Category: Uncategorized

TravBuddy is a “one-stop” where an individual can share travel photos, reviews, and experiences with others. The colors are nice too, rather cheerful and do not detract from the site itself, the layout is quite simple.

The site is the brainchild of two brothers just out of college, who wanted young people to have a place to go for quality firsthand travel experiences. While perusing the site, I found a user who has visited fourteen countries and journaled the entire trip, including mapping it out using google maps. TravBuddy’s registered users come from all over the world.

In order to post photos, reviews of your travel, or any other info an individual has to be registered and so far the site owners boast at least 1000 members and is increasing almost daily.

At first glance, an individual who is not familiar with the site will wonder its purpose, as it really isn’t clear until reading the “about” section at the bottom of the web page. Once I understood the purpose of the site, I thought it was pretty unique. I’ve never seen one like it before but considering there are already 1000 members I’d say there must obviously be a need for it. “If you build it they will come” and they certainly came to TravBuddy in droves. It’ll take a little while to navigate and get used to it but it’s relatively simple and if you want to get some real firsthand information about traveling to a particular destination this is certainly the place to go.

Just remember that like everyone’s tastes tend to be different and while it’s a great idea to take into consideration the feedback on TravBuddy it shouldn’t be the sole resource in making any travel decisions. Overall I’d say this is a unique site and has a lot of potential so long as its members give quality feedback.NULL

Last time I checked, this website that you’re reading right now was called The Weblog Review. Now, for me, that means we review these things called weblogs (or blogs). Maybe you’ve heard of them.

The name of this site is FusionCharts for Blogs – Animated flash charts, and I guess it didn’t really sound like a weblog from the start, but I decided to give it a chance. And guess what? It’s not a weblog at all and there’s not a blog hiding anywhere at all.

The products on the site seem like they’d definitely benefit a blog, and adding a weblog into the site would be a great idea to help readers know about the development process of it all. With addition of an actual blog, I’d be able to rank this site a lot higher. Without? It doesn’t really fall into the type of site that’s reviewed here at all.

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According to his profile, Gary, or GMan1948, our blog author, has worn many “hats” over the years. He is a “semi-retired” CEO and bookseller.

The first thing that happened when I clicked on the URL to review his site was it crashed my computer.

After rebooting my system, I tried again. His blog forced a java update onto my PC, which I totally didn’t like. I use Firefox, so I guess that I wasn’t as up to date as I thought I was. After a few minutes of java updating and another cup of coffee retrieved, the site was loaded and I proceeded to get to work.

The top of the page under the blogger banner has six banner sized news and advertisement bars and a small calendar navigation box to the right for his blog content. The news and advertising banners weren’t interesting to me, so I began to scroll down the page. I scrolled down past articles about marketing and articles about advertising. I encountered his profile on the right sidebar, and more news and more advertising in the main part of the blog. Good grief, where is the content? More ads! eBay! Dell! Amazon! Blog Blaster!

Finally, an entry. It was dated recently, so I knew this wasn’t a shell of a site to click through for ad revenue, Gary’s content began more than halfway down the blog.

You know what my criticism is here, don’t you? One shouldn’t have to scroll until one’s fingers ache to get to blog content. The sad thing is, all that scrolling was for naught. The blog content wasn’t all that thrilling, and quite a let-down since I had to dig for it so deeply. Gary blogs other people’s content, about microbusiness, launching websites for small businesses, and how to make money with your blog.

Blogvermercial indeed.

The only saving grace is that he actually attributes sourcing to the authors of the articles he quotes extensively or reprints in total. How incredibly refreshing! I have reviewed blogs here on Weblog Review where the content is obviously lifted from other sources and the blogger NEVER links back or attributes ownership. So it was nice to see actual “about the author” information on each of the entries for the past several months.

The site archives go back to February 2006, and it was only by going back there did I find any content written by the blogger himself, from his opinion and position. Commercials he hates, commercials he loves, how he used Craigslist and wanted to know what other people thought about bartering.

That’s a blog. Interesting,

The past couple of months worth of entries are simply cut and paste reposts of other articles. I think Gary’s blog, opinions and voice have been eaten alive by the concepts of advertising and marketing on the web. And this is really sad, because I bet Gary has some great stories, anecdotes about customer service and business, and opinions that are better than what he is culling and pasting from the web.

That’s something that happens in our modern consumer culture. And it is kind of sad because I enjoyed reading the early months of the blog.

In short — the ads and all the noise at the top of the page totally detract from the site, and the author is lost. I give the site a 2. I see hope and potential if Gary gets back to writing and speaking his own voice instead of letting other articles fill the space. Hopefully he will. He has two other blogs in his Technorati profile, so perhaps those spots are where he shines. I’ll have to visit and see… but right here at the Blogvermercial? Not so much.

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Every now and then I come across a blog who’s name is original. It is almost impossible to find something truly original in this thing we call the blogosphere, but this name of Sensibilities just struck me as original. I didn’t know what to expect, so I dove right in.

The blog tells us that it is “An attempt to make sense of things in a random universe.” That’s quite a burden to impose upon oneself, but nevertheless it is still a task.

The blog is not quite about the universe, more about the author. Which is fine and a little more manageable. The blog talks about all kinds of different things the author has been through. She also likes to talk about the books she has read, and by the looks of it, she reads a lot.

The design of the site looks like a blogspot template only slightly modified. It works for this site, which is a rarity amongst the blogspot templates. The biggest complaint is that the left hand navigation is obscenely long. Sometimes longer than a month of posts.

Overall I enjoyed this blog. The posts aren’t all that frequent, though they do typically contain a lot of content. The navigation for archives is at the top of the left hand column so this also makes a little annoyance, but overall this is a good blog to read.NULL

It’s every bloggers dream to wind up being able to quit their jobs and live life a rock star solely based off the revenue their weblog generates. Anyone that keeps an online journal and says they haven’t thought about that is quite possibly lying. Personally, I make enough money off of my weblog to afford an addicting tattoo habit, but I never want to make that the prime focus of my personal weblog.

Because of this and all of the different “opportunities” (and I use that term loosely) that present themselves online, my eyes tend to roll across the floor when I find a site that’s geared towards nothing but that. Case in point? A weblog called “Online Income Opportunities”. Sure, I’ll review the site and boost your Google page rank, so more people will advertise on your site. Why not? Then maybe I can get rich for my superb writing skills and never have to work again.

The site loads and I’m instantly greeted with ads all over the three-column layout. A gigantic banner fills some of the top part of the screen, and a column listing all 15+ different sites where the author makes money while blogging fill one of the sidebar columns. It’s drab and boring. The most aesthetically appealing item on the weblog was some sort of widget the author of the blog has installed to allow people to review this site on the spot.

I wasn’t thrilled when I realized I was going to have to be reading entries dating back to September 06 that serve no purpose, but to make a few bucks here and there. The first post lets readers know that the author has been investing online for almost a year and she’ll be sharing her experience with the programs she’s joined.

Along one column of the blog, she mentions she lives in Bangalore, India. If that’s the case, it doesn’t really make much sense why she’d be blogging about house loans in the UK unless she was getting paid for it, right? And how the post written about the Beverly Hills Plastic Surgery office that she writes about and includes a nearly 600 x 500 pixel image of a photoshopped girl? This is the way about 99% of the entire weblog is written. The rest of the posts are the author telling the advertisers, I mean, readers that she’s going to be gone for a couple of days.

It’s a money-making blog. There’s no rhyme or reason to it. I can’t rank it any higher than I have.
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