The Weblog Review

At first Anachronic appears to be the weblog of your average Joe. The layout does nicely, there are some links, photos, wishlists etc along the side navigation bar and the writing is lined up neatly and inoffensively on a white background. But it’s when you begin to read that you realise you’ll be sticking around a lot longer than you were expecting.

Jon describes himself as a “philosopher, almost.” So considering I stereotype all philosophers as rambling and argumentative, I found his original, to the point and often witty writing refreshing. Through his posts you can often pick up his mood and thoughts at the time. Topics get clumped together, such as several posts in February relating to high school. More recently Jon writes about Asian culture, encompassing asian-american films/movies, stereotypes and family. His sharp perceptions make for fascinating reading.

There is a simple but effective design. I’ve seen the same layout used in other weblogs but the colour choices work well. Going through the archives you can see that Jon changes his layout quite often. My favourite is headed with an image of a leafy suburb. Whilst a frequently changing layout can be a sign that there is more interest in the layout than content, here it just seems to show the author’s interest in his blog. Overall, the current layout is nothing flash or unique, but is carried off well.

To get all philosophical, almost, everyone is fascinating and yet there are so many dull blogs out there. Anachronic is an exception. In the words of Rowan Williams, “We can’t assume that any human face we see has no divine secret to disclose.” As Jon shows us through Anachronic, some people bring this to their weblog better than others.anachronic

Frandoogabooling in an Alley (mercifully FIAA hereafter) has the basic blogspot template (ho-hum…) layout with some cute, occasionally humorous and insightful entries.

However, a few things… please get rid of the JavaScript or Java or whatever keeps toying around with the bottom scrollbar. It was neat the first 800 times it stretched and pulled, after that it was simply annoying. “…I’ve been adding new buttons and things to this page, as you can see. Tell me if it gets too cluttered.” It’s too cluttered. 😛

The author seems to love checking out her referrals (and hey who doesn’t?) “horney goat weed women” anyone or maybe “searching yahoo, I’m the 10th result for “i’m feeling sooo horny now!” great, huh? those horny people will really find my blog stimulating… :P”.

She has a diverse range of interests ‘poking fun at George Dubya’, tennis, outings with friends, reading…Many of FIAA’s entries are short daily reflections, others are a little more profound entries such as, “I just finished “One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest.” Amazing book. I’m…touched isn’t quite the word, but I really feel like that book meant a lot to me. Changed me. Oh, I don’t know, but it’s certainly very thought provoking. And very well written. By Ken Kesey. Don’t you know, I’ll be reading more by him quite soon. I’m just feeling this book so much, it’s amazing. Wow. So read it. Go to your library, check it out, and freakin’ read it. Or get it from Amazon. and then email me, and tell me what you think. ‘Cuz I wanna know.” She seems to read some pretty deep stuff for her age. 🙂

There are also some amusing entries: “life is good: seeing that I had a new email, I checked my inbox at 11:40, thinking it would be just another spam, you know, something about enlarging my (nonexistent) penis. But NO, it was an email titled “[Monongalia-closings] School Closings Announcement for monongalia”. I didn’t believe it. I opened the email. It read, “Monongalia County Schools will operate on a two-hour delay.” This is wonderful! fantastic! amazing! I will sleep until 8:40 and it will be great and YEAH! But for now I need to go to bed. I love inclement weather!”

I think FIAA would be a great blog to watch develop. The author has a keen wit, good sense of humour and often some makes some insightful reflections. I’d like to she how her blog reads in a few years.. although I believe she is off to a very decent start as a blogger, in light of this I tacked on a 0.5. You go girl. And exactly what happens when you are Frandoogabooled in an Alley? hmm…

Frandoogaboogling in an Alley

I hate making a big deal out of the design of a weblog, because quite frankly, that’s not what I’m reviewing a site for. The design of this site, however, was the first impression that stuck with me, and it wasn’t a very good one at that. The layout appears to be just several tables slapped up next to each other in order to make everything fit snuggly. Each table has a different colored border, and within each table, you’ll typically find all sorts of different colors of text. The design is NOT something I hope sticks around for a while, but I was very much hoping the reading of the weblog could make up for the design I just couldn’t find myself liking.

The weblog at first appears to still be a fairly new one, with archives only dating back as far as February 21 that I could find. I get the feeling, however, that once the “new design”, which I believe is now the current one, rolled out perhaps there were some archives lost in the shuffle.

There were several entries in a row that ended exactly the same. The author posted everyone on the well being of the family cats, the weather, and the condition of the family Honda. For a week straight.

