and if I can refuse certain topics (adult, gambling, drugs) I write a review with a pleasure.

So we answered the e-mail of seoblogreviews by following the given link. To be honest the system was quite confusing. Following the link you fill be led to a pure form where you can submit your blog(s) but you cant find a proper website for bloggers with all the relevant information. This made me suspicious even if within a few hours I got a feedback in an other e-mail negotiating for the price. The negotiation is not a classic one, since they offered a better rate for the review posts.

Just a few days after a new e-mail has arrived with an offer to write a review. I was glad since it seemed that the system works. But on the other hand still no clear information on the requested review (length, number links, any special details), and no platform for submitting the URL of the written review.

I "googled" the seoblogreviews searching for posts and forum conservations about it. I found that people had the same experience. Many blogger got the invitation, found himself/herself in a confusing situation with no direct communication with the staff of the seoblogreviews. I wrote two e-mails to this secretful "Joy" but never got any answer. I was almost sure that this initiative is a spam or a joke.

But three days after I accepted the first review offer suddenly I got 10$ (the negotiated price) for the review which was not written yet at all. Right after the money has arrived I also got a new e-mail, which gave all the missing detailed information. They required min. 300 words, 3 links and they gave you 5 days to write and submit the review.

So it seems the system works but I really don't understand why they are so hidden and secretfull with zero communication with their partners.

Why I like FLICKR?

2009-08-20T07:10:00.000-07:00

To be honest first I didnt recognise the potencial of FLICKR (www.flickr.com). I was a little bit disappointed of the different photo sharing sites I tried before and I switched to FLICKR with a bad mood looking for a simple storage of photos only.

Well, as a storage it served me very well. For the first 6 months my only activity was on FLICKR to upload my photos there. Why?

- because its easier to show the photos for friends, for family if you just send a link instead of attaching each of them one by one. If you wanna prevent others to see your photos you can set it as private choosing certain people only to see them.

- Since I am actively blogging my photos away very soon I have recognised that FLICKR is perfect tool for blogging. The system automaticaly creates html code for your photos in different sizes. Much easier to insert a photo to any hosting site with html code than to upload them to your hosting service's site. For example wordpress (which I use for my www.budapestdailyphoto.com) limits the number of photos you can upload. After a while it might be difficult to post. But if you insert html code it doesnt take any space.

- beside creating html codes for your photos you can blog them directly if you register your blogs on flickr. Just pushing two-three buttons, setting up the desired size and location you can blog your photos directly from you account.

But this is only a little part of the opportunities you can have on FLICKR.

After 6 months of inactivities I realized that Flickr is a perfect tool for giving publicity for your photos (lately for videos, too but I am not really into videos there).

How to give publicity for your photo?

- Add people to you contact list (as friends or as contacts) and they will see your latest uploaded photos on their main page. Since recently I have about 2000 people on my FLICKR contact list as soon as I upload a photo usually I immediately have an audience for them and some of them actively comment on my photos.

- Join to groups, award photos and be awarded. On FLICKR you can find a lot of groups in diffferent topics. Some groups have more then 20.000 members that are ready to see new photos and to award the best of them. You can add a photo to as many as 60 groups at the same time. It may bring pretty large audience to your photo.

I have joined to several groups and recently I have 7800 photos uploaded that got viewed altogether about 550.000 times in the last 1,5 years. It means an average of 70 views on all pictures I uploaded.

My most viewed photo is this with 8251 views.

Of course, sex sells everything. After the cheerleaders photos this one is the most viewed with 4835 views.

I think its pretty large publicity, especially considering that I do not really have time to add my photos to groups regularly.

But thats not all, yet.

What I wrote until know is still the very passive way of FLICKR-ing. Actually FLICKR is very interactive and very user-led (with some limitations).

How is FLICKR interactive?

- commenting on photos, sending flickrmails, awarding photos and taking part in discussiong threads and comeptitions are widely used activities there. FLICKR can be very addictive for some months I was totally obsessed with it.

