Month: January 1970

When I first got to fBlog, I noticed that it didn’t look like a conventional blog and looked more akin to a giant content management system. The blog seems to have been established since May of last year, however trying to access the posts during this period was challenge that I eventually succumbed to because of the poorly designed Archive system.

The blogger himself doesn’t really give away much information about himself. Sure, we know that his favourite colour is orange and that he likes bands such as Bowling For Soup but there’s very little personal information divulged and I had to resort to using my detective skills to unveil his first name from his email address. We also don’t know where he’s from. Initially I thought America, because he used the grade system when referring to school but then I noticed that he likes Cricket, a sport that would be unheard of in the US so I’m guessing he lives in a country that’s a dominion of Great Britain, maybe Australia?

What struck me as being particularly strange was that this blog has very short posts. This maybe intentional to prevent people from being bored by long, in depth posts. However, as an over-analytic, it had the opposite effect on me and I soon found myself to be viewing a tonne of posts that were lacking creativity, personality and intellect. Don’t get me wrong, some posts are indeed long, but they too bored me! Maybe I’m just hard to please or maybe this blogger hasn’t quite honed his writing style yet. It’s not all bad though. Some posts were interesting and very thought-provoking (such as his post on Friend-ism) but the majority of the blogs here seem to be just the blogger reporting on his daily life in a not so personal style. This means that as an outsider I have a fairly good idea of whats going on so the blog isn’t just confined to those who personally know the blogger.

As I said earlier, the site appears to look more like a CMS that you’d see on a Tech news site for example and not a blog! Maybe that’s because there’s a lot of extra features down the sidebar. On most other blogs you’d expect to see links to the archives, maybe a profile and a few buttons and not much else. On this site however, you’re treated to a whiteboard, buttons, a hit map, a poll, a chatterbox, a friends list, blog information, links, an image gallery and a calender which makes the word “overkill” spring to mind.

Now it may appear that I’ve been very pessimistic towards this blog throughout the review but that’s just because I find with Personal blogs that you either fall for them straight-away or just can’t get yourself around them. This, for me, was the latter! However not everyone feels this way because of the presence of a small community that regularly comments on the posts which is something I just didn’t feel compelled to do.
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I’m guessing this blog is written by a malaysian schoolgirl. Not because it says so in her profile, I’m just getting good at this. “Soar like the Eagle, but laugh like the monk.” is a highly random blog run by a girl called Jen who exchanges in-jokes with her friends blogs and links (or pastes) interesting tidbits onto her site.

Now, its not that I don’t enjoy her writing style, and she assures us she does not speak like she writes, but there are certain things that detract from the readability. For example, “!!!!!!” and “!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!” are great ways to, um , exclaim but there are many useful words that work just as well. An adjective in the hand is worth two bangs in the bush. I just made that up, can you tell? CAPITALS ARE ALSO NO REPLACEMENT FOR EMPHATIC USE OF LANGUAGE.

Its not all bad of course, she links to some genuinely funny stuff and her blog is well received in a larger Malaysian community of blogs. The design is cluttered, but generally nice with lovely tones of brown and a great stock photo decorating the top.

The header phrase for “Soar like the Eagle, but laugh like the monk.” says “Cheesy, desperately trying to be funny and unentertainingly blog. I’m off to a good start, ain’t I?” I’m not even sure what that means, but dictionary.com assures me that unentertainingly is not a word. I could be wrong though, and so can dictionary.com, Jen’s blog is well loved and who am I to say otherwise. NULL

The first thing I read is how she gets annoyed when people say she is pretty. So I’ll start the review by saying – honk honk, you’re hot. Deal with it. Girl blogs are great aren’t they? They are so much more honest and open than us blokes and Majorie’s blog is no exception. She agonizes and articulates, pains and postulates. We see a smile in her social photos, but mostly she complains a lot. In a good, philosophical way, that is.

