Today sees the release of Red Faction: Guerrilla for the Xbox 360 and PlayStation 3 here in the UK. The game is an action adventure game that takes place on a sandbox style planet Mars.

I’ve reviewed the PlayStation 3 version of the game for my gaming website Gamebrit.com, and the review in full can be read in full here. Below is a small excerpt of the review can be seen below:

“Red Faction: Guerrilla offers plenty of gameplay, yet sadly the poor storyline and the lack of variety within the game world brings the overall experience down and fails to truly engage beyond the first few hours. A fun experience at first, that soon becomes a chore. The real enjoyment is to be found in the multiplayer modes, which really are explosive pure fun. “

My relatively small interest in poker is on the rise, from not knowing hardly any hands a few years back, to now playing on a somewhat regular basis. I enjoy playing every now and then, be it either playing online on the Xbox 360 or at a friends poker evening every couple of weeks; I am yet to look into playing for cash online, but I would like to. I am slowly getting better, and have been looking into getting my own set of chips and possibly even a table, it would be nice to be able to host a casual evening of texas hold’em with some friends.

Flop2River.com sells a variety of poker tables, and have a fair few to choose from, be it different sizes, colours or shapes! In addition to tables they also sell cards, chips, guards and more. Sure there sites design is a little out dated but it is secure, and they offer live chat too if you require help when making a purchase. So if you are in the US and have an interest in poker be sure to check them out, as they have an impressive range of goods on offer. Check them out!

Secure, reliable, trusted. All things you would expect any online ecomerce software to be. Thankfully Americommerce, which provides users a simple way to set up online stores with ease can proudly claim those attributes as their own.

Many folks often want a really simple way to sell their goods online, and many sites out there offer a solution, Americommerce offer a variety of useful features including a customer friendly checkout, promotion tools, affiliate options and many more. In addition to this wide range of features, a demo is available, as is telephone support (for those in the US), along with a completely free 14 day trial, which leaves very little reason to not give this a go, you have nothing to loose if your looking for a ecommerce solution. If you needed more reason to give this a go, then before you go and jump into a trial you can view screenshots of what the service can offer. The service seems full of usefull and handy stats along with ways to track sales and so on, meaning running a shop through Americommerce should be easy to keep track of and simple to identify strengths and weaknesses on your online store. Give it a go!

As many readers of my blog may know, I am quite keen on taking the odd photograph. Many updates on my blog in the past have concentrated on my picture taking and the hardware I use (Nikon D40). With this in mind I am always interested in discovering new photography sites (when not browsing Flickr of course).

rent a car bulgariaOne such example is the photographer blog at PhotographyBlogger.com. This blog has been updating since about August of 2007 and regularly updates with a variety of photography based topics. Such as the differences between photo taking as a hobby (like myself) or as a profession, to other such detailed posts like the history of the humble Polaroid. The blog has a fairly simple apperance and could do with a little more personality from the author but beyond that the content is detailed and informative, and for those who have a slight interest in photography, or are new to the hobby then it may be worth checking out, you may learn something!

The Internet has a handful of websites that offer the ability to make a forum, some for free, others not. Not surprisingly, Forums-Free.com are one of the sites that offer forum creation for no cost. Of course when using these services your freedom in what you can achieve is limited to that of a paid solution, but for something more casual and informal the options available are more than adequate.

The free forums available at Forums-Free.com offer up to 1GB of storage, over 40 different themes to choose from, and the option to personlise it to! To create a forum (phpbb) all you have to do is simply fill in a simple form on the site, you choose a name, the launguage you want your forum to be, and that’s it! For a free option, this may be worth trying, especially if you want to get some experience with phpbb before trying a dedicated solution.

Viagogo is an online ticket exchange site which was formed back in 2005, and aims to offer folks an environment to buy and sell tickets for various live events in a safe, secure way. According to the company the trading of tickets online is traditionally viewed as a somewhat “murky marketplace” and the site aims to change that perception by offering a guaranteed method of trading tickets. Thankfully the site has a light attractive appealing design, which is simple to navigate and also boasts several security certificates which will no doubt appeal to those users wanting to use the sites services but may be skeptical due to the general “ticket tout” perception.

The site originally and primarily deals with UK events but since then have enjoyed significant growth, so much so they have expanded to other markets, including America in late 2006. Due to myself being a UK blogger I will discuss the UK version of Viagogo in more depth. Viagogo UK offer an expansive marketplace for a wide range of events, all split into easy to find categories, ranging from theatre tickets, arts events, sports events like the cricket, including ICC World Twenty20 Tickets, The Ashes Cricket Tickets, and 6 Nations Tickets; to music gigs for such big acts as Coldplay, Oasis and more.

For those for decide to buy from the site, Viagogo has a variety of payment options on offer, including major credits cards and also somewhat refreshingly for a larger trader, PayPal, yet again the more options for the consumer the better. In addition to these payment options a wide variety of information is available on the way the site works, which really does ensure that visitors fully understand the sites working practices before use.

