Starting Mountain Biking | Hostel 333

This write-up describes the basics of mountain biking. Studying far more about the sport will aid you to take pleasure in it even a lot more.

Mountain bikes are amongst the strongest and most rugged bicycles that you can uncover. The reason that these bikes are so robust is that they are ridden on some very tough terrain, including steep inclines, dirt tracks, and pebbles. In most instances, mountain bikers do not ride on smoothly paved roads, rather they ride on hilly and uneven terrain that can be fairly rough on a bicycle. Mountain bikers get a huge thrill in riding on unpaved, rough terrain, even though this is hard on a bicycle. That is why numerous producers have produced sturdier bikes for this purpose.

The tires on a mountain bike are thicker and fatter than regular bike tires. They are also created of more durable rubber that gives the rider added traction and control on uneven surfaces.

Suspension is yet another quite vital characteristic of a mountain bike. A sturdy suspension technique is crucial for a mountain bike so that the rider can far better handle the ups and downs that happen when riding on uneven terrain.

Mountain bikes can be separated into numerous diverse categories that are founded upon the sort of suspension that they have. The classifications are dual suspension, challenging tails, soft tails, and completely rigid bikes. Rigid bikes feature a rigid fork. Soft-tailed bikes have a rear suspension that pivots on the frame. Tough-tailed bikes function a front suspension fork. Suspension bikes have either front, rear, or dual suspension systems. These bikes also feature a shock absorber in the rear, in addition to a linkage.

Lighter weight material and supplies that are far more resilient are the norm for a cross-country mountain bike. You can find a cross-country bike that can weight anyplace from 20-40 pounds, depending upon your demands. An all-mountain or Enduro bike will usually be heavier than a cross-country bike. These bikes range in weight from 30-35 pounds. These bikes feature a suspension that will allow you to maneuver about hairpin turns and climb up hills significantly simpler.

Heavier and stronger supplies are utilized to develop a cost-free ride mountain bike. They are produced to support make pedaling less difficult, so that you can simply move around something that is in your way and you can make sharp turns. They weigh in at about 45 pounds, which decreases their efficiency more than other cross-country bikes.

For downhill tracks or race courses, you will want to choose a downhill mountain bike. They offer you far better traction than the other varieties of mountain bikes for maximum manage and speed.

If short distance riding is your game, then a trial bike is most likely the one for you. They lack suspension and do not have a seat or vestigial pad. They are also a lot lighter than other bikes for maximum speed. They weigh in at about 20 pounds.

Amongst mountain and trial bikes, you will find Street Mountain, Dirt Jumping, and Urban Bikes. These bikes are very touch and feature anywhere from one particular to nine gears with a chain guide for the front and rear gears.

To check out more, please go to: skate skis

Source: http://hostel333.com/?p=42679

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Internet Marketing Pertaining to Small Businesses ? Get More ...

If you?ve been researching doing affiliate marketing for your small business, you certainly would have seen or heard many people discussing the advantages of it. Nonetheless, as a business owner, you cannot be dependent solely for the opinion involving others. You?ll want good understanding of this type of advertising and marketing, of its benefits and advantages and of the ways in which you will use it efficiently. This guide can help you understand this greater.

What is internet marketing for smaller businesses?

Simply put, website marketing is the on-line promotion of your respective business as well as the products that it gives you. However, there are plenty of aspects to it. To be accessible web in order to run online, your company needs a website.

Setting up an online site is only the beginning of your internet web marketing strategy and it will not make you instantly popular with buyers as they will simply not find out about your site or even business, neither your products or services. You need a strategy to aid you in getting website traffic and also customers.

This is how internet marketing pertaining to small businesses also comes in. It is targeted on search engine optimization (Search engine optimisation) for generating more traffic to your website through organic searches. Strategies such as article marketing and video marketing are used for promoting your company and merchandise and your website as well. Social internet marketing is an important component of the overall technique as well as the idea allows for greater traffic, immediate advertising along with retaining active customers. Email marketing will help you reach the latter a pair of as well.

What will be the benefits of affiliate marketing for small enterprises?

More prospective customers may visit your site. This is the main benefit of such a marketing. The more popular online the more consumers you will get.