Her profile surprises me by being close to my own as she has great taste in music and activities and a questioning nature. Her posts delve into her present emotional states and uninhibited, she tells us about her innermost ponderings. She has a great writing style and at the same moment she berates herself for being inadequate, she does it so poetically and intelligently it leaves you confused. She tells us also about her college life, the parties, the boys, the hangovers, the good times.

The design is pretty well a straight blogger template we’ve all come to know and love and doesn’t annoy me too much. One post is filled with photos, while the next is full of stream-of-consiousness text, it really depends on her state of mind I guess.

Staying awake to chase a dream is a non-thematic personal rambling of a young girl finding herself through her friends, her thoughts and her lifestyle and makes entertaining reading. NULL

Business writers use the craziest naming conventions around (except for maybe the adult industry). Anyone who has browsed the local bookstore for business books will agree after having seen such titles as “The Mind Gym”, “The Money Diet”, “Freakonomics”, “Who moved My Cheese?”. These are all on Amazons top 5 right now, no kidding. So when I read Steve Majors title I wasn’t surprised, although when I logged on I was hoping to read about how I could make lots of money by being lazy, something I’m extremely proficient at, but was dismayed to find good, well written business advice instead.

Steve’s Bio includes a photo of himself and a summary of his business history. His methods are “lazy” which mean they require little overall relative effort as well as being involved in “no money down” business startups. I know what he is talking about having started a webhosting business myself. The best kinds of businesses are the ones that require very little effort and Steve specializes in real estate. He kind of looks like a typical accountant and apparently is a country music singer which conjures up an amusing image.

The Lazy Investor website has only occasional updates but the updates are long, thorough digests of advice including posts on business marketing, real estate investment and writing a business plan. Of course, he also promotes his own “boot camp” seminars and this is nicely segwayed (hey I just invented a word) via a rant about his injured leg. Despite the often dry subject matter Steve writes well both professionally and conversationally enough to not seem like you are reading from a textbook.

The site design and neat, tidy and a little boring. The logo features the author leaning against his own URL, arms folding looking real pro, and lazy since his shirt is not tucked in. The title header uses drop shadows and the site is a customized blogger template so everything screams cliche.

Steve Majors, The Lazy Investor, is a good website for anyone interested in gathering small business advice or interested generally in the practice of real estate investment. I can’t appraise the value of his advice as I’m not expert on the subject and really, too lazy to do the research, but he does seem to know what he is talking about. The site could use revamping but is easy enough to read and presumably makes good companion reading to his Lazy Investor workshops and literature. NULL

iPodbloggers has lots of squares, in varying shades of blue. It also has lots of ads, in varying shades of sod-off-and-stop-trying-to-sell-me-stuff. There are also several Flash animations of some kind. I don’t know what they are, because Flashblock kills the damn things nicely. If you’re using Firefox, go and get Flashblock now. If you are using IE, go and get your brain looked at because it appears to be malfunctioning.

Despite all of this I read on. The postings include articles on different iPod models, services available for iPodders, podcasting, and MORE BLOODY ADS. Aside from the ads I would have to say that the content is interesting if you have an iPod, or are thinking of buying one, and want to get the most out of it.

The colours are well chosen, I think, because they work well with all the photos of iPods, and that’s all I’m going to say about the ad-laden design.

In addition to the articles iPodbloggers also gives you RSS feeds of Ebay listings containing iPods, which is pretty cool, and – in case I haven’t mentioned it already – a tonne of ads. What a bonus.

If iPods are your thing and you have a high ad-tolerance this will probably be of interest.

Finally, to scoring. Let’s start with a score of three, which of course represents your average crappy blog. Take off three for all the ads, and unnecessary use of Flash animations, which gives us a score of zero. Next add one point for the potentially useful content, and another half-point for the RSS feed idea, giving a grand total of 1.5 points. Possibly I am being too generous.

Suddenly my brain slips a gear and I find myself giving iPodbloggers extra points for having a well-defined topic and not being just another damn personal weblog.NULL