Category: Uncategorized

Life with Rashed is a new blog, and it looks like Rashed still hasn’t quite figured out what he wants the site to be. Of course, I don’t really know if Rashed is the author, there is no bio info or author email, a personal pet peeve of mine.

The site looks nice, with pleasing tones and the ability to change the colors in the skin by pressing a button. There are a lot of images, and for the most part they are clip-arty. Just about every post has an image.

It could be this is a first effort at blogging and websites, and Rashed is having a good time with it. There are some flash movies on another page, and an empty forum. Presumably the link to register allows you to comment in the forum, but this wasn’t clear.

The writing is all over the place, and I’m not really sure who the audience for this blog might be. There are surveys completed by the author, some poems and random thoughts. Particularly bothersome is the post on smoking saving folks from cancer. Someday Rashed may find a better direction for the blog, but for now, it comes off as a project and not as thoughts from an individual. There’s nothing of interest here for me.NULL

When I saw “Sawx Blog”, I was thinking sawx=socks, oh, how cute. No, actually, sawx=Sox; the Red Sox, to be precise. From my position as a teenage girl uninterested in sports, I had to contemplate whether or not to even do this review. Would it be fair for me, very much not a sports person, to do a review on a blog entirely devoted to sports? I suppose my final decision is evident.

As I perused the blog, I noticed that it was entirely red, white, and blue; Red Sox colors, as I learned from the pictures. The design is a little cluttered, with a ton of links on the sides, and the Google ads match the site well enough so that they’re an exact match and blend in with the rest of the links… not too appealing to me.

The blog itself is very informative. I regret to mention that I actually learned a few things reading about the baseball team (haha) and may perhaps become interested in the Red Sox. Well… maybe in a few years. As a non-sports person, the entries weren’t that interesting to me, but I could really see how someone who likes baseball could be drawn in.

There aren’t many extras to this blog; there’s a picture every now and then, and as mentioned above there are quite a few links, but other than that it’s fairly simple. While this could be good or bad, I think it does well for this blog. Nothing but the sports… for the avid sports fan.

Overall, I don’t think I like this blog very much on a personal level, because it’s not something that interests me in the least. However, the entries are well written and regular. That’s always a good thing. I have to knock off a bit for the cluttered sidebars, and for my lack of interest. For someone who’s interested in the Red Sox and who doesn’t mind scrolling through a bunch of links (or who plans to read this with an RSS aggregator, perhaps), this blog would be a good bet. Overall, I’d have to give it a 3.5 out of 5.NULL

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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Um excuse me, does anyone here know what the hell zazzafooky is? Is it a thing? Is it a place? Is it something all the cool kids are doing and I just don’t know about it? To many questions, and I have to get this review done.

When I first got to zazzafooky the design was missing. At first I thought the author just went back to simplistic times of websites in 1995. But then the first post said how that if the site doesn’t look pretty to click a link and it will be all better. Sure enough, click the link, and bam you have a well designed blog.

The design of the site at first looked similar to a blogmoxie design; however I didn’t see the bm link anywhere so I was impressed with the author’s ability to have a custom look. I then noticed a skin me feature, but unfortunately that doesn’t work. The blog is a standard 2 column layout and in the sidebar there are all sorts of goodies.

I quickly noticed the “What is she?” link and figured this was a good place to start. Turns out zazzafooky is a made up word that means crazy unexplainable and is a verb. I am now determined to shout out the word zazzafooky in verb tense sometime today. She then goes on to talk about how she studies quantum theory, but that won’t be in the blog. Instead it will be other personal stuff.

The first post that I read that I knew I was going to like this site was one about her daughter. Since the age of 4 the daughter has watched scary movies and laughed at all of them. That was until recently (3 years later) when she saw Jeepers Creepers and now the author won’t let her live that down. This post was entitled “Bad Parenting” but I laughed it up as “Good lesson, just took too long to get there”.

Other posts talk about her job, her living situation, her daughter and well pretty much anything you want to know about her. I laughed through most of the posts that were supposed to be funny and took in the more serious posts. I enjoyed the pictures she posted to accompany some of her posts as they gave us either a little more insight on the post, or proof on a previous post.

I don’t know how in all my years blogging I missed a gem like this one. I had a good time reading this site, and I think you will to. There is something here for everyone, which is very rare in a personal blog. The fact that TJ is able to keep me entertained and not bored with a personal blog is warrant enough to give it the 4.75 that she deserves.
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Wow Gardens Blog is an informational site with regular updates an a wide range of gardening topics. If you’ve ever tended a garden then you are probably aware of just how fulfilling and satisfying it is to grow and maintain your own flowers, fruit or vegetables.

The author anonymous author provides tips and suggestions for seasonal gardening and includes an easily to navigate variety of categories including tips, products, seasonal gardening, seeds, flowers, vegetables, perennials and is referenced throughout by acknowledging sources. This is a good thing, in that citing your sources is generally good writing practice however every single article starts with the unchanging phrase “In a recent article…” which may be a comforting routine, but seems a little dry after a while and the links to sources are not clickable.

The Wow Gardens Blog seems like an excellent new resource for American gardeners and collates news articles in a straightforward summary meaning keen gardeners can simply log in to the blog for a good round up of recent news. There is little color either in the language or the design of the site which is a shame considering the topic.

The site design is actually quite nice in its simplicity, like a minimalist Japanese garden but did not awe me for a few reasons. Firstly, there are posts but nothing else. No profile, no links, faq or linkback to the parent site which actually has a little more color. Secondly, the CSS was completely broken in my Safari browser and works only in Internet Explorer (I’m no expert but spaces in URLs, particularly the CSS URL is not good code practice). Being a gardening site I would like to have also seen at least a little color or imagery instead of the safe but dull black-on-white text.

This blog is a good news source for American gardeners and has the potential to be a better resource for readers but could do with a touch up to the template design. Updates are regular an informative but lack the inspiration a gardener finds in their garden. NULL