Zesto Wrappers

What can you do with leftover plastic wrappers, the wasteful by-products of an industrialized generation?

Burn them? Bury them? Throw them into space?

You’d be surprised. Zesto does none of these. Instead, Zesto Corporation donates all their (clean but) excess doy pack materials to Gawad Kalinga, a non-profit organization dedicated to providing shelter and livelihood to financially-challenged Filipinos. In turn, GK produces beautifully woven bags from these donated scraps right in their local chapter in GK Sunshineville, BF Resort Village, Las Piñas City, Philippines.

Their product include woven handbags, laptop bags, lunch bags, envelope bags, purses, bed mats, coasters, table tops, place mats, picture frames, storage cases and more.

Last week, I and my fellow bloggers, in coordination with Nuffnang and sponsored by HSBC, got the chance to personally visit GK Sunshineville.

We met up at Starbucks Bonifacio High Street early Saturday, and rode a van towards GK Sunshineville. It was half an hour’s ride away from Makati, and upon getting there, we immediately saw the GKers hard at work weaving strips of doy pack, sewing up bags, making envelops and creating all sorts of wonderful knick knacks.

Project Director Bong Ragojos and the GK Beneficiaries

We met Brother Bong, the project director for the Gawad Kalinga Bayong ng Kabuhayan livelihood project. (Bayong in Filipino means large bag. Bayong ng kabuhayan means livelihood bags.)

He, with the help of his wife, voluntarily manages the Bayong project, as part of  his responsibilities towards Couples for Christ (CFC). The men and women of Gawad Kalinga Sunshineville choose to work for the Bayong project, as most of them are unemployed and with children.

I asked the women how many bags they produce in a day, and they said that on average, they could finish 5-7 each. They are paid about 7 pesos per bag they create. Each bag sells for about Php200-300. (But more when sold via retailers.)

Bayong ng Kabuhayan Samples

Here are sampler bayongs from the Bayong project. Lovely, aren’t they? From afar, you can’t even see that they’re made out of Zesto materials.

The generic silver bags are Bayong’s best seller. They’re a hit locally. Interestingly, foreigners and Filipinos overseas prefer those that show the Zesto labels. I completely understand. Who wants to walk around carrying a bag that matches your buddy’s snack? However, a local product is certainly something unique abroad.

I was enamored with the silver bag as well, but I’m not a fan of the handbag. I wanted a laptop bag, but the one they currently had on display had a black strap. I wanted the earthy brown strap they used for the other bags. They were only too happy to oblige, except that they couldn’t find a long enough strap to hold my laptop bag. Aw. However, they said they could do it, I’d just have to follow up. GK Sunshineville, I’m holding you to your promise!

If you are interested in purchasing these bags, they do accept orders and even customizations. You can contact Mr. Bong Ragojos via mobile phone 63.2.9173907861/63.2.9196120202 or email him at ljragojos2002@yahoo.com.

My thanks goes out to Nuffnang, especially Patty, for inviting us to this event, and Abby, for buying us lunch. Thanks to Gawad Kalinga as well for giving me a bag! (More on the next post!)

To see more photos of the trip, see the gallery below.

12►

Stumbled upon a new Blogger issue today. I’d rolled out a few posts and my friend Heidee wanted to post a comment. Alas, she could not, because she could not find the word verification input box.

Here is the screenshot she sent:

As you can see, the verification word is visible but the rest of the comment box seems cut off.

I tried to duplicate her issue, but since I was logged in to Blogger, I was not asked for word verification. I logged out and tried commenting on my own blog, and was able to duplicate her issue on Firefox and IE. (My friend tried it in Safari as well and it’s broken as well.)

The cause of the issue is all too clear. Blogger is now showing a preview comment before the verification box, where before it was not. It seems that whomever approved this change did not test it out on the embedded-below-post comment forms, or failed to consider to increase the height of the pop-up word verification form, so that the input field is now inaccessible.

I thought to scour the web for a quick fix, but the issue seems fairly new. I found posts documenting the issue on Blogger Help here and here, logged July 10, 2009. So I doubt there’s already a fix. And since this is a Blogger issue, editing my template won’t help.

