Category: Uncategorized

Inquire Within is a personal blog by Derek Johnson who I am gathering, from fragments within the site, is some kind of lawyer. Maybe he is just some kind of legal fetishist, but I’ll take a wager he is an American lawyer living in London, enjoying its cosmopolitan lifestyle and blogging for the folks back home, only Derek writes well and his readership probably extends further than the family and friends missing their free-legal-advice buddy.

The site is real tidy, kind of what I would expect a lawyers house to look like, clean, swish, very high brow. The column structure is laid out nicely with various links one comes to expect, other blogs, favorite posts, a profile etc. The muted color scheme also works nicely and is really visually pleasing. The top header however, which is a nicely composed photo of a two people walking down a long avenue, is fairly low res which gives some pixel artifacts and blurriness which lets the rest of the design down.

Derek is a regular guy, although he comes across as very educated, well read and written every now and then his posts come back to the simple day to day observations typical of personal blogging, which is welcome relief between the heavier law posts and creates and interesting dichotomy. They are all written well and even the legal speak is dumbed down enough for a left wing cyber hippy like me to read and understand.

Inquire Within is a nicely penned, and easy to look at personal blog that is moderately superior to the internet’s propensity for worthless navel gazing and Derek’s openly legal discussions are relevant and topical. Being familiar with law, you wont see any out and out defamation or read any intimately voyeuristic posts about the author, but you will be sure to read a blog of rare quality. Kudos for using his real name too, this is the sign of a truly earnest blogger. If legal jargon gets you all hot and sweaty under the collar, prepare to bookmark. NULL

Off to the world, “I’m just saying.” This blog appears to have potential. Just by the name it would appear to be a site dedicated to setting people straight, obviously after reading, this is a pretty close assumption. This 26 year old mother rocks her blog with the tone of gripe… gripe… gripe… moan… moan… moan…

Grant it that there were quite a few things I agreed with, but it appears apparent to me that this mother hits the blogs as a good form of stress relief. I did get a lot of laughter from the agony she tells through her blog. I really enjoyed her trip to the DMV, but you have to dig to get to it. Check out the January ’07 archives you will see it there.

The site is a blogger site, which she clearly doesn’t care about due to her disclaimer on the side of the blog. I didn’t like the way her archives are laid out; I found the black text not lining up where they appeared they should on the grey background with the black bar down the middle. I would make simple recommendation of updating the template for the archives areas. The main site is easy on the eyes. I mix of greys and black lettering. It is plain, but I find I like plain layouts better than some of the bright colors.

Overall, the site was an interesting read, but like I said it appears to be a place for her to relieve stress and wind down the day. It was funny, but I think that the funny part comes from most comedy coming at someone else’s expenses. She has blogged frequently since January of ’07. She claims this is another attempt so she appears to have been in the blogging world a lot longer than her archives show. There are some grammar mistakes, but overall the blog is a simple read. I would recommend this for family and friends to see what new sarcastic experience that she has to comment on next.
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Our blog author Sergey has put together a website filled with code that is supposed to help me master ASP.net.

The thing is, I don’t know what ASP.net is.

There are five or so entries in the blog, all of which are code for “Deploying a SQL Database to a Remote Host.” The thing is, unless you already know what ASP.net is and does, and you already have an idea and application for this process, you’re not going to ever need this blog.

Sergey does not include entries on what ASP.net is, what it does, what the practical applications are for this process. Unless you are already versed in what to do, this blog is unnecessary.

The layout and colors are nice. The blog navigation is difficult because the archives and the “About” are all the way at the bottom of the page instead of in a sidebar navigation pane. Sergey doesn’t say too much about his expertise or himself in the “About” but there are three other empty blogs listed in his blogger profile. I am not sure if he intends to actively write about programming in the future, or just cut and paste code and screenshots up for the world.

It would be nice if the blog was expounded upon with ideas for what people can do with ASP.net, before being told how they can master it.
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I am not the intended audience for this blog. I am not someone who views herself as “progressive,” and I feel the term in and of itself is rather cliché anymore. But I did enjoy the Progressive Wednesday blog for a lot of reasons. Let me tell you why.

