Category: Uncategorized

Kudos to yet another of the rapidly blooming blogs appearing out of the UK! Okay, so maybe they have been around for quite some time and I just am now noticing for myself. What does that say about me, personally? Absolutely nothing! But I digress.

The Girl Behind really impressed me right from the start! This blog is presented in a rather upbeat, jovial manner. A speckled plethora of intriguing photographs that accompany most of the recent posts definitely brightened up the basic blogger template.

The posts are well written and provoking for such a young blog (the archives date back merely to April 2005), which leads me to believe that maybe the author has blogged previously or at least kept a physical journal. Her mild rants were amusing and I laughed out loud more than just once.

I lost myself for a while in the “London posts”, which were a delightful glimpse into a bus tour of the city. I’ve never been to London, myself, and all of the colorful descriptions and photos really re-sparked my desire to travel.

The author’s interest in the theater really caught me by surprise. When she first mentioned seeing a ‘matinee’ of Mary Poppins, my initial reaction was that she went to see the film. It was in her next post about seeing David Schwimmer on stage, when I realized the full effect of what she had written. (Then it hit me. Different country. Duh. The language, although VERY close, DOES have its differences! That tickled me because it kind of woke me up to the culture and made me want to visit England all the more!) These were theater reviews. And really good ones at that. Of the plays she reviewed in her posts, I had seen only one, Guys and Dolls. I did find myself reading each of the reviews twice, just in case I had missed anything. I felt that the review content was good enough to be printed for the public to experience.

I do still remain a bit puzzled about the squirrel hand puppet. Although it is rather cute, the background story would have been helpful for me to fully grasp the concept.

All of the links that I tried were in working order, which was nice. The only thing that was not in order (that I could see, anyway) was the ‘On My Bedside Table’ bit which seemed to have taken a bus trip of it’s own. I would have loved to have been able to see what kind of reading perks this author’s intellect.

Overall, I enjoyed reading this personal, yet pleasant photo journal. I will be certain to check back in periodically for more ‘Tours of England’ and maybe the story behind the mysterious squirrel?

I think it takes a certain type of person to recommend a site like this to. Many people might find the read bland, so all I can really say is read for yourself. You know what they say about opinions! I can say however, that I personally liked this blog because it gave me a peek into a person’s life who thoroughly enjoys learning about their own society and cultures. Cultures that I very much would like to experience for myself! You really don’t see that as much with bloggers in the states.

The Girl Behind

I figured that Stressqueen was going to be about a female who needed to rant and rave about problems in her life. Being a male, I honestly was a little hesitant to see what I was getting myself into.

Stressqueen is not a rant and rave site like I thought it was going to be. It is about the daily life of Stressqueen. Most recently it deals a lot with situations with her boyfriend, but back in the day there was a broader range of topics.

The design of this site is your simple 2 column layout with the content on the left. There are some original images on the site including a comic which I am not sure of its purpose. The links column is populated with a lot of different links which is a sign that she is well read in the blogosphere.

Her content is not something I could connect with; mainly due to the fact that I have read so many “daily life” type blogs. While some posts stood out and made me laugh, others were easily forgettable. This is not due to the author’s ability to write, just that I was not able to connect like her target audience.

To me this blog is your average blog. It has a topic and a purpose which is to tell the tale of Stressqueen. I think that females will probably (as a whole) enjoy this blog more than males, but it could be your cup of tea. I would check this blog out regardless of my lack of connection because I know that some of you will find this to be a hidden gem amongst a rather large quarry of stones.
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Every time I begin a review I start by glancing down the site quickly to see what sticks out, and what I don’t really like… I would have to say that the font on this site is way too small. It has a general Bloglines template, but appears to have some really interesting information. Another initial item I noticed is that there are no subject quick-links nor advertisements.

The weblog is a collection of Author interviews, book reviews, and writing tips. This weblog is for you if… (1) You like writing books and would like to know how to get started in the business, (2) You like reading about authors, or (3) You just enjoy literature. I feel this site is very informational. Parker asks legitimate questions of his interviewees. The questions actually apply to the career of book writing, rather than just asking what is your favorite color.

The design of the site is very simple. It has a peaceful layout that is easy on the eyes to look at, but the font is too small. I would recommend placing each of the articles on the site in one of the three categories and have links that would pull up the subject a reader would like to read. This would make maneuvering through the site faster and easier.

Parker generally likes to post to his site on Mondays. Also there are no archive links that you can jump to specific months without walking through each month from the month you are currently in. That can be annoying if you know the article you are looking for is in April of 2005 and October is the current month. He has links to other sites on the left hand side.

I would recommend this to anyone that enjoys literature. I feel the site has a decent layout. I would also like to say that Parker appears to be a very educated person keeping his site to a high standard. I give this site a 4.
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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.
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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