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Higher product sales are direct result of website marketing for small business owners. You will make far more sales because you will get more customers, however this is not the sole reason. This sort of marketing focuses not only on promotion of one?s website, nevertheless on advertising your company and products on the web and in your site also. This will offer an increase in charge conversion price and cause even more product sales.

Affordability is one of the major benefits of this method for selling your business and products on the web. Generally speaking, internet marketing regarding small businesses fees considerably less compared to most other varieties of marketing which include print press the television advertising and marketing. At the same time, competition in the industry keeps growing which provides for falling rates. Even small companies have enough money to use the assistance of experts inside the field.

How does one set up along with implement an online marketing strategy?

There are a couple of ways in which you can accomplish it. The D-I-Y strategy is always a possibility, but you require knowledge, skills and plenty of occasion. Furthermore, you cant ever be certain that your own methods will certainly yield the actual required results. Normally it takes a lot of time to find out and actually implement all the techniques needed to obtain results from undertaking internet marketing oneself.

The second option is to hire someone such as a consultant that will devise and implement online marketing strategies for your neighborhood small business. This could generate great results, but you will incur expenses in the short-term in the long-term the particular return on your investment can be high. Getting a consultant is often the better option pertaining to busy small enterprises who want to acquire results quicker and a view a return on investment without the effort to do it all themselves.

Related posts:

  1. Why Is Anyone Going Online pertaining to Marketing?
  2. How Can Smaller than average Medium Size Businesses Make use of Online Marketing?
  3. Internet Marketing and also Businesses Online
  4. The Some Principles pertaining to Online Business
  5. How to Attract Clients to Your Website

Source: http://intopx.com/internet-marketing-pertaining-to-small-businesses-get-more-clients-online/

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SB Podcast Episode 013 | The Latest in Sports Nutrition (Highlights ...

Sports NutritionIn this podcast episode, I review the highlights from this year?s International Society of Sports Nutrition?s Annual Conference.

This meeting presented the very latest in cutting edge sports nutrition from the top thought leaders in the industry. ?You?ll learn about the latest clinical and practical applications to help you improve ?your body composition and enhance your training performance.

Here?s some of what you?ll learn in this episode:

  • How to minimize the negative effects of combining strength and endurance training without compromise, as presented by Dr. Jacob Wilson.
  • You?ll learn some key concepts from Dr. Jim Stoppani on maximizing hypertrophy.
  • You?ll find out the 4 best supplements for muscle building and performance, as presented by the expert panel at ISSN.
  • And, get the latest updates in Nutrient Timing (strategic nutrition intervention) as presented by Dr. Paul Cribb

Make sure to subscribe to the show here: ?StealthBody Podcast.

Show Notes:

Be sure to check out the International Society of Sports Nutrition. ?A couple topics that Dr. Jim Stoppani presented were 2 muscle building programs. ?These are not the kind of training programs I do these days, but since I mentioned, I thought I would share with you. ?The programs were his Shortcut to Size?program (Free PDF download) and Six Weeks to Sick Arms. ?To find out more about Dr. Stoppani and get more of his workouts, get the July issue of Muscle & Performance Magazine, available for FREE at the Vitamin Shoppe stores.

The previous article I wrote summarizing one of the lectures on what to eat before bed is here. ?And, here?s the great book on Nutrient Timing by John Ivy. ?I highly recommend this classic book, if you?re more interested in learning more about eating for performance.

Questions or comments? ?Post them below.

If you enjoyed this, please share it!

And, as I mentioned, I?ve got a great interview you?ve got to hear with Dr. Lonnie Lowery coming next on the podcast.

Source: http://stealthbody.com/sb-podcast-episode-013-the-latest-in-sports-nutrition-highlights-from-the-issn-annual-meeting

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Brazil says Chevron fine not more than $25 million: WSJ

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Source: http://news.yahoo.com/brazil-says-chevron-fine-not-more-25-million-012243264--finance.html

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Companies tread water as sales lose steam

By Martha C. White

Corporate America is?pumping the brakes?on any forward momentum in the economy, according to a quarterly survey of company economists released Monday.

Only 39 percent of the economists surveyed said sales have been rising faster than inflation at their companies, down from 60 percent three months ago.

"We're treading water,"?said Nayantara Hensel, chair of the National Association for Business Economics committee that conducted the survey. "But the treading of the water is almost, in a way, a self-fulfilling prophecy because that?s driving some of the worsening economic contions we see."

