Author: admin

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

There are blogs and then there are blogs. Some blogs are personal rambling anarchistic smatterings in cyberspace, and some are specific thematic information sites with regular updates. “Captains Blog” is the latter, a very specific theme being the cruise industry, but also borders very dangerously on being a spam blog.

The first clue to this accusation is the design. You know the sites you end up at when you type google.com wrong? Two tone, link heavy, faux search engine with the domain name up the top, you know the ones. Well Captains Blog looks like this. Considering the visual and overall experience of being on a cruise liner, you’d think there would be a picture of one. There are no pictures of anything, so its all rather bland.

The second clue is the parent domain name, fixed squarely in the middle of the screen in big font. The blog is really starting to look like a thinly disguised way to increase the google pagerank of the parent domain, which looks to be some kind of commercial cruise search/link page. The third most annoying clue is that every post is a link to the parent domain. The whole post, without any attempt to hide the underline in CSS so you have to read everything with it. Its surprising how difficult is it to read conformably when the whole thing is underlined.

But read I did, and found the site site was mainly just paraphrasing the contents of various cruise related articles elsewhere on the net. Its not bad writing, and it is certainly not plagiarism, but unless you are in the industry and care about this stuff, its pretty dry.

Well there is not much else I can say about this, I’ve seen them before and I will see them again. If you don’t want your blog to be instantly recognizable as a traffic phishing site, you have to put a little love into it and try not to make the link whoring so obvious. A decent theme will always attract traffic anyway, so establishing credibility on the internet is far more important than tricking people into surfing to your parent domain. They will only hit the back button anyway, and the google engineers are pretty savvy at ignoring these sites and penalizing their pageranks accordingly.
NULL

The first thing I noticed when I loaded bryce.web into my browser was a layout that was different than the biggest portion of the personal weblogs on the ‘net. The very first entry on the site was an explanation of where one of my favorite expletives came from – I don’t know how true it is, but it grabbed my attention in any case.

I jumped right into his site, where his posts begin in November 2005. The majority of his posts are just bits of trivial information he has pilfered from the internet, with a few links for readers to follow if they want more information. I’ll admit – had it not been for this weblog, I would have never known a set identical twins voluntarily had one of their arms removed and attached to the other twin. Too bad it ended up fake!

The site is fun because Bryce does post links that not everyone would find in their average trip through the internet. From bizarre to quite interesting, he pretty much covers it all in his very brief posts.

The layout of the site looks to be something that Bryce has done himself. Black text on a white background is where the blog entries are written. Shades of blue and some black and green compliment the rest of the layout.

From the “About” section of the site, Bryce indulges his readers in a few random bits of trivia about himself.

Overall, the posts that Bryce makes are fine. There’s nothing extraordinary about them, but the links he provides give readers something to entertain themselves with. It’s a fun site to occasionally visit, just as it appears to be a fun place for Bryce to occasionally post his internet findings.

NULL

Blogs are like sanctuaries for many people, somewhere to turn to and become introspective and reflective. Nick’s is no exception although his blog sometimes sounds more like a letter to his friends, a point of contact as many personal blogs are. As I log in, I am welcome by a sleek design, complimentary colors and mostly well designed layout (MSN Spaces). Further contributing to the MS conspiracy, the template breaks in my Apple Safari browser and modules overlap, pictures don’t scale properly.

To say our author, 31 year old englishman Nick, is into god is an understatement. Nick is IN-to god. Reading through the last few months of posts I would say maybe %75 relate to or mention or conclude with a godly message, so despite being a personal blog Nick’s site is also thematically charged. He wants us to know about his piety and like a lovestruck boyfriend shouting from the mountain tops. Its all good, but I often wonder whether these kinds of personal sites are merely professing their faith (ie preaching to the converted) or trying to “spread the word” as New Testament dogma often demands. Either way, there are several well thought out posts here offering opinions that I, mostly, can agree with despite my secular ways.

Nick seems like a nice bloke, and even says in his tagline that he values his friends and doesn’t really have any enemies which is a nice way to live. The site is a little cluttered with more links that you can poke a click at, but well presented and well written. He does gets a tad preachy however which only furthers the christian stereotype of fundamental zealotry, though I know by reading deeper that Nick isn’t necessarily this way inclined. He is honest, open and searching and this shines through in Nick’s Sanctuary. NULL