Month: January 1970

I changed the category for Hormones-Beauty-Health to Business. This is a marketing site run by an affiliate for a company (http://www.ihdistribution.com), and in their own words they are “a progressive distributor of women’s healthcare and beauty products.”

Progressive? Like Moveon.org? Progressive like Liberals leaving the democratic party because it is too conservative? Good gracious I hate the overuse of the word “progressive” all across the globe these days. I’m not sure what makes them “progressive.” They certainly aren’t “radical” or “revolutionary.” At least they don’t come across to me in any way that could match up with a definition of progressiveness.

Anyway — the Hormones-Beauty-Health website is filled with feature articles on Women’s Health Care, from Skin care (adult acne, aging, post-menopausal problems) to general health care (stress, eating disorders, post-partum depression)and Emu Oil…. which I believe is something they really are into at Hormones-Beauty-Health.

The site is a gentle pinkish brown and white with standard blue underlined links in the Arial font. It is very easy to navigate, very light on graphics, and truly an “informational” site with dozens of articles on all kinds of health, hormonal and beauty topics.

In their top bar navigation (which is dark pink text on light pink background, slightly hard to read on my flat-screen monitor so i had to punch up the contrast a bit) there is a blog category so I went there to see what was being blogged.

It is a WordPress driven blog, header banner with standard two column layout. The colors of the banner are completely different than that of the marketing site. I would suggest html code of “target=blank” off of the Hormones-Beauty-Health page to launch people out of the marketing site and open up a new window for a page so completely different in scope than the rest of the site.

This page is located at http://www.hormones-beauty-health.com/wordpress/ for those following along at home. It is an easy to read and navigate blog, with somewhat repetitive information from the Hormones-Beauty-Health main page. There is an entry examining other blogs and their popularity, links to a favorite blog or two, some free recipes from a “sponsor” (which strangely enough links back to a sub-page in Hormones-Beauty-Health).

The “about” page inside the blog still holds the original WordPress content for ‘this is your about page, you can write here about yourself.’ I highly suggest that be edited because it looks silly to leave that with the default content.

The blog site is very simple and easy to navigate. The header banner is much nicer than the header for the marketing site at Hormones-Beauty-Health.

Blog archives go back to December 2005 but there is mostly one blog entry for the each of the first several months of the blog’s existence. It seems that the blog is now being used more often to promote the main corporate site as the recent months have a lot more content. The earlier months’ content seems to be repeated in some way on the Tips page for the main marketing site of Hormones-Beauty-Health and so I’m wondering — why blog at all if everything is over on the marketing site?

Everything seems cyclical and points back to the main page eventually. I think this is all a big online marketing site for people to get some advice on psoriasis or other skin and aging issues so they can buy … Arbonne! There are links to the skin care company Arbonne within blog entries as another “sponsor” to ihd.myarbonne.com. We know from the beginning About page in the main site that IHD is the progressive affiliate for another company, obviously Arbonne International.

Everyone I know right now is selling Arbonne. They want me to host parties and will give me 300 dollars off or free shipping to everyone who orders from my party… all my friends are trying to climb an inner corporate ladder to become regional sales manager or district sales director for Arbonne.

None of them have a webpage.

Overall, the tips and advice are interesting. Everyone is trying to make money on the internet, and Arbonne is a growing business. Our blog author is using the web to promote his/her business and hopefully drum up some sales. I wish him/her the best of luck.

I have no real intention of revisiting the blog, but the Hormones-Beauty-Health page did have some good content that I may refer back to. I give the site a 2.75 rating. NULL

Ambatchmasterpublisher sounds like something my son wants me to say five times fast these days.

Try it. Ambatchmasterpublisher. Ambatchmasterpublisher. Ambatchmasterpublisher.

Visiting this blog, you will see that word printed all over the screen eighty million times. So much so that you’ll think it is the only word our blog author knows.

From what I gather, after my head exploded from so many Ambatchmasterpublishers thrown up in my face, this is some sort of blog tool or marketing tool or something. I don’t know. Essentially, I ran screaming from the site.

Color scheme is blogger white and blue. Basic, simple, painless. That’s all it has going for it. I still don’t know what this site is for and don’t plan on returning to really find out.

feh.NULL

According to his profile, Gary, or GMan1948, our blog author, has worn many “hats” over the years. He is a “semi-retired” CEO and bookseller.

The first thing that happened when I clicked on the URL to review his site was it crashed my computer.

After rebooting my system, I tried again. His blog forced a java update onto my PC, which I totally didn’t like. I use Firefox, so I guess that I wasn’t as up to date as I thought I was. After a few minutes of java updating and another cup of coffee retrieved, the site was loaded and I proceeded to get to work.

The top of the page under the blogger banner has six banner sized news and advertisement bars and a small calendar navigation box to the right for his blog content. The news and advertising banners weren’t interesting to me, so I began to scroll down the page. I scrolled down past articles about marketing and articles about advertising. I encountered his profile on the right sidebar, and more news and more advertising in the main part of the blog. Good grief, where is the content? More ads! eBay! Dell! Amazon! Blog Blaster!

Finally, an entry. It was dated recently, so I knew this wasn’t a shell of a site to click through for ad revenue, Gary’s content began more than halfway down the blog.

You know what my criticism is here, don’t you? One shouldn’t have to scroll until one’s fingers ache to get to blog content. The sad thing is, all that scrolling was for naught. The blog content wasn’t all that thrilling, and quite a let-down since I had to dig for it so deeply. Gary blogs other people’s content, about microbusiness, launching websites for small businesses, and how to make money with your blog.

Blogvermercial indeed.

