Month: January 1970

Lewis E. Moten III surely hit the jackpot with this blog! When I opened his blog, I observed a very nice looking blog and assumed that it may be a great look to cover up some writing disabilities but man, was I wrong!

I initially expected some boring life story type entries with very little flair because, I am overly cynical. What I found was a blog that not only looks good but, reads just as well. It appears as though Lewis actually takes the time to think out his entries before putting them to type. I found some humor in a few of the entries, which is rare for this type of personal blog, in my opinion.

The design is remarkable and even has a feature to change the template on the fly. You simply find the drop-down box on the right side of the page and select the theme you want to view while reading Lewis’s blog and you’re set to go. Personally, I like the “Yule” theme since I’m in the holiday spirit right now. All of the other themes are great as well! I think all of the themes work very well and do not distract from the blog itself.

Lewis took the time to list several helpful links to scripts, blog tools and other nice resources to assist the blogger. He tops it all off with the infamous “Free iPods” link which, is really a good deal and folks have actually gotten these things for free!

I would definitely recommend Lewis’s blog to anyone for some great personal reading and it’s appropriate for work as well as home viewing.

Lewies Blogs

I honestly didn’t know what to expect when I came to this blog. Gambling is an addiction I know nothing of, and a risky hobby that I don’t see the glamour in or purpose of. That being said, if I wanted to learn any and everything about it, Gambling Weblog is the place to do it.

The content consists of only Gambling information, from Poker tour dates the results of Gambling Magazine Online’s award winners. There is an abundance of links to different places in the online gambling world, and at the end of every entry, there are related, archived entries and research reports.

Yet, there is a generic air to this site. It seems to be manufactured. I didn’t like that. And the recently reviewed soccer Weblog reveals an eerie resemblance. And low and behold, the Gambling and Soccer weblog link to one another, ie. the same author, or company, or whatever. The layout is just boring. There was no imagination and no effort put into it’s design.

I myself, do not consider this a blog. It’s simply a website, attempting to attract more traffic to itself by luring unsuspecting blogger to it under false pretenses. If you enjoy Gambling and want to stay in the know, then this will be an excellent site for you to visit. It seems to be consistently updated and well-maintained. But, if you are anything like me, don’t waste your time.

Gambling Weblog

Considering my entire gambling career consists of blowing $25 on slots in Atlantic City, I was pretty excited to review this blog. I’m scared of “real” casino games because I don’t know how to play them. Billed as “your ultimate guide to gambling,” I figured this site was my ticket to riches. I grabbed a pen to take notes and dug in.

Jo runs this blog and according to the “About the Author” section, she knows the business. Jo has been working in the online gambling industry for over 5 years and currently works for “an independent casino games design company that develops products for the land-based and online casino industry.” I particularly appreciate that there is also an “about the company link” (Creative Weblogging, Ltd.).

This is a new blog that was launched at the end of November, so there are presently only about 31 entries. At first I was very impressed with the apparent research that goes into each post. Every entry contains a list of “Related Entries” and “Related Research Reports.” It wasn’t until I read several entries that I noticed that the three research reports for every post are exactly the same. They include a MarketResearch.com report on Proctor & Gamble, a company called Gambling Services and a third report from MarketResearch on Proctor & Gamble in the OTC healthcare market. Color me confused. What does this have to do with gambling? Probably something, but nowhere does Jo give an analysis of these reports nor does she tell the reader why they’re important. The “Related Entries” links pertain a bit more to the actual post, but not always. The majority of these links are to articles on other Creative Weblogging owned websites. For instance, in an article about the launch of a gambling hedge fund (please Jo, enlighten the uninitiated masses. What is a gambling hedge fund?), one of the related links is to a story entitled “Presidential Candidates Lay Out Lifelong Learning Plans.”

