Category: Uncategorized

“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.
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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

When “Suburban Turmoil” loaded into my Internet Explorer window, it immediately grabbed my attention. The design is very unique. The title fits into the layout, which is very well done. The visual appearance of the site instantly drew me in and I started reading this site from the beginning right away.

I read through the eight months of archives like I was reading a book I just could not put down. Lucinda, the author, is amusing, insightful, compassionate, and more importantly to random readers like myself, she’s real. She blogs about her life, giving so many different aspects of people a chance to connect with her through her daily experiences. It’s no wonder each entry she posts has several regular readers interacting with her via the comments section of the site.

For parents with young children, the author can entertain you and sympathize with you when she writes an entry about discovering the true meaning behind her toddler’s obsession with the word nose or how to turn the luxuries her little girl has had into luxuries for adults. I’m all for a Big Bjorn Bouncer or an adult-sized onesie! As a stepmother of two older girls, currently 12 and 15, she educates the public with her fine teen-spying skills that insure she pretty much doesn’t miss much in the ways of the arguing.

Even those people without kids, like myself, will be able to appreciate the humor Lucinda shares in each of her entries. Who doesn’t find it amusing when a baby blurts out the f-word? She even entertains the geek side of us when she writes about the search results her stat-tracking program provides. It’s not everyone that can appreciate being the #1 Google result for “wheelchair, diaper, grunting, poop”!

A link on the sidebar of the site leads readers to a different URL where they can read 100 things about Lucinda. Here is where those as curious as me can find out a bit more about the author. Quite a bit more about the author, actually. What readers don’t learn by reading through her posts, they can certainly find here.

The layout, as I mentioned earlier, is great. Even though Blogger hosts her weblog, she has gone to great lengths to alter the layout to perfectly fit the title of the weblog. It’s the classic two-column layout, but Lucinda uses different image headers in the sidebar that draw your attention to the other sites she readers or some of her own favorites posts. It’s conveniently easy to navigate and it looked great in any browser I used.

It was hard for me to find something wrong with this weblog. I hate rating sites this high, because I’m never sure if the author can handle living up to so much pressure. But I digress. From reading her site, I get the impression that Lucinda can handle the expectations that might come with such an amazing rating for her site. In all seriousness, Lucinda is a great writer and has a way that easily involves her readers. I’m bookmarking the site and plan on continuing my obsession with reading all of her entries. I would highly recommend the same for anyone else looking for a weblog that will, on a regular basis, provide you with some entertainment throughout the day.

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The site is called “Not Another Dating Angst Blog”, but guess what? Well, it is.

Joseph Jacobson, a college student, is the author of this weblog that details the past several years of his dating habits. Since the site is still so new, these dating habits include to girls during his time in high school. The entries are short and easy to read, making the site very easy to jump right into at the very beginning an read until the latest entry.

I’m a big of the layout for this site. The header graphic was made specifically for this site, and it livens up the appearance of the entire design. Normally, the pale yellow background wouldn’t be very high on my list of colors to use on the background, but Joseph coordinates the color of his entire design quite well. The layout is the very popular two column layout, where the author includes the typical blogging material – contact information, archives, other links.

The reason this site didn’t score higher is based solely on its content. Yes, it’s a content-driven site, which is wonderful. However, instead of a current weblog written about things happening in the present, this site focuses, quite obviously, on things in the past. While the subject matter is interesting, it read more like a short story, rather than a blog.

The site has great potential. It is very early on in its life in the blogosphere and the author is certainly at the age where dating can be entertaining. I’m hoping with time, Joseph begins posting about his current dating woes. Regular readers may start sticking around for a while once the content is something they can currently relate to, instead of reliving their high school dating days.
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