Corporations?do have the cash but?lack the confidence to invest in hiring new employees or capital spending in the face of flagging sales, said Bodhi Ganguli, an economist at Moody?s Analytics.

Economists noted the one bright spot: A lack of inflationary pressure kept the prices of raw materials and wages stable and helped maintain profit margins. Still, only 29 percent said they were seeing rising profit margins in the past three months, down from 40 percent three months ago. Unfortunately for workers, only 25 percent of respondents said wages and salaries have been rising over the past three months, down from 44 percent three months ago.

"There's this gloom of uncertainty all over the globe right now," Ganguli said.

American companies, especially those that do a sizable amount of international business or depend on exports, believe a worsening in the eurozone's economic troubles could drag down sales.?Businesses also are worried about a possible double-whammy of government and consumer spending contraction if Congress allows automatic spending cuts and tax rate hikes ? the so-called "fiscal cliff" ??to kick in at the beginning of next year. "The spending cuts and tax hikes would create a tremendous drag on the recovery," Ganguli said.

As a result of the uncertainty, more companies are battening down the hatches. Some 15 percent of survey respondents reported a drop in capital spending, compared with only 6 who said capital spending was falling in April. Looking ahead, the picture gets just a little better. Roughly half of businesses expect it to be flat over the next year, while 10 percent of respondents expect it to fall. ?That?s not bad, but it?s not great,? Hensel said.?

In general, corporations expect the economy to grow, but at a snail's pace.?In the current survey, 11 percent of respondents forecast GDP growth of 1 percent or less ? up from only 4 percent who had such a low expectation in April. Similarly, 40 percent of businesses now think GDP growth will be 2 percent or less, in contrast to 23 percent who thought so in April.?

Longer-term, though, Ganguli expressed a somewhat more positive outlook, citing some "fundamental strengths" in the economy that will keep it moving forward after a weaker third quarter. "We do expect a bounceback later in the year," he said. "The fourth quarter should see some improvement.??

The survey, which has been conducted quarterly for 30 years,?reflects?the view of a panel of 67 top economists, with 40 percent of those?representing?companies with more than 1,000 employees.?

More money and business news:

Follow msnbc.com business on Twitter and Facebook

Source: http://economywatch.msnbc.msn.com/_news/2012/07/16/12727954-companies-treading-water-as-sales-flag-survey-finds?lite

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Sell Digital Products ? Make Money Selling Digital Products

There are several huge advantages to selling digital products over tangibles. They?re easier to manage, you don?t have to deal with the hassles of shipping them, and the profit margins are much greater with digital products. Another benefit is that you don?t have to deal with physical returns, only the occasional refund, and the customer service is usually much easier to deal with.
Selling digital products is a better option because you can do away with the hassles of sourcing, packing and delivering the products. Digital products such as video clips, software, e-books, songs and music, paintings, drawing, designs, photos, sounds and etc can be encoded as downloadable files, and so it is extremely convenient for the sellers and buyers to complete the transactions. Some of you might want to know how a personal website able to accept payment from the customers. Yes, it is very costly to engage the service of the credit companies to install an online payment system. However, fortunately there are quite a number of online payment companies that were able to provide cost-effective online credit card payment system, one of them is PayPal, a subsidiary of eBay. I am using this service to sell my e-book on my website, I find it very convenient and easy to set up, and it is not expensive.
PayPal allows you to sign up for the service for free; they will only charge a nominal fee when you successfully close a sale. For example, if you sold something for $10, PayPal will deduct an amount like $0.40. Funds can be transfer to your credit card; your bank account and so on. PayPal even help you to set up a shopping cart, which will cost you a substantial sum if you engage somebody to do it for you. I have been using the service for a few months and I can tell you that I am extremely satisfied and grateful for the services rendered by PayPal. I am selling only one e-book on my website at the moment and the income generated is enough to pay the petrol bill (or the gas bill as you call it in the u.s.) for two family cars. The trick to get the visitors to buy your digital products is to do a brief but good write-up about your products and place them prominently in your website.
As long as you get enough visitors to your website you should be able to make sales. Selling digital products is not that time consuming, except the set up that will take a bit time; as ebooks should be uploaded to the server, the sales page should be customize also, the seller has to create a listing in the market place. Ebooks business is one of the most advantageous online money making ways in the internet marketing. Many internet marketers make their profits online by writing and selling ebooks on the internet. All you need is to sign up with a number of affiliate programs and sell the ebooks you want using your own website, email lists, or any other affiliate marketing techniques. It is much easier and profitable to sell ebooks than to become a publisher for physical books. Selling ebooks is a great way to make big money and is a brilliant business because your cost is zero, except the expense of writing the ebook; there is no additional cost.

