Author: admin

I have officially been to a website that has one of the most interesting ways of using a weblog that I have seen. “Horse Training Tips” is exactly what the title says; it gives horse training tips in weblog form. When I realized this, I was intrigued. How did the author make this kind of format work? I immediately delved in deeper, first going to the profile so I knew something more about the author.

His name is Andy Curry, but what I found disappointing is that his profile doesn’t tell much about his background with horses. All it says is he loves animals…especially horses. Well, I can see that, there’s a whole website devoted to the animals. What I wanted to know was, is he a professional trainer or is this a hobby? How many years has he been doing this? How many horses has he trained, or does he own? This is information that should be in a profile about a weblog dedicated to horse training.

Next, I began browsing the entries. A lot of these entries are structured like letters, ending with “Sincerely,” etc. And, there are a lot of external links for more information on the subject broached in the weblog. For example, there was a short tip about bucking horses, and at the end was a link to more information. However, these external links have to be copied and pasted into the URL bar! I found this very inconvenient; it isn’t very hard to add a link command into the html, I think of it as a common courtesy.

Now, I don’t know much about horse training. I did a little bit of riding when I was younger, but that’s about it. However, from what I read from the content, Andy seems to know what he’s talking about. But, it isn’t all tips, there are a few anecdotes, too, and I found these especially enjoyable. It gave the weblog a more personal feel and made Andy more human. It also made the weblog fit into the “Personal” category.

Unfortunately, there was one huge detrimental fact that reduced the overall score: when I clicked on the archive links, I received a “Page cannot be found” error, so only the posts under “Previous posts” were open to me.Horse Training Tips

According to the website, itself, “Security Awareness for Ma, Pa, and the Corporate Clueless” (which I will refer to as “SAMPCC” in this review) “gives computer security tips and tricks to government, corporations and home users everywhere. We focus on the people – not the technology.” There are supposedly six contributors, but when I went through the posts on the main page, in my initial skim-through, I saw that only Greg Hoffman was contributing anything.

I also noticed something else: although the website says that it gives security tips, I couldn’t really see any tips. It seemed that the posts were links or excerpts of news pertaining to computer security. For example, there were posts about major sites being hacked, and then there would be a link to the original news article. Where were the tips?

The layout, itself, is rather plain: your average Blogger layout and there seems to be no information about the authors when clicking on their names, except for Greg Hoffman, but even that information was sparse. All I learnt was that he was in marketing, but that was something in comparison to the others. I began to wonder if there really were other authors.

All-in-all, SAMPCC is interesting, because it provides interesting news articles about the computer and internet industry, but if you’re looking for security tips or a personal weblog, look elsewhere.Security Awareness for Ma, Pa and the Corporate Clueless

This blog was submitted in the humor category, and after skimming a few posts I can see why. This blogger has the ability to write about daily occurences in his life and transform them into comical events.

‘Mindless Drivel’ is brought to us by ‘a guy in Texas with too much free time on his hands.’ This is a relatively recent blog with entries dating back only to October 2004. He chronicles things that happen as he goes about his life, updates often and his posts are insightful, detailed and of course, funny. Recent posts include his thoughts about how people from Texas act at Starbucks when it gets cold, his commute to work where he always seems to get stuck behind bad drivers who always seem to drive Toyota Camries, and one of my favorites, how squirrels enjoy “seeing us freak out and slam on our brakes, taking out mailboxes, flowerbeds, and pedestrians in a desperate attempt to spare the life of a suicidal rodent.”

The best thing about this blog was by far the entries. They really are entertaining to read, not too long and not too short. One thing I would have liked to see was more about the author in the ‘about’ section. He does give us the basics, i.e. age and gender, but it’s always good to find out a little about the person behind the writing.

This blogger uses blogger and blogspot, and he has added a nice design to a two column layout. In one column he has his blog and the other column has navigation, a poll, archives and links He uses creative headings for these categories such as “oldies but goodies” instead of archives and “blogs that are better than mine” instead of links.

Overall, I absolutely loved this blog. Did I mention he was a finalist in the ‘Best of the Rest Blogs’ in the 2004 Weblog Awards and it’s obvious why. His refreshinginly humorous writing style makes this a bookmark worthy blog. mindless drivel

Just for Small Business is an information blog which offers resources and tips and examples to the backbone of most economies, those who run small businesses. The site is very simple visually, with a three column layout with the main content in the middle. As I scrolled down I noticed a few problems with the design, such as the ‘visit small biz boot camp box’ was overflowing into (and covering) the content (I’m browsing with Firefox), ho-hum.

The author, Denise O’Berry , has done a mountain of work with small businesses having, a small business online forum, a weekly Small Biz Strategies tip e-zine, plus she writes a syndicated small business column and publishes a small business newsletter. Phew. Clearly someone you should listen to!

The blog content contains great information for those in small business. I would think anyone running a business of any size could benefit from the wisdom and examples in this blog. It takes just a few minutes to read a month of entries. The information could potential make a major different in the success, of failure of one’s business. In one entry entitled, ‘Employees Aren’t Mind Readers’ Denise explains the importance of giving clear instructions to employees. In her example, an employee who couldn’t find a switch to turn off a machine pulled the plug out on the machine instead, which ruined the product inside by the next morning. Clearly this example underscores the importance of training staff and having reference material they can access if they need a question answered about how to do task ‘x’. Each entry has some timbit of useful information to share to help business owners in various areas such as staffing, planning, proposals, marketing, taxes etc.. The writing is straightforward and accessible for all readers, even those outside of business may find some benefit to reading this blog. Denise also reviews many books that focus on small business in her blog and offers photos of those books so readers can easily find them.

While not the most impressive site visually the solid content in ‘Just for Small Business’ makes this site an impressive resource for anyone interested in improving their bottom line. Even the casual non-business reader may enjoy some of the examples that Denise provides. Bottom line: An accessible, easy to read resource that should be mandatory reading for every small business owner.
Just for small business

This blog is designed for a target audience of…wait for it…small business. You didn’t see that coming, did you? (I kid.) It’s not a very well designed blog, but the sheer volume of links to resource material makes it an invaluable tool for anyone who owns or will possibly own a small business.

Denise O’Berry runs the site and has written “three booklets” and “several how-to pamphlets” on small business issues. It took some digging to find her bio, and I only found it after many, many clicks through her linked site which is deniseoberry.com.

Denise seems to be struggling to find an audience for her blog and her otherwise sound advice. My criticism of the site is two-fold: She should put her bio and info prominently on the page. People want to know why they are taking advice from Denise, what her credentials are, how she’s helped others. The second bit is: get rid of the annoying pop up ad for “Small Business Boot Camp” that comes up every time you hit a link to anything else. This will chase people away faster than a small business fails.

But! If you follow the advice Denise gives, perhaps your small business will not fail. Spread the word to your small business friends to check out this blog. I honestly don’t believe you’ll find a more comprehensive site out there on this subject. Just for small business