Today I was in the store and I saw a new game that struck my interest. It was a game created by my favorite company as a spin-off to one of my favorite games. I really wanted to get the game until I glanced at the price. $60?! For a game? What if the game is terrible? That’s about the point where you sit in the store for 20 minutes trying to figure out if it’s worth it. I decided to come home and look up a review on the game first, get an idea what others thought of it.

I came across a review for the game on Critics Rant, a website that lets you review movies, dvd’s, and games. I learned from others who had played the came (and it’s predecessor) that it didn’t meet expectations and probably was better off as a rental. For the same purpose I decided to look up a movie I wanted to see, because they have movie reviews as well. The movie got a great review but I learned a bit more than I wanted to prior to seeing the movie.

They review and update you on TV shows as well. So if you’ve missed an episode of your favorite show you can find out about it on Critics Rant. I don’t watch TV much, but for those of you who live your lives around them should find this handy.

You spend all day on the computer and your butt is getting mushy, right? I know, I’ve been there. You get to the point where you say ‘Enough’ and you’re ready to start doing something about it. Great! But what?

Well, you know the basic idea behind of weight loss is burning more calories than you’re consuming. If you didn’t know before, you know now. So one of the most important parts of losing weight is keeping track of how many calories you put into your body and how much you’re burning with a calorie counter.

My Fitness Pal is a new website that helps you keep track of this stuff. With their free calorie counter, food database, and food diary, you can’t use “I didn’t know” as an excuse anymore. If you want to go out to McDonald’s and you want to know what to get, start looking up foods in their database. You’ll probably find that even the salads are full of fat and about the only thing worth eating is the hamburger happy meal with apples. But it’s better than getting a Quarter Pounder and the coming home to find that you’ve just consumed more than 1/2 your daily calories in less than 10 minutes.

I really love this site, it’s one of my favorite tools for helping me make sure my weight doesn’t get out of control.

I’m not much for online chats, but networking is certainly good for business. I usually use online mediums like chats and forums to get my websites out there to new people it might not otherwise reach.

WireClub.com is a free online chat website that offers more than just chat. They’re a full service social networking site with profiles, blogs, clubs, and a dating site. So really, you can do more than just chat at WireClub.com, you can set up your own little online identity. Get all your friends to join and keep in touch with them via their online friends system. It’s definitely more attractive than some of the other, better known social networking or chat sites.

They make it a point to show photos of people who already chat on their front page. Some of them are extremely good looking. I’m a little intimidated. How many of them do you think used their real pictures? Maybe I’ll use a pic of my hot friend so everyone will drool over my photo and want to talk to me. Oh, I crack myself up.

So let me know if you chat there and maybe I’ll join and say “Hello”. I am seriously thinking about joining, but I guess I just need that little push, or someone to do it with me. I’m so lame, I can never do anything alone. I’m going to California on a plane for the first time next month and I’m dragging someone along with me. Eh, free trip, right?

A really cool service I’ve found that I use on my site is Snap Shots. Basically what it does is change your links so they show a thumnail preview of the site you’re linking to. It’s extremely helpful for people with attractive sites because they can see what the site looks like just by rolling over, and if your site looks good enough curiousity will take over.

I use the option to have the preview on the icon only for a few reasons. The most important reason for me is that I have noticed on other sites that it’s difficult to click on a link with the preview on it. Not impossible, but it is difficult. Another reason is because I personally prefer the choice of being able to click on the link without the popup preview in my face.

But this is just one of many options you have. You can change the color of the preview popup to match your site better. They have 8 very eye pleasing colors to choose from. You can add your own logo to the preview. You can choose how large you want the preview to be. You can even choose the language.

If you’re using Wordpress, like I am, there’s a plugin that will automatically put it in any Wordpress them with the footer code. However, you don’t need Wordpress to use it. They have a simple script code to put above your </body> tag. If by chance that doesn’t work, you may need to put it directly below your <body> tag, like I did. Not sure why, must be something to do with my theme.