Category: Uncategorized

What’s in a name? When I read the name “Mystickal Incense” my immediate thought was “Here we go…”. I guess I’m not a fan of spelling magic, or mystic with a k. But I’ll forgive Stephanie this since “mysticalincense.com” was taken. But the fact remains, incense itself isn’t really mystical is it. I mean, sure it is sometimes used in rites and ceremony, but only because the sacrifice is a bit on the nose eh? We all know incense is best served as a means of cloaking the smell of the last visitor to the bathroom or that stuff you were smoking in the college dorm before your folks dropped by. Doesn’t matter though does it? They still think your hair’s too long and wish you’d get a real job.

But lo and behold I was pleasantly surprised by a really cute little website, wonderfully designed and with a color scheme that doesn’t scream “Fauvism” and causes my eyes to water. Stephanie Davies’ blog is an extension of her business making and selling candles and incense, so she used her real name which is a good thing. Like most blogs she tells us about books, movies, other blogs and reviews them for our discernment. This is broken up by occasional posts about what’s going on in her life, or a new product or promotion from the store. Every now and then she discusses Tarot readings and tries to keep up the community spirit and interest in her site by bribing her readers with competitions and other interactive things.

Stephanie is a self confessed net citizen with a few other interesting little quirks I’ll leave you to discover from her website. She is only a couple of weeks older than me but she has an 8 year old kid already. Its funny when you meet someone exactly your age and can’t help but compare paths, and Stephanies is certainly an interesting one. She is a crafty girl with a flair for design and a good mind for business, so its good to see all these things come together in her blog. Well done, keep it.. er.. mystickal.

NULL

As a warning, I would suggest not reading this site while at work, unless you’re IT department happens to be okay with pictures of women in thongs and men with giant testicles. Having said that, I did this review while visiting my folks, meaning I was constantly looking over my shoulder the whole time. Sorry, pops, for the porn in your browser history.

Adults ExoticA has a tagline of “Exploring the weird, wonderful and exotic, adult world of sex” and it’s the best description there is for the content on this site.

The site is organized by category, which includes topics like Sex Poems, Reviews, Jokes, and Sex Toys to name a few. If you know the type of post you’re looking for, this is ideal. But being a new reader to this blog, I wanted to read it from the beginning. The calendar on the sidebar of the site made it quite cumbersome to find when and where the site first started.

Most of the images that are posted are ones that I’ve seen passed around as an email forward here and there, and several of the links leading to other sites seem to have a referral code of some sort, meaning the webmaster of Adults ExoticA is making money every time someone clicks them.

The layout is simple two-column layout and it’s sufficient enough for this type of site. Obviously, the main focus of the blog doesn’t have anything to do with a flashy design, but the white text on a black background does make it hard to read for some.

Overall, it’s an entertaining read. It’s definitely unlike any other blog I’ve read, and while I did enjoy my time spent browsing through Adults ExoticA, I can’t see myself coming back to visit on a regular basis.
NULL

My first thoughts on viewing Hormones-Beauty-Health was that a) it was not a blog and b) it wanted to sell me something. I guessed it wanted to sell me one of many things sold via the internet that most people would never set out intending to buy, which makes a website necessary to advertise, sell, and cleverly cross-reference the product with other sites. My first impression turned out to be too cynical and flighty with its love of flitting from first glance to conclusion. Hormones-Beauty-Health does have a blog and it wants to sell you something, but the site offers a lot of free information, recipes, and tips.

The main site design, riddled with Yahoo ads as well as links to what appears to be every page on the site, tastes a tad like spam. The pictures and text seem like they were dashed down quickly, to get the site up as fast as possible, though the pink and white colors are nice. Getting to the blog requires some link-hunting (hint: instead of scrolling down the page, just search out “blog” in the menu at the top). It’s a WordPress blog and is much more attractive than its companion site, mostly due to the aesthetics of the WordPress template, the customized banner balancing lily with beautiful woman, and the backgrounds in subtle shades of linen.

Here, all the ads are confined to the sidebar. Surprisingly, there is an assortment of goodies in the blogroll, including the artsy boygirlparty.livejournal.com and refreshing creative writing on bluishorange.com. I found a few new favorites in the blogroll, though its contents were strangely juxtaposed to the content of this particular blog. It piqued my curiosity about the blogger, but unfortunately, the “About” section only displayed the default WordPress message. Some of the blogs listed were weirdly popular and/or mainstream, such as the Blog of a Bookslut and Cute Overload, not to mention Google’s Blog. My cynicism began fluttering again, as I wondered if linking to an assortment of popular, though unrelated blogs was a marketing strategy to increase traffic to Hormones-Beauty-Health. I liked many of the blogs listed, but in a specialized blog like this, it would be more beneficial both for the blog and the reader if the blogroll contained more relevant sites.