- to me the most interesting is that you can not only joing to groups but you can create and manage your own group, too. Actually the 1000s of groups you can find there are mostly run by the users and not official groups of the FLICKR staff. It seems FLICKR brings you the frame but that enourmous rich content is provided by the users. Without them FLICKR would be just an empty box, all the life is brought there by us.

- I also have some groups. To create one is realy easy and after you invited some people you can see your baby growing because everyone has an other someone to invite or people find your group seeing the active life there.

My most successful group on FLICKR is the Breathtaking Group that has recently 17.000 member and almost 200.000 photos added. This huge number is not only my achievement the biggest fun there is to build a real living community. To manage your group you can invite moderators and admins being your mates and maintaining a good team work from very different points of the world. Recently I am working together with a Mexican and with a British guy and with a Russian and American lady as a team and I can admit that I enjoy working with them a lot. Its not a job, its fun for us and maybe exactly thats what makes it so pleasureful and successful.

What I dont like in FLICKR?

- I do not like that its not for free. It is, but only for the first 200 photos you upload. If you are active on the site it wont be enough thats for sure.
- I also dont like that the system is quite slow very often. I dont know what they are using in the background, but if you open a photo or group of photos that have several awards and comments it takes a lot of time to be downloaded. I guess nowdays this speed is not forgivable FLICKR has to improve it soon.
- Though FLICKR is very user led, the few occassions when the staff do something can be really annoying. Couple of months ago they have changed the entire look of the site rearranging the dashboards, too. Lot of people complained but all these feedbacks got ignored. I didnt like this.

Some says that people will be in trouble if one day FLICKR will be disappearing just like many other sites did. Especially those who uploaded their photos and this is the only copy they have. Again others say what if one day FLICKR will be bought by an aggressive big shark and all the rights of your own photos suddenly will be questioned because they will find a way saying since you uploaded them they are not yours only anymore.

I am not afraid. I have an own copy of my photos on CDs and I am not really into the copyrights of the photos. I believe in sharing and even I believe that even if I will want to make money from my photos will be more successful by sharing and spreading them freely generating as large publicity as possible then just simply opening a site and trying to sell the photos directly. In the age of internet only losers buy/purchase photos directly. A fair agreement of crediting is more then enough to me as a mutual benefit.

Flickr provides you all the opportunities for this. I love that site and the living communities there.

How much is your website worth?

2009-08-19T07:54:00.000-07:00

There is a cool gadget, actually a website, where you can check how much is your website/blog worth.

BizInformation.org is a cool initiative where you can get not only the value of your site but a lot of useful information, too.

As they say about their free service:

"This is a free web-based valuation service, providing website information, visitor statistics and an estimated website value. Just enter a domain name into the box to view a full report. We try our best to provide accurate information, but this is not always guaranteed. Further research and confirmation of details is required."

I have tried this gadget with my blogs.

Budapest Daily Photo

As a result they provide an informaton sheet like this:

Maybe its hard to read it, so lets see what are the most interesting results:

The value of the blog is 34 916,6$. Wow...anyone to buy it?:)
Worldwide Rank: 1 259 493
USA Rank: 689 193
Page Rank: 5
External links: 12 935 (it sounds a lot)

Breathtaking group

The value of the blog is 28 777,4$.
Worldwide Rank: 1 627 379
Page Rank: 3
External links: 975

What are PTC sites about?

2009-06-07T02:59:00.000-07:00

PTC stands for Paid-To-Click. PTC websites are places where one could earn money on a daily basis.

How does it work?

You simply click a link on the PTC site and view a website for usually 30 seconds to earn money. You usually get paid $0.01 for each website you personally view and you can see up to 4-10 advertisement a day.

Ok, only with this won't make you rich unless you live in a country where the average money that people make a day is around $1.

If you want to earn a little bit more you can buy/rent so called referrals on PTC sites.

What are referrals?