Founders Eric and Matt have put together a website filled with “to-do’s, talk, and tools to get America over the hump.” I’m presuming the “hump” is the Bush Administration, viewed by many to be the long-doldrummy Wednesday of our collective soul.

Each Wednesday they have a feature article. These articles encompass Coral Reef Endangerment, Wind Power, Porn, Wal-Mart and their efforts to take over the planet, Darfur, The Fast Food Nation, Niagara Falls, and many other topics that the editors feel need our attention. Each Wednesday article is succinct, focuses on a topic, and lists ways you as the reader can make a difference. The Wednesday articles are not the only content on the site. Every day someone from their volunteer team is contributing an article into the blog on topics ranging from Family to Religion. They have an active staff of people spanning many different decades in age, but each person is passionate about their shared and individual philosophies.

The site is constantly updated. It is great to read a blog that I had to actually spend time with in order to formulate an opinion on in order to review. The archives go back to February, 2007 and there is a lot of content to read through. So often we receive sites at TWR to review that have six entries. I have to take a second and thank Progressive Wednesday for having more than a spattering of entries upon which to write a review (tips hat in thanks towards the staff).

I enjoy that the staff, while all different people with different philosophies and backgrounds, all seem to be pointing in the same direction. A lot of times I read a community or group blog and I wonder… what is the cohesive thread that MAKES this a group blog? This group is a team and not just a random assemblage of people who feel like writing on the web.

The look and feel of the site is very basic but works very well. The header graphic changes with the Wednesday article and carries through the site for the rest of the week. The navigation makes perfect sense, and their custom logo is really good.

There are a few things I don’t like about the site. The template of the site is bigger than my screen, which is running 1024×768. The right side of the screen is chopped off by about an inch (ie: the magnifying glass of the search box is cut off, the Flickr photo section title says “One Photo Of Ou Beautiful Worl” . It isn’t a BIG problem, but I think it should be massaged to make it so everything fits.

Another thing that I didn’t like which took me some time to figure out is that if I click back on the archive calendar to go back to July, the July page which appears does not have a calendar on it to take me back to June. There are several pages for July’s archive, but even on the first page of the July archive (navigating back using the “Previous Entries” link at the bottom of the pages) shows that it just isn’t there. This surprised me at first, but thanks to the search box, I punched in a few months and was able to find the very first posting in February of 2007 so I could progress forward through the site. Which seemed a lot easier. Plus, I like reading forward in time instead of backward. A consistent monthly calendar would be great, not sure if July’s is the only one missing or not, but found the calendar on other month’s pages like March, so it may just be a code oversight.

Additionally, there were places where links launch a new window but on the same page, no new window is launched. There seemed to be no rhyme or reason. And I hate when new windows are launched randomly, for no reason.

On the Columns page, many of the links are incorrectly linked, and launched column sections that didn’t belong to the title (ie: Carey Mack’s pocket links to TGIF movie review. TGIF movie review links to Twin Cities… etc).

The February 28th Wednesday Article on Porn is filled with content errors for the footnote section. Lots of endif statements and supportFootnote statements. I do have to commend them for footnoting in the first place though, seeing as a lot of the blogs I’ve read recently don’t cite anyone or anything, which annoys me to no end. My guess is it is an easy fix, and they can clean up those errors easily.

As I mentioned at first, I am probably not the intended audience for this blog. But, at Progressive Wednesday, I didn’t feel attacked, slighted, insulted or otherwise fingerpointed at by any of the articles I read. I think the writing is honest, and the message is clear. The world is a wonderful place, worth investing effort in, and that individuals can make changes with themselves that make changes in the world. I give Progressive Wednesday a 3.75 and would recommend it to anyone looking to read well-written socially-conscious materials on the web.
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This is a list of cars. It isn’t really a blog, because it is simply page after page after page of cars and a list of their components and their stats. There is no real “about us” page so we have no idea as readers who is behind the blog, from where it originates. The blog itself is easy on the eyes… but huge pictures of cars with a list of their cylinders and horsepower is virtually useless. There is no review about the cars, no reviews, nothing.

Because there is absolutely no substance here, but the pictures are nice, I give this “blog” a 1.0 rating.

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