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Source: http://answers.apostoliccm.com/2012/07/sell-digital-products-make-money-selling-digital-products/

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Military mentor to NKorean leader dismissed

FILE - In this Sunday, April 15, 2012 file photo released by the Korean Central News Agency and distributed by the Korea News Service, North Korean leader Kim Jong Un, right, smiles with the Korean People's Army senior officers, Vice Marshal and Vice Chairman of the Central Military Commission Choe Ryong Hae, center, and Vice Marshal and the military's General Staff Chief Ri Yong Ho, during a mass military parade in Kim Il Sung Square to celebrate the centenary of the birth of his grandfather, national founder Kim Il Sung in Pyongyang, North Korea. North Korea said Monday, July 16, 2012 it has relieved Ri Yong Ho from all posts because of illness. (AP Photo/Korean Central News Agency via Korea News Service)

FILE - In this Sunday, April 15, 2012 file photo released by the Korean Central News Agency and distributed by the Korea News Service, North Korean leader Kim Jong Un, right, smiles with the Korean People's Army senior officers, Vice Marshal and Vice Chairman of the Central Military Commission Choe Ryong Hae, center, and Vice Marshal and the military's General Staff Chief Ri Yong Ho, during a mass military parade in Kim Il Sung Square to celebrate the centenary of the birth of his grandfather, national founder Kim Il Sung in Pyongyang, North Korea. North Korea said Monday, July 16, 2012 it has relieved Ri Yong Ho from all posts because of illness. (AP Photo/Korean Central News Agency via Korea News Service)

FILE - In this Dec. 29, 2011 file photo, new North Korean leader Kim Jong Un, center, flanked by Kim Yong Nam, president of the Presidium of the Supreme People's Assembly and the ceremonial head of state, right, and Ri Yong Ho, a vice marshal of the Korean People's Army, presides over a national memorial service for his late father Kim Jong Il at Kim Il Sung Square in Pyongyang, North Korea. North Korea said Monday, July 16, 2012 it has relieved Ri Yong Ho from all posts because of illness. (AP Photo/File)

In this photo taken Sunday, April 15, 2012 North Korean leader Kim Jong Un, second from right, waves as he walks past North Korean People's Army senior officers, Vice Marshal and Vice Chairman of the Central Military Commission Choe Ryong Hae, second from left, and Vice Marshal and the military's General Staff Chief Ri Yong Ho, left, and Kim Yong Nam, right, president of the Presidium of the Supreme People's Assembly and the ceremonial head of state during a mass military parade in Kim Il Sung Square to celebrate the centenary of the birth of his grandfather, national founder Kim Il Sung in Pyongyang, North Korea. North Korea said Monday, July 16, 2012 it has relieved Ri Yong Ho from all posts because of illness. (AP Photo/Ng Han Guan)

In this photo taken Sunday, April 15, 2012, North Korean leader Kim Jong Un, right, looks over at North Korean People's Army senior officers, Vice Marshal and Vice Chairman of the Central Military Commission Choe Ryong Hae, center, and Vice Marshal and the military's General Staff Chief Ri Yong Ho, left, during a mass military parade in Kim Il Sung Square to celebrate the centenary of the birth of his grandfather, national founder Kim Il Sung in Pyongyang, North Korea. North Korea said Monday, July 16, 2012 it has relieved Ri Yong Ho from all posts because of illness. (AP Photo/Ng Han Guan)

SEOUL, South Korea (AP) ? Seven months ago, he was the guardian figure always at North Korean leader Kim Jong Un's side, a top military official whose experience and position lent the young new ruler credibility with the troops. Now, Vice Marshal Ri Yong Ho is out, dismissed from several powerful posts because of illness, state media said Monday in a brief surprise announcement just days after he last appeared in public.

