The Weblog Review

Honestly, when I first opened up http://www.bobby-digital.net/ and saw that the first blog on the page was about Bruce Lee, I sat back and said, “Wow, I’m in for a good hour of reading absolute crap.” After the first sentence I was hooked, these guys know how to send a message. Quoting “It’s not like these buff dudes are out wrestling Grizzly Bears every week for a living that they need to have 40 inch arms. And guess what, they actually pay monthly fees to build up muscle that they only put to use to open up jars of Spaghetti sauce for their elderly aunts.” has to be one of the funniest lines I have heard in my life. This is an excellent blog that makes you scream for more.

And after reading all the articles on the site, that is exactly what I am doing, screaming for more. Hidden away are sketches, pics, just about anything to keep one busy for an hour or two.

Marco, (the site blogger) has been around for a relatively short time, 3 months, just barely enough to get his feet on the ground. The design flows and compliments his writing. It does have the PG-13 atmosphere but and 10 year old with a good sense of humor can get a kick out of this writing. I give this site a high 4.0. I guess we can call it that, there really is not a 4.47 button and it is not quite old / experienced enough to hit the 4.5 mark yet. Very, very good start. Keep up the Hilarity and 5.0 is right around the corner.
Bobby-Digital.net

Having only read the first few posts of this site and the subtitle stating the site was going to be about the views from a so-called “third world,” natrually I was anticipating a “third world” perspective from this blog. However, I found something else.

After having read through the archives which begin in May of 2003, I felt the site didn’t have a main focus. There were posts regarding the Middle East, poems by writers, blog related news and links to random sites. It left me wondering where the site was going or what persepective the writer was going for.

The blog didn’t contain any other links within the site, except a link to a page that contains his resume, some pictures from his wedding and a bio which still didn’t give me an idea of who the writer was. The blog’s design is a Blogger template which isn’t very flattering.

The site needs some serious work. The main thing is if the writer figures out what he wants to talk about and focuses on that, I think it would make for a better site … maybe a insider’s look on what Bangladesh is like? *hint hint*The 3rd world view

The 3rd World view states in its title that it is “views and links from a human being that lives in the so called third world”. This grabbed my attention as I was hoping to read a weblog which would give me a new perspective on the world as well as teaching me something about a different culture (the author is from Bangladesh).

To a certain extent the weblog did achieve this, but I felt it could have gone further- only a small number of the posts were about life in Bangladesh and these tended to be of a general nature, whereas I think some personal accounts would have been more interesting. There were a couple of posts about the monsoon season in Bangladesh (July 15th and 26th) and another about cricket (July 19th) but not much else.

The archived articles tended to be about international news stories (especially the war in Iraq), poems/song lyrics which the author liked and quite a bit about blogging generally. I felt the author may have done better by offering his own opinions on some of the links -some had no explanatory material at all. It also seemed that a lot of the entries, if not linked, were simply cut and pasted from other sources. Reading between the lines, the author clearly has some interesting views but it would have been nicer to see these expressed in his own words instead.

The layout was simple and easy to read, though one of the picture links in the template wasn’t working and I felt the side bar took up rather a lot of the screen (at least in the resolution I was viewing it in). There were a few errors contained in the writing itself, but I wasn’t sure if English was the author’s first language, so maybe these are excused.

Not a bad weblog overall, but the links weren’t explained enough and some personal entries would make the blog much more unique.The 3rd world view

I guess I reached teenangst just in time. The most recent post is about how site owner, Graham, is going to shut it down. So here’s a farewell gift.

Basically there are no faults with either the site design or the writing, save some typos sprinkled here and there. Graham seems to live up to the site name – he’s a teen and he has plenty of them angst, striking out at a good many things. I wish he’d complain more about his girlfriend though. Without a girl problem the ‘teen angst’ thing just doesn’t seem complete. Oh well. Maybe knowing that there’s something he’s happy about in his life is what keeps readers from going “Oh no…not another whiny teen blog…”. Or maybe it’s because the girlfriend reads the blog and leaves comments?

Another slight problem: the PhotoBlog doesn’t work. Perhaps it’s because Graham is planning on shutting down the site anyway. Besides blogging about school(lousy), teachers(lousier), mom(also lousy), hangovers(lousy too), not getting enough sleep(very lousy) and girlfriend(mostly great), Graham is also quite interested in twiddling around with his site. He’s not bad at it too, from what I can tell.

I would say that teenangst falls into the category of a fairly typical teenage blog, but it has the advantage of a memorable domain name, a cool layout and succinct writing. None of those long-winding, whiney bagpipe entries. He complains, he moves on. One sharp jab right on spot. Just like teenage angst.

teenangst

“The Evolving Word” struck me at first as merely another “links to other sites” type of site, with very little actual content of it’s own.

How wrong I was.

After looking through the first couple of posts I became aware of how very coherent and intelligent the entries are. The author is obviously broad minded as his posts range from toilet humour (May 27th) to a detailed history of the way the Incas communicated (June 23). The posts are divided up in to 15 different topics (though two topics have no posts allocated to them yet) including language, sports and music.

There is little personal content about the author and what there is tends to be slightly over-analytical (June 16th), but this is not really a bad thing due to the variety of the content and the exceedingly entertaining and informative manner in which it is written. The author also states that he wanted to avoid the more personal aspects due to its ubiquity in other weblogs.

Some postings are long and in depth, some shorter but very amusing, all of which contain relevant links to a variety of sources. There is multimedia content in many entries too which is a nice touch (especially as they enhance the posts and are not just for show) though I guess this would slow things down for dial-up readers.

The layout of the website is also very good. The posts on the main page are shortened, with the opportunity to read more if you want to (which I often did), as well as the opportunity for commenting. The archives are easily accessible, with a number of statistics included.

My only gripe really was the need for registration to view the photographs and to leave comments with your name attached (they are anonymous without registration). I am sure the registration information would not be used for nefarious purposes, but I am still not sure why it is necessary.

Apart from that, this is a thoroughly entertaining, intelligently written and wide ranging weblog.

Editors Note: the site use phpNuke software as the blogging tool. While phpNuke can be used for blogs it is more of a full CMS and that is why there is the registration requirement for certain aspects.The Evolving Word