Meh... you're new to Photoshop hm? :)
I wouldn't play too much with text effects until you really understand which text looks good and which don't.
Try learn a bit about typography. I would suggest using another font, something more basic along the lines of Tahoma, Raavi, Helvetica or Arial.
The low transparency boxes look weird, because of the color change beneath them. I wouldn't have their corners be rounded that much either, max 1-4px roundation.
Remember to use structure and give your text the same size so it looks like it belongs together and doesn't fall out of contrast.
Writing vertically - imo - is a bad idea because the readability suffers from it!
Could maybe try making parts of the image more intense in colors, right now it looks rather bland.