Month: January 1970

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Seeing as this is my very first review for TWR, I thought I would pick something that just by title could be randy and naughty and exciting. “Love Across Borders” was submitted under the “artistic” category, so I was afraid it might really be a business weblog about trafficking under-aged foreign girls into arranged marriages and destinies of woe. Ooooh! Potentially scary and not safe for work weblog for me to review!

Instead, I find that it is a navel-gazing Emo blog of poetry. It is set up to be a “community,” but the only poster is the ubiquitous Shaun, who has posted every single poem and news announcement. His little thumbnail avatar picture is on every single page, about eighty thousand times. This is Shaun’s blog of poetry.

The header tag of the website describes Love Across Borders (easily abbreviated to LAB) as “open community publishing for poets through forums; features the works of amateur and professional poets, tagging, and books.” The “About LAB-P” page states that “Love Across Borders is an international community that seeks to host and promote open art and discussion in a community of caring people. You can share words in our Share Forums.”

Indeed, we are encouraged to post into the forums and share our thoughts and ideas. We are encouraged to search poetry by genre, or type. Unfortunately, all the searches return Shaun’s poems, and the forums and books tab announce that the page cannot be found… but list out the press releases about Community Publishing and LAB’s mission.

To be fair, it appears the site was launched in late April 2007, so the fact that Shaun is alone in his poetry posting is a little sad. I sure hope other poets will join him and post their poems about “dieing” too.

The site design itself is not very artistic. It is an obvious cookie-cutter blog template, with google ads and ridiculously huge navigation bar hogging up the screen “above the fold” as it were. The meat of the site, the poems, are all down the screen on the page and one must scroll to read the double-spaced free-form “poety” goodness below.

Don’t get me wrong — I was an English major in college with a minor concentration in Irish dramatic arts and poetry. I enjoy poetry very much. This isn’t a community blog though. Yes, yes… the launch was in April 2007, and perhaps we should give it more time so other poets can join in. Perhaps this review will encourage others to join… but I think not. Shaun should drop the whole “Community Publishing” and “Love Across Borders” labeling and philosophy of the site and get honest and re-brand the blog as “Shaun’s Blog Of Poems,” and be honest about it. The site is all Shaun. All the time. So it needs to be recreated in that image. With that change, with that honesty, the blog shows a little more potential. And I think I’d rather see it set up as such. In conclusion, I give Love Across Borders a 1.5 rating NULL

I used to consider myself a musician about 12 years ago when I was obsessed with my high school band teacher. Since then, the only music I’ve been playing comes through my iPod. Why am I telling you this? To let you know in advance that I’m far from the target audience that the authors at IntellectualMusician.com were probably targeting when updating their blog.

The first thing I noticed, and I hate it when this happens, is that the layout was rather distracting. Instead of listing the last several posts down the page, there’s a table set up with the first sentence or two listed of the post and a link where readers can read the rest of the article. All of the authors do a good job of giving readers the gist of an article in the first several words, but I just found all of the clicking a little unnecessary. That’s why I scrolled to the bottom of the page so I could click on “View All Posts”.

April 9th was the very first post of the site and it does a straightforward job in explaining what the site is about and how those interested can also become a contributor to the site. From that point on, posts are made on a regular basis about a bevy of subjects, including Composition, Ear Training, Improvisation, Practice, Theory, and many, many more.

Each of the four authors have their own specialty they focus on when posting and their own writing style, all of which are key components on what make this blog work as well as it does.

As I mentioned before, those best suited for reading IntellectualMusician.com are, well, intellectual musicians, or at least those aspiring to be such. Former high school musicians, like myself, may have some challenges understanding each of the posts, but may also be able to pick up a new tip or two in their reading.NULL

By the name of the site “intellectualmusician.com,” I began to think about what this site could be about. I imagine a site where music is taken to another level – thought. I would imagine that the owner of the site is probably either a musician or someone in an academic world. I expect to see music from the eyes of the mind instead of the ear. I hope to see this take place. Hopefully someone can help the world understand the thought behind putting a music piece or composition together displaying the musicians thought behind the music rather than a catchy tune that all of us seem to enjoy as we turn on the radio today.

