Wednesday, November 28, 2012

The Hessey Diaries


REVIEWED BY: Ms. Cairo

MY RECOMMENDATION: Yes

AMAZON SUBSCRIPTION LINK: The Hessey Diaries, by Barnaby Capel-Dunn

WEB ADDRESS: http://hesseyfamily.blogspot.com/

BLOG DESCRIPTION: Middle class life in London and rural Essex, as depicted in the diaries of my grandmother during and after the Second World War.

MY REVIEW: This is an interesting blog that I think a history buff will enjoy. It's the type of blog that you'll have to read for a while to get to know the author, and I suggest you check out the actual website to view back entries. (By subscribing to Kindle you get several weeks worth, but I'd suggest starting even further back then that.

A fun blog if you're interested in what life was like in England in 1948.

RECENT POSTS:
Diary entries from 1948
_______________________
Ms. Cairo writes several blogs including:Seaborn: Oceanography BlogStar Trek Report: Space SciencesTopical Murder and Dated Death

Thursday, November 22, 2012

This is Mamma's House (parenting)


REVIEWED BY: Ms. Cairo

MY RECOMMENDATION: YES

AMAZON SUBSCRIPTION PAGE: This Is Momma's House

WEB ADDRESS: http://thisismamashouse.blogspot.com

BLOG DESCRIPTION: If mama ain't happy ain't nobody happy. Someone wanna run that by my crew?? This blog is a record of my life with 4 boys...3 being my children, the 4th being my husband.

MY REVIEW: Women with kids will probably love this blog.

It is well written, and the tales told are humorous. I don't enjoy these types of blogs as much as those written by dads, because of course mom's are supposed to be like this, where very few people think dad's do anything...or worse, should do anything. (I'm thinking to myself - what is this - your husband can't help you do the laundry? Your kids aren't old enough to help you out?)

Sample Paragraphs
I always let my kids have the best of everything. Whether it's the last piece of pizza, the last scoop of ice cream, the last glass of milk....I always give up what I want for them. Always.

(My mom used to do this when we were kids, and still does this, and drives me crazy! It's the last scoop of icecream, you have it! And in any event my brother, the eldest kid in the family, had and has no respect for her, just because she's so willing to cast herself as unworthy of having the final piece of pie, et al. When your mom doesn't hold herself in high esteem, how can you as a kid respect her? I had those feelings to as a kid, also, I expected her to give me everything I wanted because of how she treated us - and yes, I got it, but she got no respect for it - now as a grown woman of 48 it still infuriates me when she does this - she still does this. But she sees herself as a mom who sacrifices for her kids first, last and always, instead of a an individual with just as much right to exist as her kids, and maybe even more because she is the parent.

Okay, sorry about that rant.

Here's a better example of her writing.
It's no secret that I can't cook. I try, really I do. I want my kids to have delicious, balanced meals that they can turn their noses up at. But it seems that no matter how hard I try, I always fall flat.

Well, not always. There are occasions where I actually produce a great meal. Last night was not one of those.

I had planned to cook chili. My chili recipe consists of browning hamburger meat before adding it to several cans of different type beans and stirring. That's it. Simple enough, huh? Yeah, you would think.

I had fended off several thigh attacks from my younger two while standing in front of the stove when I realized there was an awful lot of smoke coming from the pan. I was browning the meat, so I expected it to smoke, but what I saw was excessive, even for me. I ushered the kids out of the kitchen, because in my head I already knew what was about to happen. I was right.

I slid the pan off the eye, and the sudden introduction of oxygen caused a hot orange flame to burst forth and threaten to melt my mounted microwave.

A sight like that should cause panic. After all, most people aren't accustomed to seeing flames erupting from their stovetop. Most people aren't me.

This is the sixth, yes I said sixth, time I've set my stove on fire. I'm so used to seeing flames by now that there is no panic at all. I remember the first time it happened. I freaked out and covered the kitchen in fire extinguisher foam. Not anymore. I laughed to myself and said, "Well, damn. The kitchen's on fire again," as I opened the cabinet below me and reached for a pot lid.

