Month: January 1970

The Direct Creative blog is a simply designed, rather interesting blog about marketing, copywriting, and direct marketing design. It is the blogging corner for a company called Direct Creative, a copywriting and consulting company owned by Dean Rieck. Dean started the blog in October because he enjoys talking shop and sharing his thoughts and observations on his vocation, his job, his career and his life. Dean keeps it all business and doesn’t talk about his personal walk up to this point in his life, and how he really came to be in this field. All business, all the time… copywriting and marketing advice is what it is all about here.

Now, direct marketing is often a term that makes folks (myself included) cringe. Dean makes it fun by pointing out where folks make mistakes in their copywriting. There aren’t a lot of archives, but reading through I felt informed and entertained with the content within.

My favorite entry was a very recent one where it looks like a postcard is selling kitchen cabinets, but it is really a condominium complex that is trying to sell their units. Dean very carefully examines where the writers went wrong by trying to be to smart by half… and in the end, a quick view of the card leaves the recipient unaware that their future home might be in the palm of their hands because the message is lost.

The website itself is nicely laid out. A bright orange header bar is gently overlaid by what looks like to be a “sheet” of paper almost … it is a nice, classy design for a blog on creative marketing. Layout-wise, we are presented with a two-column format with entries on the right and navigation to the left. The left navigation area seems a bit cluttered by a lot of offers and Amazon.com ads and the usual money-making on your blog opportunities, but it isn’t too overwhelming and noisy, and it really could be with all of the different widgets, feeds, gadgets and toys out there in the blogosphere. The RSS subscription feed is easy to find, as are the archives. All told, it is a nice, clean layout without too much noise. The perfect vehicle for Dean’s message.

I have a friend who is a copywriter and will refer her to this page to see if there are tips and tricks she can pick up. For the average, everyday non-marketing type like myself there isn’t a real need to revisit. But if you’re in the marketing industry and direct mail or copywriting is your thing, this blog (and Dean himself as a consultant) are a great resource. I give the blog a 3.75 rating because it is for a very specific audience and not the whole wide world of readers. NULL

I’m taking just a little bit of editorial license in calling Mirror Image a blog, as it is really a website without the series of posts that blogs normally have. But why not include such an excellent website in TheWeblogReview.com listings?

Peter Shah is an amateur British astronomer who has about US$32,000 pounds of astronomy equipment set up in a shed in his garden. Incredibly, he has produced photographs with his 8-inch telescope, despite the often cloudy British skies, that have been favorably compared with photos from the multi-billion dollar Hubble space telescope.

The Mirror Image site is Shah’s repository of breathtakingly beautiful photographs which are the product of his relatively humble infrastructure. The photos are of extremely high quality, with endless detail that the eye can peruse for minutes at a time. I’m no astronomy expert, but beauty like this needs no expertise whatsoever to appreciate. On the contrary, anyone would find it totally accessible.

As I gazed at my favorite photo of the Andromeda galaxy, produced with an exposure time of two half hours, I thought “If Shaw is smart he will sell his images in various media as soon as possible, because they are absolutely worthy of it.”

The site is an example of how powerful personal publishing can be, and for we who visit sites like this, it shows again how rich the benefits of surfing the Internet can be, looking for sites created by people who are passionate about their interests and talented at conveying their enthusiasm.NULL

First of all, there’s no way to fit a site like Kottke.org into a category. It’s one of those sites that takes as its subject matter anything that crosses the radar of its creator, in this case Jason Kottke. Blogs like this remind me in a way of newspaper columns by nationally syndicated writers like Thomas Friedman, Nicholas Kristof, Art Buchwald, et al. The blog format means that the articles are usually much shorter, posted several times a day with topics that are much more wide ranging and often only comprised of a few sentences of commentary and a pointer to something of interest anywhere on the Internet.

The strength of columns and the best blogs like these isn’t necessarily any inside information or even particularly highbrow sensibilities or writing ability. Their strength is that they had a unique voice, and a sustained definable perspective that you enjoyed Revisiting regularly. Lucky for us that RSS feeds mean we don’t even have to go to the front door to pickup the newspaper, much less pay for a subscription.NULL

“Awakening Sense” has the subtitle describing the blog as being “about waking up to our awakening process…sensing its pull.” Who awakens? Not us — but our inner selves. What is this awakening? Spiritual mostly, and more of a consciousness of being. Delving into the blog one can learn more about what our author believes “awakening” means, and how folks can reach for this greater sense of being.

