Author: admin

This site has four posts. That’s it. September 9th, September 12th, September 13th, and November 14th – these are the days Jeff, the author, has posted on his weblog, Spaulding Bogosian.

For starters, I don’t know what or who Spaulding Bogosian is either. I tried Googling it, but only came up with a comment or two that Jeff, the author of this site, had left on a movie review website. Jeff lives in New Jersey, after some time in New York and a stint in the Midwest. He’s a stay-at-home dad for three boys. Moreover, once he gets on a soapbox, there’s really not much you can do to get him off – this is a great reason for him to have a weblog.

Design-wise, the site is hosted by Blog*Spot, and features one of the several popular Blogger templates. Jeff uses the pink version of this two-column layout. He keeps the information in his sidebar very limited – a link to his Blogger profile and his archives, listed by week and by title. Each post is very wordy, but to break up the monotony of so many paragraphs, Jeff throws in a picture of something that can somehow be tied to what he is writing – a dad (perhaps the author?) and three boys dressed up for Halloween, Martha Stewart, an indescribable image that caused me to laugh out loud, and my personal favorite, Dr. Sue Johanson from The Sunday Night Sex Show.

He covers topics that a lot of people can relate with. Thanks to his current lifestyle, he can easily write a humorous comparison to his life as a stay-at-home dad with that of a typical stay-at-home mom. It’s unquestionably worthy of note to read the take of a man’s opinion on so many things related to women, like most of his four posts are wont to do.

Obviously, the site is just getting off the ground. Once Jeff begins to post on a regular basis, I think traffic will increase for the site. As soon as that happens, it will be interesting to read the response to some of his opinions. Jeff does a good job implementing humor into his expressed opinions, but it’s the kind of humor that could easily offend some people and, on the other hand, just really crack someone up.

It’s hard to rate a site this early on in the game. From what I did read, I can see this site will be a hit once it finds it’s niche in the blogging world. Like I mentioned earlier, once Jeff starts writing consistently, there’s definitely an audience out there for him.
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The first thing I noticed when I got to this site was the Google ad at the top of the page. Soon after that I noticed that this is another Blogger blog, but not with one of the Minima layouts (or Scribe… I don’t like that one either) so I guess I can’t complain too much about that. As I skim through I notice a few other instances of ads that aren’t even blended in very well. This isn’t a great start, but I’ll try to look past the first impression for a second.

The posts are informative and range from features Blogger releases to the newest version of Firefox. They aren’t extremely interesting, and they’re full of links that I suspect may be sponsored, but they do let you know about what’s going on. Some of the spelling is a little off but I’m willing to look past that.

The template is, as I said, a Blogger stadard, but not one of the extremely overused ones. There aren’t many links aside from the ones in the posts, and the ones that are there are mainly to particular posts in this blog.

There are a few extras, most of them being ads or statistics plugins. There’s what I assume is a counter at the bottom, and there’s the I Power Blogger logo. Other than that, it’s pretty empty.

If you’re into technological things or South India (since there is a post or two about the local stuff as well), you might want to look into this blog. Otherwise, you might just end up getting overwhelmed by the ads and links and not really know where to go from there. It’s definitely not a bad blog, and I may end up checking it out again. I have to give it a 3 out of 5, because it won’t exactly be something everyone can relate to, but you should at least check it out to see if it appeals to you. Who knows, it may be a keeper.

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This is a non-weblog weblog. It is a static website with photo albums. There are no dated entries and no text, but lots of photos and one page under the link “other applications” called, “Your Salary according to Romanian legislation.” Since I don’t live in Romania, I didn’t spend too much time figuring out what this was.

The site has a couple nifty design features. You can choose the “color set” and the language for the page. The default color set is the much-loved black, which is my least favorite, but there are seven other choices : white, blue, yellow, grey, orange, green, and navy. Each color set is accessed from a handy pull-down menu in the upper left corner of the page. When you change colors, you also get a new set of photos on the home page. The language choices are German, English, Italian or Romanian. You may change the language by clicking on a flag representing the country where the language is spoken (US for English).

