The Weblog Review

Okay, so I open up Dianarchy expecting to see total anarchy in the design as the name would suggest, but instead I was confronted by a blogspot template. The bland white and baby blue color scheme left something to desired and the large, text only header and menu system with a few links made me want to see some pictures. Or graphics. Or something.

But I remind myself this is about the writing, so I dive right into the archives to the beginning of the blog, which got started by Diana (Diana=Dianarchy. I get it now) in August of 2003. The beginnings are fairly rocky, with posts about living in New York, taxi drivers and PMS. But there’s something rather curious about her writing, and I continue reading to see how this develops.

Further into the blog, I notice a distinct voice developing in the writing. Some posts tend to be long with dense paragraphs, but they have an interesting tone. It’s written from a stream-of-consciousness female perspective and topics don’t stray too far from definitively female subjects: Everything from men and the oh-so-female concerns of weight and looks to, again, men and being a graduate student. And men. The writing reads something like an episode of Sex in the City mixed with any album by The Cure. If you can imagine such a combination.

As I’ve said before, the design could benefit from a little pizzazz that would show off the writing, which should be the hero here. The writing is generally solid and well written and shows glimpses of true talent and I would like to see how that evolves. My major complaint is that the paragraphs tend to be long and could benefit from a few well-placed paragraph breaks and objective self-editing. Though, all-in-all, the witing itself shows plenty of potential.I’ll be checking in to see how the style develops.Dianarchy: A Day in the Life

Beauty Dish… I had absolutely no idea what I was going to be walking into upon my first visit to this page, but I had a sneaking suspicion that it was going to be something I couldn’t identify with. When I flipped up the page and saw the header of True Underground Adventures Of An Avon Lady, I got that feeling in the pit of my stomach that you get just before something really bad happens.

I will happily admit that I was wrong. 100% wrong.

The weblog is written by a 30 something lady who decided that she needed to find herself a career after her youngest child started first grade a little while back. With no job and no money in her pocket, the solution was simple – become an Avon Lady! A relatively new blog (only started at the beginning of April), there is just enough material to digest to get you in a place where you’re starting to become comfortable with our anonymous author. A brand new blog, it’s a perfect “jumping on” point for anyone who doesn’t want to go through an archives section packed to the gunnels with entries. In the few entries that were available, I was totally taken into the author’s world, and was particularly touched by the one about the author’s guinea pigs… I’m a sucker for a sad story.

The layout is nice and clean, and serves the blog’s purpose well. There’s even a little cam spot down the bottom where the author sometimes posts pics of an odd body part modeling the newest Avon product. (that’s not as dirty as it probably sounded). My biggest complaint is with the URL of the site, and I believe the author would get a lot more traffic if it were actually shifted to it’s own domain purchased by the author.

Beauty Dish is off to a great start, and I have found a site that I will gladly add to my list of favorite blogs. I instantly connected with the author, and if a guy who’s on the backside of 20 and whose idea of a beauty product is toothpaste can identify with this lady, anyone can.

I look forward to more tales from the world of door-to-door beauty sales. My rating is a 4/5, with definite room to move up with more entries in the future.

Beauty Dish

Beauty Dish? What was I getting myself into? Being a male who is starting to find the benefits of “products” namely due to Queer Eye, I thought maybe there would be something for me here, but I doubted it.

When I got to Beauty Dish I was greeted with a banner that said “True underground adventures of an Avon lady.” I knew I was in for a ride. I thought this was a great idea for a blog, explaining the ins and outs of being an Avon lady. Seeing the good things and the bad things. And most of all seeing the obstacles and her over come then.

Birdie is a recent entry into the world of selling Avon products. Her children are in school and she was looking for a job that would give her the benefit of the hours she needed. Most jobs do not allow you to work partial days, let alone take time off when your kids need you to stay home. Obviously the choice is simple: be self-employed.

Birdie posts about her struggles with being a saleswoman, product reviews, stories of her pets, and of course about her kids. My favorite passages are about her learning to sell the product. She has a fear of going door to door, which I can’t blame her. I am sure, in time, she will be much more outgoing than she is now because of this job experience.

The design is very basic. A nice banner at the top, and a two-column layout make up this blog’s design. Unfortunately it breaks in my browser of choice (Safari) and the second column is below the main posts. I also have a problem with the archive system that Salon uses. I hate having to click on dates to see what is posted. Her calendar gives us the ability to see an entire month’s worth of posts, but even that wasn’t 100%.

If I had to pick out a downside to this blog, it is how green it is. The blog has only been open since April 8th and there are many directions in which she could take it. So far she has stayed on track with what her title says, and I hope she manages to stay on track.

