Although the author of this blog has put his blog in the “Entertainment” category, I think that it falls more appropriately in to News/Links, as the majority of the content is linked to material that is not the author’s own.
The site is powered by Movable Type; though considering that there are so many templates available for this platform, I felt that the author could have put more work in to his. There is a very simple title bar which contains no graphics, a sidebar with a few links to archives and other sites and the opportunity to email the author. Sadly there is no “About Me” page to be found or any other information about the aim of the site.
Like I said, most of the entries contain links to other sites or content. Subject wise, the US plays a big part in the make up of the blog- US politics, US sport, US culture, etc. I am sure these entries are entertaining enough for those living in the US, but to us crazy foreign types, a little more explanation is needed as to their context and relevance to be fully appreciated. Some posts in fact don’t seem to have any explanation at all except the link itself and the difficulty with linking to Yahoo News seems to be that they don’t keep hold of their archives for very long, as I soon discovered. In fairness, there are also some pretty funny links and pictures here (though I have seen funnier) but these are really not sufficient to keep someone busy who does not live in a US-centric world. And before anyone emails me, US-centric is probably not a real word but I kinda like it anyway.
Occasionally, the author does include his own opinions on a subject, which does really open up the blog and is nice to see, but on other occasions he merely asks other people to comment on something, which strikes me as handing the content of your blog over to someone else and asking them to take responsibility for it.
There is very little wrong with this site in so far as all the links work, there are few spelling mistakes and there is consistently updated content, but the trouble is it does not go far enough. In an online world where the casual reader has a million blogs to choose from, simply being average is not enough to hold people’s attention. After all, there are so many blogs out there which do go the extra mile and do impress.
Although there is potential here for the author to achieve a higher score, for this to happen I would like to see much more embellishment of the links with his personal opinions, more effort made to vary the content a little, or if US politics is to be the “theme” of the site, don’t assume that all your readers will have even the faintest idea what is going on in that arena in any detail. The World Wide Web is, after all, world wide. And pretty templates always make for happy reviewers :o)In the mind of Laquidara