However, Ri did not appear ill in recent appearances, feeding speculation abroad that Kim purged him in an effort to put his own mark on the nation he inherited when father Kim Jong Il died in December. At the same time, there was no sign of discord at Ri's last public appearance at a high-level event, barely a week ago.

The decision to dismiss the 69-year-old from top military and political posts was made at a Workers' Party meeting Sunday, according to the official Korean Central News Agency. It was not immediately clear who would take Ri's place, and the dispatch did not elaborate on his condition or future.

Daniel Pinkston, a North Korea analyst at the International Crisis Group, was skeptical of the illness claim. He noted that Ri won his major promotions at a September 2010 party conference but received none in April, stirring speculation about his future.

"There's a very high probability that it wasn't health issues, but that he was purged," sending a strong signal to anyone seeking to challenge Kim Jong Un ? even if Ri never directly defied the new leader, Pinkston said.

The dismissal comes as Kim makes waves in other ways. State TV showed him appearing at a music concert and visiting a kindergarten recently in the company of a mysterious woman who carried herself much like a first lady. Her identity has not been revealed but her public presence was a notable change from Kim Jong Il's era, when his companion sens were kept out of state media.

The dismissal of the top army official is a significant move in North Korea. Kim Jong Il elevated the army's role when he became leader after the 1994 death of father Kim Il Sung, the nation's founder.

Kim Jong Un has upheld his father's "songun" military-first policy, but in April he also promoted younger officials with economic backgrounds to key party positions in line with his push to build up the nation's economy.

Where Ri's departure leaves North Korea's million-man army, one of the world's largest, remained unanswered.

The Korean Peninsula has remained locked in a state of war and divided since a truce in 1953 ended three years of fighting. North Korea has threatened in recent months to attack South Korea's president and Seoul's conservative media, angry over perceived insults to its leadership and U.S.-South Korean military drills that Pyongyang says are a prelude to an invasion. A North Korean artillery attack in 2010 killed four South Koreans.

The United States said Monday that without fundamental change in policy direction, personnel changes in North Korea's military leadership would mean little. State Department spokesman Patrick Ventrell said North Korea should "take the path available to it" and rejoin the international community by refraining from threats and complying with its international obligations including on denuclearization. He urged the North to feed and educate its people rather than pour "scarce resources into nuclear, missile and other military programs."

Ri was vice marshal and chief of the General Staff of the Korean People's Army. In 2010, he was won top spots on the Central Military Commission of the Workers' Party and the Presidium of the party's influential Political Bureau. That boosted him to the highest political circles ? along with Kim Jong Un, Kim's uncle Jang Song Thaek and other trusted members of Kim Jong Il's circle of advisers.

Ri had been at Kim's side since the young man emerged publicly as Kim Jong Il's successor in 2010, often standing between father and son at major events. He was among the small group of men who accompanied Kim Jong Il's hearse through snowy Pyongyang during the funeral procession.

In the months after Kim Jong Un took power, he accompanied the new ruler on his first trips to visit military units in a pointed show of continuity and military support as Kim sought to shore up the backing of the nation's troops.

Ri's departure could mean he lost a power struggle with rising star Choe Ryong Hae, the military's top political officer tasked with supervising the army, said Koh Yu-hwan, a professor at Seoul's Dongguk University.

Choe, originally a Workers' Party official, was handed several top jobs and was named a vice marshal in April. Ri had been anointed as Kim's patron during the young man's rise to power, Koh said. "But after Kim formally took power, Choe has emerged as No. 2."

North Korea's political and military reshuffles are mysterious, with officials sometimes dropping out of sight without explanation. Many top North Korean officials -- such as Vice Marshal Jo Myong Rok, who died of heart disease in 2010 at age 82 --stay in their posts until they die.

The robust, stocky Ri, who had served as chief of the General Staff since 2009, showed no sign of illness when he spoke in late April at a meeting of top officials marking the 80th anniversary of the army's founding. He was shown in photos on July 6 chatting with Pyongyang residents and two days later joined Kim Jong Un at the Kumsusan mausoleum to pay respects to Kim Il Sung.

