In an attempt to get a piece of the $25,000 that ReviewMe is offering the following. This is my review.

ReviewMe is service that pays bloggers to write paid reviews about advertisers who pay a pre-determined fee based on that particular blogs value. ReviewMe determines the value of each blog with an algorithm that is based off Alexa, Technorati and most likely a few other sources. Bloggers can decide to write either a positive or negative review, but they must disclose that they are being paid to write the review. ReviewMe splits the advertising fee 50/50 with the bloggers.

I know the guys behind ReviewMe and I think for the most part they have done an excellent job on the execution. The site is well designed and the UI is pretty good, I had no trouble signing up and finding my way around. The one thing I noticed that could cause a problem is that you can signup with any blog. Just for fun I signed up a few popular blogs under my name just to see what their posts were worth, I quickly deleted them from my account. They should probably add some kind of security feature to make sure this doesn’t happen.

Overall I am fan of these kind of services. I think it offers a great revenue model for bloggers to make a decent chunk of change for writing. The problem I see here is that Google and the other search engines will frown upon it, since they are against people paying for text links. At least ReviewMe requires full disclosure for the posts and because of that I think they have a great shot of kicking Pay-Per-Post’s Ass. That and the guys behind this business know this market inside and out.

It’s a relatively new advertising method, and one that if handled properly, in my opinion, has some viability. Others are experimenting with similar ideas as we speak. Take the great Techmeme. If you visit their site, you’ll notice on the right sidebar a column of ads that are written by the sponsors themselves; they are all composed of short articles, fed directly there through RSS. However, the section is clearly labeled “Sponsors” and there’s no confusion that the copy in that area represents someone’s presumably slanted opinion. It’s new, it’s smart and it works. No one loses.

So, are there no flaws? Well, no, there are. A case could be made that there may be pressure on the blogger not to write negative reviews for fear of scaring future potential advertisers. Also, the specific wording of disclosure is left up to the blogger, which may lead to some potentially misleading phrasing. And these are very valid points. Supposedly a blogger may be able to overcome them if he’s already established a certain level of trust among his readership, and isn’t overly dependent on that particular source of income. But is that enough? Well, in my opinion, yes.

Overall it looks like a good idea, and as I often share links to other sites and services I feel worthy, if somebody’s willing to give me money as an added bonus for doing so I’m not going to turn that down.

ZDNet has a great article on PHP and how it’s succeeding where Java isn’t. I’ve been using PHP for about 2 years now and I’m not intending to stop. Almost all of my freelance projects incorporate PHP scripts one way or another. PHP’s easy development environment and large library of pre-built scripts helps all project maintain low costs and cut down on development time. Another reason PHP has enjoyed this great success is MySQL and vice-versa. PHP incorporates outstanding functionality which enables developers to build database-driven applications and web sites with an ease.

The simplicity of scripting language PHP means it will be more popular than Java for building Web-based applications, Internet browser pioneer Marc Andreessen predicted Wednesday in the US in a speech in California at the Zend/PHP Conference.

The article goes on to examine the future releases of PHP and some reactions from industry professionals such as Rod Smith, vice president of IBM’s Emerging Internet Technologies Group and Mike Milinkovich, executive director of Eclipse. I believe that PHP will become one of the most used scripting languages for application development due to the high increase in support for the open-source community. Especially now since large corporations such as Oracle, IBM and Google are taking a greater interest in open-source development.

It’s been several days since my last entry. This past week has been very busy for me with interviews, projects and Thanksgiving, i’m actually still full from all the food. As I await feedback and news from my interviews and possible milestones in my career I came across a super article from Jakob Nielsen. If you have never heard of this guy then you better read this article. Jakob has been referred to as the king of usability and in this article he compiled the top ten web design mistakes of 2005. Some of the mistakes that made the list are issues that have been addressed in prior years but still designers over look these issues and build web sites with usability problems. After reading this article I found that my site might be considered to have some of the mistakes listed, but rules are made to be broken.

I just came across a new site Don’t Meet Your Heroes. This site compiles CSS articles from different source all on one page. Great resource, keep up the good work Rik Catlow.

Richard MacManus posted a great article on ZDNet in regards to desktop applications and web based applications. The main focus is on the current trend in developing “Web 2.0 Application”. The article goes on to discuss how desktop applications are on the way out and web based applications are in. I agree with Richard that the recent recognition AJAX has received has contributed to the Web 2.0 craze and development of web based applications. I believe that web based applications will see the day of light but not just yet. AJAX is a new concept and needs time to be adopted and properly developed to meet user standards. Richard also goes and lists several AJAX based applications. Read the full story.