Month: July 2006

For a moment I thought I’d stumbled into Myspace, that notoriously clunky template used by the world dominating social networking site. But no, this was your stock blogger blog but with dozens of little touch ups that make the whole site look kind of busy. Some of it is good-busy, but mostly just cluttered. A website is a package, so design is part of the criteria. Vlad says he is 34 in his profile, but his lifestyle seems much younger. He enjoys sports and “hangin wit da boyz” so maybe the design is actually carefully premeditated to attract the myspace crowd.

Thankfully Jay’s personal posts are pretty well to the point. No lengthy agonizing, or introspection. They are usually about sports or odd things he has heard in the news and deemed worthy to grace his pages and make fairly interesting reading if you are into that thing. I’m not really, but even still the odd post is entertaining enough and he has no immediate problems with grammar or spelling which is always a bonus. His witty side-swipes that punctuate the posts are fun too.

I’m really not familiar with the relevance of sport blogging and how it plays against main stream media but then I’ve never really been into it. I guess its one of those things. Vlad certainly is and shows great enthusiasm for the topic, but he also blogs about a wider array of male-orienteted pursuits. The cluttered template distracted me too much. Jay. Blog. is good for a stopover but lacks the power to absorb you or tempt to return.
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Online confession sites are not new, grouphug.us is one of the more popular examples, however the fact that “The Stories You Cannot Tell” is a more verbose blog format is refreshing. It allows the people who submit their stories anonymously to stretch out and really tell the story properly.

The idea is sound, the users are there, and the stories are typically magnetic no matter how badly they are usually written so its really quite annoying to see the font size at 50 or whatever it is, which makes me feel like I’m reading a kids book and means I have to scroll constantly. The color scheme isn’t terrible, but the overall design leaves something to be desired. I don’t think it would take much, just a better attempt at the CSS, a nicer font in a much much smaller size. At least it would allow for longer stories too.

I had a chuckle after reading about one guy getting an “under-the-table” hand job from his girlfriends step mother which was immediately followed by an advertisement for “Sweet MILF Action”. Very tactful. The ads divide every story and are also in this incredibly huge font.

Then I realized that maybe the site is not showing up right in my browser, so I fired up IE and sure enough the font is normal, but the entire site is in the left hand sidebar! Hmm.. I think there are some serious CSS template issues to fix here which is a shame because the stories are intriguing and the comments are often obnoxious and sometimes helpful. An interesting little experiment that could do with some house cleaning. NULL

I knew exactly what I was going to get with The Stories You Cannot
Tell. My first thought was that this was going to be a site similar
to cubichell and other places where people come and post stories of
their life. The only difference is that these stories would be the
ones you shouldn’t be re-telling or would be telling in a normal
situation.

When the site first loaded I was greeted with huge text. This could
be due the fact that I am on a mac, and sure enough when I hoped over
to firefox it was a bit better. I was still a bit put off by the huge
font from the mac and decided best to shrink the font down as much as
possible.

The design of the site is a standard 3 column layout with the main
area being in the center. Along the left hand side is a FAQ, then a
bunch of links to other sites most of which will give the owner some
money. The right hand column is a little better with links to all the
posts, most popular and then some other sites the author likes. At
the bottom of the site are even more links for products.

The posts range in topics by various authors. Some are about previous
lovers, others about their kids, and others about work. I shouldn’t
go into detail because these are “The Stories You Cannot Tell” anyone.
Some kept me entertained, but most were not enjoyable at all. I
recently saw the movie Hostel and that movie disturbed me. You had to
sit there and take in what was being presented and that was how I felt
with this site.

While the owner of the site makes every effort to make sure the
stories are the focus of the site, I cannot help but notice how many
different links to 3rd party products there are. Additionally it is
quiet clear that there are several authors and not just the owner who
post to this site, and yet I get a feeling from the owner that he is
taking credit for all of this. Was the site readable? Yes. Will I
go back? Probably not. Should you check it out? Maybe. This site
while having a definite niche, did not impress me the way that it
could.NULL

One of the greatest virtues of a good blog presents itself in “Anna’s” My Not-So-Secret Self blog, that is, the virtue of honesty. In an early post she readily admits that only through the nature of anonymity can she, as a writer, truly share her often perverse, sensual, intimate and descriptively sexy posts with us. Thats fine by me, and I can’t help feeling a little voyeuristic as she describes her sexual awakenings as a young girl, or her day long fuck session with her boyfriend or her bisexual fantasies. I suppose it doesn’t help that she is using my girlfriend’s name as her pseudonym.

I can’t help thinking that her partner must feel a little privileged having received a toolbox full of sex toys for christmas from our author, but am unsure whether I would put her in the “nymphomaniac” category, rather than just a regular sex fueled person like the rest of us, the difference being she writes about it, quite well, for all of us to read about. Sex-blogs aren’t new, but when written well are compelling never-the-less. I’m totally sucked in. I continue reading about her spank session in uniform, why is this so engrossing? Obviously I’m not alone, the post is filled with positive comments. I’m feeling like a perv… but hey, I’m just a mammal right?

The site is a basic design, though thankfully devoid of the tacky adult ads most sex blogs are decorated with. Not that I would know, of course. There is a simple, text, non-animated ad for a sex toy store which is only minimally distracting. The pink and white are an obvious choice of color for the content and the site is easily readable and simple, which is refreshing.

“My Not-So-Secret Self” is well written, and wonderfully frank sex blog by a girl in a long term relationship whose exploration and kink with her partner are beacons of sexual compatibility in a swamp of tackiness that is the internet. Read on for more details of “Anna’s” not-so-secret sex life. NULL