The Weblog Review

The first thing that I noticed about StayPuff.net is that it’s not merely a weblog. The
weblog is the main focus of the site, but there are several other sections (including an
intriguingly named “Experiments” section) in addition the weblog. I was
expecting those sections to be external links, but clicking on them shows that they’re
internal content created by David, the owner of the site.

There are actually 5 authors (including David) listed on the side, but 3 of the others have
blogs of their own, and David seems to be the only active writer. Browsing through
the archives shows that the other authors average about a post a month. However,
David more than makes up for the lack of the other authors posts with his frequent posts.
The other authors also frequently make comments on David’s blog and vice versa.

The writing style of David is easy to read and he has a sense of humour that translates
well into text. The posts are varied and can be anything from news events to David’s
personal life. The posts feels easy to read because of his writing style and that is not
something that many people can do. I genuinely felt compelled to read more due to
the way David structures his entries.

Unfortunately, I could only read up to June 2002, even though the weblog has been
online since May 2001. It appears that David made the transition to Greymatter on
the 22nd of June and clicking on all entries before that resulted in a “404 – File not
found” error. Nevertheless, I thoroughly enjoyed reading all the archives up to June,
and it’s nice to see that the writing style and humour carries back to the beginning.

The first other thing I clicked on was the Experiments link, and the title does not
disappoint. Inside that section, David describes the internet experiments which he
has conducted. I particularly enjoyed reading the “Chatting up a chic via e-mail”
one, where he posted a tantalizing profile at an online dating site and
compiles the list of replies that he received. These experiments give the
readers a voyeuristic enjoyment in reading the replies. I was also impressed
by David’s sense of responsibility, in that he did not post the results of the
second experiment, which is about a dubious issue (read it on the site).

There is also an Articles section, which is a list of articles David and his friends
has written over the years. These includes pieces as varied as “A few
pointers to seduce women” to a multi-part road trip to Albany write-up, which
was the first clue that David is an Australian (I missed the Aussie Blogs
webring link at the bottom of the main page).

There is also a section called David’s People (D.People). It seems to work
like a agony aunt article in that David replies to readers who write in about
various personal problems. Some of them are funny and some of them are
genuinely helpful, but all of them are interesting to read. The other sections
are the guestbook, links, results of the monthly polls and a gallery – which
wasn’t the personal picture gallery I expected but screenshots of David’s
“The Sims” (a computer game) families.

Regarding the design of the site, I found the clean approach and black
background to be easy on the eyes. I also liked the way the red, blue and
yellow bars seem to have an effect of guiding the eyes down. That
hypnotising effect is probably why I spent so much time reading the main
site. 🙂 However, there is a design decision which I found strange. The
archives of the blog open up in another window and the formatting of the
main site does not carry over into the archives. I have no problems with this
though, since the basic white archive template is easy to read, but it does
detract from the “integrated” feel of the site. Also, this is nitpicking, but the
Main link on the top navigation bar pops up a new window instead of simply
loading it in the current one. I’m not sure if this is a conscious decision, but I
found this to be distracting as I have to close the new window.

In conclusion, I like the site and I feel that it really deserves a 4.5, but the
inaccessible pre June 2002 archives and minor design issues made me
reduce the score to a 4 in compliance with the rating guidelines. I really
recommend that everyone visits this site, as it’s worthy of that at least, to
establish if you like this site enough to read it regularly. Personally, I’ve
already bookmarked the site and will continue to read it daily.StayPuff

It was bound to happen. A weblog, which is supposedly personal and unprofessional by nature, produced for a company entirely by professionals, every word scrutinised so as not to cause offence and to promote the product in the best light, every post researched, planned and approved. I am just waiting for the first celebrity blog run wholly by their PR company. Maybe it’s already happened and I’ve missed it.

I first entered Raging Cow unaware that it was a Dr. Pepper marketing campaign, after the name jumped out at me and made me chuckle [Raging Bull is not my favourite film]. When I found out that it was an advertising campaign I was interested. For the record, I don’t like Dr. Pepper, and Raging Cow, the drink, hasn’t been released in the UK, so I dove back into the site to see how it stood alone- as a weblog. After all, this site will have been planned, designed and written by professionals, [and caused a hell of a lot of controversy] so it ought to be good.

As for the writing, if you like My Trailer Is Bigger Than Your Trailer, you’ll like Raging Cow. It follows a very similar writing style: quirky cow let loose in the world, logs her experiences and unique perspective on what she finds. Some posts are less subtle than others in the “buy our product” campaign. Take week one, for example, “Hey, our milk – it’s for everyone. But it’s just the same old thing, day after day after day. We’re just looking for a little variety. A little pizzazz. A little extra. A little … something …” Hmm, I wonder what that could be?

The design, as you’d expect, is attractive and fun, but took a long time to load. Once it did fully load it fell down where attempts had been made to make it fit in with other blogs out there. The link buttons [to the sites of the bloggers picked to test the product] crammed into the right-hand column didn’t sit well with the rest of the layout’s clean lines and cartoonish images. Aside from that, it’s simple enough to navigate.

