Cubalaya Blog UK

www.crowdedbrain.co.uk

If you're interested in technology, video games, electronic gadgets, and films, you might want to visit http://www.crowdedbrain.co.uk/.  This site has a growing library of product reviews and news excerpts, which could prove quite useful to the Christmas shopper over the coming month.

Another thing to check out on this site is an extensive list of online games to play.  You can play anything from Bookworm to The Rise of Atlantis to Yahtzee through this site, helping you kill some downtime whenever you need to.

But probably the best part of the site is the SmartPhone review section.  They already have reviews of 15 products here, including the best place to buy and photos of each phone with its accessories.

Hotel Video Reviews

Started only 7 months ago, Trivop has been quite a successful venture.  The website specializes in videos of hotels from around the world, giving would-be visitors a firsthand glance at what a hotel has to offer.  Even though the site is relatively new, they already have videos of over 400 hotels worldwide.

According to the site, sometime in the future travelers will be able to upload videos they have taken in different hotels, which will make the Trivop more of a social-networking web service.

While I was looking at Trivop I stumbled across TVtrip, which operates under the same premise.  I found this site quite useful as well, having a more diversified collection of hotel videos than Trivop and also a multimedia listing of hotels with available rates and a list of available amenities.

   

3 Skype Mobile Phone and GPhone Updates

3, Britain's fifth-largest mobile service operator, has released a new phone with built-in Skype capability.  Phone users will be able to conduct Skype calls to other users through a dedicated button on the phone's  interface.  With this new model 3 is probably hoping to reverse its steady loss of customers over the past few years, and with an estimated 2.5 million Skype users in the UK, they just might be able to lure some of them over with the mobile VOIP option.

Supposedly the Skype service will be free to users under contract or those who fill up their prepay account regularly.  However, the SkypeOut option (placing calls at low prices to non-Skype users) will not be offered apparently, for the obvious competitive reasons.  According to the Guardian, the phone will reportedly also feature a 2MB and MP3 player with video playback as well.

TechCrunch reports that Skype has an estimated 246 million users worldwide, although only about 70 million of them are believed to be active users.  And many of the active users are not paying users, as regular Skype service is free.

In more news, Google has been talking to US wireless carriers Sprint, T-Mobile and Verizon (as well as Vodafone internationally) about its plans for the GPhone.  The way things are shaping out, it looks like Google doesn't want to create one special GPhone, but rather branch out and let the manufacturers use its applications for a diverse selection of devices.  Google already has an extensive list of web-based applications, such as Google Maps and YouTube, and with the recent addition of a word-processing and an excel-like application, the Internet giant has put itself more in a position to battle Windows Mobile than Apple's iPhone.

Altogether, it looks like the mobile industry is headed for some serious changes during the next year or so, with VOIP systems like Skype starting to get a foothold in the market, and Google looking to make mobile phones an open platform for developers to build lots of applications on top of. 

Christmas Bargains Online

Christmas shoppers can bag substantial savings by going online rather than to the high street, research by consumer group Which? shows.

It found that savings of more than 1,000 pounds could be made on a shopping list of five popular gifts -- a flat-screen television, camera, camcorder, hi-fi and DVD recorder.

Researchers compared prices on 72 products at 111 retailers and found that online savings ranged from 11 percent on digital camcorders to 29 percent on LCD and plasma televisions.

Savings could also be made on everything from books (14 percent) and MP3/MP4 players (11 percent) to CDs (7 percent) and champagne (2 percent).

But games consoles -- such as the Wii, Xbox 360 and PS3 -- were found to be similarly priced.

"The trick to bagging a bargain is to discover which stores offer the most extras," Which? said in its November magazine.

"For example, while John Lewis sells the PS3 for 398 pounds, HMV sells it for 425 pounds, but with four games (which cost up to 50 pounds each) and an extra controller -- which is the best deal we found."

Consumers could be missing out on savings of up to 240 million pounds a year by not shopping online, recent research by the Office of Fair Trading shows.

People's top 10 reasons for shopping over the Internet include ease of price comparison, avoiding crowds, price competitiveness and more choice, according to a poll of 2,343 Which? online panel members.

Source: Reuters (London)

Cubalaya launches new homepage

Earlier this week we released a new home page for cubalaya. It was the first time in weeks since the previous change we made to our main entry to the cubalaya site.

On top of the comparison shopping information I believe that cubalaya provides a unique package of content to its users, including  Product reviews, buying guides and the Blog.
In a way, I felt that many of our users were missing this content and never got to read it.

Our new Homepage brings our unique content package to the front stage (quite an improvement, last time you could get to it from the page footer only…) and now there is no way you will miss it . I believe that the clean and simple structure of the homepage will be more appealing to our users then the previous one (comments are welcome).

Enjoy!

Social Shopping Experiences

Online shoppping is quickly becoming more social-oriented, as ebay's and Facebook's recent upgrades show.  While the former is first and foremost an e-commerce giant, and the latter is the leading social networking online service, they have each taken steps that bring them closer together. 

ebay has launched "ebay neighborhoods", which are micro-social networks focused on a single product or category.  Inside these neighborhoods one can find blogs, guides, reviews, product searches and users- all content found across ebay.  Members can join these neighborhoods and add to discussions, post photos, invite friends, write reviews and meet other like-minded people.  It is also possible for users to start new neighborhoods for specific products, sports teams, hobbies or any other idea.