For now, I have disabled word verification on my comments. It makes me vulnerable to spam, but I have no other choice. If I revert to the default pop-up window comment form placement, my template might get messed up because I edited it before to get the embedded comment form to work.

For others encountering the same issue, you can do what I did, disable word verification. And if your blog is inundated with spam, then turn on comment moderation. The alternative is to switch from embedded comment form placement to full-page or pop-up comment form placement.

Hopefully Blogger fixes this issue fast.

P.S. Thanks for the heads up, Heids!

This is for those of you who are interested in making money off your blog or the Internet in general.

Clickbank has now opened its doors to the Philippines. That means that Filipinos can now promote Clickbank products (be an affiliate, in other words). You can browse through their product catalog and choose whatever product you think your users might be interested in, ranging from diet pills to stock trading software.

Of course, this means you have to have a host. For the cheapest hosting, I recommend WebHostingPad. With a coupon, you can get umlimited space and bandwith for only $2.99 a month for 12 months. I would have committed to their hosting, except that they didn’t accept Paypal payments. Bummer! (I switched to HostMonster instead, and so far so great.)

Now that I’ve bought and paid for some much-needed hosting, I can finally try this affiliate marketing I’ve been hearing about for so long. I’d love to convert this blog over to WordPress but then I would lose too much linkjuice from all the changed links. (Is there a way to save site structure when moving over from Blogger to WordPress? Anybody?)

And… I’m off to tinker with my CPanel!

I am sure many Blogger users out there admire the myriad plugins and functionalities of WordPress. I am one of those admirers.

I especially like that there’s a WordPress plugin for category feeds, or label feeds. It’s not immediately apparent that the same is available in Blogger, since it’s never promoted, but you can actually get label feeds in Blogger.

Why would you be interested in label feeds? Many reasons:

1. Letting readers subscribe to a selected category
2. Placing the latest posts from a category onto your sidebar
3. Styling your blog into a magazine layout
4. Creating label widgets for iGoogle

And you can probably think up more creative ways to use category feeds. These are just some of the few reasons I went looking for the label feeds in Blogger, and so far I’ve used #2 and #4, but quickly abandoned #2 because my sidebar looks busy enough as it is.

So how do you get the Blogger label feeds? It’s pretty simple. First, you have to make sure that your Site Feed is turned on. To do that, your blog’s Settings -> Site Feed -> Allow Blog Feeds -> Full. You can also use Short, if you don’t like offering full feeds. But don’t use None.

Now, if you have a regular Blogspot URL like such:

http://yourblog.blogspot.com

Then your default posts feed is this:

http://yourblog.blogspot.com/feeds/posts/default/

But you probably know (and use) that already. To get the feed for an individual label, just add an -/labelName to the end of your default feed. So, for example you have a label Technology, the resulting feed would be:

http://yourblog.blogspot.com/feeds/posts/default/-/Technology

A note to remember is that the feeds are case sensitive, so this feed:

http://yourblog.blogspot.com/feeds/posts/default/-/technology

…won’t work.

Now let’s say you have a label like this: Things I Like. Just replace the spaces with a %20, so your feed should look like this:

http://yourblog.blogspot.com/feeds/posts/default/-/Things%20I%20Like

Again, be aware of the cases.

Say you have a customized domain like mine. This is my URL:

http://www.randomdetox.com

The rules are the same, you just change the prefix of your feeds. So, an example of my label feeds are the following:

http://www.randomdetox.com/feeds/posts/default/-/Losthttp://www.randomdetox.com/feeds/posts/default/-/Gossip%20Girl

There! Now that you know, make good use of the feeds!

Oh and if you’re interested, here are some of my label feeds you might like to subscribe to:

Pop Culture

Hello Kitty
Manny Pacquiao
True Blood
Ugly Betty

Tech Stuff

Blogging
Tech
Tutorial

Travel Stuff

Cebu Pacific
Dakak
Dapitan
Dipolog
Philippine Airlines
Travelogue
Zamboanga
Zest Airways

Other Stuff

Discounts
Free Stuff
Personal

Oh yeah, and here’s how my iGoogle looks like.

