Author: admin

TWI or (T)ech and (W)eirdness of the (I)nternet for short is (according to the blogs “about” section) a blog that was started in October of this year with the soul aim of filtering the best of tech news from around the net and displaying it in an opinionated format (i.e not just copy and paste) by it’s author, “Maxx”.

The layout of the blog is very well and the fact that the blog is running off WordPress is really well concealed and until I hovered over a link in one of the posts, I was convinced that the system may have been coded from scratch! There are loads of RSS feed’s available and quite some thought has gone into the naming of catagories and tag’s that feature on the site.

As I already said, this site is all about the author delivering his own interpretation of the latest and greatest technology news around. Usually I would turn my nose up at a site like this for the simple reason that I like my technology news to be factual and with an opinionated blog like this, there is always going to be room for bias towards one company/organisation in particular stories. It appears however, that this blog is an exceptional case. There may very well be some bias here and there, but because the author always derives his opinion from supplied quotations you can often understand how they managed to form this opinion and for me, figuring this out is almost as interesting as the news within the posts themselves!

Overall I found the blog to be both informative and interesting to read and even though I read a lot of Tech news sites, I still learned a lot. The blog is also a joy to navigate around and obviously, a lot of time was spent in figuring out exactly how to display the content to the visitors. Lately the author has been encouraging community contributions to the site due to a lack of available time to work on the blog. It will be interesting to see if this idea gets off the ground and if it does, it begs the question, will the style of the content change too dramatically? Only time will tell but for now this is certainly a very entertaining blog and I heartily recommend it to any self-respecting tech savvy person out there!NULL

“Rant”. It seems to be the buzz word in the blogging community at present! Nearly every second blog I come across these days has the word “Rant” embedded into it somewhere only to dissapoint with posts that don’t resemble a rant at all! This was my main concern while I was waiting for this site to load which it took a long time to do!

Once the page started displaying I could see quickly see why it took so long! The scrollbar on the right of my browser window was rapidly shrinking – almost to the point where I couldn’t see it anymore! This blog is big! After a quick scroll down a pre-installed blogger template page, I counted only eight different posts, three of which were extremely brief leaving five incredibly long posts.

On the sidebar we learn that the author is one Scott Hudson who lives in South Dakota. I apologise that that state doesn’t mean much to me because this humble reviewer resides in Ireland. Not having any local knowledge slightly hindered my ability to understand what was going on in some of the posts in this blog but thankfully it didn’t prevent me from enjoying it because the posts are clearly well thought out and they accurately convey the author’s strong feelings towards certain issues. As I said earlier, this blog is big and I suppose this is a suitable time to question the blogs title which is “Rant-a-BIT”. I think “Rant-a-LOT” would have been much more fitting title!

Staying on the subject of the content, I was happy to see that the blog isn’t all about serious issues and Scott often offers his own spin on light hearted and humorous issues which is just as well because I don’t think I could handle rant after rant after rant! If there’s one bad thing that can be said about the blog it’s that once you’ve finished reading one page, there is no “Next” or “Previous” link. Instead you have to scroll all the way back up to the top of the page and click a suitable link in the archive section of the sidebar which can be incredibly annoying for anyone who wants to read back through the archives which span all the way back to March of 2003 where the posts were just as vast as they are today!

Overall I can say that this blog is well worth the read especially if you like long posts which offer a great insight into the life and personality of the author. If you prefer short and snappy blogs then this blog just isn’t for you! Personally, I enjoyed reading it and will probably add it to my growing list of quality blogs in my bookmarks!NULL

iPodbloggers has lots of squares, in varying shades of blue. It also has lots of ads, in varying shades of sod-off-and-stop-trying-to-sell-me-stuff. There are also several Flash animations of some kind. I don’t know what they are, because Flashblock kills the damn things nicely. If you’re using Firefox, go and get Flashblock now. If you are using IE, go and get your brain looked at because it appears to be malfunctioning.