In fact referrals are people like you. Registered members of the PTC site. People that want to make money online. So just like you do, they are sitting in front of the computer and click every day on the given advertisements. To have this people as referrals means these people will work for you for a certain period which is usually 30 days. When they click on the advertisements as your referral beside the money they earn you also will earn money after their clicks. Usually this is $0,005 for the beginning but after upgrading to a higher level you can earn more.

So how to make more money with this?

I totally understand if you are not interested in making $0.04 a day. So do I. But if you rent referrals you can see how your income will increase step by step. Start slowly, do not trust and do no invest if you are not sure. To register is totally free, if the PTC site requires some money for joining/registering leave them immediately because you will find plenty of other sites for free. I give you an example of NEOBUX which I have already tried. You can register to it for free here.

After you have registered click every day and collect some money for your first referal. On NEOBUX you can rent your first 3 referrals for $0.75 so be patient and use your time to read carefully the forum posts and the FAQs of the site. It helps you to get familiar with the site and you will get the answers to your 1000 questions.

If you are done with your first referral rent and your new "workers" are clicking every day as you do, you will make already $0.055 a day as a next step. You got to know that at the end of your "journey", after upgrading, you can rent as many as 4000 referrals which can bring you up to $160 a day and you are still just sitting in front of your computer and click on advertisement 4-10 times a day.

Why is this clicking thingy good for the advertisers?

Although being an active member you deal more with your referrals and with your account management than with the advertisements themselves I have to admit that clicking every day to those ads is one of the best imprinting. I have joined this site just couple of months ago but I remember all the advertisements since I see them every day. NEOBUX has 3 million registered members recently which means potentially hundred thousand more people are seeing the ads every day while they are clicking.

Very important rule is that you get your money after your referrals only on the days when you click it yourself too, so the system is motivating everyone to keep seeing the advertisements and even to encourage others to do the same. I guess this is the clue of the whole idea.

What are the possible pitfalls?

There are two ways of failure if I don't mention the case when you simply give up.

1. The site is a scam and it disappears after a while or it simply doesn't pay you.
2. Bad account management.

Its unfortunately true that there are plenty of fake PTC sites out on the internet. So never ever join or especially never ever invest to any of them until you have checked it carefully. Some hints how to make sure its real:

- google it. Read reviews, opinions, forum posts about the site just by typing its name into the google. If they are fake some people already failed and some of them would have written their opinions on this. Learn from the mistakes of others. If there is no independent info about the site its a turn off itself.

- if the PTC site doesn't have a working opened forum, leave them. Forum is one of the best way for opened communication between the members and between the members and admins. If the admin never appears, not available, if there are no answers to your e-mails or support tickets, just pack and move away before you wasted too much time and money.

-if the PTC site doesn't have any advertisements but its own or other PTCs its most likely a fake or just a very new one. My experience is that these sites are fluctuating very quickly, the market is full of cheap cheaters, so look for the mainstream.

-if you are a bit more experienced on Internet you can check the domain registration and you will be able to find out something about the owners of the site. Useful information is to know for how long they have paid for they domain and who is behind the registration. With some efforts after a while you will recognize easily those cheaters whatever names they put to the window.

Account management is the other critical point. Through on a good PTC site, you can earn without any single investment too. If you want to earn more than just a few coins, you will have to invest into referrals by an upgrade, buying packages and recycle the lazy ones. These actions will cost you and its only up to you if at the end your incomes are higher than your previous investments. Though I don't find it too difficult to manage an account reading carefully the forums and learning from other's mistakes or successes won't hurt.

Blogcatalog - my expriences with Blogcatalog

2009-05-24T02:42:00.000-07:00

BlogCatalog is more than just a social community for bloggers; according to their self definition, it is one of the largest blog directory on the Internet. Whether you are looking to search a blog, to connect with fellow bloggers, to learn more about blogging or simply to promote your own blog, BlogCatalog is for you.