How might you use label feeds from Blogger? Leave a comment!

Is the Philippine government trying to tax bloggers?

That seems to be the case, judging from an inconspicuous proposal posted on the National Telecommunications Commission (NTC) website. Here is the crux of the matter. They want everyone on the Internet to register through them…

Contents, Information, Applications and/or Electronic Games Providers, Contents Developers, Information Sources, Applications Developers, and Electronic Games Developers are required to have commercial presence in the country and shall secure Certificate of Registration (COR) from the Commission.

…and then pay fees. A filing fee of Php300 ($7) and an annual registration fee of Php6000 ($133). Whoa!!! I haven’t even made that much from Google Adsense in five years, and I have to pay that amount EACH YEAR just to be able to place a banner ad over my blog??? That’s just crazy!

Stop right there, you say. How do we know if we really are part of this proposal? Well, firstly let’s take a look at what is addressed by the proposal:

Content – refers to all types of contents delivered to/accessed by the users/subscribers such as music, ring tones, logos, video clips, etc.

Information – refers to all types of information delivered to/accessed by the users/subscribers, e.g. road traffic information, financial information, visa application information, etc.

Now that we know, let us ask ourselves whether we, as bloggers, offer either content or information. And the answer is yes, on both counts. Content is definitely an area that some, if not most, bloggers have ventured in. Who hasn’t tried to upload a Youtube video or two? Information, on the other hand, is most definitely blogger territory. That’s what we offer our readers everyday, that’s everything we do.

So we know the kind of data addressed by the proposal. The next step is to analyze whom the proposal really pertains to. Are we actually involved? Well, here are the affected, and my comments in brackets:

Contents Providers – are persons or entities offering and providing contents to the public for compensation through the networks, systems and/or facilities of authorized networks, systems and/or facilities providers [If you place advertisements on your Youtube videos, you're a content provider. Or if you sell graphic designs or web templates, you're also a content provider.]

Information Providers – are persons or entities offering and providing information to the public for compensation through the networks, systems and/or facilities of authorized networks, systems and/or facilities providers. [Okay, we're talking about the paid bloggers here. In fact, anybody with an ad network like Google Adsense falls under this sweeping definition, and that's like, almost the entire blogging community.]

Contents Developers – are persons or entities creating contents. [Uhhh. The only thing differentiating this term from a content provider is the issue of compensation. Meaning, a content provider is a subset of a content developer. So why even make up a "content provider" if they're gonna tax all content developers anyway? Or do the content providers get taxed TWICE??]

Information Sources – are persons or entities providing information to Information Providers. [Rest assured that if you have any original thought in your body, share it and get taxed.]

Applications Developer – are persons or entities creating applications. [Oh, are you a programmer like me? Too bad, we're getting taxed. Say goodbye to the opensource movement.]

Electronic Games Developer – are persons or entities creating electronic games. [My, my. As though electronic games were not applications. I wonder how many times I will have to get taxed here.]

Man, that’s a whole lot of people the NTC wants to tax. The entire Internet fits in there! In fact, I alone, fit in five categories of people the NTC wants to tax. I am a content provider, an information provider, a content developer, an information source (sometimes), an applications developer and an electronic games developer. So, I guess I should pay NTC a filing fee of Php 1500 ($33) upfront and a registration of Php 30,000 ($667) from now and each year thereafter.

Then, on the matter of scope. How can we be sure that we’re talking about the Internet here? Maybe we are just simply discussing the mobile networks in the country? Well, that’s where the ambiguity of the entire document comes in. While the data and the persons addressed by this document are defined clearly, the scope is not defined at all, only the goals are:

• Promotion of competition in the telecommunications market, where telecommunications carriers are free to make business decisions and interact with one another in providing telecommunications services, with the end in view of encouraging their financial viability while maintaining affordable rates.
• To further encourage the development of contents, information applications and electronic games, the prevailing access charge regime between the contents, information, applications and electronic games providers and the networks providers which is revenue sharing should be replaced by fixed access charge.

