MyShoppingPal.com Blog

Diamond Ring Buying Guide

When you buy a diamond ring, the first thing to consider is the budget. Once you decide on your budget there are two aproaches to buying diamond ring. In the first approach, you pick a loose diamond that fits your budget and then you find a ring design and setting that enhances the beauty of the stone. In the second approach, you decide on the design first and then you find the appropriate stone and setting for it.

1. Diamond Design:Diamond RIngs  come in many designs:  solitaire ring, a ring with a number of stones, or an open-work lattice ring in which the diamonds flow along the lines of the setting.  You can also add  gemstones sapphires or emeralds to the ring. Depending your personal style modern, vintage, floral, romantic or more contemporary, you may pick different design. 

2. If you have a design in your mind. It will be easier for you to decide what shape of diamond you want. Diamonds come in various shapes: round, princess, emerald, radiant, oval, pear, marquise, heart, asscher, and cushion. If you decide to pick the stone first by focussing on the 4Cs of diamond quality, you can pick the shape which provides you better quality diamond for the same price.

3. When you select the diamond stone, you need to focus on the 4Cs of diamond quality  and make sure that the merchant provides a certificate for it.

4. Once you have decided on the design, shape, and 4Cs of diamonds, the final thing to consider is the setting for the diamond. You want the setting to show off the beauty of your diamond and goes well with the design that you have in mind for your diamond ring.

MyShoppingPal.com's personalzed shopping search engine appriases the quality and price of diamond ring and all stones in them. MyShoppingPal.com also has one of the largest inventory of Diamond Rings on the Internet and it gets products from all premium stores on the Internet. It categorizes jewelry in three subcategories: regular jewelry, designer jewelry, and wedding jewelry.

With its personalized intelligent search engine, MyShoppingPal.com helps you find your perfect ring at the best price from any store on the Internet.

Different Types Of Diamond Settings

Prong Settings: A prong setting is the one most often used to hold a solitaire. A prong setting puts the emphasis on the diamond and not the metal supporting it. The purpose of any setting is to hold the diamonds securely in the mounting and at the same time allow light to enter the diamonds for maximum brilliance. The prong setting can also be found in a few variations. V-prongs are generally used for diamond shapes with points -- such as the corners of the square Princess Cut or the tip of the pear shaped diamond. The v-prong provides additional protection to the points which are often thin, fragile, and subject to chipping if left exposed. Another variation on the prong setting is called the common prong. Here, the metal wire is grooved at the top, and is used to hold two gemstones by their side (girdle).

Bezel setting: A bezel setting is a collar of precious metal that wraps around the diamond.

Channel setting: Channel setting is also used to set round diamonds. Channel setting offers a sleek, elegant appearance, though the end result is a very different look. Channel setting is also used when there is no center stone at all. The placement of baguettes around an entire band is a beautiful choice for a wedding band, one that goes well with a matching ring set with a diamond solitaire.

There are many more options for settings and will depend on the shape of the diamond and the design of the ring.

Buying Guide: Diamond Beauty, Quality, and Price

The price of diamonds depends on their beauty and rarity. In technical terms, four factors Clarity, Color, Cut, and Carat Weight are used to characterize diamonds.

Clarity: it tells you how clear or clean the diamond is. Usually most diamonds will contain some sort of blemishes (imperfections outside of a diamond), and inclusions (imperfections inside a diamond). The clarity grades established by Gemological Institute of America (GIA) are FL, IF, VVS1, VVS2, VS1, VS2, SI1, SI2,I1, I2, and I3, where the best is Flawless (FL) and the worst is I3. In general, it is recommended people buy diamonds with at least SI1 clarity. If you shop around, you can buy SI1 for the same price that most I2 stones are sold for.