"Whether because of a physical malady or political sin, Ri Yong Ho is out, and Pyongyang is letting the world know to not expect to hear about him anymore," said John Delury, an assistant professor at Yonsei University's Graduate School of International Studies in South Korea.

It's too early to determine "whether Ri's stepping down is a manifestation of civil-military tensions, or Kim Jong Un's attempt to consolidate control" over the army, he said.

Ri, though a powerful figure, arrived on the national scene during Kim Jong Il's final years, Delury said. "Perhaps he was always meant to be a transitional regent figure, and his function is played."

___

Associated Press writer Foster Klug in Seoul and Matthew Pennington in Washington contributed to this report.

Associated Press

Source: http://hosted2.ap.org/APDEFAULT/cae69a7523db45408eeb2b3a98c0c9c5/Article_2012-07-16-NKorea-Military%20Chief/id-852a3484fa874f0d8e8b31fe1eadf771

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Is Bird Flu Waiting to Explode? (preview)

Feature Articles | Health Cover Image: June 2012 Scientific American MagazineSee Inside

By concocting bird flu viruses that could potentially spread easily among humans, researchers have ignited a debate about the need for safety versus open inquiry


Image: Photoillustration by Kyle Bean and Sam Hofman

In Brief

  • Birds are a natural reservoir for influenza viruses that sometimes jump to humans.
  • H5N1 strains in particular have some virologists worried because mortality may be high among the few people who have been infected, mainly from direct contact with birds.
  • After the September 11 attacks, bio?defense spending soared, leading to recent research on H5N1 lab-made strains that are transmissible among mammals.
  • This work set off a debate between biodefense experts, who argue that the new H5N1 strains are potentially dangerous and want restrictions on research, and scientists, who argue that research on dangerous pathogens is important for improving surveillance of natural outbreaks and that hampering such work would do more harm than good.

The chickens were already getting sick when Yoshihiro Kawaoka arrived in the U.S. in August 1983. A few months before, in April, a bird flu virus had arisen in the poultry farms of eastern Pennsylvania, but veterinarians had deemed it to be ?low pathogenic??meaning it made chickens sick but did not kill many of them. As the virus swept through the poultry farms, however, a new strain developed. Chickens began to die in large numbers, and farmers started to fear for their livelihoods. The state called in the U.S. Department of Agriculture, which set up a temporary command and control center in a strip mall outside of Lancaster. To contain the epidemic, it culled 17 million birds from Pennsylvania down through Virginia.

Kawaoka was a young researcher from Japan who was starting work at St. Jude Children?s Research Hospital in Memphis. His boss, virologist Robert Webster, had a theory that human influenza viruses originate in bird populations?that they circulate harmlessly among ducks and geese and that, every once in a while, a strain will evolve the ability to live in the human upper respiratory tract. To combat human influenza, Webster asserted, you first had to understand bird flu. In November, when Webster heard that the outbreak had become serious, he dropped everything and headed to its epicenter.


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Source: http://rss.sciam.com/click.phdo?i=ac59a8ff08adb920bc91670f1982bbbf

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Cozi

Modern families need modern tools for keeping the household finances on budget, planning meals, remembering everyone's health status (allergies, immunization, blood type), and other points of organization. The Web app Cozi (free to $49.99 per year for Gold membership) aims to centralize some aspects of running a household. Each family member has access to a shared calendar, grocery shopping list, messaging board, and more.

While Cozi offers a few desirable features and services, it doesn't implement any of them well. Its worst offense is that every family member uses the same password to log into the system. Cozi recognizes all the email addresses of family members as user names, but one password is reused for all of them. From a security standpoint, that one reason is enough to not use Cozi.

The Web app also skips large swathes of family management entirely. For example, it doesn't contain much in terms of document management, nor any financial planning and monitoring tools. The amount of information you can add about each family member is extremely limited as well. The free version of Cozi has advertisements (a perpetual thorn in my side), as well as limits on the number of messages family members can exchange, and other restrictions.