Telecommunications is mentioned in the goals, but does the term “telecommunications” solely pertain to the mobile carriers like Smart and Globe? And then, these companies do not serve only the mobile market, but also the data market (they are Internet Service Providers as well), and so if these companies are involved, then are we, as data consumers of these companies, not part of them as well?

It’s nice that the NTC would like the telecommunications market to be more competitive. It’s nice that they think that by enforcing more fees from everybody, that somehow everybody else would experience lower fees (where is the logic in that?). But goals are just goals and not often the end result, especially not from such an ambiguous, all-encompassing proposal such as this.

So, is the Internet involved? Are we, bloggers, involved? Scope is not spelled clearly in this document, but if we forget that for a moment and say that yes the Internet is involved, then yes, we bloggers are definitely involved and are definitely taxable.

So let us not let this proposal be passed into a bill, in its very ambiguous state. Because if it does pass, then only a tiny misinterpretation of the law is needed to spell disaster for bloggers.

It’s the best way to curtail free speech in a third world country. Don’t let this happen.

* * * * *

Here is the full text of the proposal:

2 December 2008 draft

MEMORANDUM CIRCULAR
No. ______________________

SUBJECT: GUIDELINES ON THE PROVISION OF CONTENTS, INFORMATION, APPLICATIONS, AND ELECTRONIC GAMES

WHEREAS, the 1987 Constitution fully recognizes the vital role of communications in nation building and provides for the emergence of communications structures suitable to the needs and aspirations of the nation;

WHEREAS, the promotion of competition in the telecommunications market is a key objective of Republic Act No. 7925 (RA7925, for brevity), otherwise known as The Public Telecommunications Policy Act of the Philippines, which mandates that “a healthy competitive environment shall be fostered, one in which telecommunications carriers are free to make business decisions and interact with one another in providing telecommunications services, with the end in view of encouraging their financial viability while maintaining affordable rates.”

WHEREAS, RA7925 further defines the role of the government to “promote a fair, efficient and responsive market to stimulate growth and development of the telecommunications facilities and services”;

WHEREAS, the provision of contents, information, applications, and electronic games to the consumers creates demand for telecommunication networks and services – the development of contents, information, applications, and electronic games should therefore be encouraged and facilitated;

WHEREAS, the entry of more contents, information, applications and/or electronic games providers in the market will result to lower prices benefiting the consumers;

WHEREAS, to further encourage the development of contents, information applications and electronic games, the prevailing access charge regime between the contents, information, applications and electronic games providers and the networks providers which is revenue sharing should be replaced by fixed access charge;

WHEREAS, in the power sector the consumers can purchase their power requirements from independent power producers – power producers are not subject to nationality requirement;

NOW, THEREFORE, pursuant to RA7925, Executive Order (EO) No. 546 series of 1979, and in order to encourage and facilitate the development of contents and the provision thereof to the consumers, the National Telecommunications Commission (Commission) hereby promulgates the following guidelines:

A DEFINITIONS
1. The following terms as used in this Circular shall have the following definitions:
a. Content – refers to all types of contents delivered to/accessed by the users/subscribers such as music, ring tones, logos, video clips, etc.
b. Information – refers to all types of information delivered to/accessed by the users/subscribers, e.g. road traffic information, financial information, visa application information, etc.
c. Application – refers to all types of applications delivered to/accessed by the users/subscribers, e.g. mobile banking, electronic payments, point of sale service, etc.
d. Electronic Game – refers to games played online except gambling.
e. Contents Providers – are persons or entities offering and providing contents to the public for compensation through the networks, systems and/or facilities of authorized networks, systems and/or facilities providers.
f. Information Providers – are persons or entities offering and providing information to the public for compensation through the networks, systems and/or facilities of authorized networks, systems and/or facilities providers.
g. Applications Providers – are persons or entities offering and providing applications to the public for compensation through the networks, systems and/or facilities of authorized networks, systems and/or facilities providers.
h. Electronic Games Providers – are persons or entities offering and providing electronic games to the public for compensation through the networks, systems and/or facilities of authorized networks, systems and/or facilities providers.
i. Contents Developers – are persons or entities creating contents.
j. Information Sources – are persons or entities providing information to Information Providers.
k. Applications Developer – are persons or entities creating applications.
l. Electronic Games Developer – are persons or entities creating electronic games.

