The internet is a huge shopping mall and jewelry is one of the most popular items purchased. This may surprise you but there is a very simple reason for it – online jewelry merchants don’t have any overheads to cover rental so they can sell items at a cheaper price than an actual store.

So you can find an engagement ring with a much more agreeable price tag! There is also the convenience of buying online, why spend a whole day trawling the shops in the rain when you can type in exactly what you are looking for and within seconds have an entire range fitting your requirements right in front of you. So you have window web-shopped and now you think you found ‘the one’? With a few clicks it will be on its way to your doorstep! Couldn’t be easier!

But is it safe? What happens if it gets lost in the post? How can you be sure it’s a real diamond? What if you change your mind? Don’t panic, there are a number of ways to ensure the whole process runs smoothly. Below is a checklist of important points you need to be satisfied with before ordering. Take your time to find your perfect ring – it’s for life after all! Good luck!

#1

The first thing you should do is find a reputable online jeweler. Do some research online to find a long standing, company. Even better if you can find one with some credentials, for example Forbes magazine have listed Blue Nile as the best online jeweler for several years running. If you use Google to search the first few listings in your results will be the most popular companies who have been around the longest, and so are likely to be more reliable.

#2

Once you have a found a company you are interested in ordering from, conduct an internet search for feedback from their customers. Check for any negative statements or positive reviews. There may even be a forum on the company’s website where customers can voice their views. This will tell you a lot about the service you should expect to receive from the company. Don’t be scared to ask questions on the forum, if people have had a bad experience they want to share the story to make others aware.

#3

You need to know what you are buying. Whether it’s gold, silver or diamonds there are various grades and if you have done your homework you are less likely to be fooled into buying fake jewelry online. Search the internet for information, there’s lots of sites that will explain in simple terms.

#4

If you have spotted your dream ring on an online jewelry store but you’re hesitant to make the purchase, call their 800 number and have a chat with a customer service advisor to ensure they reliably provide support and service.

By Georgette Grey

If you’ve suffered a mishap at the salon and your hair isn’t how you wanted, or worse, has gone terribly wrong, you’re going to want to fix it straight away. Whether the stylist’s symmetry was a bit off, the colorist left the dye on for just slightly too long, or your bangs aren’t in the style you wanted them, most problems can be solved. You can’t get your old hair back once it’s been cut, but you can easily change how it looks.

The first thing you should do, once you’ve dried your eyes and put on a cute hat, is go back to the salon. As kindly as possible, explain that there’s a problem with your hair, and if there’s anything they can do about it. You shouldn’t be charged, and more often than not, the stylist will be pleased to help you out. Try not to feel uncomfortable or awkward – you’ve paid for a service, after all, you should get what you asked for. If you paid for a sweater and one of the sleeves was missing, you’d take it straight back to the store, wouldn’t you?

Perhaps you’re really not comfortable with complaining (and that’s okay, some people aren’t), or you don’t trust the salon you visited to come anywhere near your hair again, for which no one can blame you! In this case, you may have to DIY at home. Ask for help from a good friend or close relative if you think you’ll need it. Have adequate mirrors and lighting, invest in a pair of professional hair cutting scissors, perhaps also some grips and styling products. It will all depend on what the problem with your hair is, but with time and care, you can probably come to a solution.

The only exception for this rule is with colored or damaged hair, for which you must visit a salon. Attempting to dye over, or even worse, bleach your hair, is almost always going to result in an unsatisfactory color and a large amount of damage to the hair. Your hair may be “dead,” but you must take care of it with the correct treatments and products. Seek out a warm, welcoming salon that is within your budget, and a friendly stylist who can help you revamp your locks.

If all else fails, you can simply cover up your hair accident with accessories. Disguise a whole head of hair under stylish hats or patterned headscarves, and pin and clip any odd clumps of hair into position with grips, slides, and barrettes. Experiment and see what looks you can come up with – you may just develop a new fondness for fashionable hair accessories. And if you’re really at your wits end with your hair, you can always wear a wig until it grows out. Try to keep positive, remember: it’s only hair, it will grow back, and no one will notice the mistake half as much as you do.