I could not justify giving this site any more than a 3 because of how new it is. The concept is great, the execution is great, but it is only one month old. How do I know if this site will have lasting power? I don’t. Will I continue to check this site out? You bet. Can it earn a higher score than a 3? Given time definitely yes. I think Birdie submitted her new blog to help promote it. There is nothing wrong with that, and I hope she re-submits in a couple of months so we can see her growth.Beauty Dish

Welcome to the new adventures of the tie-dyed Avon Lady. I had to laugh when I came across our latest site to review, Beauty Dish, simply because I used to be a beauty consultant myself, so I know all the joys of trying to meet specific sales quotas in order to earn a decent wage. However, I have never seen a blog about such things, so I thought it would be an interesting change from the norm.

Unfortunately, whilst the blog is off to a very nice start, it is extremely new – as in just started in April new. It is this reviewers opinion that to be reviewed properly, one has to build up a decent number of entries so the reviewer can get a good idea of the style of writing, the theme and quality of the posts, the bloggers staying power, that sort of thing.

Anyway, that said, I went to have a look at the first couple of entries to find out a little more about Birdie. Like so many Avon Ladies out there, this particular Avon Lady is a mother wanting to make some money on her own time and terms. She writes:

“Do you have any idea what it’s like to read the classified ads, hoping for the perfect job? One that has the same hours at the elementary school, that allows liberal sick days and time off for school plays and parent-teacher conferences? One that pays enough to make your house payment, buy groceries, plan for a week of camping in the summer? “

Ah, if wishes were horses then beggars would fly. Two weeks in though, and Bridie seems to have slipped into the Avon niche quite well. What made the reading even better is that she has a very fluid, entertaining way of writing that made the blog easy to read and surprisingly, I found myself really wanting for there to be more to look at – hence my profound disappointment that it’s such a short blog. In further entries, Birdie goes on to talk about the products she’s selling (she’s in the process of testing them herself) and documents what she does and doesn’t like about each, getting over her fear of meeting people face to face (it isn’t easy!) and in general, what she likes and dislikes about the business.

The site looks neat and very uncluttered – as one would expect from an extremely new blog. The layout is pretty standard and nothing exciting but for the pretty header graphics. There aren’t that many links, just a few favourites and a smattering of links to various blog tools. There’s nothing that I can pick at really, though I would like to see Birdie include a bit of an “about me” section so her future readers can find out about her a little more in depth, and I’d love to see a snazzy design that reflects the theme of the site a little more (though what she has is now is perfectly acceptable).

It’s my hope that this blog does continue with regular postings, as I believe Birdie may be onto a winner here, especially with the way she writes. Incorporate the blog into her personal site, BeautyDish.com as well as her e-trade site for Avon and she will have a very good business network. Good luck Birdie!Beauty Dish

What in the world is xequa? How does one even pronounce xequa? More importantly why should I read xequa? Unfortunately the only question that got answered was the last of those three. But thankfully that is the most important of the three questions I had going into xequa.

The author of this blog is a 26 year old white male as he calls himself. I assume the picture on the site is him based on other pictures on the site. While the picture doesn’t really do much for me, it does give me that little bit extra background info to make me want to dive into the site. Why this picture?

Before I go on about the blog and its tender goodies, I must address the design. The site is using a three column layout with white text on a black background. Now normally I wouldn’t mind this color scheme, but the font size is insanely too small. I thought this was due to my browser of choice at the moment which was Mozilla. But after getting so tired of squinting, I switched to IE. Still it has the same problem. Finally I loaded the site up on my mac and I could actually read the site. This is probably due to the fact that the author is on a mac, and thus makes the site work for his machine.

But enough about the design, lets get onto the goodies. The entries them self vary a bit. There is a fair amount of political talk, personal life stories, short little standard blog posts, and pretty much everything but the kitchen sink (though there is a picture of a bathroom sink). You have to hand it to the author, as he does put a nice spin on some stories that need to be poked fun of a bit, and tells it straight when not to. Overall his entries are entertaining, and that is a good category for him to have put himself in.

As far as extras go with the site you have a couple of options. First like most bloggers now a days, he has a photo album online. But unlike most, the pictures in this album are solely black and white. Maybe this is to go along with the design of the site, maybe not. He is also pimping out his cafepress merchandise on the blog which is actually interesting to look at. Finally he has a latest mirror picture on the site to give us that much more.

Overall I enjoyed my time at xequa. Other than the font size chosen for the site, my only other complaint is that the blog started in August. There are a large number of posts to read, and it really doesn’t take that long to read them all. This site left me wanting more, and now I have to wait for it.
x e q u a