B REGISTRATION
1. Contents, Information, Applications and/or Electronic Games Providers, Contents Developers, Information Sources, Applications Developers, and Electronic Games Developers are required to have commercial presence in the country and shall secure Certificate of Registration (COR) from the Commission.

2. There shall be no nationality requirement for contents, information, applications and/or electronic games providers, contents, applications and/or electronic games developers and information sources.

3. The application for registration shall be filed and acted upon by the Commission not later than seven (7) working days from date of application.

4. The application shall include the following documents:
a. Valid registration from the Securities and Exchange Commission or from the Department of Trade and Industry and Articles of Incorporation;
b. Facilities lease agreement with duly enfranchised and certificated public telecommunications entity; and

5. The Certificate of Registration shall be valid for a maximum period of five (5) years. Applicants for registration may opt to apply for shorter period not shorter than one (1) year. Certificates of Registration shall be renewable.

D FEES AND CHARGES
1. The following fees and charges shall be imposed:

a. Filing Fee : PhP 300.00
b. Annual Registration Fee: 6,000.00
c. Surcharge for late : 50% of the annual registration fee if application
filing of application is filed within six (6) months from date of expiry
for renewal 100% if filed after six (6) months from date of expiry

E RATES
1. The rates shall be deregulated. The contents, information, applications and/or electronic games provider shall inform the Commission of the rates for each of the content, information, application or electronic game offered at least three (3) days prior to the offering of such content, information, application or electronic game. Contents, information, applications and/or electronic games providers seeking increases in rates shall inform the Commission of the details of such increases at least five (5) days prior to the implementation of the increase. The Commission in the exercise of its mandate to protect consumers may not allow the increase. If the Commission does not act on the information within five (5) days from receipt of the same, the contents, information, applications and/or electronic games provider can impose the new rates.

F ACCESS CHARGES
1. Networks, systems and/or facilities providers shall provide access to contents, information, applications and/or electronic games providers upon request and based on an access agreement. Access to the networks, systems and/or facilities of duly authorized providers by registered contents, information, applications and/or electronic games providers shall be mandatory.

2. The access charge shall be negotiated. The access charge shall be cost-oriented and shall not be higher than the prevailing retail rates, not promotional rates, for the service where the contents, information, applications and/or electronic games are offered/provided.

G CONSUMER WELFARE AND INTEREST
1. Contents, Information, Applications and/or Electronic Games Providers shall strictly comply to the provisions of MC No. 05-06-2007 (Consumer Protection Guidelines), MC No. 04-06-2007 (Data Log Retention of telecommunications traffic), and MC No. 03-03-2005 (Rules and Regulations on Broadcast Messaging Service) and its amendments.

2. Complaints from the subscribers/users shall be presumed to be valid. The burden of proof shall be upon the contents, information, applications and/or electronic games providers.

H Sanctions
1. Violation of any of the provisions of this Circular shall be a ground for the revocation or cancellation of the registration as Contents, Information, Applications and/or Electronic Games Provider.

2. The Commission may direct the disconnection of the access to the networks, systems or facilities of authorized providers pending the investigation of a complaint filed by a subscriber/user if the Commission finds that there is strong evidence against the contents, information, applications and/or electronic games provider.

3. Any violation of this circular shall be dealt with in accordance with law.

E Final Provision
1. Any circular, order, memoranda or parts thereof inconsistent herewith are deemed repealed or amended accordingly.

2. This Circular shall take effect fifteen (15) days after publication in a newspaper of general circulation and three (3) certified true copies are furnished the UP Law Center.

Quezon City, Phlippines _________________________.