If your running a site or a blog, be it an entertainment or music site then Viagogo has an affiliate program on offer through the affiliate network Zanox, so be sure to check that out if your looking to make some additional income through your site.

Viagogo has plenty of support options, with guides, telephone support and more; all of this in a simple to use site. For those with spare tickets to sell, and those looking to grab a sold out ticket Viagogo could be a superb resource and a more reliable option than other choices (for example eBay). If your after a ticket (or just wanting to sell) then be sure to consider Viagogo.

Diggy is an established web design company based in Brisbane, Australia that have been in operation since 1997, and since then have produced more than one thousand different websites for various clients, making for a varied portfolio and client list. The experienced company offer a variety of custom products and services such as standard website design, domain name registration, internet marketing, e-commerce options, search engine optimization and graphic design; an impressive range of services!

It’s clear from looking through diggy’s past work that the company can offer an extensive variety of services and offer them to a satisfactory standard. Some sites in their portfolio have impressive elements and the case studies of certain sites give good examples of this. In addition to this plenty of glowing testimonials can be found.

Diggy’s actual site could use a lick of paint, especially from a design stand point, as it is starting to look a little dated; but other than this the site seems fairly straightforward to use with clear navigation and a simple page flow which is easy to follow. Of course contacting the Brisbane company is important from the stand point of any prospective client and thankfully the site offers visitors plenty of options on how to contact them.

Australians looking for a company who can offer a wide range of web services can do no harm in looking up diggy!

This is the third post in my series of BlogReviews, if you are interested in receiving a free blog review, please click here to find out more information.

ReviewBunker is a relatively new blog which launched in November of last year. It has a simple yet ambitious goal to review ‘everything’. It would probably be more appropriate to say that ReviewBunker will review ‘anything’.

To those new to the site you are instantly greeted with a simple yet concise blurb of text as to what the blog is about, which contains links to other sections of the site, this is a great way of letting visitors know what your about, although a suggested addition to this front page presence would be to add a link to the ‘request review‘ page.

The content on ReviewBunker is random to say the least, and for those of you looking for a review blog which concentrates on a specific area then this blog is not for you. ReviewBunker covers a wide range of products, websites and services from things like Brownie Cake Mix, Office boxes, even movies and restaurants. Despite this random mix, the writing is very concise and informative as well as pleasantly informal. If you do happen to find a review that takes your interest then I recommend reading it, as without a doubt it will be helpful.

ReviewBunker also offers readers the opportunity to become a guest blogger and review anything for the blog, so if you are looking for an outlet to review something, or anything, then this may be worth checking out.

The site uses a free blog design, which is customized with an appropriate header image, the colour scheme is easy on the eyes and overall flows well, and boasts well integrated AdSense adverts. Oh, and it has the Entrecard widget, which is great.

My only concern for ReviewBunker is that its content area is to broad, and it may be wise to cut this down, visitors will never know what to expect. Maybe even just reviewing offline products exclusively, and not reviewing websites. Reduce confusion.

A well written blog, with potential to shine. Focus and concentrate your niche to a more specific area, and keep up the good work.

http://www.reviewbunker.com/

I recently outlined my plans to be making £100 ($200) per month from this blog by the end of 2008, and although this may not seem like much to some bigger bloggers, I think its a realistic goal that I have good chance of reaching.

In order to monetize my blog I decided to sign up for various review networks and try them out, and recently I got approved for Smorty. Smorty describes itself as a tool to connect various advertisers with bloggers like myself. Smorty works in a similar fashion to other advertising networks in that advertisers can pay bloggers to write opinions and thoughts in a post and link back to the advertisers site. With smorty you get paid to blog.

Upon signing up, my blog got approved rather quickly (impressive), and without little hesitation I logged into this blog for money service and was instantly greeted with four money making opportunities, some I will take others I may not, but either way you will see the results here at ChrisBrandrick.com. Whether the opportunities will continue to roll in is yet to be seen, but Smorty has a sleek interface which is easy to use, navigate, and offers you your current opportunities at a glance. Simple.

Once you have earned enough you can get paid via PayPal, and for those of you with multiple blogs Smorty supports you to.

Smorty – Get paid to blog. Check it out, what have you got to lose!

It’s been nearly a month since I installed the Entrecard widget here on my blog, and I am more than happy with the benefits gained from adding it.

Haven’t heard of Entrecard? Here is a brief description of what to expect from this social blogging tool:

Entrecard is the first and only free exchange network for 125×125 ads. Through this revolutionary platform, you can advertise your own 125×125 Entrecard on any blog in the network, for free, for a number of days.

Since installing the 125 by 125 widget here at ChrisBrandrick.com my visitors numbers have doubled, with a good majority of that new traffic coming directly from Entrecard. This increase in visitor numbers is also down to me blogging more, but still the incoming traffic sure is encouraging and proves that this advertising system works. For the traffic benefits alone Entrecard is worth looking into, but it offers so much more than that. In the month I have been a member I have found several new blogs which I now regularly read and enjoy checking.

I highly advise installing this hot widget, not only for traffic but to increase your RSS count, readership and earn new blogging friends.