The blog itself consists of a very basic layout. A large red banner with no graphic adorns the top of the page, and the title of the blog hyperlinks back to the home page at all times. The background of the blog is white, with two columns. Navigation on the far right and content on the left. Archives go back to September 2007, which isn’t that long ago, but there is plenty to read here as our author has posted frequently through the months.

There is very little in the navigation area as our author does not use blog apps or ads by Google. The site is refreshingly non-commercial and very uncluttered. And that is a beautiful thing.

My only criticism of the blog, even though I do love the basic simplicity, is that I find it lacking in a way. The web is a big, wonderful, interesting place… and I would love if the author provided links and resources and information outside of their own little realm on the web. Not sales information through ads by google or whathaveyou, but links to resources he/she finds help nurture his/her philosophy.

You will notice that I am using his/her and he/she as I refer to our author here. On the About page, our blog author outlines why he or she has decided to write anonymously. And in that anonymity, there is no detail as to whether the voice behind the blog is male or female. Not that it matters, it just makes it hard to point to the author with a proper pronoun so I’ll have to be forgiven for using the he/she kind of notation.

It is a little disappointing, this anonymity, because I would like to be informed more about who the individual is behind the thoughts and philosophy here. But I have to honor the decision, and thank the author for not creating a false persona behind which he/she hides. So many people either lie about who they are or create false identities to hide behind, so I have to give credit to the honesty shown here on the About page.

The content of the blog is very spiritual and reflective, but more of a guide to the reader than the author’s experience with the concepts of awakening him/herself. There are references to the many forms that god has taken across the realms of religious consciousness through history. I would recommend this blog to people who are interested in expanding their concepts of their inner self, their core being, and developing a stronger spiritual base.

I give the blog a 3.75 and am changing the category from “creative writing” to “personal.” I didn’t find any of the content to be of a “creative writing” kind of vibe, because I found it to be more of a self-help and personal feel, and we don’t have a religious/spiritual/self-help/philosophy kind of category. So personal it is. NULL

The blog we find ourselves reviewing this morning is called “Gifts” in the submission area, but it is really called “Ano’s blog on how to make money online.” It is a standard blogger template in basic web-happy colors of blue, yellow and green. Ano’s profile page shows nine other blogs, most of which are money-making blogs as well.

There are only two entries on this blog’s front page, a July 2007 and November 2007 entry. To find other blog entries in the archives (those date back to April 2007) you have to scroll all the way to the bottom of the page. Archives and profile information should really be more accessible, and neither were listed towards the top of the page.

The MoneyOnline widget crashed my Firefox browser and forced a restart of my computer. Thanks. I love visiting blogs that crash my system. After logging back in with Internet Explorer, I found there is really no substance to this blog at all. Because the blog only shows two entries of the possible 40 for the year, the right side panel banner ads are all that there is to look at. They’re smooshed over into the more narrow side panel, and to see them all, you have to scroll down the page until your finger hurts from spinning the mouse wheel.

There are ads for everything from chocolate to how to get bigger boobies by wearing the right bra, to gay and lesbian fashion and “whale friends.” A lot of the ads are too large/horizontally designed and don’t fit in the side panel. They end up chopped in half or cropped off, due to being bigger in pixel width than the navigation area allows. Look specifically at the horizontally designed banner ad for “Steganos Internet Anon” and realize that about half of that ad is lost because it isn’t designed for that space. Horizontal Vs. Vertical. It’s key to know what to do with graphics, where to put them, and how they work best on the web.

Just slapping up banner ads and not really caring what they look like on a blog, or what they do to the layout of a page, shows a real lack of caring about the blog itself. Let’s join as many affiliate programs as possible and hope we get a buck or two out of it. Horray! It’s a blog!

Best part of this blog is when I scrolled all the way down, alllll the way down to the bottom, there is a giant glittery graphic of a fairy sitting on the moon. Incredibly random.

I’ve said it before. Everyone wants to make it big, make it rich and I can’t fault Ano for trying. A few bucks here, a few bucks there — and pretty soon you’ve got a lot of money coming in. The more advertisements, the more revenue… right? That’s the philosophy here. But without interesting, informed, entertaining content, there is no reason on earth to visit Ano’s blog. I give this blog a 1.0 rating. NULL