There are three reasons to visit Raging Cow. One is to see what all the hype and controversy is about, the second to see what happens when a big company takes on a weblog, and the third is because they did an okay job and it’s a humorous read [if you can get past the obvious plugs for the product every post]. This is the first time I’ve ever said this, but due to those three reasons, this a must-see weblog.Raging Cow

The first thing I noticed about this blog is that it is probably one of the nicest looking blogspot blogs I’ve read in quite some time. I also really liked the tagline, “Ramblings from a face in the crowd. Could be interesting. Could be crap.” That definitely got me interested. While the author of this blog doesn’t have a biography or anything like that, you learn a lot about him through his posts. It’s always great to read a blog by someone who is relatively new to blogging. It’s like there is a fire that is burning in them that has long gone out in some veteran blog authors. This fire can definitely be seen in Mark’s posts.

Although the author submitted this site under the category of Humor, I would have to place it in the personal category. While many of his posts are very humorous, they are all rather personal in nature. That isn’t a bad thing at all. In the case of this blog, it is a very good thing. Mark definitely can tell a story, and more times than not they are pretty darn hilarious. The posts are all extremely well written and you can tell that Mark put a lot of thought into them. There isn’t really a single “blogging for the sake of blogging” post to be found here.

I really liked the design of this blog. Instead of just using one of the default templates and leaving it at that, Mark took a default template and made it his own, changing th color schme and adding some well placed graphics. This makes for a nice looking blog. The blog uses Haloscan as their comment provider and the comment links are very well integrated into the blog. I’ve seen blogs that use outside commenting systems where the comment links look terribly out of place. This is certainly not one of them. I was also very impressed that there was an RSS feed availab.e This is very rare with Blogger made blogs since it requires some extra effort since Blogger itself does not provide RSS feeds. Mark had done an excellent job with the design of this blog.

This is a great example of a well written personal blog. The humor keeps the reader interested and wanting to come back. It’s not just your “Today I had a bad day at work” type personal blog. It’s way more than that and is definitely worthy of a regular reading. R80o

My first impression of this site was, I have to say it, the dog. He reminded me of the dog from Little Rascals. I was also curious what exactly R80o was, but needed only to look in the archives to find out that it was another name, until another blog with the same name (different spelling) was found. The writer enjoyed this new blog so much, he changed the name of his own. Properly pronounced ~ radio.

The site itself is a standard Blogger layout, which has neat clean lines and is pretty easy on the eyes. The additions of textured colour to parts of the template were a nice addition to something we have seen a thousand times, making it a bit more personalized. The only issue I had with the design itself was the links. Black on green was a bit hard to read, especially with font so small.

R80o itself, was extremely well written. It’s simply a personal journal, written with just enough detail that any reader feels he knows enough about the writer to really “get” the story. Each new entry is written with real feeling, and a good deal of humour, encouraging you to keep reading, and has left me waiting for a new post. The writing itself is intelligent, but light and each post has been thought out and shows emotion and detail to tell he really cares about what is being said, not just posting for something to do.

One of the coolest things I found on this site was a link to the Blog-tography. Here you can view pictures, or register and post your own for others visiting this blog to view. I also found the links to other’s blogs interesting reads, some I have saved in my own list now.

Overall, this site is good read for anyone. I laughed almost the whole way through some of the stories, especially the one about K Mart. You’ll know what I mean once you read it. There is no real group who would enjoy this more than any other, as long as you’re ready to have a good chuckle. Based on how much fun I had reading this, and keeping in mind the link issue, I am giving the site a 4.
R80o

When I clicked on the link and saw that it was a “blogspot” blog I would be reviewing, my heart sank. Without wishing to be libellous or anything, I don’t like the adverts, I don’t like the fact that the archives rarely work and if they do, they display random lines of code as well and finally, I have come across very few “blogspot” blogs which have a half decent template.

However, it serves me right for being judgemental because this one was certainly an exception. The template looks good. I mean, he has his own title bar, appropriate to the domain name, (the title of the blog is pronounced “Radio” by the way) and he has even personalised his comment boxes with a nifty dog cartoon. The overall look of the site is professional and tasteful, despite the adverts at the top. And yes, blimey, the archives do work and even the permalinks too!

So on to the content then. Well it didn’t take me very long at all to warm to the author and his writing style. His postings are very easy to read, self effacing, witty and personable. Most of the posts (with the exception of a couple of movie reviews) are anecdotes about his life and what he is getting up to. There is no “About Me” page, but it is quite easy to get in to the head of the author because he is pretty open about things. Also, go check out his photo blog too- the guy is a professional photographer as far as I can gather and he certainly takes some groovy photos -would be nice to see more.

Mostly though, his postings are funny. Some of them are really funny, in fact I defy any reader not to laugh at this particular entry or many of the others. I mean, this guy could do stand up with a few more stories like this, (although with his fear of public speaking, that might not be such a good idea after all). The strange thing is, he also calls himself a verbal retard, though this most certainly NOT the case. I found all his postings to be extremely well written and honest.

This is a new blog and the archives only go back to September, but it is updated frequently and given time, this blog could score a five without too much difficulty at all. I also took points off because, lawsuit or no, the adverts do get on my nerves and also there seemed to be random numbers and letters found in the middle of some of the words- for example “… one time th B68 at really…” and “…I lov 1104 e you…”. Not sure what is going on there, but it could do with being sorted really. All in all though, a great start to blogging and although I am a sucker for the more personal, unpretentious kind of blogs, I reckon most people would get a lot of enjoyment from what’s here.R80o