The Weblog Review

“JadedJu: Delectable, but deadly” … or so that’s what the subtitle says on JadedJu.

I was instantly sucked into this site and continuously entertained by the tales of Ms. JadedJu. Her little tales of woes and takes on those in the blogging and real world were fun to read.

As I read through the archives, I found that I was able to get a sense of who she was through her writing by what she shared. She wrote about her family and friends and things going on around the Bay Area of California. Her funny sense of humor and cynical view on things made me want to read more. She never seems like she holds back about what she’s thinking.


The layout’s okay, didn’t blow me away, but it’s fine. She has a list of links on the side bar along with a profile of sorts near the bottom of the column.

Overall, this is a pretty good site, a definite must read!JadedJu

I have to say I was pretty impressed when I first
arrived at “Charlotte”. It was definatley not what I
expected it to be.

This website belongs to musician/singer Charlotte
Martin, an Illinois native who graduated from college
with a degree in opera. Instead of becoming an opera
singer she decided to write and perform music.
According to the “bio” section of her site, what sets
her apart from her peers is the; “candor in her songs
and her willingness to not take herself to seriously”.
If you go to the “see/hear” section of this site you
can listen to a handfull of her songs and read the
lyrics as well. My favorite would have to be “Raven”,
the piano and singing are just fantastic, and the
lyrics definatley have you thinking. I didn’t find a
song here that I didn’t like. This is really great
stuff!

There are a couple sections of this site that stand
out as well. A cartoon secion and a section called
“word tree”, I don’t even know what a word tree is but
I kind of found it fascinating. There’s an active
message board, a place where you can go to see where
Charlotte is performing, and even a store where you
can purchase a cd, which I made ad is fairly cheap.
Definatly worth the money I think.

The site is designed superbly, easy to navigate, no
broken links, a professional job to say the
least.

Unfortunatly though, this is not the “design review”
or the “music review”. You can find Charlotte’s blog
posts under the “news” section. There are some posts
of a personal nature, but most of them are where she
will be performing. I counted nine posts, and was
unable to find any archives, which I really would have
found interesting. I have never read a musicians
weblog before and it would have been fascinating to
read what its like to be on the road and performing. I
noticed that a couple posts were by someone else as
well who runs the site. Had it not been for the music,
lyrics, and word tree, I probably would have not put
this in the personal category, and maybe into the
music category.

I’m giving “Charlotte” a 2 because of the limited
amount of posts and no archives. I never really felt
that I knew the author, the bio section although
informative, was written by someone else so that
didn’t help me make a connection. Perhaps if I were
reviewing for Rolling Stone or Spin I could give out a
higher score but Charlotte Martin’s site just barely
fits the criteria of what most would consider a
weblog. The music is great, and the site has
potential, but its not a very good weblog. Two stars,
check out the cool music.
charlotte

First let me start by saying that any website that has a Buffy quote as a tagline is aces in my book.

I liked the way this blog is designed. A nice simple color scheme, a nice clean blog space, and good organization. Kimberly has a nice grasp on web design and did a great job with her blog.

Having said that, I had hoped the content would be a bit more than it was. Her links to the “contact me” and “about me” page were blank, and the only way I found out about her was to click into her business page and click on the “about me” page listed there. Hopefully she’ll update that soon for those who only visit her blog.

As for the blog itself, her entries consist of a lot of links to other sites, but she also has some nice personal posts among those. From a look at her archives she’s only been blogging since July 10, but according to her very first post it sounds as though she’s done it before. So while content is short as of now, I hope that in the future there will be a lot more there.

For now I took off points for missing pages and lack of content, but I easily see erraticfrog’s rating going up once Kimberly reestablishes her website and continues to post.erraticfrog

Upon first looking at Lynne D. Johnson’s diary page, I thought, this looks like a juicy one! I think it was because I like the wide main column, the nice little font, and the white background. A glance at the left-side links to her bio and information about her as a professor, writer, editor, speaker, and black scholar told me this is the journal of an adult, and a seriously accomplished one at that.

The site contains much more than the diary, and it all seems to be designed to promote the author’s professional goals and accomplishments. The diary section gives her a place to express thoughts about current events, culture, and her full life. Reading some of the comments tells me she has a steady audience of other culture-watchers and music lovers.

Johnson’s journal entries are usually long and interesting. Sometimes she quotes from books and articles, conversations with friends, or IM exchanges. One particularly entertaining entry transcribed an exchange of adlibbed rap-style rhymes over IM. Others are thoughtful explorations of life’s dilemmas and decisions and professional issues. Both the entries and the reader comments seem to come from upbeat perspectives and stick to the positive. The site is professionally maintained in the sense that though it’s quite large, everything seems consistent and everything loads properly (except for her link to Blogsnob). Johnson has done a great job with this site.

I think anyone, particularly women of all colors, who is concerned with issues facing high-tech workers, higher education, teaching, or New York life would be interested in this online diary. And the variety within the posts makes me think it will be worthwhile to check back often.
Lynne

This website is not so much a blog as a general webpage with a bit of info on it. David is a webdesigner, so on his main page you find links to his resume, his portfolio, and his skills. That’s all well and good if I was looking for a webdesigner, but I was looking for a blog. And I didn’t find one.



The design of the site is fine enough – although I would think a web designer would have a site filled with all kinds of cool things that only designers can do. But it looked like a site that I could build (which isn’t saying much).



He does provide a link to his “thoughts”, but as opposed to finding out more about David McDonald, all I saw were links to other sites with a brief description of each site. Nothing really personal could be found here.



If you are looking for a blog (meaning an online journal or diary), I wouldn’t suggest you visit this one. If you are interesting in just surfing and looking at people’s homepages then by all means, go ahead and look.

David