RUEL V. CANOBAS
Commissioner

JORGE V. SARMIENTO
Deputy Commissioner

JAIME M. FORTES, JR.
Deputy Commissioner

* * * * *

This is not a law yet. This is just a proposal, and in fact there was a public hearing earlier this afternoon, at the NTC Executive Conference Room (3rd Floor NTC Building, BIR Road, Quezon City). (Will update you on the outcome of that.) Apparently, the hearing was cancelled. No news on whether it will be resumed later.

Please blog about this topic and air your thoughts. Let us not let the Philippines government take away our right to free speech.

Other bloggers reporting on this story:
Mike Abundo
Tech At Hand

Follow Blogger on Twitter here.

Blogger Buzz says:

We will be posting status updates, major feature announcements, and pointers to cool uses of Blogger will all show up in our Twitter account. We will do our best to keep an eye on replies to @blogger as well, but our Help Center and Blogger Discussion Group remain the best places for help from fellow users as well as the Blogger support team.

Update: It seems the two are using the same stock graphic. Thanks Eric!

Unless the two websites belong to the same person, I suspect foul play bad design choice here.

I first bumped into Paying Post because it’s been heavily advertised in the (paid) blogger community lately. As you guys know, I am a member of many of these sites, so I signed up for the newest player, though I have yet to take an assignment from Paying Post. (I was waiting to see if Paying Post would turn out to be a scam or the real thing.)

Here’s a screenshot of the Paying Post website.

My first impression was that it looked too much like a blog than a website. Note that this is Paying Post’s recent redesign, so now it looks more like a website.

A few moments ago, I got a tweet from @nourayehia linking to her blog post about Photoshop brushes. In the post, she put up a link to and a screenshot of Photoshop Lady‘s blog. It reminded me a lot of the Paying Post website so I went over and had a look. Here is a screenshot of Photoshop Lady’s blog.

It turns out the graphic of the lady on the laptop on Paying Post’s website is just a part of Photoshop Lady’s header horizontally flipped! Now I wasn’t sure who copied who (if indeed it is a case of plagiarism), but looking from the screenshots, it’s a mite obvious, isn’t it?

I thought, well maybe the creators of the websites were just one person, so I checked their WHOIS info. Paying Post’s is private so I can’t tell, but I did notice that while Paying Post used Go Daddy to register, Photoshop Lady used Media Temple. So I’m thinking they’re probably not the same person.

I also noticed that Paying Post registered their website in late October of 2008…

Registered through: GoDaddy.com, Inc. (http://www.godaddy.com)   Domain Name: PAYINGPOST.COM      Created on: 27-Oct-08      Expires on: 27-Oct-10      Last Updated on: 29-Oct-08

while Photoshop Lady had registered her website a lot earlier, in early February 2008.

Registrar of Record: TUCOWS, INC. Record last updated on 01-Feb-2008. Record expires on 01-Feb-2009. Record created on 01-Feb-2008.

So… did Paying Post rip off Photoshop Lady?

This is a guest post from Gim, new blogger of the world. Here to talk about, um, kilts. – Flisha

While tweaking with my personal blog, I stumbled upon a blog for costumes. That day’s feature was on kilts and how to wear them.

Browsing through the blog, I was astonished that a lot of men still wear kilts or kilt-like clothing in this time and age. I guess I shouldn’t be surprised. Kilts are part of Scottish formal wear. What amazed me though, was the way they’re worn.

As kilt aficionados will tell you, a kilt is not worn properly unless a guy wears nothing underneath. Although a lot of kilt-wearers will swear by its comfort (such as the gentlemen over at Kiltmen), I would, being brought up and influenced by a society of trousers, find it extremely uncomfortable. Although the idea of going through a kilt-check falls into the “wildest fantasy” category, I’d still take trousers over kilts anytime, thank you very much.

Since its the holidays and all, I would just like to state that I prefer to gawk at silk ties over kilts on formal occasions, but I wouldn’t mind doing a kilt check hahaha. — Flisha

ScribeFire is a must-have browser plugin for all travel bloggers out there.

It’s the solution for bloggers who are often without Internet access (like me!) and have to blog offline. You can write up your posts through ScribeFire’s blog editor, save them, then publish them whenever you get Internet access.