BlogCatalog is the place for you to connect with other bloggers, so as to become a better blogger. It allows you to attract more blog readers, and to participate in groups and discussions. You can also find the latest tools for your blog, and much more!

Ok, that's how BlogCatalog defines itself. Let's see what is my own experience with them.

I have been a member of BlogCatalog since 2007 April. 2 years of membership is long enough I guess to say I have some experience with this site and with its service.First, I have to admit that I don't use BlogCatalog as a site which I visit everyday like a living community. It's just my personal choice and not about the limitation of the site. BlogCatalog is a well built, and strong instrument that has a jungle of different functions and features. But in the jungle of other opportunities such as Facebook, youtube, twitter, Blogger, or the Hungarian IWIW, it has never attracted me enough to make me sank in BlogCatalog.

I have been using it as a catalog of blogs for both being listed on it and for searching for other blogs in certain topics.

What does it mean for you if you register to BlogCatalog and you are listed there?

I have a photoblog called Breathtaking Group on Blogger. This blog has been listed on BlogCatalog since the 3rd of January 2008. Being in a catalog, you expect to be found and to give a certain publicity to your blog.

What happened to my Breathtaking Group photoblog on BlogCatalog?

Between the 3rd of January 2008 and 3rd of January 2009, my blog received 149 visits from BlogCatalog according the Google Analytics statistics. Let's say BlogCatalog is not the nuclear bomb which will raise your traffic up to the sky. If you like, you can be featured there in different ways but it's not for free and I never thought that I should pay for something like this.

I am a man with no time. I prefer fast solutions and structures that I can understand very quickly. I have no two weeks to read all the TOS, FAQs and Forum posts. I am sure spending a lot of time on BlogCatalog you can reach much better results, but what I was looking for was something very simple and very fast.

To register, and to be listed there is fast enough and I didn't have any problem. You have to wait a couple of days until they approve your blog but this is not a problem to me..even it shows me that the system is more reliable. Maybe the statistics would be more attractive if they allow more than 6 tags to describe your blog when you register.

Another opportunity to increase your traffic on BlogCatalog is to build a whole community around your blog. You can have fans, you can announce groups, you can follow others, exchange letters and messages, vote, rate, review and comment. This features are definitely useful and BlogCatalog has an active life. Without being active myself I get 3-4 messages a month, people add me as "friend" and they write comments on my account. Dealing more with this I am sure I would be able to reach better results but I have no time for it. The results which I showed, can be reached just by a simple registration and I inserted BlogCatalog's gadget to my blog sidebar to give a reciprocity. This is a requirement by the way. They won't approve your blog if they don't find at least a link back to them. Which is fair enough.

Blog search

The other feature which I use is the blog search function of BlogCatalog. A place which lists a lot of blogs in various topics is perfect for that. The advantage of this service is that it finds BLOGS in certain topics while google blogsearch rather finds blogposts mentioning certain keywords.

The difference is relevant to me. If I need news or information on recent topics written by bloggers, it is better to use google blog search. But if you look for blogs with a certain characteristic topic, for example for link exchange, BlogCatalog is your perfect tool.

Typing the topic of Budapest blogcatalog gives you 40 results. Having a quick overview of them, I found out that almost all of them are relevant, dealing really with Budapest from different aspects. The number could be higher, but if you try the same with New York you will find 15 000 blogs as search result.

wanna increase website traffic? fwebtraffic - does it work?

2009-05-14T12:38:00.000-07:00

And does it make sense? Lets try!

I wouldn't say that I am aware of different online marketing strategies. The way they advertise them is not attractive enough to me. Or better to say the way they advertise them is rather frightening to me then inviting.

Repeated exagerating keywords with large red letters:

1 million Guaranteed real visitors
Whatever is the product the text of the advertisement seems to be very similar.

- stop wasting money
- no cost to you
- what are you waiting for.

But ok. If you wanna know something better to try. This is the first time, and probably the last I try one of the great opportunities here.

