Category: Uncategorized

I waited for two weeks for more entries to show up on this site in hopes of having a little more substance to review. Unfortunately, that never transpired.

The site, called The Washington Wizards Report, is obviously a report on the NBA’s Washington Wizards. There are three posts on the site, and a fourth that only seems to be a test post when the site was first set up.

For a site that’s supposed to be about the Washington Wizards, only 1/3 of the site actually pertains to them. The posts cover other Washington D.C. sports teams, too – the NFL’s Redskins and MLB’s Nationals.

The design is simple. It’s black text on a white background, with some dark blue bordering the complete layout. If I had to guess, I’d say it was a template of some sort.

The posts each have a byline, which gives off the appearance that the text was copied straight from a newspaper’s website. Reading through the articles, I feel like I’m reading the sports section of my local newspaper. There’s no author information anywhere, so readers could very well be reading the weblog of a high-profile sportswriter… or just someone who’s copying and pasting from ESPN.com. Either way, the lack of archives make it easy to stop reading this site and not even think twice about it.
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Having an idea about the weblog I’m about to read is something I enjoy. Almost like a movie trailer, it gives me an idea of what to expect. The author(s) of this weblog “aim to entertain a general audience with short stories and essays. Our publication schedule is irregular, but we do try to put up something new once a week.” At least that’s what it says in the about section of the site. So, that’s the idea I went on – irregularly posted short stories and essays.

When I clicked on the archive link, I was taken to a page where there are only nine entries. There are no dates indicating when these entries have been written at all. I decided to start at the one listed at the bottom and work my way up.

The essays are mundane. Describing in detail the process of “stop, drop, and roll” should you find yourself on fire and defending the integrity of the planet Uranus could both be topics that can turn into something fun or lengthy, but the author is content to just give four or five brief paragraphs about the topic. As I progressed up the list of archived essays and short stories, they got better with time.

The layout doesn’t consist of much. It’s a three-column layout and doesn’t appear to be based off any standard template. Hooray. The site is missing any bells and whistles, but they truly aren’t necessary and the design works just fine with this site.

The author’s “Instrument of Joy”, in this case, seems to be the keyboard (or the pen). He makes note in his “about” section that he wishes to remain anonymous until he becomes a better writer. With that, readers learn nothing else about the author.

I really never feel comfortable critiquing or reviewing someone’s creative writing. What someone else may find magnificent, I may find as something that cannot keep my attention for more than a few minutes.

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I found this site to be interesting in concept, but scary when it comes to intellectual property rights. The site has many interesting graphic designs. It is not clear whether the author has created these works on his own, or is he compiling them from other places.

The design of the site is rather simple. It has a typical header at the top denoting what the blog is about. On the right side bar the author has created a list of blogs of interest, as well as links to his past archives. The site has been around since November 2005, so it is still a relatively new blog, but it does have many posts. The author for the most part picks a work of art or graphic design and tells his thoughts on it. He accomplishes this by a catchy and descriptive title or a simple analysis of his feelings into the piece of art.

There are really no extras to the site. If the works of art or graphic designs are from another site, I feel it should have a link to those sites showing the copyright information or a statement on the site saying that he has permission to display these items. The reason I mention this is because in recent months and years, it has been a big concern of copyright infringement on the web. I love the idea; I just think there needs to be some notices on the site.

If you like art or graphic design this blog is for you. The site is very interesting. The works of art displayed on the site are intriguing. I feel the site has great potential and should continue to create this fabulous compilation of works of art across the net. I would recommend to the author to at least link or state where the image came from… As a fellow blogger and webmaster, I would want my information cited or at least linked to. I rate this site as a 3.
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I love when blogs have very obvious names to them. Food Mayhem is one such blog. It is going to be a foodie blog and since this is the first foodie blog, I decided to create a new category of “Food” since “Entertainment” doesn’t quiet fit the picture enough.

Being that this blog is about food, I expect a lot. I read a lot of food blogs and I own more cookbooks than any of my friends. Ok that’s not saying a lot, but I still own a good share. I also go out to eat at least two times a week if not more. I worked in the restaurant industry for about four years and at one time was going to go into management before I found a job in IT. With that said, lets get onto this review.

The blog is written by two authors (as far as I could tell, Lon and Jessica). Both of whom live in NY and the site focuses on meals in NY city. Sometimes they post a recipe (as was the case in older posts) other times just a review of a restaurant and other times just stating opinions on all things food.

My favorite part of this website has to be the reviews of restaurants. While living in NY does provide with more outlets of restaurant reviews, most places in the US do not have very many. Each review of a restaurant either made me want to eat there, or never eat there. I know that if/when I travel to NY I will definitely be searching this blog to find out if the restaurant is worth going to.

The design of the site is very crisp and clean (like a kitchen should be) and functions very well for the site. The site uses some Web 2.0 stuff for expanding a couple of the sections which is a nice touch. The archives leave a little something to be desired. I have never been a fan of linking each and every post. Instead I would recommend having the archives be similar to the main page where they are listed in order – full text and all.

My only other complaint would be the lack of addresses for the restaurants reviewed. Sometimes the authors link to the restaurant’s website, but in doing a review, I would expect to see an address and/or phone number for each place. I am sure they could even find a little widget to auto link in google maps to give people directions.

Overall this is a great food blog. It doesn’t strive at all from its goal and it does what it is supposed to do very well. The information is laid out nicely and it doesn’t hurt that the blog is well written. This is a definite must read if you live in NY, and a should read for everyone else.
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Cars, trucks, or vehicles in general don’t really fall into a bucket of things I want to learn about on a regular basis. Anytime I’m around my younger brother, however, I learn a little more than I’d ever wanted to know. He’s got opinions of every car and knowledge of car parts that cost more than the actual car itself. I felt qualified to give Car-O-Focus a fair review, despite not being as big of a car buff as my motorhead of a sibling.

The archives go back to December 2006, making this site about six months old according to the posts I could find. Each post is three or four very small paragraphs that make up the first part of the post. Readers then have to click on a link that takes them to a completely different URL for the rest of the entry. This would become increasingly annoying if one was reading the site through an RSS reader.

The layout of the site is extremely distracting. Red is one of my favorite colors, but having so much of it on this site drew away from the actual entries, which were also a bit tedious to read at times with white text on a dark gray background. There are so many Google ads thrown all throughout the site that readers will have a hard time distinguishing between a link the author suggests or an ad of some sort. There were often up to 15 separate ads on any given entry.

In the “about” section of the blog, the author explains that he wanted to start a site that had a particular niche. He does do a good job of staying in the niche he’s chosen.

I didn’t particularly find this blog as one I would return to anytime in the future. I didn’t even find the need to pass it along as a link of interest to my brother, who, as I mentioned before, loves anything to do with cars. It’s just another blog that happens to be out there and ready for someone to accidentally stumble upon when searching for a BMW review, but not one I could see winding up on too many lists of “blogs one must read or their life will not be complete”.

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