After all the debate over Kate’s Mulberry custom made (or bespoke) green alligator bag I thought we should look into Mulberry’s bespoke bag service for you guys. Basically you choose one of the core Mulberry styles in the skin and hardware of your liking, it is also personalized with your initials engraved on the postman’s lock on the front of the bag to further confirm its owner (you know, in case you are at the SoHo House and some bimbo tries to sneak off with your bag!). The lock-free Calder will be specially fitted with a Mulberry branded plaque on the back of the bag that can be engraved with your initials. In addition, leather initials can be ordered to hang from the handles of the bag and make it truly personal and unique. As for Kate’s bag with the missing exterior front straps that confused so many of you, our Mulberry source said it was an aesthetic decision based on the alligator skin (just as I thought!). Though you are not actually designing a whole new bag, this customization (or bespoke) service allows you to choose the leathers and hardware that best fit your personality and taste! The cost is not that much more and you have to admit, having your own initials on a bag is quite appealing. (More info after the jump!)
See Mulberry styles online!
Bespoke service is available at Mulberry’s London stores (Bond St and Brompton Road)44(0)2072291635, the Rue St Honore store in Paris, as well as New York (Bleeker St and Madison Avenue).

Left: Ledbury In Violet Ostrich Right: East/West Bayswater in Cyprus Ostrich

WHAT IS THE MULBERRY BESPOKE SERVICE?
1. The range of bags are from both women’s and unisex styles.
2. Customers can choose from six classic Mulberry styles: Ledbury,
East West Bayswater, Bayswater, Piccadilly, Brynmore and Calder.
3. These styles are available in a selection of exclusive leathers, including
ostrich and metallics.
4. As part of the Bespoke Service, you can choose to have up to
three initials engraved on either the Postman’s Lock on the outside flap
or on a metal plate fixed to the back of the bag depending on the
bag you choose.
5. For an additional charge, the service also includes the option to
purchase up to three leather initials that hang from the handles of the
bag and are made from matching material.
6. Each bag is made individually by hand in the Mulberry factory in Somerset.
7. The bags will be delivered within 6 to 8 weeks after the order has been
taken if the materials are in stock, and within 14 weeks if the leather has
to be specially ordered.
8. The bags can either be collected from any of the participating stores or
delivered to a home address.

Left: Bayswater in White Patent Right: Brynmore in Soft Tumbled Gunmetal

CHOOSING A STYLE
There are Six classic Mulberry styles you can choose from for this service:

WOMEN’S STYLES
LEDBURY- £495-1,500 / USD $995 – $3,415
EAST WEST BAYSWATER- £595-2,195 / USD$1,195 – $4,409
BAYSWATER- £850-2,700 / USD$1,707 – $5,424

UNISEX STYLES
PICCADILLY- £1,250-4,000 / USD$2,511 – $8,037
BRYNMORE- £595-2,195 / USD$1,195 – $4,409
CALDER- £850-2,700 / USD$1,707 – $5,424

CHOOSING MATERIALS
1. You can choose from a selection of exclusive materials, including patent and ostrich.
2. All leathers are tanned in the UK, Italy or France for Mulberry from premium grade hides.
3. All ostrich leathers are sourced from certified farms.
4. The customer has a choice of silver or pale gold components

CHOOSING AN ENGRAVING
As part of the Bespoke Service, customers can choose to have up to three
initials engraved on either the Postman’s Lock on the outside flap or on a metal
plate fixed to the back of the bag depending on the chosen style.

HANGING LEATHER INITIALS
For an additional charge, up to three initials can be made in the same leather
chosen for the bag. The letters are hung from the bag and are individually cut
and finished in Somerset by local craftsmen.