The blog posts contained a luscious assortment of homemade recipes for all-natural beauty regiments as well as vegetarian dishes. They offer a lot of health tips, tricks, and information, many of which I’d never heard before and might try in the future. The tip about brushing cornstarch into oily hair made me cringe, but my hair is unreasonably oily, and I’ll try anything, especially if it is as innocuous and inexpensive as cornstarch.

A lot of people will find this blog useful and surprising. If you are health-conscious, vegan, and care about your appearance, this blog consistently offers sweet soy tidbits for your taste buds. Naturally, if you like their free advice, they hope you’ll buy some of their products, so they regularly plug posts with offers from their sponsor, an independent consultant for Arbonne International, a line of beauty products. There are plenty of archives to research, which is always a plus. The first entry, made in December of 2005, is titled “Introduction” and with some punching up, could be the “About” section this blog needs. It starts off, “This Blog is designed to keep you informed on Women’s Health and Beauty Issues.” Nice.

I wish there was a category for “Health” or “Product,” because “Personal” doesn’t seem to fit. Though it’s a few sizes too big, it’s the only one that comes close to fitting, so there it is.
NULL

So a name of Insani-Tea Blog has to be about Tea right? I mean what else could it be about? For fun I threw the word Tea into the dictionary on my computer and the last definition was “Another name for marijuana”. Maybe, just maybe it is about pot, but I hardly doubt it.

Oh I was right it is about tea. How to make it, different kinds of tea, different gadgets for helping brew tea, and well anything and everything without tea. The posts are well written and sometimes seem to ramble a bit, but are enjoyable to read. I would have to say it is like a good glass of iced tea on a hot day. Nice and easy without too much stress.

The blog is hosted on blogspot which isn’t always a plus. It also uses a blogspot template, but oh well. The posts are few and far between which is kind of a let down. The blog started off strong, but now the posts are about once a month, maybe twice.

A blog with this specific of a topic has to be great. It cannot just be good. Unfortunately this blog is just good. The infrequent posts by the author make it hard to enjoy and almost discourage checking the site out. The information however is golden and is well worth reading. I wish I could say more about this blog, but all 25 posts are just a quick read, and that’s how this review will be.
NULL

The blog we find ourselves reviewing this morning is called “Gifts” in the submission area, but it is really called “Ano’s blog on how to make money online.” It is a standard blogger template in basic web-happy colors of blue, yellow and green. Ano’s profile page shows nine other blogs, most of which are money-making blogs as well.

There are only two entries on this blog’s front page, a July 2007 and November 2007 entry. To find other blog entries in the archives (those date back to April 2007) you have to scroll all the way to the bottom of the page. Archives and profile information should really be more accessible, and neither were listed towards the top of the page.

The MoneyOnline widget crashed my Firefox browser and forced a restart of my computer. Thanks. I love visiting blogs that crash my system. After logging back in with Internet Explorer, I found there is really no substance to this blog at all. Because the blog only shows two entries of the possible 40 for the year, the right side panel banner ads are all that there is to look at. They’re smooshed over into the more narrow side panel, and to see them all, you have to scroll down the page until your finger hurts from spinning the mouse wheel.

There are ads for everything from chocolate to how to get bigger boobies by wearing the right bra, to gay and lesbian fashion and “whale friends.” A lot of the ads are too large/horizontally designed and don’t fit in the side panel. They end up chopped in half or cropped off, due to being bigger in pixel width than the navigation area allows. Look specifically at the horizontally designed banner ad for “Steganos Internet Anon” and realize that about half of that ad is lost because it isn’t designed for that space. Horizontal Vs. Vertical. It’s key to know what to do with graphics, where to put them, and how they work best on the web.

Just slapping up banner ads and not really caring what they look like on a blog, or what they do to the layout of a page, shows a real lack of caring about the blog itself. Let’s join as many affiliate programs as possible and hope we get a buck or two out of it. Horray! It’s a blog!

Best part of this blog is when I scrolled all the way down, alllll the way down to the bottom, there is a giant glittery graphic of a fairy sitting on the moon. Incredibly random.

I’ve said it before. Everyone wants to make it big, make it rich and I can’t fault Ano for trying. A few bucks here, a few bucks there — and pretty soon you’ve got a lot of money coming in. The more advertisements, the more revenue… right? That’s the philosophy here. But without interesting, informed, entertaining content, there is no reason on earth to visit Ano’s blog. I give this blog a 1.0 rating. NULL