For a site calling itself the ultimate guide to gambling, I had a hard time finding any actual guidance. Most of the posts are news articles containing lots of links, in addition to those mentioned above. Trump Casino’s recent bankruptcy filing gets a mention, as does the 2004 award winners from Gambling Online magazine. I enjoyed the post “Botnets, Zombies and Botherds – How DDOS Attacks Work” because of the author’s helpful commentary. I’ll probably try to squeeze the word “botherd” into conversation at holiday parties this season just for fun. I’m still trying to figure out where the post reporting reviews of the movie “Ocean’s Twelve” fits in.

The site design is minimal, which is a plus for this type of blog. Most interesting on the sidebar is an ad for “News Spotters.” The company offers to pay US$5 for each breaking news story you send in that they publish.

Overall this is an interesting site if you are really into gambling and want to keep current on the gambling world. I think calling this site “Your Ultimate Guide to Gambling” is a bit misleading. This is strictly a site for gambling news. For the general population more explanatory commentary from Jo is required. There is really no need for links to the research reports on every post and quite frankly related entries links should actually BE related to the post. Perhaps with more posts under its belt “The Gambling Weblog” will find its stride. There is definite potential here.
Gambling Weblog

Please don’t take offense, Greg & Deb, but the name of your blog sounded like a site for swingers when I first read it. (You never can tell what impression someone else will have of something, can you?) At any rate, imagine my surprise when the blog turned out to be just a wonderful tale of a family with a hilarious photo of two children (I assume they are Greg & Deb’s) sitting in a basket watching laundry go ’round. A brilliant first impression.

And it doesn’t disappoint from there. Greg and Deb have been blogging for a loooong time (since 2003, making their blog archaic, since blogging seems so ‘new’ to the thousands who discovered it in 2004.) While Deb is included in the title, Greg is the one who posts, but he speaks of his wife and family so much they may as well be blogging with him. The early posts tell of the birth of their second child and contain revealing posts about marriage and children–all of it compelling and tinged with humor. There are no titles to the posts, they are all simply dated, so it is hard to tell you what I enjoyed (especially since I enjoyed nearly every post I have read thus far).

There is not a link to “About Us” or even “About Me,” rather a ‘Goo b Gone’ link in the sidebar. I’m going to guess that this pertains to Greg’s attempts at becoming more fit–even though it doesn’t appear to have been updated since 2003. So, I question the need to keep the ‘Goo b Gone’ link, and I encourage an “About Us” link.

The May 7, 2004 post about testosterone being a blessing and a curse is just one of the many that made me laugh out loud. I hope you take a trip over to this blog and spend some enjoyable time there. I plan on reading as many of the archives as I can (sorry I couldn’t read them all before having to turn in this review. I am sure they are worth every second.)

Greg & Deb on the Web

I like to judge what a blogs going to be about by the title. I know, it’s a bad case of “judging a book by its cover” but it’s just something I do. So the judgements I had for Greg And Deb On The Web were:

1. It was a family blog.
2. It would be filled with anecdotes not interesting to anyone except family and close friends.
3. It would contain posts by both Greg and Deb in a sort of tennis match manner, with one person posting one day and the other the next.

Ladies and gentlemen, it’s not very often I do this, so treasure this moment. I was wrong. Except maybe for number 1. Yes, it is a “family” blog. But only in that Greg (who by the way, is the only one who posts on it, not Greg-and-Deb) does write about his family occasionally. Okay, he writes about his family a lot. But, nevertheless, it is interesting and funny enough, for an outsider like me, who doesn’t know them, to enjoy and appreciate.

Greg obviously has a sense of humour. Not forced, like a lot of other weblogs which “try” to be funny, but a genuine amused, slightly cynical way of looking at the world around him. He posts a lot about his daughters–Allie who is four and the baby Julia. Allie is an endless fund of humour, with her little bon mots.

Usually, when reviewing a weblog, I skim through the archives, dipping in occasionally to figure out more about the writer and where they are coming from. In this case, I sat and read through the entire archives (starting in July 2003) and before I knew it, I was hooked.

The layout is just that–a layout, in simple colours, uncluttered with a few links. It doesn’t detract at all from the writing, nor does it add anything to it.

Personally, now, not as a reviewer, but as someone who loves to discover fresh writing, this blog will be one I will be checking again and again. You should too.Greg & Deb on the Web