Photos and Source: Mulberry London

In front of 400 friends and family, and with boyfriend Spencer Pratt at her side, The Hills star Heidi Montag bid a tearful goodbye to her stepbrother Eric O’Hara at a memorial service Wednesday in their hometown of Steamboat Springs, Colo.

“I didn’t write anything down today, just couldn’t. Eric was the best brother I could ask for,” Montag said as she stood at the podium with their other siblings. “He was happy, strong and an amazingly patriotic person. I’ll never forget how he could make me smile. I will remember all the times we had together and cherish all the memories, the goods ones and the bad ones. Eric was a true hero. I love him and I will miss him.”

Montag, who flew back to Colorado after O’Hara, 24, died in a freak accident last Thursday, took solace in her family during the service.

After serviceman from O’Hara’s 82nd Airborne Division gathered around his flag-draped casket to share stories about his military service (O’Hara was a veteran of several combat missions in Iraq and Afghanistan), the family headed across the snow-covered street to the Tugboat Grill and Bar.

In a statement to PEOPLE, Montag said she was just “glad I can be with my family at this time.”

There is either very good or very indifferent news for music fans this morning, as a new service is unveiled at MIDEM, the music industry conference, today. According to The Telegraph, the service has signed up EMI, Sony BMG, Universal Music and Warner Music, providing a combined catalogue of 25 million songs.

courtesy Bed&Breakfast.com

While standard gift certificates for books or music are always great, this year we decided to go a little more exotic. So we scoured the web for the best unusual gift certificate options that no one will forget.

Give the gift of a weekend escape. Bedandbreakfast.com lets you purchase gift certificates redeemable at nearly 4,000 B & Bs nationwide with no expiration or blackout dates. They offer several pretty gift card designs, and they’ll even let you create your own by uploading any photo you choose.

Buyyourfriendadrink.com lets you toast any friend with a certificate card redeemable at over 120 exclusive bars and restaurants in New York, Boston, D.C., Chicago, L.A. and New Orleans.

She’ll feel like she really cleaned up this holiday with a gift certificate for maid service from mollymaids.com.

Fulfill every girl’s wish for a great massage or fabulous facial with a gift certificate from spawish.com, which can be used at over 1500 spas across the country.

We just love signaturedays.com. The web service helps you create an extra special day for a loved one in any region of the country by scrolling through hundreds well-selected adventures and activities. You can give everything from an afternoon of wine tasting, to a historic walking tour, or brunch on a luxe sailing yacht.

Here in the UK we have a website called Not On The High Street which is actually a virtual high street but all the shops are very unusual. I shopped at a few of their shops the day before yesterday and received the items today. How’s that for service?
Take a look at their Christmas range.
The top image is a Christmas Cracker and I understand that only the UK do these at Christmas – you don’t know what you are missing rest of the world

The way it’s working out for our wedding, most of the guests will be from out of town. We just happen to live in an area away from most of our friends and family. *shrug* For this reason, many people aren’t familiar with the area and even for the people who know it a little bit, it can be confusing. For this reason we are providing all of what they might need to know mapped out for all of the events of our wedding weekend. You could use mapquest or google maps but I actually found something much better than BOTH of those combined!

The service I recommend is called WeddingMapper.com. It’s a mapping service specifically designed for occasions such as weddings. It allows you to put virtual markers (in fun little shapes, I might add) at all of the different important locations of the wedding (church/ceremony, reception, hotels, rehearsal dinner, even airports, etc.)

Here is a screen shot of our wedding map by Wedding Mapper:

The service can be hyperlinked to your wedding website OR (if you pay a little extra that’s really not that expensive anyway) you can print actual full color copies of the maps off with every route and every location clearly marked.

I’m pretty sure that any location (in our outside of the US) is game since Wedding Mapper actually uses Google Maps to draft up their maps. It’s great!!! And it’s even more helpful when you’ve got a ton of guests coming in from out of town who aren’t familiar with the area where the wedding will be. Also, as an added bonus, you can upload pictures of your actual locations to your map online so that when guests hover their mouse over the locations, actual pictures of the locations pop up!

