2008 has arrived, and we wanted again to wish all the readers, visitors, commentators and more a Happy and Safe New Year! During this year, we attempted to provide material which is interesting, informative and also fun to read - hopefully this was achieved.

A few moments before the new year is at our doorstep, we would like to introduce our most popular posts based on your feedback, comments and views. Furthermore, also included are some of our own personal favorites.

Any comments, feedback, suggestions and more regarding this list or anything else are more than welcome. If you find that any of your favorite posts are not included, please let us know which those are.

• Build Your Own Home Cinema Projector - A Do It Yourself project with video.
• Divx Pro Free Download is Available for a Limited Time - The Limited Time may have passed, but it may be worth it to check.
• Bring Sunshine to Your Room with Bright Blind - A cool frame concept mimicking the look of an actual window.
• Sleeptracker Watch Wakes You Up When You Are Ready - A wrist watch which tracks your sleeping patterns in order to wake you up rested and refreshed.
• Never Say Cheese Again - This Digital Camera takes pictures only when the subject is smiling.
• How to Boost Your Cellular Signal - A hack to enable you to increase your cellphone reception.
• Increase Your Wifi Connection by Yourself - A few ways illustrating simple DIY projects to increase your Wireless connection.
• The Terminator Revisited with an Exoskeleton Suit - An Exoskeleton suit which grants the user additional strength and abilities.
• A Mini Spy Camera Hidden in a Pen - A cool, little gadget to take videos in a hidden way.
• How to Hack a 12 Volt Battery- This easy and amazing battery hack saves money.
• Self Destructing USB Flash Drive by Ironkey- A highly encrypted and safe USB Flash Drive.
• Spybot Search and Destroy Easter Egg - A free game is hidden in Spybot Search and Destroy.
• Mario Brothers Theme Using Tesla Coils - Just like it says, the awesome and extremely popular Mario Bros. theme using electric Tesla coils.
• Go Green with USBCell Rechargeable Batteries - Environment friendly batteries, which are charged using the USB port.
• A Robotic Luggage that Follows You - An electronic luggage system that will follow behind you without physical effort on your behalf.
• Very Artistic Hand Carved Wooden PC Case- A beautiful handmade project.

and some of our personal favorites are:

• iPod as a Painkiller - Title says it all.
• Dear Facebook: Enough with the Applications! -Facebook applications are created for fun or productivity, but sometimes they are a nuisance and a waste of our time.
• Control All Your Messenger Services in One Account - A free software to combine different messenger services into one place for extra convenience.
• Your Cellphone May Be Your Flight’s Boarding Pass - The video illustrates a different solution for boarding our planes.
• How to Make Your Own Lie Detector - A fun video presenting a Do It Yourself project of making a handy lie detector.
• The Nintendo Wii Brings People Together - It may be the reason the Nintendo Wii is so popular.
• Improvise Drumbeats in Real Time Action with a Robot - An amazing video of a robot playing off of another person’s drum beats. The two end up playing together.
• Monopoly Electronic Banking Edition without the Paper Money - A new edition of the popular board game, but with memory enabled calculators to keep an efficient count of player’s finances.
• Connect the Brix Phones together for a Larger Media Screen - A spectacular concept which envisions to enable specific phones to be connected, making a larger and more capable media screen. It may then be used for gaming, TV and video.
• Recall This! -There are products recalls almost everyday. Does that seem right?
• Are Chimps Better in Technology? - This great video shows a chimp’s amazing response to memory and logic tests.
• Recover Your Stolen Gadgets with iHound Software - a simple solution in case your portable electronics are lost or even stolen.
• Half a Lemon - Our products seem to work right only half the time. This kind of makes them Half Lemons!

Thank you very much.

- The Walyou Team

Monday December 31st, 2008

As the Holiday Season is upon us, all of us at Walyou would like to wish you Happy Holidays and a Happy New Year!

It has been a great year for us, and we have done so much. We opened Walyou, made some new friends, and received wonderful suggestions and feedback from all our readers.

We thank you for all your support and opinions throughout the way and appreciate you coming back.

So have a great time with family and friends during this wonderful time of the year, and hope next year will be just as great if not better.

Thanks to chrisb42491 for the picture.

It’s Blog Action Day! Today is a day where over 14,000 blogs have agreed to take part and write about one issue - Our Environment. While many would agree that this is an important cause, only true intentions would suffice.

We have recently read a wonderful post by Kate entitled “Going Green to Make Green”, where she discusses whether this ‘Green’ trend is just a fad. It seems that the essence of environmental awareness is truly valuable, but many overvalue it. A study by GFK Roper Consulting about environmental awareness confirms the previous statement by figures like the following:

Over 70% of respondents claim that the environment influences most of their commercial decisions, including where they shop, invest their money and more. 40% of Americans are willing to pay more for a product that is perceived to be better to the environment although 55% agree that most of these are not actually better. Furthermore 74% believe these products are too expensive and 61% believe they don’t work as well as others.

Instead of over evaluating, we believe in discussing and promoting products that are good for the environment AND practical and efficient for the everyday consumer. For a product to be beneficial, it should help the environment and the consumer simultaneously. In this situation, the individual will be prone to help and understand more.

