We try not to bring it up often, but both our reviewing and our consumer research and reporting are supported in large part by readers' clicking through affiliate links to Amazon.com and buying stuff. It's a strange world. We don't mention it too often because we seriously value the integrity of our reviewing, and we don't ever want to encourage someone to buy something that isn't worth the money, or that wouldn't suit them. It's why people trust us, and we try not to mess with that.

When we do mention it, it's nice when we can offer a real value to readers in exchange for helping us out. And I'm writing today to tell you we're pretty excited about having put something together that meets that goal.

We've built a browser toolbar that puts much of our most useful work at your fingertips. Here's what it offers:


ZRecs Guide Ratings: Quick links to ZRecs Guide ratings for the more than 1200 products currently tracked for chemical safety, sorted by consumer age group and by product category.

Amazon Shopper: Drill-down links to dozens of Amazon.com shopping categories, including outlet and sale categories by product type, custom online shops like our Award-Winning Children's Books store (which features every winner and honorable mention from the Newbery and Caldecott Medals currently in print, plus a list of our own honorable mentions that didn't win either one. You'll be amazed to see some of the classics that got passed over - and you'll love having all this great kidlit at your fingertips. You'll also love browsing quickly to relevant sections of Amazon from within your browser - it makes online shopping a breeze, and any purchases made through the toolbar directly benefits ZRecs and our consumer research and reviewing. It's the easy way to help us help you!

Ships Free: Giggle.com offers dozens of "essentials" in a broad range of baby gear categories (from health and safety items to feeding gear to toys and beyond) with free shipping, no minimum order required. We've created a menu of direct links to these categories to check before you buy something elsewhere and pay shipping for it. Purchases through these links (or any purchases on Giggle.com once you get there) support us with a small commission.

Gift Guides: We've made a list and we're checking it twice - it's a list of direct links to the best parent-oriented holiday gift guides from this year and recent years past. Our list includes gift guides from Cool Mom Picks, Wired's GeekDad blog, our own network sites, and others, and we're adding new ones as we find them. Perfect for some last-minute browsing for that perfect holiday gift for the kids in your life. And after the Christmas holidays, we'll update this section seasonally with gift guides for relevant holidays that are coming up - populated each time with the best gift guides we see in the hundreds of blogs we read (or scan) every day. You can support many of these sites by purchasing through links in their gift guides.


ZRecs Safety: Not a power Twitter user? We've added our family safety Twitter feed, @ZRecs_Safety, to our toolbar so you can access our tips and alerts directly from your browser. Read our tweets in full and follow our links without even heading to Twitter!

Giveaways: A static link to the "Ending Soon" section of PRIZEY, where you'll find dozens of blog giveaways that are ending within the next day or so. There's no better way for the casual reader to dip into PRIZEY to try their luck at some great prizes.

Donate to ZRecs: We've established a special donation link to enable anyone to contribute directly to support us in our work. Donations are not tax-deductible, but offer us a direct means of support from our readers and help preserve our consumer-driven focus and editorial independence.

Once installed, you can hide or uninstall the ZRecs Toolbar at any time. It works in Firefox, Internet Explorer, and Safari browsers. We've had readers testing it for a while now and they have provided some great feature feedback as well as doing browser and OS troubleshooting (no troubles found). Any time you browse to Amazon using this toolbar, you can shop knowing that a portion of your purchase is sent to support one of the hardest-working consumer blogs for parents.

To try out the ZRecs Toolbar and put some of the web's best holiday shopping recommendations, ZRecs safety guidance and ZRecs Guide lookup, easy Amazon browsing, and giveaway links at your fingertips, download the toolbar here. We'll add other product guides to the Amazon Shopper menu as we develop them, including product recommendations from our archives, as well as content developed in response to reader feedback.

If you aren't interested in a browser toolbar (although we think you'd like it if you tried it) you can still support us this holiday season and beyond by doing your Amazon shopping through this link or any link on our site (including the Amazon search box in the lefthand column on Z Recommends), and we'll get a commission on any sale, and you can reach our direct donation page here.

And to everyone who has been asking, we are doing our best to get our fifth 2009 gift guide online - everyone in our house is now finally getting over a very bad two-week cold. And sinus infection, for some... Hence our relative quietude on the blog this past week. Thanks for noticing, and we're looking forward to happy holidays with a scaled down (live, potted) tree and a new burst of family energy just in time for Christmas!