In more recent entries over the past couple of weeks, the posts seem to be getting a bit more in depth and cover more news than just the weather. The improvement I’ve noticed just over the few entries available to read leave me to believe that this weblog has the potential of getting better and better as times goes on.

Spelling is something I find myself being extremely picky about, whether on a review of a weblog or even when publishing to my own. It only takes a few minutes to run an a few sentences through any type of spell check, and everyone always benefits from correctly spelled words. Spell check could definitely have been utilized at Riftlands Café and it wouldn’t have hurt anything at all.

Riftlands Café has a cute little “about us” section, where not only do you get to read a brief paragraph about the main people involved with this site, but there’s also a photo of each of the family members posted there – a very nice touch for a personal weblog.

One big thing I liked about this site was how complete it is. It’s not “just a weblog”. The authors of the site take pride in it and like to make sure everything’s accounted for – the about the authors section, about the site, tons of photos in different galleries of all types. Very fun addition to the site itself, again making Riftlands Café more than “just a weblog”.

Riftlands Café – it’s a site that I probably won’t be back to visit, but it’s one that could very easily draw regular readers that may already know the folks behind the weblog. It was just a little hard for me to find myself on the edge of my seat waiting for the next entry to be made just to keep the readers posted about the condition of the cats or the weather.

Riftlands Cafe

As the ‘about page’ goes, Jacob met Julie in a chatroom, fell in love and moved from Denmark to live with her in the USA. I’ve come across several sites telling very similar stories and as cheesy as they may sound, they are pretty interesting, firstly because they give original insights into a county’s cultures, and secondly because the people often seem as normal as they come, and how many non-crazy people have you met in chatrooms recently?

Jacob’s about page is pretty comprehensive, which I found useful as it was only in October that he started blogging in English. As I don’t speak Danish I felt like I was missing a lot, and I like to see how a weblog began. Luckily the about page filled in most of the gaps.

So why am mentioning the about page so early on in the review? To me it was of the most interest. Jacob says of the page, “You don’t have to read it if you don’t want to but it will make the content in my web log make a little more sense.” It certainly did. Most of the entries to the site are about day to day life. Nothing dramatic, just mainly work, films/movies and eating out. I think you can get much more out of it once you know where Jacob’s coming from.

The layout of A Dane Abroad is nicely done in blues. It’s not too adventurous but this is not meant to be an adventurous site so it works well, giving space to the writing. There is also a well laid out gallery with lots of pictures ranging from cooked turkeys to kittens [fortunately not cooked].

The only problem I had with the writing was that for a personal weblog it didn’t get personal enough. The writing always seems a little detached from the author, and details such as the latest videos watched or the weather are given much more often than feelings or opinions. Of course this is just a personal preference of mine, my own inquisitiveness. I like personal weblogs to divulge everything, and some authors don’t want to do that, which is fine and doesn’t mean for one minute that the site is any less readable. Jacob still gives us a fascinating insight into his life and it’s well worth a look.
weblog from a Dane abroad

Blog.org – now there’s a domain name that’s just screaming to be huge! With a domain name like that, how could anyone possibly go wrong?



With probably one of the longest taglines I’ve ever seen on a weblog, David, the creator and author, uses “daily updates on the Internet and public policy, broadband, virtual community and more from the UK-based consultant and journalist” to describe his weblog. And well, the tagline describes the weblog to a T.

David posts on a frequent and consistent basis. More often than not, readers are only treated to a few of David’s own words that briefly describe the particular external link he’s featuring that particular day. From time to time, the author does expound a little more in depth on why he’s linking a particular site, sharing his opinions and thoughts on the matter at hand. David’s a good writer and typically knows his facts, so having him share more of his thoughts on what he’s sending his audience to via the links in each of his posts would definitely add more personality to this weblog.

The layout is brought to you by Moveable Type as one of its standard templates that come along with every download. There are a ton of links grouped down the right hand side of the blog that can lead you anywhere from the archives of the site to nearly any subject matter that could possibly cross your mind.

I expected a lot from a site with a domain like this one. You see the word “blog” everywhere you look now, and I was expecting something huge, something that would just jump out at and scream. I didn’t really find that here.

Blog.org isn’t the type of weblog you’ll find yourself growing easily attached to if you’re looking for anything along the lines of a personal weblog. If you’re in the market for a weblog that’s going to give you an occasional link here or there that you might find worth checking out, then this is a spot I’d visit.


blog.org