RECENT ARTICLES:
-Passion vs Payday (an interesting post on her writing ambitions)
-Life's Moments (young son flunks a social studies test)
-Man am I HOT (Mom can't cook!)
-Mama's My Name, Laundry's My Game
-One Day With Chuck E. (Cheese - at the restaurant)
-You're Gonna Miss This (a song with foolish lyrics about raising kids)

Wednesday, November 21, 2012

The Mogul Mom (entrepreneurship)


REVIEWED BY: Ms. Cairo

MY RECOMMENDATION: YES

AMAZON SUBSCRIPTION LINK: The Mogul Mom Blog

WEB ADDRESS: http://www.themogulmom.com/

BLOG DESCRIPTION: Written by a seasoned mom entrepreneur, The Mogul Mom blog offers free coaching, camaraderie, ideas, information, resources & recommendations for mom entrepreneurs.

MY REVIEW: In these tough economic times, mom's have to bring in an income, as well as their husbands. (Or partners, or if they are single moms or divorced moms). This blog will help women with small kids learn how to run their own businesses.

The info here is important if you want to bring home your own income. Subscribe to it.

Sample post:
How To Clear Your Website Clutter In 3 Key Areas by Reese Spykermanby Heather Allard on July 21, 2010

You know that feeling when you walk out into the living room, and all the stuff is put in place, and your amazing bookcase looks orderly, and there’s a clear line of sight out to the porch to check out the yard in the summer? Yeah. That. That’s what we’re going for here, but on your website.

There’s peace in de-cluttering. Calm. A sense of empowerment. Order in the midst of chaos.

So imagine what it would be like if your site or blog felt like this. Not just for you, but for your visitors, too. Imagine them coming to your site and thinking, even if subconsciously, “ahhh” because it’s an oasis of clarity among millions of sites overloaded with too much stuff.

It’s possible. You, too, can have a website that Martha Stewart would envy. (if you’re into that sort of thing). When you declutter your website, your audience appreciates it. They’re more likely to read. To buy. To stay a while, soak up your goodness, and engage.

Here are three ways you can start:

1. Your sidebar: it’s like the space under the kitchen sink
Send your sidebar to Goodwill. This place is notorious for collecting unneeded junk. 10 badges for all the networks you’re in? (Never mind that 80% of them either no longer exist or aren’t doing a thing to help bolster your brand’s perception). That specialty search bar you hope will bring in a few coins a month? Or how about 80 different ways to navigate through your blog (archives. categories. tags. fruit of the month club).

Here’s all that you really need on the sidebar:

Your email sign up list (and if you deliver posts by email, roll this into the same newsletter as whatever other newsletter you offer. Less for you to manage, and easier for readers to understand).Make this your topmost sidebar item, and see your sign up rates improve. (It doesn’t hurt to have a fun, non-smarmy call to action or small “treat” you give for free to entice sign ups)
A small RSS icon (seriously, this doesn’t need to be massive)
Neat and clean social networking links (e.g. Facebook, Twitter, Linkedin). Don’t include 80 of them here. just 2-4 of the ones most people visit.
Category links (to allow people to browse archives by category)
A search box (just the factory default one that came with your content management system or blogging software, please. Or powered by Google works, too, in a pinch. Generally you look more professional when you aren’t pimping out other company’s things in a sponsored search bar).
An additional call to action (This serves as a small graphical promo or something you want people to see/know about. Completely optional but use it to promote one or two of your best things (product, service, etc))
2. Clean up your home (page)
If you have a blog on your home page, don’t put the entirety of each entry on there. Yes, some people do like to read the whole shebang of each entry down the home page, but cutting your excerpts to small blurbs helps:

1. keep reader’s attention
2. improve search engine happiness
3. showcase more of your awesomeness on the home page
3. Navigate your way to happier readers
Recently I had to live in someone else’s home for 4 months. I couldn’t find a damn thing. Tongs? Knives? Paper towel? All up in the air. Now we’ll forgive this home because I’m sure she knew just where everything is. But if this home had been a website, I would have left.

Your people need to know where to go in a matter of a nanosecond. You can make this easy for them by having a strong, easy-to-read navigation placed high and prominent on the site.

Avoid things like mystery meat (I know. The kitchen analogies are getting old). Mystery meat is when you don’t use words for your navigation, but just images that are all clever and goofy and leave people wondering if they’ll get dancing chickens if they click on one of them. Avoid uber-fancy fonts (script faces are hard to read) and drop-down menus. (Yes, I use them at times, but only when the client really begs). Make the verbiage concise, like our own dear Heather does here on her site. (It’s both attractive and clear).

