Month: January 1970

I wasn’t sure how a “Web 2.0 Directory” would qualify as a blog. But it turns out that the author has made his “Directory” a blog and not a directory at all.

The first thing I noticed was that the url for this site was a blogspot hosted site. I have nothing against blogs being on blogspot per say, but if you are going to have a site called “Web 2.0 Directory” I think it should be hosted at its own domain.

The design of the site is rather bland and boring. It has this massive header that tells us the site has been around since December of 2006 and is tracking all the new web sites out there. Ok that’s fine, but 33% of my screen for this header is not needed. The rest of the design is a standard 3 column layout with the content in the center. Nothing about this design says “Hi I am a directory”.

The posts are boring as all get out. In fact they don’t really do much of anything other than describe a website. Some of the descriptions are one sentence long which leads me to my next thought about this site.

The site screams it is a spam site. Or at the very least, set up to just generate money and not actually do anything for the reader. There are many little details that lead me to believe this. First the author had the max number of google ads on the site. In addition to those the author has a nice break down of categories and wouldn’t you believe that the Pay Per Post category has one of the most posted to categories?

In addition to that the author has at the end of every post a link to every single site that you can submit your URL to such as del.icio.us, digg and others. All in the hopes that people will link back to his site.

This site fails miserably at what it says it is. It is not a directory by any means. It isn’t even what one would call a “Web 2.0” site. I really think the author should say that the purpose of the site is just to make me money and that is it. I think a complete restructuring of the site is needed if he wants to keep using the “Web 2.0 Directory” as the name of his blog.

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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.
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The Broken Credit Blog is a clearinghouse of information specifically housed to help advise people with bad credit situations. The blog is written by individuals who register for the blog, and they share their stories and solutions.

Usually, these individuals are industry professionals, and not just random cranks who talk about how they stuck it to Bank of America with a protest letter or something. Although, there are plenty of first-hand experience stories from people who had a very nasty time with creditors.

The site is incredibly easy to navigate, is updated frequently (I reviewed the page over the course of two weeks and there were almost daily updates to the site). There are tons of archives, and the information is helpful and interesting. The site is not flashy, a very simple white background with easy to read navigation, archives by month and by category topic, and an RSS feed for those who wish to subscribe.

The Broken Credit Report blog offers a link for obtaining a free credit report, a form for users to generate their own dispute letter, a huge help center, and online seminars. There are tons of archives to go through too, which is great because there are so many blogs that I get to review that have … six entries. Hard to review six entries folks. Here, they offer interesting bits of advice on how to raise your credit score, advice given to clients on how to clean up credit, comforting and encouraging bits about identity theft and dealing with that problem.

All told, the advice and the first hand experience stories were all a pretty interesting read for what I thought would be kind of a dry topic, or a complete and total “shell” of a blog hawking someone’s business services. Obviously there is a business behind this website (located in Las Vegas…), but it seems that they are willing to share a lot of information that normally you would think would cost you an arm and a leg. And that’s pretty cool… considering that so many Americans get into such horrible credit situations, and can use all the free and honest advice they can get.

The About page cites the New Testament with a quote from the Book of Matthew:

Let your light so shine before men, that they may see your good works, and glorify your Father which is in heaven.

I believe our blog authors ascribe to this philosophy and present the information in this blog with a generosity that only grows from someone who truly wants to do good works for other people to glorify God. So indeed — Hats off to the authors for being generous with their content. I hope this kind of generous business practice blesses them with actual clients that can keep them going and generating this service for free.

I would highly suggest that in addition to the words of Matthew, our authors include this quote from Shakespeare’s “Hamlet:”

Neither a borrower nor a lender be;
For loan oft loses both itself and friend,
And borrowing dulls the edge of husbandry.
This above all: to thine own self be true,
And it must follow, as the night the day,
Thou canst not then be false to any man.

While it is necessary to borrow money for mortgages (because really, who has $500,000 in the bank to just up and buy a house these days…) it is important to not dig that hole too deep. Lord Polonius was right in his advice to Hamlet — be honest, work hard, and do the best you can. And you may not find yourself stuck with bad credit in the end.

I give this site a 3.5, because it was chock full of information and not a shell to suck me into a business sales site. I think it is incredibly helpful to people who need to learn how to clean their credit house, and would highly recommend it to friends struggling with problems which are addressed here.
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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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Webcasting Business Model is a site dedicated to the business models of webcasting. Obviously quite a niche market, but the author attempts to corner that market. The biggest problem is the lack of content. Looking through the archives shows that the entire site only hosts thirteen articles since 2005. Beyond the sparse content however, there is quite a bit here for those interested in business models in general. Mostly in the form of links to related sites, but there are also book recommendations, videos and even a small glossary/dictionary.

I don’t admit to being an expert on business models, but the authors seem educated and well written. Each article is concise, topical and interesting. The authors touch on everything webcasting and business models from trends and predictions to straight-up news. The blog is also meant to be a place to provide updates for a book edited by two of the authors.

This blog is hosted by Google’s blogspot, and uses one of the basic designs. So, there’s not much to look at when reading this blog. On the upside, that can be seen as a strength so as not to detract from what content is there.

My overall impression is that this blog is more of a side project for the authors. It feels unfinished and in progress. If I were interested in business models or wanted to find out more information, this would be a good starting point. I wasn’t blown away by this blog, but certainly not turned off either.NULL