Month: January 1970

Eric loves his video games, but hates the giant corporations that make these video games. Since this is his blog, this is what he writes. He started this weblog in response to the Madden 2006 football game that was released earlier this fall. He was disappointed with the game, and decide to develop this weblog in order to give gamers an actual voice in the situation. All of this information was in the very first post of the site, and I felt good knowing exactly what I would be reading for the next month’s worth of posts.

This site is still new. Eric made his inaugural post on November 1, but has steadily continued to post since then. It’s all put together on what looks like a standard Blogger template. It’s a two-column layout, done in black, white, and grays. There’s the typical Blogger profile in the side-column area, which also contains “essential” video game links, a few ads, and all the standard weblog additions – a blogroll, archives, etc.

Thankfully, his posts vary from his dislike of the latest football game release and stray to other types of big corporations that he can’t stand – Wal-Mart and Microsoft, for example. He has his reasons for his dislike of these company, especially the monopolies the companies have – hence the name of the site. From time to time, Eric also throws in a link he’s found on the internet that might make you laugh.

While this isn’t going to be a site that everyone will follow or appreciate, it’s a perfect fit for those diehard Madden 06 fans that are just as frustrated as Eric about the quality of the latest release of this game. It’s still a new weblog and has a lot of room to grow.NULL

I found this site to be very interesting. Being a member of many nonprofit organizations, I found this site especially useful. My initial thoughts were just what you expect, great another raise money quick scheme, but my opinion changed radically. It has an elegant layout that draws the eyes in.

The site is designed to provide information on fundraising to nonprofit organizations. Step by Step Fundraising is what it is called, and righteously so. This site is broken into many different ways. It is dived into idea types: general topics, athletic events, fundraising events, ideas, letters, news, products, forum, and special offers. The site gives you a substantial listing of different fundraising events that different organizations use to raise money.

The sites design is a simple 2 column layout with menu options at the top. It has a side bar with interesting and pertinent information. It uses a calm color scheme including shades of blue, tan, green, yellow, and red. On the Home page the information is broken into smaller clips easily defined by the topic name.

My conclusion for this site is to recommend it. I commend the author “Sandra” for pulling this information together into a central location. If you are a member of a nonprofit organization or looking for some good fundraising ideas, I would recommend you to take a glance at this site. I rate this site at a 4.25.
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I traveled over to the Climate Change Action to see exactly what they had to say about Global Warming and who the author was blaming for the change in weather. That is what I was expecting, but when I arrived I found a site that was devoted to the change in climate with scientific data and research to back the finds.

This site is not a site to blame any specific group of the changing climate. It just says that climate is changing and here are some ideas why. The blog began in July 2005 and has had many posts. Some things to expect when reading the blog are charts, graphs, and photos from casualties of the weather. I feel that if you need a good place for climate research here would be a good place to go. The information appears to be legit with many credible resources backing the information being presented. The author also presents information where he is applying for one of six positions at the Ben and Jerrys Climate College. He also provides personal feelings on some topics he feels are very important dealing with the weather.

The design of the site is a typical blogspot template. A two column blog with the main information located in the left column, while the right column is loaded with links dealing with the climate, past articles, comments, and archives. It has a “catchy” banner, which is made of simply text and color. I thought it was an interesting way to present a menu for the site. The menu provides the following choices: climate change action, climate change news, and climate change resources.

I felt the site was interesting to read through, even though the weather is not a specialty of mine. I enjoy keeping track of what is going on currently with the weather but its past and future is not really much of a concern of mine. If you are a weather fanatic then this blog might interest you. Due to the amount of information presented in this blog and the professional means by which it is presented I rate this blog as a 4.
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“Where’s this dude from?” is the question that pops into my mind when I see the name of this weblog. And my question quickly finds an answer in the About me section of the website. He’s a 23 year old guy from the U.S. currently living in Pakistan, where he attends Medical School.