Do these things as best you can, and you’ll be well on your way to a clutter-free website that gives you a sigh of relief, and makes your readers more endeared to you.

Question for you, lovely reader:

What things do you find most helpful on a website, and what cluttered stuff annoys you the most?

Post by Reese Spykerman
Reese Spykerman is a designer and quasi world explorer. She lives part time in SE Asia, where she sometimes succeeds at keeping her home clutter free. Reese recently created a course called “The Great Name Claim” that teaches you how to claim your name through various online profiles and look awesome in places like Yelp, LinkedIn, and Facebook. As a special gift to The Mogul Mom readers, she’s giving 15% off the course until July 31, 2010, when you use the coupon code mogulmom to check out.

RECENT POSTS:
--How To Clear Your Website Clutter In 3 Key Areas by Reese
--Trade Shows
--Marketing To Retailers
--Video: 3 Ways To Find Out Who’s Talking About You On Twitter
--Bring The Spa Home With Infused
--

_______________________
Ms. Cairo writes several blogs including:
Seaborn: Oceanography Blog
Star Trek Report: Space Sciences
Topical Murder and Dated Death

Sunday, November 18, 2012

Somebody Dies (mystery fiction reviews)


REVIEWED BY: Marguerite Zelle

MY RECOMMENDATION: YES

AMAZON SUBSCRIPTION LINK: Somebody Dies, by Craig Clarke

WEB ADDRESS: http://somebodydies.blogspot.com/

BLOG DESCRIPTION: Somebody Dies is the premier multi-genre book-review blog, covering crime, horror, and Western fiction (with the occasional digression into other arenas). From the obscure to the mainstream, from forgotten "classics" to the newest releases, everyone can find something to enjoy.

MY REVIEW: This is an excellent book review blog. The author reviews crime, horror and western fiction, "with the occasional digression." His reviews are thorough, covering all aspects of the book in question, something many reviewers don't do. When he reviews audio books, he also gives opinoins as to the quality of the narration, so that's a plus if most of your "reading" is done via audio.

The author averages one review a week, two at the most.

Sample review:
Trail Drive to Montana (Gunsmith #69) by Gary McCarthy writing as J.R. Roberts
Regular readers of this repository of reviews will likely know that I am a big fan of The Gunsmith, which is the only long-running adult Western series still primarily written by a single author under a pseudonym, in this case Robert J. Randisi under the moniker J. R. Roberts. However, he has not written all of them. Randisi stated in a 2007 interview with Saddlebums Western Review that his publisher early on wanted more books than he could turn out on his own. Thus, around 30 of the first 100 were contracted from other authors to fulfill the twelve-a-year quota.

Later, I learned from an interview on Western Fiction Review that author Gary McCarthy, who had written a book I had recently enjoyed called The Pony Express War, had been one of those writers. (He reportedly wrote four Gunsmith novels.) As I enjoy cattle-drive novels, I chose McCarthy's first for the series, Trail Drive to Montana, to see if I could detect a difference in styles.

Actually, it was easy. From page one of Trail Drive to Montana, I would at least have known that it was not from the usual author. Randisi has a fast-paced, easy reading style that utilizes punchy dialogue and short, sharp paragraphs. The first paragraph of this book has 20 lines of small text, and there's no real conversation for five pages. This is not a criticism of either style, merely an illustration of how different they are.

McCarthy shows you the whole picture, and this slows things down a bit compared to the norm for this series, but I must admit to the appeal of seeing ex-lawman and professional gunsmith Clint Adams being genuinely articulate instead of simply a man of action. Even the heroine remarks, "You got a fine way with words, Mr. Adams."

She is Mandy Roe, whom Adams discovers after her horse is killed and she is left stranded underneath it. Her father is Bart Roe, the former outlaw pardoned by the governor and now an innovative cattle breeder in his 80s, who still has as fiery a temper as ever. Or, as Clint says, "He's the craziest old son of a bitch I ever saw in my life." (Having a way with words means you sometimes get right to the point.)

The Roes need to drive their herd of special crossbreeds up to Montana, away from the vengeful Moffit clan, seeking revenge for a 25-year-old transgression. The Gunsmith, in no way a cowboy and actually quite proud of the fact, agrees to accompany them on the journey. Unlike typical Texas longhorns, who are known as "rainbow cattle" for the variety of their hues, the Roe herd is exceptionally uniform in size and color, selected for those attributes in the breeding process.