I have signed up for www.fwebraffic.com

I am not familiar in this field. This is a random choice of mine. I dont know if its a famous site, or I dont know the method they use is widely used or unique. Actually I dont think its unique but I also do not know if it works or not.

The system is very simple. Sign up and click on the last 6 links you will find there. These are the blogs of the 6 previous users in this chain. After clicking you can add your own blog to the list and everyone joining after you from your link, will see your link as the first.

Its like a pyramid game. Nothing to do with the content. Not important if your blog is interesting or not, its only about clicks. By the way its not totally true...among the six links I had to click on I found one quite interesting.:)

Ok..so now the experience has started. I signed up, I made my clicks, and I inserted my own clicks, too. Beside I advertised the site on some of my blogs and I am doing it here in this post, also:) I wait one month...lets say how it works and I will be back with the news.

UPDATE:

I waited more then one month. Now is 13th of May when I write this update so after like 4 months the result looks like this:

One million visitors....hehe:)

Canon EOS 350D

2008-10-26T07:18:00.000-07:00

Hard to write an objective report because the Canon EOS 350D is like my baby. But this blog is about subjective reports so I can just repeat...its my baby.

I have started with a Canon EOS 300D in 2005. It was with me in Indonesia and in Malaysia and I was very satisfied with it though today I find that machine too large and heavy.

In the same year, Canon introduced a new, smaller digital SLR camera. This was the EOS 350D (in the US they prefer the name Digital Rebel XT). 8 megapixel sensor in a smaller, nicer looking body and with definitely more functions.

I am not into the fancy technical details as processors, CMOS, flesh system etc. For the first sight I just found the camera simply beautiful. My Canon 300D had a silver plastic body which challenged me several times in the heat of Indonesia. When your hands are sweating, it is easy to drop the camera. With the 350D it never happened to me since its body has different texture, more stable to hold. Maybe the small size might be a problem for those who have larger hands.

On the other hand, the black plastic body of 350D is more impact. My 300D got damaged in a few months, but the 350D still looks like a brand new camera even after two years usage.

The Canon EOS 350D is originally with a Canon EF-S 18-55mm lens but I rather use a Canon EF 20-35mm f/3.5-4.5 USM lens because it has a short wide angle focal length range. This lens give me special opportunities.

The other lens I prefer to use is a Canon EF 90-300 which is perfect for objects in a long distance for a reasonable price.

Its not easy to use it without tripod if its a bit darker or if the object is too far, but with some creativity and settings you can make a miracle.

I like that Canon 350D being very fast. Faster than 300D was. You switch on the device and the camera is ready within a second. At times it was annoying with the 300D that you could miss a moment just because the camera sets up slowly. Other important element of the speed is the autofocus. Unless the background is a very similar, a homogenous feature, the autofocus is very fast. You can change the focus easily, actually 350D is very precise with very useful gadgets. I am not a professional at all but I easily learn how to play with the focus.

Even after two years, I am satisfied with the accumulator of the 350D. With my settings I am able to shot 300-350 photos at once, and even after uploading them to the computer, I can capture one more round without charging. For the 300D, it took a while to upload the photos...you could have dinner while 300 photos were uploading to the laptop, the 350D arranges it within minutes.

I am really very satisfied with this camera. It never gets frozen, caused me a lot of pleasure and even for a non-professional like me, its a perfect tool to take amazing photos.

iPhone vs Nokia N95

2008-10-12T01:39:00.000-07:00

I had been using a Nokia N95 for more than a year, and I have been using the new iPhone of Apple for three weeks. In this term, to compare the two phones, it's not a right thing. I have a lot of usage experience with Nokia N95 and I am just getting familiar with the iPhone.

