The Weblog Review

I’ve never been an avid reader of Consumer Reports; I figure if I buy something and it ends up being a piece of junk, that’s my loss. But when it comes to buy toys, supplies, or even food for my dog, I do as much research as I can, because he can’t really tell me what he thinks about it. As foolish as it might sound to non-pet owners, I think anyone that finds themselves as attached to their pet as I am will find the Petsumer Report Blog a valuable tool.

The site is still relatively new, having less than half a dozen posts so far. As long as the author, who seems very devoted to the issue she’s blogging about, keeps things rolling with this site, it definitely has the potential not only become more popular, but help pet owners everywhere make better decisions on what to buy or feed their pets.

Susan, the author of the site, has worked in the pet industry for over 20 years, according to the brief about section on the site. She’s an accomplished dog trainer and author, giving her the perfect background and wonderful credibility to publish a site like this.

The layout is one of the standard Typepad layouts, which makes since considering that’s where it’s hosted. There aren’t many added bells and whistles to the site, and while the minimalistic look is good at times, I think a site like this could benefit from other links, product recommendations, or something along those lines to enhance the different information in each post.

Petsumer Report is clearly a very helpful site. The author mentions having sent out a press release and already being contacted by PBS. In order for the site to be a big hit in the blog world, though, it’s going to need to stick around a bit more. As long as the staying power is strong for the site, Petsumer Report will easily become a well-respected place of information for pet-owners everywhere.
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I read a lot of blogs. More recently they have been of the businesses from home type. So I knew what I was looking for when I visited Work At Home Options.

The first thing I noticed was that this site was promoting feedburner a lot. And not just feedburner, but any and all RSS feeds. This was made apparent by the large text box that said add my feed and listed a bunch.

The site is very simple. A bunch of reviews about a bunch of different products. All of which are of course on some form of an affiliate program. Once I realized this, I found the reviews to be a bit on the false side. I mean seriously, what are the odds that someone has used a drop shipping program before?

Then I started to wonder where the archives were and of course there wasn’t a link to them. At the very bottom of the page there is a link to a blogspot blog. I visited there and it was all the same information however this time there was a design that I know I have seen someplace else.

This site was designed with one purpose. To make money. I am sure the author is doing that, however I really hate blogs where it is so painfully obvious that the author doesn’t care about the subject matter and is only in it to win it so to speak. For that I give this site a 2 out of 5. NULL

I’m a fan of a good photoblog. I would consider myself an amateur photographer (very amateur) and seeing the different aspects from other photographers, amateur or otherwise, always adds an additional bit of creativity or motivation. Tom Sheehan’s photoblog was no different at all.

The layout is fairly simple. It’s a two-column layout, like so many other weblogs of any kind. Each post has a photo taken by the author, which is big enough for readers to get a good view of the photo. The sidebar has several sections with the standard blogger components, including a section that lists the different cameras Tom uses.

Tom has a setting in place that allows him to reply to comments within his posts almost like a message board or like the comments through LiveJournal, with those familiar with that. He responds to his readers regularly, definitely giving this weblog a more personal and valuable touch.

Each post, as mentioned above, contains a picture, a brief description of where the photo was taken or what’s been captured in the photo, and some additional information about the camera used and other situational statistics – whether or not a tripod was used, for example. He keeps the descriptions to a paragraph or two and it’s obvious that the main focus of this site belongs to the photos.

The archives are a bit confusing and became my only complaint of the site. There’s a caveat on the sidebar explaining that some of the photos have been moved over to a different website, which makes it hard to determine when this blog began. The only way to navigate through the archives is a category-based list, which is great when looking for photos of a particular subject, but cumbersome when trying to scroll through by date.

With sites out there that just let anyone take pictures and post them online like Flickr or Fotki, it’s not often that readers can find someone who opts to use their own hosting, template, etc. Tom Sheehan’s photoblog is a nice read for anyone interested in something as simple as looking at original photos to getting ideas on what cameras would work better in particular situations.
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The nice part about people submitting a category with their blog is it really gives me an idea of what is going on. Especially when said category is Photography. There are a lot of photoblogs out there, and sites like Flickr have helped increase the number of them. With that said lets have some fun looking at pictures.

Before we get into the pictures themselves, lets talk about the design. The main content area has a black background which is great for helping to make pictures pop. The header has a picture of a camera, which of course fits, into the site. The site also has a basic two-column layout with information on the left and the pictures on the right.

One thing I have point out is the archive system. I really hate it when sites do not have archives in a chronological order and instead just give you the archives via categories. I have written numerous reviews on this issue and yet I still am faced with it. I don’t care if you have 4 categories or 40 categories, it is simple to do, all the major tools let you do this, so do it.

Ok with that out of the way lets talk about the pictures. A good friend of mine once said his photos were fantastic, and if you didn’t believe him, just look at how stunning his pictures look at 72 dpi instead of 300dpi. The same is true for this site. The pictures are vivid and interesting. Also it took me a couple minutes, but the photographer puts a nice colored matte around each picture. At first I thought there was a standard matte, but then I realized that each one is a different color based on the colors and composition of the photograph.

Overall this is a good site to look at. I have my issues with the archives, but I can get over that because this is a photography site. Tom knows what he is doing and I think everyone should take a look at his pictures.
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Link Building is a tricky name for a blog. I figured it was probably something to do with search engine optimization and not much else. And of course I was right.

The first thing I noticed was that the author linked to his main page when he submitted his site. Don’t worry I fixed the URL to his blog. If you want the main site, just remove the blog/ from the url.

The blog says it is powered by Submit Edge, but really its a word press blog. I know this because it is using a standard template that comes with word press.

The posts are all about SEO and what you can do and all that stuff. I say all that stuff because he even says in one of his posts that SEO work is for the professionals. So why even have a blog about how to do it?

The blog does have some good posts and tips on what to do so I can’t knock it. This blog is ok as far as SEO blogs go. There are far better SEO blogs out there, but then there are a lot of worse ones. I would look at the site and see what he says and take it with a grain of salt.NULL