Dr. Thomas Thom, Bart Roe's brother-in-law and an equal partner in the breeding, makes a connection between the longhorns and Americans. As he puts it, "Crossbreeding almost always results in a more vigorous strain of beef. It accounts for much of the American drive and energy. You see, this country is the greatest bunch of crossbred people in the world.... We are not in-bred like many of the old-line European families. We have greater vigor. So does this herd."

McCarthy fills Trail Drive to Montana with the expected level of action (of both types), and an additonal level of description that makes for a richer read than the typical series novel. He is quickly working his way toward an entry on my list of favorite authors, and I look forward to reading more of his work.

Further reading: For another adult Western series novel about a cattle drive, read Longarm on the Goodnight Trail. For more "respectable" novels on the subject, Ralph Compton's Trail Drive series, starting with The Goodnight Trail, is also a winner. And of course, there's the epic of all Westerns, Larry McMurtry's Pulitzer Prize–winning Lonesome Dove, which also centers around a trail drive.

RECENT POSTS:
--Trail Drive to Montana (Gunsmith #69) by Gary McCarthy writing as J.R. Roberts
--Psycho by Robert Bloch (unabridged audio book read...
--Sea Fangs by L. Ron Hubbard (unabridged audio book performed by a full cast)
--Blue-Eyed Devil by Robert B. Parker (unabridged audio book read by Titus Welliver)
--Twilight and New Moon by Stephenie Meyer (unabridged audio books read by Ilyana Kadushin)

_______________________
Check out the following blogs:
Seaborn: Oceanography Blog
Star Trek Report: Space Sciences
Volcano Seven: Treasure and Treasure Hunters
Rush Limbaugh Report

Saturday, November 17, 2012

Bitesized Languages

http://www.bitesizedlanguages.com/

Bitesized Languages is not available for subscription via the Kindle, but then, it doesn't really need to be. You can subscribe to it for free and have it delivered to your mailbox.

All it is is one sentence a day, translated into English and... whatever language you've chosen. I've chosen Spanish and German (I get two separate emails.) The sentence is the same in both languages, so I"m learning both languages simultaneously, which is fun.

It's a lot easier to learn to read a language than it is to speak it. If you just want to be able to read books in the original, check out Bitesized Languages as a teaching aid.

Wednesday, November 14, 2012

Susan Katz Keating (Politics)


REVIEWED BY: Ms. Cairo

MY RECOMMENDATION: YES

AMAZON SUBSCRIPTION LINK: Susan Katz Keating, by Susan Katz Keating
[Note that the blog is listed twice, one as $1.99, the other as .99. I've given you the link to the 99 cent version!]

WEB ADDRESS: http://www.susankatzkeating.com/

BLOG DESCRIPTION: Sometimes serious, other times snarky: Author, national security insider, and Expert marksman Susan Katz Keating on PTSD, FUBARs, brilliantly executed missions, and much more.

MY REVIEW: Susan Katz Keating is the author of Prisoners of Hope:: Exploiting the POW/MIA Myth in America in 1994, as well as Women of the West, Native American Rivalries (Native American Life), and Saudi Arabia (Modern Middle East Nations and Their Strategic Place in the World).

She's a Republican, I'd wager, and supports the troops. Check out her blog, it's pretty interesting.

Sample post:
What Next From Saudi Clerics? Adult Breastfeeding Edict Boggles the Mind
Flat-out nuttiness from Saudi clerics: women should breastfeed adult male non-relatives. That way, the men become family members, and it's okay to mingle with the chicks. This is the sort of thing that makes me wonder if dangerous mind-altering chemicals from the oil fields have leeched into the Saudi water supply. How else to explain such lunatic ideas...


RECENT POSTS:
--Courtney Keating on Restrepo: A Guest Post
--Response on That Michael Yon SOS...
--Danish Med Team Needed STAT to Field-Triage the Ranting Michael Yon
--Resisting the Impulse to Hog All the Web Traffic on Chuck's Post: Teaser on Solution to Israel Situation
--What Next From Saudi Clerics? Adult Breastfeeding Edict Boggles the Mind

_______________________
Ms. Cairo writes several blogs including:Seaborn: Oceanography Blog
Star Trek Report: Space Sciences
Topical Murder and Dated Death

Thursday, November 8, 2012

Gawker (arts ad Entertainment)


REVIEWED BY: Marguerite Zelle

MY RECOMMENDATION: YES

AMAZON SUBSCRIPTION LINK: Gawker, by Gawker

WEB ADDRESS: http://gawker.com/

BLOG DESCRIPTION: Gawker is the group's flagship title, a mix of pop culture and media gossip, updated more than a dozen times a day. Gawker is compulsory reading for New York editors and reporters, and often sets the agenda for the entertainment weeklies, gossip columns such as Page Six, and the soft sections of newspapers such as the New York Times.

