Author: admin

Inconsistency – that’s the first word I have that describes the weblog simply titled “poetry…” The sites is updated very sporadically. The archives list includes only seven months of archives that begin in December 2002 and end in July 2005. Each month, there’s never more than just a few poems that have been posted. All together, there are 15 posts. It’s definitely not enough to keep readers coming back unless they know the author on a personal level.

According to the Blogger profile linked on this site, the author is Abhinav Shankar, a 22-year-old research analyst from India. He lists a few interests, but other than that, this is all we learn about the person behind this poetry.

My main reason for not scoring this weblog any higher is simple. I wasn’t sure if the poems were written by Abhinav or if they were just poems he likes. Some entries are listed with the author of the poem, and others are not. Maybe it’s safe to assume that the unaccredited poems are written by the author of this weblog, but everyone knows what happens when you assume.

The poetry itself, as infrequent as it is, flows very nicely. The author uses a good amount of personal emotion, which allows readers to somewhat see into the author’s life. He tries different formats of poetry, which also lets readers know that, as a poet, Abhinav is certainly open to new things and not afraid to try something different than what he’s used to doing.

The layout is a Blogger template. Not a surprise since the site is hosted at Blogspot.com. It doesn’t take away from the site, nor does it add anything special to it.

I felt like this site lacked a little bit of everything. There’s no consistency in posting, there’s no way for a reader to feel a personal connection with the author. If the author’s goal is to keep people coming back on a regular basis, one of those two things needs to start happening. If the author’s intension it just to have a place to post his poetry, so he can go back and read it from time to time, then I suppose he has accomplished that goal.
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At first glance this site’s structure is simple, simple headings, simple layout, simple design. I expected to find posts about the trials and tribulations of being a father, and that’s exactly what I did find.

The posts on this blog are pretty straight forward, nothing too deep, just basic information about the every day life of a father. I did find some of the posts entertaining but most of them resembled each other so the uniqueness was a bit lacking. I did like that he seems to post a lot of pictures of his kids and the events he’s describing, it allows you to become more familiar with the author.

I liked the design of the blog. It’s a simple frame web page with the links across the top so it makes it easy to find archives, links, and extras. The basic design supports the content of the blog, simple design, simple posts.

One of the extra features I did like was a provided link for some extra blog tools. The author provides some really great ideas to fellow bloggers and easy access to obtain them.

Although this blog didn’t explode off the page with creativity or thought-provoking content, I did like reading the posts. I’d recommend this site to other parents especially fathers who can relate.NULL

When I stared my own weblog in 1999, I didn’t know of any people other than complete computer nerds that would actually be in to that type of thing. Now, six years later, everyone has hopped on the blogging train – even businesses. I guess it should have come to no surprise that a weblog like the Commercial Real Estate Loans Blog would have been submitted for review.

For starters, I should preface the rest of this review by saying I have no experience and barely any knowledge when dealing with commercial real estate loans. That being said, I think the majority of folks that might randomly stumble upon this weblog will have the same type of background on the subject matter as I do.

Aesthetically, the site looks just fine. It’s hosted by TypePad, using a generic template that’s available for anyone using this same blogging tool. It was slightly customized using a stock image of a Mark Wahlberg-looking type fella, who I’m sure is related to the Commercial Real Estate Loan business to some degree…

The site has a huge number of convenient add-ons for readers. Plenty of RSS feeds, categorized archives, and other commercial loan publications and resources. There’s a small “About” section, which just gives a brief biographical paragraph about Pacific Security Capital, the parent company behind this weblog.

The different posts are hard to follow for neophytes in the commercial loan business, like me. However, they’re very well written and I’m sure strike a solid chord with those following this line of business. A lot of the posts give information on different panels or presentations that are sponsored by Pacific Security Capital. It doesn’t seem as much like an advertisement for this company, but more like a place to notify those interested in these informative events.

Will I visit this weblog again? It’s very doubtful. Would I visit this weblog again if I was following the commercial loan business and happened to be looking for a loan company with “expertise in real estate capital markets”? Absolutely. This is a weblog that will fit only into one niche, but it does a fine job of doing that.
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Vern Beachy’s Raves is exactly that. Vern raving, or linking to various news/sports/entertainment pictures &/or articles with a few lines from himself every so often. Before getting to the site reading the blog name gave me the impression of finding one person’s raves on whatever may have caught their attention, which is basically what you get set out on a simple blogger template.

Going back through his archives though I had a few troubles. The first archive of July 2004 warps the template and has two columns of posts with no relevant links in the side panel that were on the initial blog page. I don’t know if that’s because blogger doesn’t play nice with firefox or not, but it happened a few times with various archive entry’s. I also think that it might be wise to shrink some of the pictures in the sidebar to a more manageable size as they are outside the actual borders of the sidebar and I just find that a bit messy.

Some of the entry’s in this blog caused me to chuckle, some of them I just bypassed as they didn’t interest me at all. There is such a broad spectrum of articles here that one can skim and choose.

The author doesn’t really share anything of himself, his about page is brief and tells that he’s a “former radio and TV journalist and married…”. I’m not quite sure why this is listed in the personal section. I think it belongs in the news/links section.

Overall I gave this blog a 3.5 because of the problems I encountered whilst trying to get into his archives, the template outages and my own partial interest in the content.

But if you like news clips and sometimes funny finds online, then check this blog out.
Vern Beachy’s Raves

Barbed wire love. I thought, yes, here we go, something that is going to throw curve balls at me in regards to love in this day and age, barbed wire included. What you do actually get is a plain white blog, with a picture of house roofs at the top and a little blurb in regards to the blog, here’s the first few lines: “Had a book sitting around… needed a kick up the backside to finish it…”

I believe the author is trying to write a book. The blog is so brand spanking new that it’s only got 2 entry’s on it. Which made it easy to read, but a bit lacking in content in regards to the story.

I found the story, as little as there was of it, a bit engaging, a bit humorous and a bit dragging on. I’m sure this is still at draft stage, considering that it’s not even a chapter yet. I just hope that the author is going to engage a bit more. There just doesn’t seem to be any direction to the story as yet.

But then again, in the first chapter of quite a lot of books you don’t get much direction. I hope that the author finds the direction that is going to capture readers, because at the moment there isn’t enough there to capture the imagination.

The score of 2.5 was for the fact that there just wasn’t enough development there to give incentive to a reader to come back. It’s way to early to tell the story as yet.
barbedwirelove