I use the Blogger CMS, so I can verify that ScribeFire works with the Blogger platform. It also works for other free platforms like LiveJournal, Drupal, MySpace, WordPress and others. All you have to do is have a compatible browser like Firefox, download the plugin, then run it.

Once installed on your browser, a little notepad icon sits in your browser status bar, waiting for you to click and start writing.

When you click on the notepad icon, the ScribeFire window comes up, occupying the lower half of your browser window. You can set the size of the window by dragging it up and down.

You can add your blogger platform account on the right toolbar, so that you can later on publish your entries easily from the ScribeFire window, without ever visiting your platform’s blog editor. If your platform uses categories, you can also set or add your post’s categories via the ScribeFire window.

The timestamp can be set as well, especially for bloggers who like to write posts for later publishing. ScribeFire can also ping to Technorati, Weblogs, Blo.gs, Blogrolling, Icerocket and other ping services.

It’s been very useful to me, as I don’t like to spend a lot of time writing posts when I’m paying by the hour. So I just write them when I’m offline, then publish when I finally get online. There are probably other blog editors that do the same job, but I don’t think any of them measure up to ScribeFire, especially when it comes to including photos on your blog post.

A little known fact among blog publishers is that they can use ScribeFire’s advertising platform that’s similar to Google’s Adsense. However I haven’t gotten around to making a ScribeFire Quick Ads review yet, so anyone who’s tried it, please feel free to comment.

Download ScribeFire here. (Works only with Firefox, Flock and SeaMonkey. Sorry IE users!)

P.S. If you’re using ScribeFire with the Blogger platform on a custom domain, you may run into some image problems. Solution here.

When researching for a host provider, it is best to cover all your bases.

Web Hosting Geeks is a good place to lurk, definitely. The website covers everything you need to know about a particular web hosting provider, such as how much the hosting costs, how much space is offered, and how much traffic is allotted. The informative site also reports on what bonus features are offered per provider (these are commonly free domain names and marketing bonuses).

Web Hosting Geeks’ concise but complete report per host provider is a great tool for potential clients. A summary of the web host’s packages and pricing claim top real estate in the report, followed by an overview of the features offered by the web host. Reviews are contained in an inline frame so as not to clutter the page, and less important information such as awards garnered and average uptime of the web host over the years are listed at the bottom of the page.

Most importantly, Web Hosting Geeks is filled with web hosting reviews and ratings made by customers of the host providers. Even the top rated web hosts have some (or even more!) irate clients so it’s important to read through all the comments left by both satisfied and unsatisfied reviewers, to come away with a fair understanding of a provider’s good and bad points, and to decide how you feel about the product.

You can see the dedication that Web Hosting Geeks puts to customer reviews by reading through the pages of reviews each web host provider has. InMotion Hosting, for example, has ten pages full of reviews and comments about the site. Even more significant, reviews on the site are categorized. Highlighted are webmaster reviews, customer reviews and RealMetric reviews.

With the huge number of blogs existing in the world, and millions being created every day, it is thankful to know that some web hosts excel at providing hosting for blogs. BlueHost has been crowned Best Blog Hosting, and true enough, BlueHost is hailed by many bloggers as the best web host provider available.

If your needs are a bit different, then it’s time to crawl the different awards that Web Hosting Geeks has doled out. Best Dedicated Hosting goes to Startlogic Inc, Best Budget Hosting goes to WebHostingPad (at  $4.95 a month, who can argue?), and if you’re unsure of your specific category, then it’s safe to go with InMotion, which gets the top spot for best web host provider overall.

To keep updated with reports on hosting and the Internet at large, visit Web Hosting Geeks maintains a web hosting blog for its visitors. Common topics are content management systems (CMS), domain names and ecommerce. If you are new to the world of domains and hosting, this is a great source of information for you.

Whatever your hosting needs are, remember not to commit to a web host without a little bit of research. And if Web Hosting Geeks is the first place you’ll go to, then it’s a lot of research in a little bit.