• Top female chefs explain why they are a rare breed. — New York Magazine
• Frustrated by bad service? Read this diners’ rights manifesto. — Los Angeles Times
• Tex-Mex is a cuisine worth celebrating, and cask-conditioned beers are making a comeback. — New York Times
• Japanese pubs called izakayas serve tapas-style treats. — San Francisco Chronicle
• Follow the powerful force of tea in China, from the farm to the teapot. —Minneapolis Star Tribune
• Chefs are using black licorice to push the culinary envelope. — Chicago Tribune
• Wines under $4 run the gamut from decent to despicable. — Charlotte Observer
• How to plan a haute Halloween party for adults. — Miami Herald

Source

Is your computer acting like a possessed zombie from hell? Maybe it’s time to call the professionals for a little exorcism. CyberDefender is offering free technical support to anyone on Halloween Day to rid your computer any viruses, zombies, botnets, or any other malware taking up residence in your hard drive. If you think you could use the extra help, give them a call at 877-377-3765 starting on October 31st until Nov. 1st at 9AM PST. Normally, they charge $50 to $100 for this service, but this Halloween you get the special treatment with services that repair malware damage, speed up your system or makes sure your other your security software is working properly. The catch is they’ll try to get your on board as a Cyberdefender customer, but you’re not obligated to sign up for anything, unless that is, a service like this helps you sleep better at night. Mark your calender, and if you decide to use them, come back to tell us about your experience.

I’ve heard of beer of the month clubs that let you sample different microbrews, as well as wine of the month clubs, which are a great way to discover small wineries. Now, I’ve just discovered a similar service for coffee lovers, called Citizen Bean. Guided by the principle of “coffee with a conscience,” Citizen Bean sends its subscribers a new organic or fair-trade coffee each month, selected from micro-roasters all over the US.

The service ranges from $79.99 for four months to $199.99 for an entire year. Each month, you get a full pound of coffee, sent within days of its roasting date, along with assorted coffee-related accessories and treats. Plus, Citizen Bean asks each of its featured roasters to designate a charity, to which CB donates a portion of sales. This would be a great way to branch out from your supermarket offerings, and it would also make a delicious gift for any coffee aficionados in your life. What do you think? Would you use a service like this?

while back AOL began offering it’s free My eAddress service which allowed you to get a custom email address, at the domain name of your choice – as long as it was available. However, if you wanted to use a domain that you already owned with the service, that option wasn’t available. Fortunately, that has changed and the My eAddress now also works for domains that you own. So if you own a domain and are keen on using AOL, you can now hook up an email account @yourdomain with AOL’s email service. And for all you AOL-haters out there, in AOL’s defense, they have recently improved their web mail interface. That and the fact that they offer unlimited storage, makes AOL email actually pretty tempting, whether you care to admit it or not.

With the final three contestants left on Hell’s Kitchen, last night’s episode was by far the most emotional. The chefs proved themselves worthy with a stellar dinner service and seamless teamwork. The tables were turned as Ramsay challenged Bonnie, Jen, and Rock to run the pass (translation: shouting out the orders as they come in, one risotto, two wellingtons, etc). For all this and more – including who paid the cheffies a surprise visit –

read more

I have just learned about the greatest service in the contraceptive field called PillBell and I just could not but share this news with you all! It seems to be such a simple and yet such a genius idea, it’s unbelievable how we lived without this service.

PillBell came up with the great idea of text messaging people when they are scheduled to take their pills, in our case – contraceptive ones. The registration procedure is really easy – just filling in a short form and setting your own schedule for taking the pills. The cost of the service is ridiculously low, just some cents for a text message that will save you time and “effort” in the future.