Color: Diamonds come in all colors of the rainbow, from violet to shades of blue, brown, gray, and orange. The colored diamonds are rare and very expensive. The chances are that the diamonds you will see in your shopping will be white or yellow, the whiter the diamond the better it is. The yellow color comes from nitrogen, and as a rule the more yellow the stone, the less value it has. The color grading scale changes from D to X for white and yellow diamonds and Z is the grading for color diamonds. D is the whitest and the most valuable, X is dark yellow and least expensive. Z grade and beyond is for the colored diamonds, which are rare and most expensive. It is recommended to go for color grades H or I. Once mounted they will look as good to the average person as the higher grades, without costing a bundle. The average diamond purchased in the US is color grade M or N, but the customer is usually told it is higher.

Cut: This refers to not only the shape of the stone, but proportions, factors which determine the sparkle of the diamond. The GIA grading system for cut is Ideal, Very Good, Good, and Fair. It is recommended going for Very Good cut, which is pretty good and does not have the hefty price tag on it as an Ideal cut will have.

Carat Weight: This is actually the weight of the stone, not its dimensions.

Diamond Certificates: There are many agencies that certify the diamond qualities. The best one being GIA followed closely by AGS. EGL comes third, and then there are many more. It is recommend to buy jewelry with GIA or AGS certificates. EGL is acceptable.  The certificates are doubly valuable in online shopping for the diamonds.

MyShoppingPal.com's personalized shopping search engine analyzes the quality for all diamond jewelry items and help you find premium quality items at the best price.

How Does MyShoppingPal.com Find Your Perfect Dress?

When we built MyShoppingPal.com personalized shopping engine, the first category we tackled was women clothing and the first product that we added was women dresses. It is probably one of the most complex items that we have analyzed. Our personalized engine considers your body charactertsics, your preferences, and personal style to help you find what dresses will look good on you and go well with your taste. The body characterstics inlude body type, colors, height type, tummy type, shoulder type, neck type, face shape, leg type, bottom type, bust type, and arms type to figure what type of dresses will look good on you.

Our recommendations focus on highlighting your strengths and camouflaging your weak points.

Let’s look at women with different body types to see what kind of recommendations it will come up with. If you have curvy figure, it will try to highlight your curves and minimize the details at the bottom and top with dresses such as wraps, shifts, A-lines, and belted shirtdresses. If you have pear shape, it will try to pull attention to the top with dresses such as empire waist. It will add details at the top and keep the details at the bottom to minimum. If you have column shape figure, it will focus on enhancing the curves with bias cuts and horizontals and more details at the bust and bottom.

If you are short, it focusses on incorporating vertical details and patterns such as piping and vertical lines. If you have full bust, it will focus on lengthening your neckline and draw the eye up to the face with open necklines such as V-necks and sweetheart necklines. If you have small bust, the bust defining empire waist styles works better.

MyShoppingPal.com looks at your hair color, skin color, and eye colors and tones to figure what types of colors will work best for you. We also take into consideration occasion to make occasion based recommendations. Above all, the personalized search engine gives high priority to the features that go well with your preferences. Finally, MyShoppingPal.com consideres your personal style to figure what type of fashion trends will work well for you.

MyShoppingPal.com also has the biggest inventory of all premium brands on the Internet and we have partnered with all premium merchants to bring the widest selection of premium brand and designer brand dresses. The large inventory of products helps us find your perfect dresses from all stores on the Internet.

Popular Brands for Women Dresses

1. Nicole Miller
2. Jones New York
3. Donna Ricco
4. Gap
5. Lands' End
6. Calvin Klein
7. Bcbg Max Azria
8. DIESEL
9. Eddie Bauer
10. Kenneth Cole New York
11. Ralph Lauren
12. Tommy Hilfiger

Designer Brands for Women Dresses

1. Alexander Mc Queen
2. Diane von Furstenberg
3. Dolce & Gabbana
4. GUESS
5. Gucci
6. DKNY
7. Versace
8. Marc Jacobs
9. Betsey Johnson
10. JOHN GALLIANO
11. Stella McCartney
12. Valentino
13. Prada
14. Christian Dior
15. Tadashi
16. MAXSTUDIO

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How MyShoppingPal.com Finds Your Perfect Fitting Jeans?