The only saving grace is that he actually attributes sourcing to the authors of the articles he quotes extensively or reprints in total. How incredibly refreshing! I have reviewed blogs here on Weblog Review where the content is obviously lifted from other sources and the blogger NEVER links back or attributes ownership. So it was nice to see actual “about the author” information on each of the entries for the past several months.

The site archives go back to February 2006, and it was only by going back there did I find any content written by the blogger himself, from his opinion and position. Commercials he hates, commercials he loves, how he used Craigslist and wanted to know what other people thought about bartering.

That’s a blog. Interesting,

The past couple of months worth of entries are simply cut and paste reposts of other articles. I think Gary’s blog, opinions and voice have been eaten alive by the concepts of advertising and marketing on the web. And this is really sad, because I bet Gary has some great stories, anecdotes about customer service and business, and opinions that are better than what he is culling and pasting from the web.

That’s something that happens in our modern consumer culture. And it is kind of sad because I enjoyed reading the early months of the blog.

In short — the ads and all the noise at the top of the page totally detract from the site, and the author is lost. I give the site a 2. I see hope and potential if Gary gets back to writing and speaking his own voice instead of letting other articles fill the space. Hopefully he will. He has two other blogs in his Technorati profile, so perhaps those spots are where he shines. I’ll have to visit and see… but right here at the Blogvermercial? Not so much.

NULL

Hip Hop World is a blog that features news on and video from hip hop artists. The site has a black background with white text and yellow navigation in the sidebar, which isn’t as hard on the eyes as I’ve found in the past.

There is no “about” page listed that I could find, no blogger profile. So I am not sure if our author is an American or International Hip Hop fan. An about page is always key, so we know the profile of the writer and where he or she is coming from. I suggest activating that in the blogger dashboard so we know more about the person taking the time to bring us the news.

The standard three column blogger template is deployed but is slightly out of skew. The header banner (at 804px wide) is too big for the table, and hangs out of the table frame to the right by about fiddy pixels. Because the table is the wrong size for the content, the right navigation column is forced to the bottom of the screen for users at 1024×768 resolution. (I viewed the site on my monitor at home and at work with the same problem).

Seeing as the right panel navigation is incredibly important, I would suggest to the blogger that the size of the table be increased, or size of the photos and videos inside the center column be decreased. A little bit of code-tweaking can fix this problem quickly, and can be done through the blogger dashboard.

The left navigation bar has icons for going straight to iTunes to buy certain artists’ latest recordings. There is a message board to dialog with other Hip Hop fans, which opens up discourse and interaction with a wider community. Unfortunately, the site is too young for that feature to really have gotten off the ground at this point, but I think that if the blog author gets a little more exposure the community can grow.

There are few archives to the site at this point, just April to June. This was just enough content to keep me reading and interested this morning. Also, the site categories are listed out by artist, so if you’re only interested in Ciara or Timbaland, you can go to those categories and read the entries for your favorite artist.

My favorite part of the blog was the biographies, which sound like they were written by the author and not creatively appropriated from Wikipedia or another source. I also loved the header graphic, which is a beautiful mural portrait of hip hop’s current and past, living and gone, performers.

My major complaint with the site, aside from the layout being messed up with the right panel navigation forced to the bottom of the screen, is the overwhelming amount of Ads by Google content. Under the header, in the left side panel, and after every single entry… Way way way too much. The target audience is more interested in reading about hip hop and less interested in the advertising. I know everyone is trying to make money off the web in whatever way they can, but I’d totally pare down on the advertising… at the header of the page and in the entries. Leave the Ads by Google in the left panel of the site, away from the content.

I give the site a 3 rating, because I see potential as it grows. Now, where’s the review on the Beastie Boys’ new release. Rolling Stone says it’s the best ever.NULL

Unique South America Travel Experience is not really a blog, but I felt the need to review it because I feel the website owner truly loves his subject.

The site is filled with photographs and personal remembrances by a traveler who has been to South America, and writes in his “About Us” that he is in Dublin Ireland (a place I personally long to visit) and will one day return to his beloved continent. The About Us page does not let us know who the author is, aside from a photo at the top of the page which I presume is our author. I’ve guessed that the website owner is one “Daniel Moore,” because several of the photos on the site are attributed to that individual. I would recommend editing the About Us page to make it clear who is speaking to us and encouraging us to take a chance in visiting South America one day.

From the opening page, the writer makes it clear his love for South America and all the countries therein. There is a date-stamp on the page that shows the current date, but I believe that is code generated and not a sign that the site was updated today. The layout of the Homepage is kind of lumpy, with huge text and lots of pictures and a giant Google Ads box in the middle of things, disturbing the textual flow of the page.

The navigation on the left sidebar makes has a nice natural flow, and the only thing I’d recommend is moving the About Us page up to the second position. The navigation is repeated at the bottom of each of the webpages, which is redundant and should be removed.

The next option in the navigation is SA Travel Blog which offers readers an RSS option for when the blog is updated, but there isn’t any “blog” content.

Moving on from the blog and the overview of the continent on the first page, we move country by country through South America. Here is where the true heart of the site lies. The author writes about each country and top destinations, and the sometimes scary adventures he had in each nation.

While interesting to read about things he experienced from the 1970s onward, I found this to be a site that I won’t necessarily visit again… unless I need maps. I would suggest our author update more frequently, perhaps use Blogger or something to actually BLOG about his travels, and I truly hope he makes it back to his beloved South America someday. Ireland may be lovely, but the photos of SA make it look dreary and boring in comparison.

I give this site a 2.75 rating, as it is worth a look once, but doesn’t generate a desire for anyone to really revisit. NULL