There are many companies that produce tech products, consumer electronics and gadgets who are taking advantage of this Green hype and leveraging on the fact that as long as a ‘Green’ tag is within a product description or title, sales would increase. Are all the companies concerned about the environment or perhaps just ride on the bandwagon of this growing trend? Can we truly determine which products help the cause, and which are in it for the money?

We previously posted about USB-rechargeable batteries. While these are somewhat expensive, they are truly practical and environment-friendly. Moreover, in how to fight global-warming from your desktop , Local Cooling offers simple software which tracks your energy usage and proposes energy saving solutions that help you save money while helping the environment.

In order for something to truly receive the Green stamp it must answer to the “WIIFM” (What’s In It For Me). If it does so with the consumer, only then will it’s Green nature be perceived as an advantage over another less environment-friendly alternatives.

With so many electronics out there claiming they are for the Green Cause, we would like to hear about the ones that actually are. Only we as consumers can truly say which of our so-called environment friendly electronics we believe actually help us as well. Please let us know your opinions and thoughts about different ‘Green’ products, for we would like to write additional posts about them.

Hello everyone,

It may be a bit sentimental, but we are excited to publish our 100th post. We want to personally thank all our readers for visiting, commenting and giving us great feedback for us to improve upon.

Due to our reader’s suggestions, we have changed our original categories, added a few more and changed the interface a bit. Our interaction with the visitors and bloggers has increased within our own Blog and other’s as well. We feel great about this and wanted to give a heads up to all of you.

In case you weren’t aware, Walyou is inspired by users…so please continue. Let us know your opinions and suggestions as a comment, a quick feedback (on the right) or personally contact us.

Thank you again,

The Walyou Team

We previously mentioned the celebration of Blog Day (Technorati Tag: BlogDay)

As promised, here are our five picks of Blogs:

• 1938media Loren Feldman is a little off the wall. He tapes his opinions of different subjects that are sometimes humorous and other times hostile. His abrasive yet honest presentations are definitely full of valuable content, which are sometimes also thought provoking. One may admit that his thought patterns on the different subjects are very creative.

• Blonde2.0 is a great place for Online Entrepreneurs. She writes about online communities, social networks, and provides interesting commentary on the latest developments in the world of Web 2.0. Furthermore, she personally responds to her user’s comments, which gives a genuine personal feel to her Blog.

• Doane Paper is versatile in the posts it offers. Some of its previous posts include: recommendations of personal music list selections, reviews and announcements of various accessories, touching current events and also information about its own designed doane paper. The latter is writing paper which “combines the benefits of lined and grid paper onto a single sheet”

• The Marketing Nirvana Blog of Mario Sundar is an interesting area to read about Community Evangelism. He also owns the same position on LinkedIn, the online professional network. A number of intriguing areas are touched here, such as: communities, social networks, and marketing. For those interested in such subjects, Mario posts remarkable articles that include actual valuable industry information. He is also very good at responding to questions of the readers.

• Reviews and More As the title suggests, a place for reviews and more. Easy and fun to read reviews of many different subjects, such as books, music, websites, movies, TV shows, and more. The posts are well written and provide actual value to the reader.

Please take a look at these, and we hope you enjoy them. In addition, we would like to hear of other Blogs that other’s are reading as well. So please let us know of your five favorites and/or any you recommend to others.

Thank you,

The Walyou Team                                                                              

On August 31st, 2007 Walyou
will join many world-wide in the
celebration of Blog Day. This is
a wonderful experience, for it is
a time for Bloggers throughout
the world to pay respect to other
Bloggers. On this specific day,
participants will post their top
5 favorite Blogs for all their visitors to see. In turn this will allow readers to leap around and discover new, unknown Blogs. Since this happens only once a year, please check back for our personal list. Who knows? you may discover a new Blog, or find out we read the same ones as you. Our personal recommendations will be presented with their links and a brief description.

If you are also a Blogger that celebrates Blog Day, please send us a link. We would like to view your recommendations as well.

Thank You!
For more information please check out Blog Day and Technorati.

We are still working on the website but have launched our Blog meanwhile. Opening up this Blog before actually completing the website is somewhat unusual, but we figured it’s never too early to give value and receive feedback from our future users.

Walyou will be a place to store your information and share your knowledge about the electronic products you own.

Picture yourself not having to dig through your pile of old papers for support information about your products. Imagine a place where, just like searching for friends on Facebook and adding them to your list, you could add your new laptop, digital camera or game console to an account and simply receive relevant information about how to deal with its quirks. This community surrounding your products enables you to connect with others who own the same products, to share knowledge not only when problems occur but also when you just want to explore and have fun. This is what we are working on 24/7.

Come check the Blog from time to time to follow our latest developments and help us with your suggestions.

Thank You!

We are working on the website and will update you on the progress. This blog will be used for information we would like to share with you:

• In Announcements, we will keep you posted on anything that is new about Walyou.
• Tips and Tricks consists of additional uses we have found for your products, whether it is a feature you didn’t know existed, or another way to use the product.
• Discussions are aimed to begin conversations on important areas. This is the place to vent and share how you feel about the topic.
• We use the term Tumbleweeds for anything we found that did not fit in the previous categories. Like Tumbleweeds are plants that break away from their roots and scatter their seeds far and wide, so is our string of short posts of pictures, links, videos and such that may be fun and informative.

You may find more information about us and even contact us through this blog.

Thank you,

The Walyou Team