MY REVIEW: I enjoyed this blog. It doesn't get that political (as a reviewer on its Amazon subscription page said) and has interesting comments about events of the day.

The blog is updated by several authors each day.

Highly recommended.

Sample post:
Love Means Not Knowing Anything About Your Partner
Love is... commitment. Love is... compromise. Love is... not giving a shit about what your partner likes. A new study indicates that people in long-lasting marriages know less about their partners than people in shorter relationships.

The study, conducted by University of Basel psychologists Benjamin Scheibehenne and Jutta Mata alongside Indiana University psychologist Peter Todd, asked participants to rate their and their partners' preferences in food, movies and kitchen designs. The young couples, aged 19 to 32 and in one-to-two-year committed relationships, were able to correctly guess their partners' preferences 47 percent of the time, whereas the older couples, aged 62 to 78, were only 40 percent accurate, proving that basically no one knows that much about their partners, but old people really don't know that much. According to researchers, the biggest gap came with food.

Why does this gap arise? It could be that older couples don't pay as much attention to their partners anymore now that they've "got that shit locked down," to use the scientific terminology. It could also be that your husband so goddamn boring, how on earth are you supposed to keep track of how he wants the kitchen to look?

The older couples also tended to attribute "their own food, movie and design preferences to partners who had different opinions." The most telling finding, though, is that more long-term couples said they were satisfied with their relationships than the younger couples. That's right: The secret to a lasting, satisfying marriage is just assuming your partner likes all the same things as you.

RECENT POSTS:
--YouTube Comments Are No Longer Safe for Mean People on the Internet
--Did Someone Lose the Nuclear Launch Codes?
--Love Means Not Knowing Anything About Your Partner
--Chilean Miners Already Sick of Media Attention
--Anti-Rand Paul Ad Basically Accuses Him of Being an Alien Shaman
_______________________
Check out the following blogs:
Seaborn: Oceanography Blog
Star Trek Report: Space Sciences
Volcano Seven: Treasure and Treasure Hunters
Rush Limbaugh Report

Wednesday, November 7, 2012

Somebody Dies


REVIEWED BY: Marguerite Zelle

MY RECOMMENDATION: YES

AMAZON SUBSCRIPTION LINK: Somebody Dies, by Craig Clarke

WEB ADDRESS: http://somebodydies.blogspot.com/

BLOG DESCRIPTION: Somebody Dies is the premier multi-genre book-review blog, covering crime, horror, and Western fiction (with the occasional digression into other arenas). From the obscure to the mainstream, from forgotten "classics" to the newest releases, everyone can find something to enjoy.

MY REVIEW: This is an excellent book review blog. The author reviews crime, horror and western fiction, "with the occasional digression." His reviews are thorough, covering all aspects of the book in question, something many reviewers don't do. When he reviews audio books, he also gives opinoins as to the quality of the narration, so that's a plus if most of your "reading" is done via audio.

The author averages one review a week, two at the most.

Sample review:
Trail Drive to Montana (Gunsmith #69) by Gary McCarthy writing as J.R. Roberts
Regular readers of this repository of reviews will likely know that I am a big fan of The Gunsmith, which is the only long-running adult Western series still primarily written by a single author under a pseudonym, in this case Robert J. Randisi under the moniker J. R. Roberts. However, he has not written all of them. Randisi stated in a 2007 interview with Saddlebums Western Review that his publisher early on wanted more books than he could turn out on his own. Thus, around 30 of the first 100 were contracted from other authors to fulfill the twelve-a-year quota.

Later, I learned from an interview on Western Fiction Review that author Gary McCarthy, who had written a book I had recently enjoyed called The Pony Express War, had been one of those writers. (He reportedly wrote four Gunsmith novels.) As I enjoy cattle-drive novels, I chose McCarthy's first for the series, Trail Drive to Montana, to see if I could detect a difference in styles.