But even during these three weeks, I have so much to tell, that I decided to write this post.:)

Appearance and size:

To me both phones are attractive. The Nokia N95 looks very pretty from behind and as you can see even after 1 year active usage the back cover of the phone is still intact. I think it was a good choice to order the swiss Carl Zeiss lens to this phone. It gives a decent look.

iPhone is special with this very strong, compact look. You can open it (of course you can, but let's say: you don't have to), and the huge screen with these Mac type of menu bar makes it obvious from the very first moment that its much more than a phone.

In my opinion, Nokia N95 looks like a camera and iPhone is like and iPod or palm top. And these are the strengths of these phones.

Considering the size, they are quite similar. iPhone is a bit larger, but Nokia is thicker. In my jeans pocket, I still have a bad feeling if the iphone will be broken, but its more discrete there. The Nokia was always visible in the pocket with its thickness. By weight, Nokia N95 is slightly lighter (I intentionally didn't check the technical description, this is a subjective review), but only just by a little bit.

Its obvious Apple was taking care of little details of appearance. Even the box is so sleek and pretty like a jewelry box. I don't know where is the Nokia's original box, but the iPhone's is still in my room, I even didn't think about to throw it out.

As a phone:

I didn't find any differences in this term. Technically both devices are perfect for their original functions. You can receive and initiate phone calls. You might say its obvious, but to consider the whole market of phones, it may not be the case for every brand (types). I remember those Ericson family of phones which had great challenge to get any signals behind a paper size wall.

As for a user, the details are more important. How the device helps me to arrange my phone calls.
With Nokia N95 you can answer an incoming phonecall by using the slide. Or you can just simple push the little green button on the front. I prefered to use the slide, its a simple movement, to find the green button fast enough is more challanging.

You have to do the same if you wanna initiate a phone call because this is the way you can get the keypad. The buttons are very user friendly with the Nokia N95, I could write sms or dial numbers without looking at the keypad, hence very easy to maneuver.

Maybe its just a question of time but I can't do that with the iPhone, yet. iPhone doesn't have buttons (only one universal 'button' for taking a step back to the main menu) and some on the side for the volume and for muting the phone and for switching off/on on the top.

That mute button on the side is really creative but having the phone in my pocket, at least twice I've experienced it being released during this three weeks. And maybe its only me, but its a challenge to me to switch off the iPhone. Even if I push the button for long, instead of switching off it just lock the keypad. It can be embarrassing when it rangs after you thought you have arranged it already.

iPhone is not about buttons. You can arrange everything on the screen which is sensitive to your touches. It doesn't have keypad anymore, you have to use the multi touch display with virtual buttons. You can use this for dialing, for typing text or as a calculator, too.

I wouldn't say that typing is easy with iPhone for the first time. It senses the tip of your finger (even do not try with your nails) and unless you are a 12 year old skinny child, you will surely mistype. Tilting or turning the phone aside, the screen will switch (its not true for every functions, though) to give you a 'landscape view', and for those like me having large sausage fingers, its a bit easier to type on the enlarged keys.

Nokia N95 has no problem like this, but also do not have this attractive solution of turning screen. It might help it but not for calls, rather for looking at pictures or watching videos.

As a camera

Here the winner is definitely the Nokia N95. Since I run a daily photo blog (www.budapestdailyphoto.com) a phone which is a good camera is a big advantage to me. Nokia N95 has a 5 megapixel camera and in good lights it served me perfectly.

Photo taken with Nokia N95

In darkness, or under not too good lighting circumstances, even 5 megapixel was too weak. But iPhone is weak at anywhere with its 2 megapixel camera and without any video facilities (some says its already available to download a software for video but i am not too much interested in it with this lens).

Photo taken with iphone

But when it comes to displaying photos again iPhone is the winner. Without any exaggeration, iPhone's screen gives you the best quality when it comes to displaying videos or photos:

My Canon photo displayed on iphone

Browsing on internet, checking your e-mails:

To me, any former mobile phones (including Nokia N95) were a joke if we speak about browsing on the internet. The WAP is ridiculous, usually the connection is slow and damn expensive and I especially hated when I needed special settings, sign ups or anything for a function that they advertised as available. Push the button and go...this is my basic expectation.

iPhone was able to provide me this. The best is about e-mails. Only once - I had to set up my gmail (username, password) and since that moment only one button to push and my mails are downloaded. This is very practical and useful to me. If I don't use large attachements to arrange my mails, I do not need my laptop anymore.

