Author: admin

The New School Geek Cynic(TNSGC) is a fairly clean looking weblog with a banner at the top that looks kind of sucky. “Sucky” is a technical word that us professional reviewers use that means the thing we’re looking at is not very good. A common example of usage might be “That Nebyah writes some pretty sucky reviews.”

Anyway, the author, NSG, has what he describes as a personal weblog, and before you all decide to just switch over to another channel let me interject here and say that there are very few posts of the “I think Cadburys chocolates are great” variety. There is absolutely no mention of relationship difficulties, or pet cats or any of that mindblowingly tedious stuff.

Rather what you’re going to find here is game reviews, movie reviews, TV show reviews, and some rants, mixed in with the occasional diversion into website design issues he may be having, or the merits of Cadbury chocolates. (And by the way NSG I am totally with you on the subject of mindless blogs.)

I cannot comment on the accuracy of his reviews, since I have not seen any of the movies or shows he mentions, or played any of the games. However the reviews seem to be well thought-out, and the writing is good enough, and entertaining.

The design is pretty standard Blogger fare, which is fine by me. As long as it doesn’t interfere with the content I really couldn’t give a toss about design. And anyway who the hell do these airy-fairy arty types thing they are, dammit. The web is for text, and all of this awful graphics stuff is just a massive bandwidth wasting con designed to hide the fact that most sites have no content whatsoever.

Ok, so here’s the thing. As a personal blog it is not very personal. As a movie review weblog it has far too many game reviews, and vice versa. So who should read it? If you want to read reviews of movies and TV and games… but then why not just go to IMDB for movies, and one of a million specialist game sites for game reviews?

I’m inclined to think that NSG needs to pick a topic, but what the hell do I know.NULL

VoIP is huge right now. The uptake is only now beginning to surge as broadband users around the world choose providers and hardware to setup their own residential VoIP connections, and save themselves a pretty packet. I’m happy to review this site because I am a VoIP consultant myself, webmaster of a VoIP choice consumer website and Sys Admin for an ISP so I feel a little qualified to review the content.

Content aside for the moment, the CSS breaks down in my Safari browser so I reluctantly fire up IE. I like the clean blogstreet template, but its a little dull. VoIP is a dry topic at the best of times so a little pizzaz on the design wouldn’t go astray.

The blog discusses issues with this relatively new technology such as PC to phone dialing, VoIP and autodialers, VoIP disadvantages, USB phones, Wifi VoIP, industry news etc. The author writes succinctly and easily and its refreshing to read tech info in layman’s terms. I was disappointed however to read the December 8 post about Flyphone VoIP (USB based) that reads more like an advertisement than a review and based on my prior knowledge of this companies aggressive online marketing strategy I’m pretty sure it is.

As blogs take on a more prominent role in mainstream media, I believe authors will need to make their own decision with editorial guidelines for where posts and ads become harder to distinguish. In major print media, these lines are clearly defined so blogs need to think about their editorial standards. This blog certainly seems to be linking commercial websites within posts so the relationship is unclear.

Voice Over IP and Internet Telephony could do with a more imaginative title, but I suspect this site is just trying to be googlebot friendly in order to pull more traffic for its sponsors. Its content is generally good and well written but risks falling into the splog (spam-blog) category without better execution. A good read mostly, but could use a spit and polish. NULL

The Beauty Addict Blog – not exactly my cup of tea, but sometimes blogs that aren’t down my alley end up being the best ones to review. They lead me to open my eyes and give new things a chance. I was hoping for that as I opened up The Beauty Addict Blog, but my hopes were quickly dashed as I started to read this “daily fix of news, reviews, and more”.

The leopard print background, while a nice color for interior of Tarzan’s car, doesn’t really do a lot for the site visually. Perhaps it’s something that’s incredibly popular in the fashion industry, but the colors the owner of this site uses become distracting when seen against this pattern. Thankfully, the entries show black text on a white background – a classic combination that never goes out of style.

November 30th is the first post on The Beauty Addict Blog, beginning with a post on shopping at H&M and explaining a few of the ins and outs of the clothing designer that sell their clothes there. Other review-type entries follow on almost a daily basis, ranging on topics from lip gloss to reality TV and from aerobic striptease DVDs to the resurgence of black on the runway.

The typical post is only about a paragraph long and doesn’t contain that much information. People following the fashion or makeup industry may recognize some of the names and brands that are mentioned, but for a neophyte to this topic, I found myself becoming lost as soon as proper nouns started to pop up.

There are a handful of different authors that post on a consistent basis, and each of their writing styles all seem to flow somewhat similarly. It’s clearly a site where the appropriate research has been done and the amount of knowledge the writers have is well explained. It’s just not a site for someone that doesn’t have the appropriate background information and/or interest in the world of a beauty addict.
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The brain is like a muscle. If you don’t use it for extended period it will deteriorate, much like the strength of astronaughts who in their weightlessness grow weaker and come back from space sore and limp. Henry Baum’s brain gets a literary workout in his regularly updated blog – Ash Tree when it isn’t busy authoring novels or composing contemporary music. Ahh when it rains it pours and Mr Baum is one of those annoying people that got a smack with the talent stick as a kid and seems to have a natural ability for all things creative.

If his books and music are anything like his blog, then we will probably be in good hands as H.Baum writes naturally about his life as a writer, dropping names that even I know of. Having gone to school with Jack Black and his new girlfriend he tells us about her (“the prettiest girl from my high school class”) with an accompanying photo. Most of the posts are presented this way which makes the site very visual and easy to view. In fact, the whole site is very well presented with good navigation, colors, and layout.

Henry Baum is altogether a really interesting guy so naturally his blog is a great read. Whether he is reviewing books he has read, telling (or showing) us the latest music he has composed, photos he has taken, people he has met or things he is doing he does it in style and as a writer executes all this perfectly. His wife has an interesting blog too but it is outside the scope of this review.

Ash Tree isn’t for everyone but for those of you with literary tendencies and general interest in the culture of writers or artists, Henry Baum’s blog is a rare gem in an anarchic sea of crap. Highly Recommend. NULL

“A Shout in the Dark” is a re-launch of a blog that has been reviewed last month – new URL, new content management system, and a new design. I was anxious to see the author’s new beginning would bring a weblog I could not stop reading. Unfortunately, it didn’t quite accomplish that.

Since this revamped site only hosts less than two months of archives, it did not take long for me to read them each individually. Charles, the author, keeps the entries short and to the point. He’s a working man, and also going to school, and, speaking from personal experience, that doesn’t leave much time for unnecessary weblog rambling.

The way I like to rate weblogs is easy. If a personal site, such as this one, can keep my interest and teach me something, whether it be about the author or just about something the author is interested in, I feel like I’ve just read a good site. The only thing I could remember from this site after reading it is that Sean Paul and Shaggy are both up for Grammy nominations in the reggae field this year.

WordPress is the content management system of choice on this site. It is a nice change from the standard Blogger templates that are so popular. Charles has done his own tweaking to the layout, adding his picture, some additional links, and pictures in the header image. The author has also done some work in adding additional pages to the site – a biography page, some news links, and his resume, for example. Along the sidebar of this two-column layout, he also includes links to his favorite website and some pictures he has uploaded onto his Flickr site.

This site is still new and still growing. Charles is doing his best to find time in his schedule to update somewhat frequently. As time goes on, this site has the absolute potential to grow. Until then, though, I can only give it the average 3 as its score.
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