Category: Uncategorized

One of the things I enjoy about blogs is when I find a blog about a specific topic. This can be any topic, but it has to stay focused on that topic. I knew right away that The Google Spot would be a blog focused solely on Google and I curious as to what this blog had to offer about the company.

The blog is hosted on blogspot, using blogger, and using a blogger template. I wonder if the author is trying to score extra points by doing all this. The header says just what I suspected “The Google Spot is dedicated to all things Google”. So now onto the blog itself.

First a question. Did you blink? If so you might have read the entire blog. This blog consists of total of nine posts. This blog is still a baby. The posts are of course about all things Google. This ranges from news about a Google browser, Google WiFi in SF, Google and Sun’s announcement and of course the Google maps. Yup, everything is about Google.

This blog while a specific topic is not doing it for me. The problem is that there are too few posts to actually be considered “the source of all Google info” and the author doesn’t post on a daily basis. Additionally, all of the things that the author posted I have read about before on other more generic “news on the web” type sites.

I give the author credit for starting a blog dedicated to Google. I only know of one other that is dedicated to the almighty company (only because they have top search result for the phrase weblog). This blog has potential; however the author needs to invest the time into the blog in order for it to grow. If he doesn’t than this blog is just taking up space in the blogosphere.
NULL

The first thing I noticed when I got to A Shout in the Dark was the background of the page. There’s an image of a laptop, and the text (that’s directly over the image, with no sort of blogbox to make it easier to read) is white. Typically I’m not too fond of having to highlight text in order to read it.

Once I get to reading the entries, they’re fairly concise. I wouldn’t call them posts so much as articles, however; the author (Charles) seems to take random items of news, tidbits of information, or other facts and strings words together about them. Some have pictures to aid in the visualization of the situation.

The layout, as I mentioned, isn’t very easy to read, and the colors clash a bit. The sidebar is mint green, white, blue, and purple… shades that don’t compliment each other very well. Along with the posts being difficult to read, this is a bit of a setback.

There aren’t many plugins, except for links to different things. Since this is a WordPress blog there are other pages, but they don’t match very well (or, rather, at all) with the blog itself.

This blog just couldn’t catch my interest very well. Between the less-than-user-friendly layout and the posts having little to no consistency as far as relationship goes, I couldn’t really get into this blog at all, and I’m sorry to give it a 1 out of 5.NULL

“Dating Misadventures of a 40 something man…” immediately sounded like it would be a fun site to read. Dating misadventures of anyone’s other than my own usually keep me fairly entertained – sad, but true. I was definitely looking forward to reading and reviewing this weblog.

This site is hosted by bloglines.com. Not only are they offering a very popular RSS reader, but they’re also providing a site where people can start a weblog. Everyone’s out to grab a piece of the blogging world, it seems. The design of the site is sorely lacking. There are no graphics, no extra links, no information about the site or the author other than what’s available in the eight entries that have been made. The date on the first entry is November 15th – this site is just a few weeks old.

In short, this site is written by a man in his late 40s, who has decided to publicize his dating progress via this weblog. He’s divorced and through the typical disaster of a relationship, and is now focusing his sights on, in his words, going “after the most unaccessible [sic] women”. This is what we get to read.

I was somewhat entertained by the entries, but the entertainment value I was hoping for didn’t even come close to meeting my expectations. There’s an introductory paragraph, which is greatly appreciated. The posts that follow touch on different aspects of dating – mainly in the online world of matchmaking. The author of the site reviews some of the online dating sites available, and recounts his experiences in speed dating and Russian mail order bride scams.

What the author writes here is real. Anyone in the dating scene can attest to this. Reading an older (than me) male’s point of view on the dating scene is certainly eye opening. While this weblog doesn’t have the “it” factor that makes it stand out from other weblogs that mention dating in the real and online world, it does have some potential.

What would I need for this site in order to give it a higher rating? My first and more important answer is definitely more entries. While it may not be in the author’s best interest or his hope for the future, as a reader, I can only hope his dead end dating continues so that this weblog can continue to grow and entertain readers. After a few months, I can see this site really becoming an entertaining read – one like I’d expected.
NULL

VoIP is huge right now. The uptake is only now beginning to surge as broadband users around the world choose providers and hardware to setup their own residential VoIP connections, and save themselves a pretty packet. I’m happy to review this site because I am a VoIP consultant myself, webmaster of a VoIP choice consumer website and Sys Admin for an ISP so I feel a little qualified to review the content.

Content aside for the moment, the CSS breaks down in my Safari browser so I reluctantly fire up IE. I like the clean blogstreet template, but its a little dull. VoIP is a dry topic at the best of times so a little pizzaz on the design wouldn’t go astray.

The blog discusses issues with this relatively new technology such as PC to phone dialing, VoIP and autodialers, VoIP disadvantages, USB phones, Wifi VoIP, industry news etc. The author writes succinctly and easily and its refreshing to read tech info in layman’s terms. I was disappointed however to read the December 8 post about Flyphone VoIP (USB based) that reads more like an advertisement than a review and based on my prior knowledge of this companies aggressive online marketing strategy I’m pretty sure it is.

As blogs take on a more prominent role in mainstream media, I believe authors will need to make their own decision with editorial guidelines for where posts and ads become harder to distinguish. In major print media, these lines are clearly defined so blogs need to think about their editorial standards. This blog certainly seems to be linking commercial websites within posts so the relationship is unclear.

Voice Over IP and Internet Telephony could do with a more imaginative title, but I suspect this site is just trying to be googlebot friendly in order to pull more traffic for its sponsors. Its content is generally good and well written but risks falling into the splog (spam-blog) category without better execution. A good read mostly, but could use a spit and polish. NULL

Its a joy to visit a blogger website for someone with enough CSS knowledge (or help) to remove the blogger frame from the top. Instantly the design appeals to me at the “Dee411” blog, with a clean layout and complimentary tones, the page is offset by the striking drawn image of three African women.

It’s been about a week since the the last post when I read the site, but reading further I realize our main author, Dee S White, is taking part in the NaNoWriMo project, where budding authors race to write 50,000 words with emphasis on quantity, not quality. For a personal blog though, Dee411 certainly has a touch of quality. As a writer, she is a natural, and her words and sentence structure are well chosen and fluent.

That said, a major theme that runs throughout the site is Dee’s piety and the site even includes a “mission statement” about “getting the word out” about the big JC, which is all well and good if you are jumping on that particular spiritual path and want another bookmark to add to the 81,200,000 other sites vying for your dogmatic patronage. For the rest of us, you have to read between the posts, and there are some great thoughts and issues raised in here.

Dee411 reminds me of a woman I know, strong and searching. She has talent and soul and resigns all of this to a greater power and modestly makes her way. D.S.White has built the blog with love and it shows. She pours her heart into her writing and succeeds effortlessly. I read somewhere “Its not God I don’t like, it’s his fan club.”, and I only wish there were more fans like Dee. All the talent and inspiration in the world can’t make up for a theme you can’t appreciate though, so I can’t recommend this blog overall. An easy read otherwise. NULL