MyShoppingPal.com, a personalized shopping search engine, today launched an improved tool to help you find your perfect fitting jeans. The tool has support for all departments, including women jeans , men jeans jeans, and kids jeans jeans.

This tool uses the fitting, leg type, rise and wash type, and brand intelligence for jeans to figure whether the jeans will look good on you, and fit you right. It also combines the expert knowledge with your personal style and preferences to find items that work well for you.

The leg type of the jeans like boot cut, straight, tapered, wide leg or flare does the balancing act for your figure which plays a major role in maintaining proportions. For say, someone with broad shoulders, wide hips or a big bottom can balance out the figure with flared leg or boot leg.

The jeans fitting, which can be anything from regular, slim, and extra slim to relaxed, is one of the major factors in deciding the suitability of the jeans for you. For example, an extra slim fit will work wonders on someone with long and lean legs but at the same time, they can be a disaster for someone who carries bulk on the legs or derriere because they highlight the original shape of your legs and bottom.

The rise of the jeans which ranges from low, meduim to high is an important factor in finding the right fit at the tummy and the seat. The rise of the jeans also makes a big difference in balancing out the torso if you are short-waisted or long-waisted.

The rule of thumb while selecting the right wash type is that, the dark wash is very slimming while light wash can add some volume.

Apart from these main attributes of jeans which you can choose easily, there are other brand specific differences which vary as per the brand. Different brands usually have different standards for fitting across seat, hips and thighs.

This virtual tool uses this knowledge and brand intelligence to find your perfect jeans. MyShoppingPal.com also has the biggest selection of regular and designer jeans from all online stores and for all name brands. If you are looking for specific brands, here are links that will directly take you to the brands you are interested in:

Women Regular Jeans

1. Levi’s
2. Gap
3. Diesel
4. Lucky
5. Style & Co
6. Gloria Vanderbilt
7. Tommy Hilfiger
8. Polo Ralph Lauren
9. Lee
10. Mavi

Women Designer Jeans

1. True Religion Jeans
2. Seven 7
3. Citizens of Humanity
4. 7 for All Mankind
5. Rock & Republic
6. Joe’s Jeans
7. Habitual
8. Hudson
9. Evisu
10. Earnest Sewn

Men Regular Jeans

1. Gap
2. Levi's
3. Lee
4. Diesel
5. Wrangler
6. Tommy Hilfiger
7. Rock & Republic
8. Hugo Boss
9. Mavi
10. Polo Ralph Lauren

Men Designer Jeans

1. True Religion Jeans

2. Evisu

3. Energie

4. Paper Denim

5. G-Star

6. Lucky Brand

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Personalization: Collaborative Filtering vs Prediction Based on Benefit Theory

Recommender systems such Amazon and Netflix use collaborative filtering to automate the process of recommending products and services to consumers. The collaborative filtering systems produce personal recommendations by computing similarity between your preference and others. The idea is simple. If you need to select an item from the multitude of options with which you don’t have any experience, you will rely on the choices made by other people who have same preference and tastes as yours. Most collaborative filtering systems use the following methods:

1. Record the preferences of a large group of people.
2. Select group of people whose preferences are similar to yours using a similarity metric. These are the people who have same taste in things as you do.
3. Recommend options to you which other people who are in the same group as you prefer or like.

This type of recommendation systems have known to really work well for books, music, movies, etc. On the other hand, they don’t work well for a number of product categories such as apparel, jewelry, and beauty products. The primary reason for this is that these systems rely on users’ actions such as purchases, rating assignments, etc to predict their preferences. This type of user input tells you what type of items they like, but it does not tell why they liked these items. The product categories such as books, music, movies, etc are one dimensional in nature. It is easy to predict what user will like by observing a couple of purchases made by him.