Great! This is just up my alley. I’m really interested in eastern countries and this seems to be a very good opportunity to learn more about Pakistan from the point of view of someone who lives there. And the weblog does not disappoint me at all. He’s really articulate, writes very well and has a good sense of humor – not ha-ha humor, but I’m sure you’ll get it. I’ve spent half an hour reading through 2 or 3 months of posts and I’m ready to continue reading. Bring it on! Okay, I know November 2005 has only 4 posts, but still… Maybe this review will encourage him to write more – as soon as he’s done with exams, that is.

What made me think this journal might be interesting was the content on life in Pakistan and about Islam, more personal entries or stuff about his life in Medical School were far from uninteresting. As a bonus, there are pictures neatly organized, which only added to the site. Design-wise, I can’t say I’m very pleased; there’s something about the colors that don’t please my eyes. But that’s just a matter of taste. I can see that everything works fine there – archives, links to past posts, I mean it, everything, I couldn’t find one single broken link. The only thing that could be improved is the categories-thing. I know the blog has a few categories but you can only find them browsing through the entries. A menu of some sort in the column on the right would be of some help.

I would say I can easily become addicted to this journal as Rehan’s Journal was certainly a nice surprise.
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This is going to sound awful, but I just don’t get this site. I’ve looked at it half a dozen times, and tried reading through it each time. There’s not much that keeps my attention and the only reason I keep coming back is because I just can’t give up on a site. Ever.

The layout of the site probably one reason I struggle with visiting it. I suppose by subscribing to the many, many RSS feeds this site has, I could avoid the abomination of a design that greets me as the URL loads. Everything is set on a white background, but there are so many tables and links and different text sizes and colors that the site design really distracts from the main purpose of the site. There are ads all over the site. Between the links Robin lists down the sidebar, I can’t tell which ones are ads and which ones are actually part of this site.

There were a few links down the sidebar under the heading of “About this Site”, but none of them worked. The link where I could find out about the author was available, so I gladly gave it a quick read through. Robin Good sounds like an impressive person. His credentials are noteworthy, and his experience runs the gamut with anything from radio broadcasting to computer graphics. Obviously, Robin has a lot of knowledge in several different arenas due to his experience, giving him the credibility to write about quite a bit of information.

The archives are listed by the subject of each post or by category. While on a regular weblog that would sound extremely cumbersome and annoying to have to scroll through, it’s not as bad as it could be on this site. The posts do begin in March 2000, but thankfully, for readers trying to look through this entire list, sometimes the author of this site goes sometimes up to a month without posting. He does make up for the infrequency in posts by sometimes posting up to six or seven times on one day.

All of this rambling about the site and I still haven’t began to touch the actual content of the weblog. I think that’d because it’s hard to find.

If you click on an individual archive link, you’re taken to the page that features the article. This article is sandwiched in between two sets of Google ads, with links below it selling books from Amazon.com. It made finding the beginning and end of each individual post a bit tedious and more time consuming than it should have been to just read one or two paragraphs.

I did not read every post. With five years of archives, I think I’m entitled to skip a few. In 2000, when the weblog first rolls out, the author doesn’t seem to be dropping much effort into the posts. Generally, it’s a link to an internet-related site – perhaps a search engine of sorts or a site the gives guidelines of some type – followed by a small paragraph that describes what you’ll be reading. Not too much creativity and not a whole lot of effort, in my opinion.

Then, in 2001, there were multiple paragraphs. It seemed as if the author realized what he was starting was potentially a big thing and began to develop things a bit more. He ranks instant messaging programs or dives into the secret world that is Google. Back in 2001, Google was nowhere near the powerhouse it is today, so it was a fun read to go back and read about the perks Google had four years ago.

Basically, this is a site that links to other sites on the web. The author sometimes graces us with very informative paragraphs about the particular products, services, or news articles he’s linking to. Other times, we only get one or two sentences, which are followed up by a link explaining even more at another URL.

The people that will find this site interesting will be the people that like the changes in technology, reading the new findings, or discovering the next cool thing that becomes available online. It’s hard to give this site a high ranking due to it’s awkwardness. It is a very focused weblog and should fall into the “geek” niche very nicely. It just doesn’t jump out, grab me, and make me want to come back over and over again.NULL