Despite all of this I read on. The postings include articles on different iPod models, services available for iPodders, podcasting, and MORE BLOODY ADS. Aside from the ads I would have to say that the content is interesting if you have an iPod, or are thinking of buying one, and want to get the most out of it.

The colours are well chosen, I think, because they work well with all the photos of iPods, and that’s all I’m going to say about the ad-laden design.

In addition to the articles iPodbloggers also gives you RSS feeds of Ebay listings containing iPods, which is pretty cool, and – in case I haven’t mentioned it already – a tonne of ads. What a bonus.

If iPods are your thing and you have a high ad-tolerance this will probably be of interest.

Finally, to scoring. Let’s start with a score of three, which of course represents your average crappy blog. Take off three for all the ads, and unnecessary use of Flash animations, which gives us a score of zero. Next add one point for the potentially useful content, and another half-point for the RSS feed idea, giving a grand total of 1.5 points. Possibly I am being too generous.

Suddenly my brain slips a gear and I find myself giving iPodbloggers extra points for having a well-defined topic and not being just another damn personal weblog.NULL

Business writers use the craziest naming conventions around (except for maybe the adult industry). Anyone who has browsed the local bookstore for business books will agree after having seen such titles as “The Mind Gym”, “The Money Diet”, “Freakonomics”, “Who moved My Cheese?”. These are all on Amazons top 5 right now, no kidding. So when I read Steve Majors title I wasn’t surprised, although when I logged on I was hoping to read about how I could make lots of money by being lazy, something I’m extremely proficient at, but was dismayed to find good, well written business advice instead.

Steve’s Bio includes a photo of himself and a summary of his business history. His methods are “lazy” which mean they require little overall relative effort as well as being involved in “no money down” business startups. I know what he is talking about having started a webhosting business myself. The best kinds of businesses are the ones that require very little effort and Steve specializes in real estate. He kind of looks like a typical accountant and apparently is a country music singer which conjures up an amusing image.

The Lazy Investor website has only occasional updates but the updates are long, thorough digests of advice including posts on business marketing, real estate investment and writing a business plan. Of course, he also promotes his own “boot camp” seminars and this is nicely segwayed (hey I just invented a word) via a rant about his injured leg. Despite the often dry subject matter Steve writes well both professionally and conversationally enough to not seem like you are reading from a textbook.

The site design and neat, tidy and a little boring. The logo features the author leaning against his own URL, arms folding looking real pro, and lazy since his shirt is not tucked in. The title header uses drop shadows and the site is a customized blogger template so everything screams cliche.

Steve Majors, The Lazy Investor, is a good website for anyone interested in gathering small business advice or interested generally in the practice of real estate investment. I can’t appraise the value of his advice as I’m not expert on the subject and really, too lazy to do the research, but he does seem to know what he is talking about. The site could use revamping but is easy enough to read and presumably makes good companion reading to his Lazy Investor workshops and literature. NULL

The first thing I read is how she gets annoyed when people say she is pretty. So I’ll start the review by saying – honk honk, you’re hot. Deal with it. Girl blogs are great aren’t they? They are so much more honest and open than us blokes and Majorie’s blog is no exception. She agonizes and articulates, pains and postulates. We see a smile in her social photos, but mostly she complains a lot. In a good, philosophical way, that is.

Her profile surprises me by being close to my own as she has great taste in music and activities and a questioning nature. Her posts delve into her present emotional states and uninhibited, she tells us about her innermost ponderings. She has a great writing style and at the same moment she berates herself for being inadequate, she does it so poetically and intelligently it leaves you confused. She tells us also about her college life, the parties, the boys, the hangovers, the good times.

The design is pretty well a straight blogger template we’ve all come to know and love and doesn’t annoy me too much. One post is filled with photos, while the next is full of stream-of-consiousness text, it really depends on her state of mind I guess.

Staying awake to chase a dream is a non-thematic personal rambling of a young girl finding herself through her friends, her thoughts and her lifestyle and makes entertaining reading. NULL