Category: Uncategorized

Online confession sites are not new, grouphug.us is one of the more popular examples, however the fact that “The Stories You Cannot Tell” is a more verbose blog format is refreshing. It allows the people who submit their stories anonymously to stretch out and really tell the story properly.

The idea is sound, the users are there, and the stories are typically magnetic no matter how badly they are usually written so its really quite annoying to see the font size at 50 or whatever it is, which makes me feel like I’m reading a kids book and means I have to scroll constantly. The color scheme isn’t terrible, but the overall design leaves something to be desired. I don’t think it would take much, just a better attempt at the CSS, a nicer font in a much much smaller size. At least it would allow for longer stories too.

I had a chuckle after reading about one guy getting an “under-the-table” hand job from his girlfriends step mother which was immediately followed by an advertisement for “Sweet MILF Action”. Very tactful. The ads divide every story and are also in this incredibly huge font.

Then I realized that maybe the site is not showing up right in my browser, so I fired up IE and sure enough the font is normal, but the entire site is in the left hand sidebar! Hmm.. I think there are some serious CSS template issues to fix here which is a shame because the stories are intriguing and the comments are often obnoxious and sometimes helpful. An interesting little experiment that could do with some house cleaning. NULL

One of the greatest virtues of a good blog presents itself in “Anna’s” My Not-So-Secret Self blog, that is, the virtue of honesty. In an early post she readily admits that only through the nature of anonymity can she, as a writer, truly share her often perverse, sensual, intimate and descriptively sexy posts with us. Thats fine by me, and I can’t help feeling a little voyeuristic as she describes her sexual awakenings as a young girl, or her day long fuck session with her boyfriend or her bisexual fantasies. I suppose it doesn’t help that she is using my girlfriend’s name as her pseudonym.

I can’t help thinking that her partner must feel a little privileged having received a toolbox full of sex toys for christmas from our author, but am unsure whether I would put her in the “nymphomaniac” category, rather than just a regular sex fueled person like the rest of us, the difference being she writes about it, quite well, for all of us to read about. Sex-blogs aren’t new, but when written well are compelling never-the-less. I’m totally sucked in. I continue reading about her spank session in uniform, why is this so engrossing? Obviously I’m not alone, the post is filled with positive comments. I’m feeling like a perv… but hey, I’m just a mammal right?

The site is a basic design, though thankfully devoid of the tacky adult ads most sex blogs are decorated with. Not that I would know, of course. There is a simple, text, non-animated ad for a sex toy store which is only minimally distracting. The pink and white are an obvious choice of color for the content and the site is easily readable and simple, which is refreshing.

“My Not-So-Secret Self” is well written, and wonderfully frank sex blog by a girl in a long term relationship whose exploration and kink with her partner are beacons of sexual compatibility in a swamp of tackiness that is the internet. Read on for more details of “Anna’s” not-so-secret sex life. NULL

There are blogs and then there are blogs. Some blogs are personal rambling anarchistic smatterings in cyberspace, and some are specific thematic information sites with regular updates. “Captains Blog” is the latter, a very specific theme being the cruise industry, but also borders very dangerously on being a spam blog.

The first clue to this accusation is the design. You know the sites you end up at when you type google.com wrong? Two tone, link heavy, faux search engine with the domain name up the top, you know the ones. Well Captains Blog looks like this. Considering the visual and overall experience of being on a cruise liner, you’d think there would be a picture of one. There are no pictures of anything, so its all rather bland.

The second clue is the parent domain name, fixed squarely in the middle of the screen in big font. The blog is really starting to look like a thinly disguised way to increase the google pagerank of the parent domain, which looks to be some kind of commercial cruise search/link page. The third most annoying clue is that every post is a link to the parent domain. The whole post, without any attempt to hide the underline in CSS so you have to read everything with it. Its surprising how difficult is it to read conformably when the whole thing is underlined.

But read I did, and found the site site was mainly just paraphrasing the contents of various cruise related articles elsewhere on the net. Its not bad writing, and it is certainly not plagiarism, but unless you are in the industry and care about this stuff, its pretty dry.

Well there is not much else I can say about this, I’ve seen them before and I will see them again. If you don’t want your blog to be instantly recognizable as a traffic phishing site, you have to put a little love into it and try not to make the link whoring so obvious. A decent theme will always attract traffic anyway, so establishing credibility on the internet is far more important than tricking people into surfing to your parent domain. They will only hit the back button anyway, and the google engineers are pretty savvy at ignoring these sites and penalizing their pageranks accordingly.
NULL

The first thing I noticed when I loaded bryce.web into my browser was a layout that was different than the biggest portion of the personal weblogs on the ‘net. The very first entry on the site was an explanation of where one of my favorite expletives came from – I don’t know how true it is, but it grabbed my attention in any case.

I jumped right into his site, where his posts begin in November 2005. The majority of his posts are just bits of trivial information he has pilfered from the internet, with a few links for readers to follow if they want more information. I’ll admit – had it not been for this weblog, I would have never known a set identical twins voluntarily had one of their arms removed and attached to the other twin. Too bad it ended up fake!

The site is fun because Bryce does post links that not everyone would find in their average trip through the internet. From bizarre to quite interesting, he pretty much covers it all in his very brief posts.

The layout of the site looks to be something that Bryce has done himself. Black text on a white background is where the blog entries are written. Shades of blue and some black and green compliment the rest of the layout.

From the “About” section of the site, Bryce indulges his readers in a few random bits of trivia about himself.

Overall, the posts that Bryce makes are fine. There’s nothing extraordinary about them, but the links he provides give readers something to entertain themselves with. It’s a fun site to occasionally visit, just as it appears to be a fun place for Bryce to occasionally post his internet findings.

NULL

“Cancer. It’s not just an astrological sign anymore.” If that ain’t the truth, I don’t know what is. This weblog, if it isn’t obvious from the title, is a personal weblog written by Amanda, who shares her experiences of being by her husband’s side as he battles his way through cancer. The most heart-wrenching part of this blog, for me, was the age group these two fall in – Amanda is 24 and her husband is 25.

In the immortal words of The Doors, “The time to hesitate is through.” Amanda and her husband are no longer hesitating on anything. They seem to be grabbing life by the reigns and going full speed ahead.

Since the inception of the blog back in April 2005, life appears to be non-stop for the couple. The day she starts blogging, she explains her disappointment in not being able to find any “real people” cancer blogs, which is why she created this one. Then, the next day, it’s time for her husband to start an extensive chemotherapy treatment. While each thing that happens would absolutely zap the energy and hope out of someone, Amanda rolls with the punches and keeps an amazingly positive attitude throughout the past several months.

Yes, cancer, the treatments, and the effects of the combination of the two play the major part in the posts for this site. However, there’s the rest of her life she has to deal with, too. The couple moves from Hawaii to Maryland shortly after the site began and, sadly, their kitten passes away. All the while, Amanda is taking time off work to be with her husband and blogging his process and treatments for the world to see.

The design on this site is really nice. That may sound trite, but it’s the first word I thought of upon loading the site. Amanda had recently submitted her site to several other review sites. The latest review she received made note of the light text on a dark background, so she immediately changed it to it’s current look – the nice one. It’s a very sleek look, easy to navigate, and everything is easy to read. I didn’t see the design before, but this one works very well.

I enjoyed reading this blog. It connected with my emotions and personal feelings enough to really pull me into the site.
NULL