However, of all the family organization sites I've seen, none run the full gamut, which is to say that Cozi's missed opportunities aren't much worse than those of ?Doxo (free, 3.5 stars) or AboutOne (beta) (free, 3 stars). Each one emphasizes something unique, while also missing entirely areas that the competition covers. For example, Doxo emphasizes bill payment by giving you one login to access all your e-statements from banks, credit card companies, and other service providers. But Doxo doesn't take on people management, so you can't create a profile of each member of your household. AboutOne, on the other hand, has great tools for uploading documents and cataloguing the family's possessions, but no bill pay features. Cozi's sweet spot is in lists and calendars, a lackluster niche to have seeing as better digital calendars and list-making apps already exist. It integrates only minimally with existing services (read-only integration with iCal, Outlook, and Google Calendar).

The only family management app that comes close to covering all the bases is Famjama (beta) (free), our Editors' Choice, but even it doesn't have anything near to the finance management features found in Doxo.

Cozi Features
As mentioned, Cozi comes in two versions: a free account that contains advertisements and some feature limitations, and a paid Gold account ($4.99 per month or $49.99 per year), which removes both.

The core features include the ability to create profiles for each member of the family, a shared calendar, shopping lists, to-do lists, a family journal, and a meal-planning area. Cozi has space for two "adults," which are essentially account administrators, and up to ten more family members, which can include pets. For each member, you can assign an email address and mobile phone number, but, regrettably, nothing else. Cozi does assign each member a color so that all the activity related to that person is easy to identify, and you can change the colors as you like, but these settings are tucked away in the calendar area rather than in the section where you enter people's names, email addresses, and phone numbers.

If you're so inclined, you can add each member's birthday to the calendar, tag it to the person so their color code shows up, and mark it as an annually recurring event. But wouldn't it be better to just assign birthdays to each person when you enter basic information about them? Wouldn't it save a lot of time if Cozi automatically set up birthdays as recurring events for you?

Cozi's calendar does include decent sharing features. You can send a link to anyone to have your Cozi appointments inputted in their third-party calendar (Google Calendar, Apple iCal, and Microsoft Outlook for Windows).

Another nice feature is that Cozi lets you opt in each family member to receive a weekly email that lists the week's upcoming agenda.

The app has a messaging area where you can leave notes for all to see. This section of the website simply isn't well designed. When you write a message, you have to choose whom it's from, meaning anyone can write a message as "mom." You're not locked into writing a message from only your account. Also, you can't tailor who can see the message, so a note to the kids will also be visible to Grandpa and the nanny. In essence, the messaging center is really just a public graffiti wall where anyone can sign anyone else's name. A lot more work is needed in this area.

Other features, like shopping lists and to-do lists, work as advertised, but even lack solid management tools. It would make more sense to have control over which family members have read-only capabilities and who can actually edit and change a list. For example, if a mother created a shopping list and asked her spouse to buy all the items, she wouldn't want her bratty teenage son to quietly add the list things he wants? at least not without showing the items as "pending approval."

You access Cozi primarily through a Web account, but there are apps for iPad, iPhone and iPod touch, and Android. The Cozi iPad app works well, but it's missing a few key features found in the website, namely messages, email, recipes, and recipe planning.

A bonus feature in the Cozi Web app that's absent from the mobile app (rather unfortunately?I think it's a missed opportunity) is recipe suggestions. If you find a recipe you like, you can automatically add all the ingredients to your grocery shopping list.

Still Waiting for Something Great
Cozi's family calendar and shared shopping lists could be useful to some families looking for a quick and free way to add these digital assets to their household management program. But, overall, Cozi isn't designed appropriately for multi-person use and thus is not an app I would recommend for family organization.

If you're looking for a fantastic household management tool that lets you upload and back up important documents, maintain a group calendar, collaboratively write and share lists, and manage your family's budget, keep looking. I'm still dreaming of a family Web app that works like a pared-down version of project-management or content-management software. Wouldn't it make sense to have administrator accounts for parents who could turn on and off various features for other users? Imagine letting your teenage kids see the meal planning component of the app, but not be able to edit it. What if you could create a calendar entry that would remain hidden from everyone except your mate until he or she approved it? Until there is a family organizer that reaches those extremes, the next best option is Famjama, our Editors' Choice.

More Personal and Home Software Reviews:
??? Cozi
??? Famjama (beta)
??? Doxo
??? AboutOne (beta)
??? Digifit iCardio Multi-Sport Heart Rate Monitor Training (for iPhone)
?? more

Source: http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/ziffdavis/pcmag/~3/awEkUQK2gkM/0,2817,2407022,00.asp

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