I can say almost the same about browsing on the internet. The first mobile phone where I can check a website without having the feeling I was cheated by saying this device is for browsing on the net, too. And the opportunity that you can enlarge the view just by pulling your fingers over the screen brings you again a sci-fi feeling. And beside this, its very practical.

I like that the iPhone is very user friendly with internet connections too. My provider gives me a 3G access with 4 GB free traffic but at any time when the device finds a wifi in the area, it will prefer the free wifi to the providers' connection. (in case you prefer your safe connection, of course you can change the settings easily).

Gadgets

Beside the better camera and the video record function, Nokia N95's advantage is to have fm radio. Its very practical on tramways or when you have to wait in a queue, you can to listen to M2 (Petőfi) in Budapest with any headset. iPhone doesn't have radio, but you can play your mp3 files and your videos. I don't find it userfriendly that iPhone accepts only its own headset and since I am not a Mac user this iTunes thingy was a bit annoying to me at first. Why I have to download a new program and why I have to get familiar with it just for listening to my music? I find it a bit pushy. With Nokia, I didn't have 16 gigabytes capacity but just by copy and paste I could transfer my music files from any device, with iPhone if the device doesn't have iTunes you have no chance.

But watching videos is a real experience on the iPhone.

Coldplay Viva La Vida video on iphone

iPhone uses 'Safari' as its browser. Youtube videos can be viewd since they have created a different system featuring youtube with a separated button in the menu screen. This detail shows that iPhone is rather a multimedia device than a phone.

On both phone you can find gadgets like calendar, alarm system, time zones, calculator, notes etc. Practically the same functions, but iPhone is definitely more attractively designed. It is simply beautiful as we already know it about every Apple solutions.

weather report on iphone

timer on iphone

world clock on iphone

My choice is definitely iPhone, but the lack of radio, video and the weak camera in some aspects makes me missing my Nokia N95 for my everydays.

Hungarian innovative SOLO Car

2008-10-11T03:44:00.000-07:00

I am proud when my country invent something new and very useful. This SOLO concept sounds very interesting and I like a lot the design, too.

The smooth,oval-shaped "Solo," developed by Hungarian company Antro and presented Tuesday at Budapest's Museum of Transport, is just over three metres long, less than two metres wide and can carry up to three people, with the driver sitting between the two passengers.

With a car frame and body made of a carbon fiber composite, the vehicle is ultra-light, weighing only 270 kilogrammes (595 pounds).

And the glass roof is entirely covered with high-performance solar panels, enabling the vehicle to cover 15-25 kilometres on solar energy alone. For longer trips, four small electric engines are also hidden behind each wheel.

"Solo is a hybrid car with two modes of functioning: moving in the city using electric engines, solar energy or even human power thanks to mechanic pedals attached to a generator -- for traffic jams. And for longer trips it uses a modern engine running on not only traditional but also biofuels and ethanol," said Antro director Zsolt Hegedus.

The interior is elegantly cosy with wood and leather everywhere, even on the steering wheel and on additional pedals allowing the passengers to help move the car along.

Solo is expected to cost about 12,000 euros (18,606 dollars), the usual price for a small city vehicle of this kind, but its carbon-dioxide emissions are only a quarter of that released by its non-hybrid rivals, its developers said.

They said they were hoping to begin mass production in 2012.

Antro has also promised a big sister for Solo by that time.

Baptised Duo, it will carry six people and its owners will even be able to go their separate ways if need be: according to its designers, it will be possible to transform the Duo into two Solos in ten minutes.
(sources: www.terradaily.com and http://autoworld.wordpress.com)