Out of the 7 girlfriends I polled earlier today ONLY ONE never forgets to take her pills, if needed (although she is a medical student, so her answer might not even be counted :) As for the rest of us – “normal people”, it is really hard to keep in mind the fact that you have to pop up a pill at a certain time every single day.

You would think timing might be not that important, unless… we talk about contraceptive pills, people!

I am not a doctor, but I can assure you that that’s when every hour counts. If you forget to take the pill – in the best case you will not have all the romance you were going to have or, in the worst case, you will not remember about not taking the pill and in a couple of weeks you will be cursing the contraceptive companies for the lack of promised protection…

So, to avoid this unnecessary “troubleshooting” and “problem solving” just set your Bell up at PillBell.com and start enjoying your life without fear and worrying.

This post was sponsored by PillBell.com - the one that cares!

Picture by ee seuu.

Between a office phone, a home phone, a cell phone, and maybe you even have a second cell phone – somehow people still complain that they have a hard time reaching you. Or maybe it’s that you find it annoying to have to check the voicemail for each one of those lines separately. Whatever the scenario, GrandCentral can simplify your communications. The service gives you one single number that rings all of your phones. You also get a single voicemail box for all of those lines, and the ability to check your voicemail on your phone. Plus, GrandCentral gives you the ability to listen to a message while it’s being left. Previously GrandCentral was free if you were using it to consolidate two lines, and there was also a $10 premium plan for consolidating up to 4 lines. The service is currently in beta, and it looks like it was recently acquired by Google and that can only be a good sign.

Perhaps you’ve been using AOL email for your years but you’ve been johnsing after Yahoo mail because of it’s spiffy push email capability. Or maybe you’re a Gmail user that wants to move to AOL. In any case, most of us have been in a situation like one of these – we want to move to another email account provider, but it’s too difficult and confusing to figure out how to transfer all of your contacts, calendar entries, archived emails and folders. That is where TrueSwitch comes in. The service takes care of the headache involved in migrating from one email provider to another, and somehow the most popular email providers will work with the service. And if you have a Yahoo account, you can migrate all your old email accouunt stuff in to Yahoo for free, otherwise the TrueSwitch service retails for $19.95.

Generally I’m always in an a place which has a wifi connection, but occasionally i’ll go on a road trip and I’ll find myself wishing that I had a laptop PC card with an EVDO connection. But each time I’ve determined that it’s not worth spending an extra $80 a month for a card that I really wont use very often. This is why I am so excited to hear about AvisConnect, a new portable Wifi Hotspot service. For $10.95 a day, Avis throw in the Autonet Portable Wifi Hotspot router for your rental car so you can get online while you’re traveling. But wait, it gets cooler. When they say portable, they really mean portable. You can even take the Autonet router with you in to your hotel room. Now considering many hotels charge upwards of $10 a day for internet access, this is really convenient for you and your wallet. Do I ever rent from Avis? No, but this new service alone will probaly cause me to start using them.

New York based company Georgi has offered free chauffeuring services to both Lindsay Lohan and Paris Hilton. Which means they’ve single handedly saved the lives of every person in Los Angeles. A drunk monkey is more qualified to own a driver’s license than these two. I could floor the gas and let my tennis racket steer and I’d end up driving better than them.

And here’s Lindsay Lohan leaving rehab again to go workout with a bunch of friends. And by workout I mean stand on the balcony and wave at people.

Remember we told you about colorful Upstage phones debuting at CeBit in Germany earlier this year? Sprint is launching the Samsung Upstage in lipstick red this Monday, June 18. The phone retails for $99 with a two-year service agreement and $50 service credit. Not bad, considering the phone includes and extedned battery wallet, 1.3 megapixel camera/ camcorder, MicroSD slot, Bluetooth, and music player on the other side of the phone interface. The dual-sided phone has been a popular handset, exceeding sales expectations, as well as winning industry awards from CNET, Popular Mechanics and LAPTOP Magazine.