Facebook has thousands of applications for members to use as add-ons, but the most interesting addition is "My Shopping".  This application, powered by SecretPrices.com, allows users to shop within their own Facebook user, where they can search for products, rate items they want or already own and get advice or make a recommendation on a product.  A recent survey shows that many teenagers communicate with their friends while shopping- either by shopping together physically, talking on cell phones, texting or IMing.  Facebook is looking to enhance the social aspect of online shopping through its social environment.

It will be interesting to see if these two leading Internet services end up competing with each other as social shopping networks, and how this will affect the rest of the online shopping world.

England Defeats Australia - Again..

Even though our usual focus is e-commerce and shopping, with the excitement of the Rugby World Cup yesterday we can't avoid but putting some of our sporting thoughts down on paper...

Australia had come out looking to avenge the 2003 World Cup defeat on home-soil, but England had other ideas.   Led by Andrew Sheridan and Jonny Wilkinson, the English side brought down the heavily favoured Wallabies with a smashing performance.  The four penalty kicks made were enough for the English side, even without scoring a single try.

And if this wasn't enough of a surprise yesterday, the French side knocked out the cup-bound All Blacks,  with an outstanding second half.  Who in their right mind would have expected an English-French semi-final?  Betting on such an outcome Saturday morning would probably have been worth 100 to 1 odds, if not better.  It seems that Australia and New Zealand can beat their respective opponents anytime except for in World Cup play.  Or maybe it's just that England and France have the right attitude to step up and defeat their supposed betters when it counts.

The last four years for the English side have been mostly downhill, with 17 defeats at the hands of Australia, New Zealand, South Africa and France.  There was also a slip in world rankings from first place to sixth.  Add to this a shutout loss to South Africa and an appalling performance against the USA in the group stage last month, which made hopes for another title absolutely disappear.

But England have done it, with a combination of strong discipline, perseverance and Jonny's left boot.  The following is a video of two of Jonny's scores yesterday, which gave him the lead in all-time World Cup points rankings too.

Hot Dogs and Wii

 

Last week the Cubalaya Team got some relaxation after work- at a company barbecue.  After dinner we had time to unwind with the Nintendo Wii- some bowling, golf and tennis for everyone.  In the photo above our product manager is going for a strike.

HD-DVD or Blu-Ray?

For those of you who are confused by the terms HD-DVD and Blu-Ray, let's try to sort out the mess and see what the future of home entertainment holds for us.

Right now the digital media world is in the midst of a format war. In the red corner, supported by Toshiba, HP, Microsoft and Kenwood, storing up to 30GB of high-definition video, stands the HD-DVD format. And in  the Blu corner, supported by Sony, Samsung, Panasonic and Philips, and with a capacity of 50GB, stands the Blu-Ray.

Honestly, it is too early to tell who will win this one. VHS beat Beta, PC beat Macintosh (although the Mac came back), yet there is almost no difference between these two formats, making it impossible to predict the outcome. The quality of high-definition video and sound is equally fantastic on each of them, and so far the larger capacity of the Blu-Ray hasn't really given it a big lead.

This competition has been closely linked with the Xbox 360-Playstation 3 one, as Microsoft's Xbox has an optional HD-DVD external drive, while the Sony Playstation's built-in drive uses Blu-Ray. And both of them play their respective high-definition formats quite well, doubling as complete DVD players.

In fact, the only thing that does separate them is the amount of titles released on each format. So far, Blu-Ray has a head-start, with more than 330 titles released, as compared to HD's 130. And if anything might be the deciding factor in this war- the race to release more titles just might be it.

If HD-DVD is what you want, I'd recommend the Toshiba HD-E1, which is also very strong on playing regular-format DVDs. But if you'd rather go for a Blu-Ray model, the Panasonic DMP-BD10A won't disappoint you.

For now, though, you might want to consider a sort of compromise that will let you benefit from both worlds. The LG BH100 does this well, and will let you wait out the war knowing you'll have invested in a win-win proposition.

Online Payment Methods

With Amazon starting its own full-blown online payment system, PayPal and its owner eBay have found a worthy competitor.  Although some people only look to Amazon as a place to get that out-of-print long-lost paperback, it has become a shopping giant for new and used items, the latter traditionally considered eBay's forte.  An online payment system makes life much easier for private merchants, allowing them to receive their payment without going through the fuss of working with the credit card companies.

But not just the merchants benefit from this kind of system- giving personal information online, especially a credit card number or an electronic check, has always been a bit risky.  Online security has improved substantially over the years, but the fear of electronic fraud has been one of the major factors in PayPal's success.  They act as the middleman between the customer and the merchant, and keep the fomer's financial data to themselves, offering a stronger sense of security, not to mention making purchases a quicker process.  In fact, eBay determined this idea so useful to its business model that it purchased PayPal in 2002. 

And then came Google Checkout.  Waiving all transaction fees through the end of 2007, Google is looking to expand its circle of merchants during the holiday season.  While still lacking many of PayPal's features, the Google has a wide range of online stores which accept Google Checkout, allows payments through a mobile phone (soon to be extended further with the GPhone?), and, unlike PayPal, has great customer service.  And looking at the recent upgrades to the Checkout service- it seems Google takes customer feedback to heart.