On the other hand, the categories such as apparel and jewelry are multi dimensional in nature. A complex analysis goes through buyers’ mind when they make such purchases. For instance, a woman may decide to buy a dress for a number of reasons such as its color, its style, its patterns, sleeve type, cut, length, and how fashionable it is. Many times the buyer doesn’t know why she liked one particular item more than other, but she has feeling that this is right item for her based on her personal experience. To determine these preferences regarding dresses for her will require hundreds of data points and which in real life don’t exist. Not only that the preference determination will require modeling each product separately. For these reasons, collaborative filtering does not work for a number of product categories.

There is another approach to personalization that uses prediction based on benefit theory.

The idea for this method is based on the intuitive fact that if you find the item for a user which intrinsically benefits them, the chances are very high they will like it and appreciate it. In other words, when people buy the products they want to maximize their benefits from it. For instance, if you find a woman a dress which looks good on her and goes well with her style, the chances are high that she will like it. The implementation of this method requires explicit characterization of the users to predict what will benefit them. This method does not require figuring out explicitly or indirectly about user preferences for various attributes of a product, but it does require asking users a few questions that can help characterize them.

MyShoppingPal.com uses this approach in its personalized search engine. When a user wants to shop for an item, the search engine asks for a few questions which help characterize the user with respect to the selected item. The information needed to evaluate the benefit is different for different product categories. For clothing items, body type, height type, and personal style is needed, while for skin care products skin-type and skin-problem related information is needed. This information about the user is used to predict what will benefit them the most. For clothing, the systems tries to find items that look good on the wearers and will go well with their style. For skin care product, it focuses on the medicinal value of the product for the user.

MyShoppingPal.com has enhanced this method with the incorporation of the most common preference attributes such as favorite brands to enhance further the value of its recommender system. Also women can shop for  formal dress, halter dress, cocktail dress, evening dress from MyShoppingPal.com

The prediction based on benefit is a lot more accurate than collaborative filtering, and can be used to predict what users will like for complex product categories. The challenging part of this solution is coming up with a right and small set of questions that will help  characterize users without making them feel overwhelmed with them.

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Top Deals of The Week

Here are the top deals of the week:

    1. From Nov 1-7, 10-50% Off Sale At Macy's 

    2. Free Shipping, free Return, 110% price guarantee, and extra 10% off coupon from  ShoeBuy 

    3. Save extra 15 percent or $10 off coupon  from   florsheim.com

    4. Get a great discount of 15% on Men's Watches Coupon at Ultra Diamonds

    5. 10% off $50 or more purchase from Diamond Harmony

    6. 50-70% Discount Sale at  Avon

To check other sales events and coupon, please visit our deals section.

Earn Cash While You Search For your Favorite Items

Today, MyShoppingPal.com is starting cash back and referral program for beta users. All beta users will earn cash back reward on their purchases and friends' purchases for up to one year after they join MyShoppingPal.com.  It is unique program, because our search engine not only helps you find what works best for you from your favorite stores and  brands, but we also reward you for finding your perfect items with our search engine.

Our first goal has been to get all possible products from all premium merchants and brands. We don't earn commission on all products. A few merchants don’t permit the sharing of commission. The products that are eligible for commission sharing are marked with the reward eligibility message on them. For these products, MyShoppingPal.com will pass 40% of its earnings to everyone who is the beta member of MyShoppingPal.com. These rewards are in addition to any promotion or coupons the store might offer for the product.

We are also starting friend referral program. Now you will receive 20% of all our earnings on your friends’ purchases for one year. This is our way of saying thank you for your referrals.To refer a friend to MyShoppingPal.com, you need to login into your MyShoppingPal.com . You will see "refer friends" link at the top. If you click on this link, it will bring up the form that will walk them through the friend referral process. It also allows you to quickly retrieve your friend contact list from your Yahoo, Gmail, Hotmail, or AOL accounts.