Welcome.
Question: What is this place?
Answer: A Big Wind is a community blog and forum with one mission and many goals.
Our mission: Hurricane protection through consumer protection, community involvement, and commerce.
Who are we and why are we doing this?
A Big Wind is part labor of love, part hobby, part business venture and last but not least, a chance to give a part of us back to our community. By trade we’re interactive marketers and citizen journalists, a husband and wife team who love working with the latest technologies like weblogs (blogs) and forums (discussion boards) to help build online communities that enable honest, diverse conversations to take place. We’re not Hurricane experts but we are expert researchers who know how to use blogs and other online tools to organize and present useful content to people like you. We are building an environment that will enable experts in the Hurricane protection field to connect with people looking for answers. Sites like A Big Wind allow you to fully participate in creating the content and community for the site. In fact, we’re nothing without you. You can get involved by asking questions, answering questions, sharing your experiences, writing reviews of products, and sharing stories of the good and bad you’ve encountered with Hurricane protection.
Example: A consumer asks a question about how to protect an existing roof structure from wind damage and an experienced engineer or general contractor answers their question. Everyone else who comes to the site can learn and contribute to the exchange by posting comments and questions on the blog, forum, or both. This formula works well on the web and we think there are enough people searching for Hurricane protection information across Hurricane Country to power a community like this. More than enough.
Our specific focus is on finding good products and services to provide Hurricane protection for your home or small business while also highlighting the companies and individuals in the industry that help you get what you need. There are tons of reputable businesses standing by to help you, but at the same time A Big Wind hopes we can warn people about scams and crooks that are just out to separate you from your money.
We’ll maintain a highly independent editorial focus and our community will ensure that everyone, including A Big Wind, keeps everything on the up-and-up. There are no stockholders to please or CEO’s to pucker-up to, and no lobbyists or special interest groups that have influence over our decisions – this is a real grass roots effort. We’re here to serve those individuals that need help with Hurricane Protection, and along the way we can see where by doing this we can also help charities, advertisers, agencies, or associations, because of the community we’re helping to build. We’ll use any money we make on A Big Wind to pay our expenses and we’ll make sure that at least 10% of any profits go back into Hurricane related charities.
Here’s some other stuff you may want to know about us. A Big Wind is a project of EXCELER8. You can learn more here about EXCELER8, our interactive marketing agency in West Palm Beach, Florida.
Here’s some more information about the policies that we’ve developed so far to help govern our Big Wind community.
Disclaimer: The content presented on A Big Wind Weblog and forum is intended for informational purposes only. For Emergency situations and/or decisions, please refer to your local Emergency Management Office.
A Big Wind may have business relationships with companies who pay us to place advertisements on our Weblog or Forum. We use the revenue from these relationships to help offset the costs of developing quality consumer hurricane protection information. Further, A Big Wind is committed to giving back to the community by giving 10% of all profits to charitable organizations and relief efforts that directly help Hurricane victims or help promote Hurricane safety.
Advertisements Clearly Identified
We believe it is important for you to be able to distinguish advertisements and for this reason, all advertisements and sponsorship acknowledgments are separated from our consumer information.
Advertisements on ABigWind.com may include offers from third parties as well as “in-house” advertisements that will link you to hurricane and consumer protection information we wish to highlight.
Clicking On Advertisements
If you click on a third-party advertisement, you will be leaving ABigWind.com and will be directed to the advertiser’s site. Be aware that A Big Wind has no control over the practices of other Web sites. Your computer may receive cookies from other sites and you will not be protected by A Big Wind’s privacy policies.
At times, when you click on a third-party advertisement, a box may pop up asking you to respond to a survey or poll or answer a question. These boxes are controlled by the advertiser; information you enter into these boxes is submitted to the advertiser, not to A Big Wind.
Editorial Independence
A Big Wind maintains absolute editorial independence. Like most other commercial Web sites, A Big Wind receives funding from third parties who pay for the right to advertise their companies and products on our site. This funding supports A Big Wind’s efforts to develop comprehensive and credible hurricane and consumer protection information. At times, third parties pay for the right to sponsor certain areas of information on our site. A Big Wind may agree to develop information about a certain topic in return for this sponsorship. However, A Big Wind develops this information in accordance with our editorial policy and practices; sponsors have no editorial input or influence on the information itself. Advertisers and sponsors also have no influence over the order of the listing of responses to a post on our site or forum.
A Big Wind Does Not Endorse Products
The appearance of third-party advertisements, sponsorship acknowledgements, or editorial links to third party products on ABigWind.com or its forum is not a guarantee or an endorsement by A Big Wind or any of our content partners, of the organization, product or service or the claims made for the product or service in such advertisement, sponsorship acknowledgement, or editorial link.
Types Of Advertisements Not Accepted
A Big Wind does not accept pop-up advertisements. A Big Wind does not accept advertising that we know either contains false or misleading claims or promotes ineffective or dangerous products.
Advertisements Are Not Targeted To You
Advertisers and sponsors may target their messages to specific categories within our site, but A Big Wind does not target advertisements to individual users on our site. In other words, we do not use personal information about you to determine which advertisements you will see when you visit our site.
No Advertorials
A Big Wind does not accept “advertorial” articles. In other words, our site does not display hurricane and consumer protection articles provided by companies who advertise on our site. More information is available about how our consumer health articles are developed.
Sharing Aggregate User Information
A Big Wind may share aggregated, anonymous statistical information regarding site usage and traffic patterns with our advertisers and sponsors. Information in these aggregated summary reports cannot be linked to you individually. Any information provided by you to the advertiser is not controlled by A Big Wind.
This policy was effective on June 1, 2006 and may be updated at any time.