Actually, it was easy. From page one of Trail Drive to Montana, I would at least have known that it was not from the usual author. Randisi has a fast-paced, easy reading style that utilizes punchy dialogue and short, sharp paragraphs. The first paragraph of this book has 20 lines of small text, and there's no real conversation for five pages. This is not a criticism of either style, merely an illustration of how different they are.

McCarthy shows you the whole picture, and this slows things down a bit compared to the norm for this series, but I must admit to the appeal of seeing ex-lawman and professional gunsmith Clint Adams being genuinely articulate instead of simply a man of action. Even the heroine remarks, "You got a fine way with words, Mr. Adams."

She is Mandy Roe, whom Adams discovers after her horse is killed and she is left stranded underneath it. Her father is Bart Roe, the former outlaw pardoned by the governor and now an innovative cattle breeder in his 80s, who still has as fiery a temper as ever. Or, as Clint says, "He's the craziest old son of a bitch I ever saw in my life." (Having a way with words means you sometimes get right to the point.)

The Roes need to drive their herd of special crossbreeds up to Montana, away from the vengeful Moffit clan, seeking revenge for a 25-year-old transgression. The Gunsmith, in no way a cowboy and actually quite proud of the fact, agrees to accompany them on the journey. Unlike typical Texas longhorns, who are known as "rainbow cattle" for the variety of their hues, the Roe herd is exceptionally uniform in size and color, selected for those attributes in the breeding process.

Dr. Thomas Thom, Bart Roe's brother-in-law and an equal partner in the breeding, makes a connection between the longhorns and Americans. As he puts it, "Crossbreeding almost always results in a more vigorous strain of beef. It accounts for much of the American drive and energy. You see, this country is the greatest bunch of crossbred people in the world.... We are not in-bred like many of the old-line European families. We have greater vigor. So does this herd."

McCarthy fills Trail Drive to Montana with the expected level of action (of both types), and an additonal level of description that makes for a richer read than the typical series novel. He is quickly working his way toward an entry on my list of favorite authors, and I look forward to reading more of his work.

Further reading: For another adult Western series novel about a cattle drive, read Longarm on the Goodnight Trail. For more "respectable" novels on the subject, Ralph Compton's Trail Drive series, starting with The Goodnight Trail, is also a winner. And of course, there's the epic of all Westerns, Larry McMurtry's Pulitzer Prize–winning Lonesome Dove, which also centers around a trail drive.

RECENT POSTS:
--Trail Drive to Montana (Gunsmith #69) by Gary McCarthy writing as J.R. Roberts
--Psycho by Robert Bloch (unabridged audio book read...
--Sea Fangs by L. Ron Hubbard (unabridged audio book performed by a full cast)
--Blue-Eyed Devil by Robert B. Parker (unabridged audio book read by Titus Welliver)
--Twilight and New Moon by Stephenie Meyer (unabridged audio books read by Ilyana Kadushin)

_______________________
Check out the following blogs:
Seaborn: Oceanography Blog
Star Trek Report: Space Sciences
Volcano Seven: Treasure and Treasure Hunters
Rush Limbaugh Report

Monday, November 5, 2012

London Ccylist



REVIEWED BY: Ms. Cairo

MY RECOMMENDATION: YES

AMAZON SUBSCRIPTION LINK: London Cyclist, by Andreas

WEB ADDRESS: http://www.londoncyclist.co.uk/

BLOG DESCRIPTION: This personal blog run by Andreas is for commuters in London and everywhere. It aims to help you get the most out of your every day cycle.

MY REVIEW: If you're a bicyclist, or a cyclist, as they say in England, you'll enjoy this blog. If you're planninng on visiting London and want to be able to bike around, you'll love this blog.

Even though the author is in England, and some of what he talks about - accesories and so on, are only available in England, I think this will be of use to all cyclists everywhere, just to know what's out there.

Recommended.

RECENT POSTS:
--Continental City Contact Tyre i.e. Whoooosh!
--What is the best cycling accessory you’ve bought in the past 12 months?
--Barclays cycle hire arrives on the Android
--10 reasons you’ll love the London Cyclist newsletter
--The lessons London can learn from the Velo’V cycle hire scheme

_______________________
Ms. Cairo writes several blogs including:
Seaborn: Oceanography Blog
Star Trek Report: Space Sciences
Topical Murder and Dated Death