The site has a simple interface. It does not render well in IE 7.0, but there is a disclaimer on the site stating to use Firefox. I am not sure if this is done on purpose for kickbacks based on downloads of Firefox from the site or not, but since the majority of the world does use IE, I don’t feel this is a good thing. It is easy on the eyes and can clearly be placed into different categories. There is an area devoted to forums. These forums could be of use to many musicians. It provides a means by which musicians can discuss their opinions of music, and how to develop new music.

The site is, as expected, about teaching music and brining a new level of music to listeners. The site has 4 authors, Henderson, Mylotte, Gerson, and Oakleaf. Oakleaf appears to be the reason why intellectualmusician.com is currently in existence. The authors wanted a place for musicians to work together and grow as an organization – a group of musicians. All of them have extensive bios in music and education.

The site takes on a new meaning for beginners on the web. If you want to learn about playing an instrument, I would recommend you to check out intellectualmusician.com. It appears they have the knowledge and the professional skills to take a beginner with no knowledge and get them playing quickly. They focus on not just telling you what keys or strokes of the instrument to play, but they actually inform you about the instrument itself. They want the beginner to not understand music, but understand how to create music through the instrument. I feel their skills would be beneficial on any college music program. Their skills are not only growing together as a group of musicians, but they are providing information to help the world grow into music.
If you want to learn how to play the guitar any beginner should check out their articles on the composition of the guitar. I am sure that more instruments will be coming as releases on this site as it grows. They are currently trying to build their reader base and their membership so that intellectualmusician.com can be a centerpiece pushing the music industry to new levels.

This is a good site for any musician. Currently it is probably more geared toward beginner musicians, but as the site develops, I think the concepts will develop. I am sure the authors of the site would love for more advanced players to subscribe to their forums and offer up their personal advice as well. This site is highly recommended for the beginner musician.

I rate this site at a 3.75 for 2 reasons: the first is for a good site to be used it must be able to be viewed with many different browsers and the second is that it is still in the growing stages and is geared toward beginners and not the advanced musicians. I do believe that this is a good starting point and that it will grow with time to truly become the “intellectual musician”.
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I love when blogs have very obvious names to them. Food Mayhem is one such blog. It is going to be a foodie blog and since this is the first foodie blog, I decided to create a new category of “Food” since “Entertainment” doesn’t quiet fit the picture enough.

Being that this blog is about food, I expect a lot. I read a lot of food blogs and I own more cookbooks than any of my friends. Ok that’s not saying a lot, but I still own a good share. I also go out to eat at least two times a week if not more. I worked in the restaurant industry for about four years and at one time was going to go into management before I found a job in IT. With that said, lets get onto this review.

The blog is written by two authors (as far as I could tell, Lon and Jessica). Both of whom live in NY and the site focuses on meals in NY city. Sometimes they post a recipe (as was the case in older posts) other times just a review of a restaurant and other times just stating opinions on all things food.

My favorite part of this website has to be the reviews of restaurants. While living in NY does provide with more outlets of restaurant reviews, most places in the US do not have very many. Each review of a restaurant either made me want to eat there, or never eat there. I know that if/when I travel to NY I will definitely be searching this blog to find out if the restaurant is worth going to.

The design of the site is very crisp and clean (like a kitchen should be) and functions very well for the site. The site uses some Web 2.0 stuff for expanding a couple of the sections which is a nice touch. The archives leave a little something to be desired. I have never been a fan of linking each and every post. Instead I would recommend having the archives be similar to the main page where they are listed in order – full text and all.

My only other complaint would be the lack of addresses for the restaurants reviewed. Sometimes the authors link to the restaurant’s website, but in doing a review, I would expect to see an address and/or phone number for each place. I am sure they could even find a little widget to auto link in google maps to give people directions.

Overall this is a great food blog. It doesn’t strive at all from its goal and it does what it is supposed to do very well. The information is laid out nicely and it doesn’t hurt that the blog is well written. This is a definite must read if you live in NY, and a should read for everyone else.
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