After some site upgrades this weekend, Cigar Envy is now available in 22 languages.

This site gets a lot of visitors from around the world. Mouse over the small map graphic in the far right column and you will see what I mean.

We have a broad readership in Europe, Asia and the Middle East in addition to North, Central and South America and the Caribbean. The map shows readers over the past six weeks, with dot size representing numbers of people visiting the site from various locations.

We will be switching over from the machine translations currently on the site in the next few weeks thanks to the interest and assistance of volunteers in several countries. I’m working out a special way of thanking them for their generous assistance.

More on that, and details on the new translations, are below the fold.

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I have been using a service called Bloglet to allow Cigar Envy site visitors to subscribe to email notices of new articles and information posted here. That is going to change.

I have been informed that Bloglet is going to cease operation soon, and so I am transferring the subscription service to Feedblitz.

Those of you who are current Bloglet subscribers will be getting an email from Feedblitz soon. It, like Bloglet, is a free service. You will unfortunately need to set up your account with them again, but they are making it especially quick and easy for people registered with Bloglet.

If you haven’t signed up for email updates, but would like to, just check out the Email Subscription heading in the near right column on any page of the site. Enter your email address into the box, click “Go!” and you will receive an email from FeedBlitz asking you to confirm your subscription. This double opt-in system allows me to make sure that no one is signed up for updates unless they really want to be signed up. I hate spam as much as you do.

You can also click on this link to FeedBlitz and sign up for the free email update service there.

This is a good place to mention that some important information for cigar dealers, retailers and manufacturers is below the fold.

Plus some information that will be of interest to everyone on special deals, discounts and free sample cigars.

Plus a photo of Rosanna Arquette that will be of special interest to cigar aficionados.

Just click on the “more” link to read the rest of the article.

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Another modification to the site makes each article available in Spanish, German, French, Italian, Portugese, Arabic, Chinese, Korean and Japanese in addition to English.

It is machine-translation, done on demand, but you can bookmark pages in your language of choice and come back to them later.

In order to translate the site, just click on the appropriate flag in the far right column at the top (above the calendar and well past the picture of Jennifer Tilly smoking a cigar on this page, and Jennifer Aniston smoking on the next page - click More), and the page you are on will magically transform. Another upgrade is in the works that will make every page on the site appear in your chosen language from then on — that should be ready in a week or so.

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The new Cigar Envy Discussion Forums are open.

There is a block in the right column menu that will take you there, or you can click on the link above. The Forums are free, and I hope you will enjoy them.

The new Forums will provide a different level of interaction than takes place here at the main CE blogazine or on the Cigar Envy Deals and Discussion email list at yahoogroups.

Talk about starting cigar passes and trades at the yahoo discussion group led me to set up Member Forums here at the main Cigar Envy site to provide a bit more privacy and a quicker response time than the yahoogroup gives. The active Cigar Pass forms at the discussion board are private, by invitation only from the pass moderators, and can only be viewed by members of each pass group. This way, members can share their home addresses, phone numbers and the like while doing passes without spreading confidential information widely on the web.

To gain admittance to a Cigar Pass, post your interest in the Register For Passes Here Forum and a moderator will admit you to a group as soon as possible. Please do not post your home address of other personal information in the open forums.

As long as I was setting up the Pass Forums, I decided to set up a full message board. There are forums for member reviews of cigars, cigar accessories, and retailers. There is also a General Talk category with areas for politics, humor, disaster relief and other charities and other subjects. Livin’ Large is the are for diversions such as wine, beer, and liquor as well as sports talk, travel, entertainment and more. I’ve also set up some areas for pipe smokers. To protect member privacy, most of the forums are not visible until someone has registered.

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This is more of a tasting note and some quick comments (with price and source information), rather than a full review. Frankly, I do not feel comfortable doing reviews based on only a single cigar, and that’s all I have had of this one.

This came up in response to a question this weekend on the new Cigar Envy Deals and Discussion Yahoogroup. The group is up to over 375 members now in just four days of existence and ranks in the top ten of the 140 cigar-related groups there. Thanks again for the very enthusiastic response.

The factory pressed La Flor Dominicana (officially the LFD Prensado), for those who might not be familiar with it, was just introduced at the RTDA show in New Orleans a few months back. It is a new cigar in Litto Gomez’ Double Ligero series, and is offered in a very limited edition of only 400 boxes.

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