Author: admin

I wasn’t exactly sure what I was going to get with quira.net. I figured it would be a personal blog since it doesn’t have a name other than the url for the site. But I didn’t know anything else to expect with this site.

I was glad when I got to quira.net to find an about section. Since I didn’t have any expectations or thoughts on what to expect this was a good starting point. I found out that the author is a female living in L.A. and is a student. Oh yeah, she just move here from Austria.

Diving into the weblog with this new found information didn’t help me too much. At first I was thinking the site was just your normal weblog. Nothing going for it really. But as I got further and further into the archives I could see what was unique about this weblog. The fact that the author is from Austria.

All of the experiences that are mentioned are told in amazing detail as if you were right there. They are looked at as if through a child’s eyes seeing something for the first time, because she is seeing it for the first time. Other posts include daily ramblings of college work, friends, and family issues. In her about section she has a mini FAQ and one question is “Are you some kind of exhibitionist?” and it is very true. The level on which we get to learn about the author is amazing.

The design of the site is original which is a good thing. It is simple and clean which I really enjoy. The author is wanting to go into web design so I am glad that she was able to put forth a design that complements her site.

Overall this site takes a bit to get into and probably isn’t for everyone. It is your standard weblog with a little bit of a twist. The experiences and events that she talks about are a very enjoyable read and the design does not hurt the site. If you want a new weblog to read that is a stereotypical personal blog, quira.net is your site.
quira.net

The site was like a black and white photo!! Very clinical and clean cut. It looked easy to use and gentle on the eyes. I think that it may be a standard template, but dawn has added her own graphics to make it stand out. The main text stood out nicely form the rest of the page.

The content of the weblog was very interesting. Everything that Dawn writes about, whether it is a movie or some music she has heard, she brings her own thoughts and feelings into it. She gives you facts about historic times, and her feelings and views on everything she finds interesting. Some of the postings gave you a real insight into her mind and emotions. She is a very interesting lady with some very interesting views, even if they may differ from your own.

The design has a sort of mystic feel, and reading through posts and the hobbies of Dawn, you get the feeling that there is a real deep thinker behind this blog! The design was easy to use and very clean cut. There are lots of flashing links and blogrings that you have to scroll through to get to the archives. The archives are in a format that requires you to pick a date to see if Dawn posted on that day. I was really unlucky as the 5 dates that I choose had no postings! Instead, you get the option to sign her guestbook or leave feedback.

Overall I enjoyed this as a personal site. It really made you feel as though you could get to know Dawn quite well. She is a lady that has a lot to write about and say, and most of it relates directly to her life and feelings. The design and flow of the site is easy on the eyes and she even has a chatterbox so that you can chat online to her. I must admit that I would have liked to see her archives closer to the top of the site, but that is just me.

I enjoyed my visit and learnt a few things whilst having a read. I thought that it was well written, and a journey into what and who Dawn is. She has some strong opinions, and some of them make for fascinating reading. A good site to get you thinking about all areas of life and what it all means!Blogger111’s Xanga Site

“The Evolving Word” struck me at first as merely another “links to other sites” type of site, with very little actual content of it’s own.

How wrong I was.

After looking through the first couple of posts I became aware of how very coherent and intelligent the entries are. The author is obviously broad minded as his posts range from toilet humour (May 27th) to a detailed history of the way the Incas communicated (June 23). The posts are divided up in to 15 different topics (though two topics have no posts allocated to them yet) including language, sports and music.

There is little personal content about the author and what there is tends to be slightly over-analytical (June 16th), but this is not really a bad thing due to the variety of the content and the exceedingly entertaining and informative manner in which it is written. The author also states that he wanted to avoid the more personal aspects due to its ubiquity in other weblogs.

Some postings are long and in depth, some shorter but very amusing, all of which contain relevant links to a variety of sources. There is multimedia content in many entries too which is a nice touch (especially as they enhance the posts and are not just for show) though I guess this would slow things down for dial-up readers.

The layout of the website is also very good. The posts on the main page are shortened, with the opportunity to read more if you want to (which I often did), as well as the opportunity for commenting. The archives are easily accessible, with a number of statistics included.

My only gripe really was the need for registration to view the photographs and to leave comments with your name attached (they are anonymous without registration). I am sure the registration information would not be used for nefarious purposes, but I am still not sure why it is necessary.

Apart from that, this is a thoroughly entertaining, intelligently written and wide ranging weblog.

Editors Note: the site use phpNuke software as the blogging tool. While phpNuke can be used for blogs it is more of a full CMS and that is why there is the registration requirement for certain aspects.The Evolving Word

I guess I reached teenangst just in time. The most recent post is about how site owner, Graham, is going to shut it down. So here’s a farewell gift.

Basically there are no faults with either the site design or the writing, save some typos sprinkled here and there. Graham seems to live up to the site name – he’s a teen and he has plenty of them angst, striking out at a good many things. I wish he’d complain more about his girlfriend though. Without a girl problem the ‘teen angst’ thing just doesn’t seem complete. Oh well. Maybe knowing that there’s something he’s happy about in his life is what keeps readers from going “Oh no…not another whiny teen blog…”. Or maybe it’s because the girlfriend reads the blog and leaves comments?

Another slight problem: the PhotoBlog doesn’t work. Perhaps it’s because Graham is planning on shutting down the site anyway. Besides blogging about school(lousy), teachers(lousier), mom(also lousy), hangovers(lousy too), not getting enough sleep(very lousy) and girlfriend(mostly great), Graham is also quite interested in twiddling around with his site. He’s not bad at it too, from what I can tell.

I would say that teenangst falls into the category of a fairly typical teenage blog, but it has the advantage of a memorable domain name, a cool layout and succinct writing. None of those long-winding, whiney bagpipe entries. He complains, he moves on. One sharp jab right on spot. Just like teenage angst.

teenangst

The 3rd World view states in its title that it is “views and links from a human being that lives in the so called third world”. This grabbed my attention as I was hoping to read a weblog which would give me a new perspective on the world as well as teaching me something about a different culture (the author is from Bangladesh).

To a certain extent the weblog did achieve this, but I felt it could have gone further- only a small number of the posts were about life in Bangladesh and these tended to be of a general nature, whereas I think some personal accounts would have been more interesting. There were a couple of posts about the monsoon season in Bangladesh (July 15th and 26th) and another about cricket (July 19th) but not much else.

The archived articles tended to be about international news stories (especially the war in Iraq), poems/song lyrics which the author liked and quite a bit about blogging generally. I felt the author may have done better by offering his own opinions on some of the links -some had no explanatory material at all. It also seemed that a lot of the entries, if not linked, were simply cut and pasted from other sources. Reading between the lines, the author clearly has some interesting views but it would have been nicer to see these expressed in his own words instead.

The layout was simple and easy to read, though one of the picture links in the template wasn’t working and I felt the side bar took up rather a lot of the screen (at least in the resolution I was viewing it in). There were a few errors contained in the writing itself, but I wasn’t sure if English was the author’s first language, so maybe these are excused.

Not a bad weblog overall, but the links weren’t explained enough and some personal entries would make the blog much more unique.The 3rd world view