The writing on the page gives the briefest possible description of the photos. There might be one word–the name of city where the photo was taken–or simply a category assignment, such as “animals,” “landscapes,” “autumn,” or “Black Sea coast.” There is no further explanation beyond dates and the name of the person who took the photo.

There is no order to the page and no explicit purpose other than to display the photographs. It appears to be a personal site that a few friends use to upload their photos. There are hundreds of public photos, but there is a link to “private photos” that is password protected.

I’m not sure who the audience for this site is. Some of the photos are pretty and might be worth a look. Since the site is not a weblog, I’m not sure how to rate it. I give a 3.5 for effort.

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I read this entire site from start to finish yesterday. There are only four months of archives, so it wasn’t that long of a process. However, since yesterday, I’ve not been able to come up with anything to write about this site. And that’s definitely not like me.

The design is a little more cut and dry to write about, so let’s start with that. Thankfully, the design is unique. The color scheme of grays and blacks obviously go along well with the site’s name – The Gray Tie. At first glance, I didn’t notice the background, but as I scrolled down to read each entry, it became more and more distracting from the actual content of the weblog. The layout is set up in two columns. Weblog entries fill the main column, which is bordered next to an extremely long side column full of a colossal list of links. There are so many links in the sidebar – ranging from categorized archives to links the author supports to random weblogs – that it ends up being longer than the actual weblog portion of the site.

Readers never really learn a lot about the author. I only learned her name was Carol by reading some of the comments other readers have left. From the posts, it’s safe to assume that she leans heavily toward the right-hand side of the political arena, with plenty of links to different Republican party affiliated sites. Sparsely scattered throughout the site are brief mentions of her two kids – Glorious Girlchild and Magnificent Manchild. The posts where she does mention her kids and her every day life are a good break from the serious nature of the rest of her posts.

The subject matter of The Gray Tie isn’t one that will interest everyone. Carol does a lot of linking to other news sites. Sometimes these posts are unique news items, like the kids in Pennsylvania who had to re-use plastic utensils at their school cafeteria. The majority of the time, though, she focuses on more serious issues – Cindy Sheehan chaining herself to the White House, students being suspended for making anti-gay comments, or quite often the severity of sex crimes against children.

This isn’t a site I would visit again. A good number of the posts are just excerpts taken off of a news article, followed by the actual link and maybe a few word about Carol’s personal opinion on the matter. Sometimes, there’s just a link. I don’t want to discredit Carol’s writing ability, because when she posts, it’s very well written. I just think if she would showcase more of her own feelings and thoughts, rather than copy so much from news articles, readers would be able to connect a little more easily to The Gray Tie.
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The first thing I noticed when I logged into this website was that the profile, links and other information had inadvertently been pushed to the bottom end of the blog; quite appropriate for a blog talking about life in Alaska! Whatever the case, as I began to read, I discovered an outsiders views on Alaskan living (originally from Utah).

This blog is worth a look just for the ice and snow. It is worth quoting Jill to give you a feel for it… “There were a couple new inches of powder on the road and I had to earn every pedal stroke – but it’s no worse than thick mud” regarding her ride through powder snow. The gratuitous Moose picture is also worth a look. Jill also usefully dispels a few myths about Alaska. Eg: Alaska is cold not frigid; Alaska is not full of hippies; Alaskans don’t shoot polar bears for dinner and so on.

This site is really meant to be a diary – somehow, as mentioned above, the old Blogger template has gone awry, nonetheless, the journalistic aspect is clear and the pictures are good. So, in terms of design of this site, no brownie points. Still, if you can find them, there are some links to other blogs, in particular those of an Alaskan ilk and some links to copy editors, Jill’s alter ego.

Obviously, Jill’s site is a personal, and an outsider’s initial discoveries of a new place, which lends it a possibly clearer timbre than that of someone who was born and bred in the snow. Whilst her web is technically of no particular interest, it shows promise for its sheer readability. I’m giving it a 3.75. NULL