The Weblog Review

2012: Science News is a blog containing news and links related to “Space, Evolution, Archaeology & Cataclysms.” Created and maintained by Robert Blast, 2012: Science News offers snippets of news and journal articles about astronomical, anthropological, geological, and political issues that address the theme of cataclysmic change, particularly that which has been predicated by the Mayans for 2012.

The majority of entries consist of links to online content from various science and media outlets. Occasionally, there are photos or illustrations. Nearly every entry includes commentary so the user has a frame of reference related to the blog’s theme, although there’s no real sense of the maintainer’s position or personality. Given the content of the blog itself and the lack of personal detail, it’s obvious that 2012: Science News is meant to be a digest of links, not a personal blog, and as such, the tone and intent toward the reading audience changes.

A subsidiary domain that focuses on open-source development of a blogging maintenance tool called antville, 2012: Science News offers a design that is simple and straightforward, emphasizing a lower-resolution layout and utilizing a grayscale color scheme with a splash of color here and there to emphasize links or entry titles. Users can comment on blog entries, although they must first register with 2012: Science News.2012

This is fairly new and pretty simple site. First thing I look for in a blog is “about me” to get to know the person that writes. No place to be found here. I can’t really tell if it is a girl or a guy (or should the name, Tyler, tell me that? I don’t think so, I’ve been surprised before while assuming gender by a name), a teenager or an adult, or where he/she lives; although because of the topics I’d say it is a guy in his mid 20’s and he lives somewhere in Brazil.

The design couldn’t be simpler. White background, no fancy letter type or colors, no links and no graphics; just a statement that reflects very well the author’s intention on the writing: “Percepções, politica, economia, gibis e cultura na visão do transeunte, que segue caminhando sem se envolver. Traga seu farnel” or “Perceptions, politics, economy, comics and culture in the view of a somebody that passes by and keep its way without getting involved. Bring your provisions”

He alternates between Portuguese and English on the posts.

It would help if every time you click on the page in any place that’s not a link doesn’t take you to the e-mail application, that’s kind of annoying.

Let’s talk about the writing itself. Brilliant for a weblog. The author seems to know where he/she is going, clearly expressing his/her thoughts. Love the philosophic angle of the topics and the analysis of the simple world out there. He comments books, newspapers articles, comics, movies, sport games, music and musicians, culture and TV. Intelligent. All worth the reading if you are interested in others people point of view of the world. I wouldn’t mind spending an evening with him/her over coffee discussing life.
Hot Chocolat

Katar.net is the homepage and blog of Aussie James Turnbull — in his words, Katar.net is his “play thing,” and he utilizes the full ability of his site to share his blog, founded in December 2001, among other nifty details.

With a simple, clean, and attractive design in cool shades of blue, Katar.net offers a glimpse into James’s life — his blog is well written with crisp language and sufficient details about the people, places, and things that matter to him. Whether it’s a poor dining experience, an investment in technology toys, or the decision to have a child, James shares his life willingly and honestly, and that’s a refreshing experience for this humble reader.

Katar.net uses frames and Blogger as to structure its content, and this worked well for me. It was easy to navigate through James’s web site and his blog, with clearly delineated sections. My only complaint was that there was no way to leave comments for various blog entries.Kartar.Net

“Peace of Imperfection” is the description of this site. I was immediately drawn into by the most recent entry which was a detailed description of the writer’s encounter with 3 small girls, all sisters who were craving his attention. The entry read very much like a journal, or a story taken out of someone’s life which is how most of this site read like.

Jeff, the writer created this site back in November of last year. I read through most of what was on the main page and some of the posts were very detailed about whatever moment he was recalling. I liked his writing a lot because it felt like I could understand and see where he was coming from emotionally and not just what was on the surface of him. He ponders a lot, but does have posts in between about things he’s seen or read online, to your daily thoughts about things you need to do or what funny thing happened on the way to the store.

As far as the layout goes, it’s a Blogger template but one of the better ones. There a links to his “daily reads” and links to some photography and poetry of his.

I really enjoyed reading this site mostly because there’s a nice balance of writing offered here. I wasn’t bored at all and really liked his writing style. This is a must visit.KaneBlues

I immediately loved the overall impression the colors gave to the site. Medium dark grey is the perfect backdrop for a photography gallery.

This site is pretty much a pure photolog. There is next to no text content, other than a brief description of the photograph galleries and their contents. The photos themselves are very nice. The author of the site shoots a wide variety of subject matter: flowers, statues, buildings, people, etc. Most of them are very well balanced visually and are pretty crisp images. From the looks of it, though, PHP is used to create the thumbnail images. While easy on the author (no need for multiple sizes of the same image), the thumbnails themselves look very poor. A few of the close up images (such as flowers) appeared to be a bit out of focus (maybe this is intended?). Fortunately, the slight bluriness doesn’t plague many of the photos.

While I loved the colors, I had a hard time dealing with the patchwork nature of the layout. The front page uses three different styles of formatting for each of the galleries. I was very irritated by being forced to take a cookie from this site. I realize that there is a “my favorites” type feature, but I shouldn’t be offered a cookie until I try and add images to the favorites. Many of the site features were broken for anyone not using Internet Explorer. The bar across the top of the full size images (that offered “add to favorites” and “series index”) was squished all to the left in Netscape 6 and Opera 6.02. Even then, only the series index link worked in those browsers, and add to favorites was not visible so I couldn’t tell if that worked or not.

In addition to photographs, the author offers Flash creations for your amusement. I was not amused. I use the Flash 6 player, since earlier versions have a security vulnerablity. The Flash toys were created in Flash 5 and were not compatible with my player (I blame this mostly on Macromedia, this is twice now where new players have problems playing older SWFs). The Flash widgets were much more fun and interesting once I tried them with the Flash 5 player.

Overall, it is a very attractive site. The photographs were very attractive and varied enough to suit almost anyone. If you don’t mind missing some of the features the author offers, it is still accessible in almost any newer browser.stuntLab