Author: admin

Symbian Softwares Review is a blog based site for posting reviews of “Cellphones Games, PDA Games, New Symbian Softwares, Symbian Softwares, Pocket PC Games, Smartphone Games, etc”. The first thing that strikes me is that the word “software” is known as a zero plural word, that is it has the same form in singular and plural without needing an “s” at the end.

The second thing that strikes me is that even at my relatively high resolution, the whole first screen is ads. A massive google ad in the middle, and ad search bar under the title, 2 referral ads on the right hand side and then a directory under this whose first link is “viral marketing”. The site is a tidy package otherwise with the regular blogroll, button clutter on the right hand frame. Color coordination is fine with a distinctly light blue theme.

The content is, as you would expect from the title, all about mobile phone stuff. Some of the reviews are quite thorough, but all is not what it seems. I took some of the text in one of the reviews and googled it.. sure enough it is a straight copy and paste from the vendor website. I’m sorry my friend, thats not blogging. One review that did look original is the most recent post about a “snake theme” but it was only one line long, which hardly constitutes a “review”. Sure enough, the line “A cool snake theme for your phone. It will surely send shivers down your spine.” was also ripped from the theme author himself.

Sigh, if you read my reviews you will find I am pretty diplomatic. But I cant award this site any points. Blogging is not about copying and pasting. Free blogger services make it easy to create a blog, but the idea has been tainted by the rise of the splogs reaping revenue from ad clicks and attracting searches by copying other peoples hard work. NULL

I am going to do something here I haven’t done since the early days of The Weblog Review. That my friends is review a blog after only reading about 25% of the entries. The reason for this? My brain hurts, but in a good way.

So I had no clue what to expect at pandemian. Pandemic means a outbreak of a disease but that’s not quiet the entire word for the title. But what ever. The site loads, simple white background, softer grey text, old tin can phone image at the top. Very basic and I like it.

I started reading and the first thoughts that went through my head were “Words on blog. Entertaining, yet forcing me to think. Why is this funny? What the heck is going on here? Do I even know what this blog is supposed to be about?”

So I took a deep breath and tried again. Again I got the forcing me to think thought going on, but I enjoyed it. Ok let me back up a second. The posts are by no means any life changing essay that you need to read, but they do make you think about the topic presented.

Since I was so distracted by the thoughts going on in my head this blog was creating I decided to poke around the archives in a completely random order. Again the blog listed all the articles and I was forced to click on them which is something I really don’t enjoy. But since I felt random order was just as good as any other order, I was in luck.

Most of the “earlier” posts all say they were originally posted at another url. At first I thought this was a website that was stealing the content from another site and then making comments about the article in question. Nope I was wrong. Server switch caused a massive deletion of the database and the author only had a select few posts saved and that he cared about. Thus those were reposted on the new domain.

Changing topics for a brief moment – I recently got to watch a final table of a poker game. This final table was by far some of the best poker I had ever seen. In fact I made sure to tell all the players that I thought it was some of the best poker ever played. Why do I bring this up? Because this blog is some of the best writing I have ever read and I want everyone to know about it. Granted my mind was made up about this without reading nearly 50% of the articles, but my brain needs time to think and digest what the author is saying. I will definitely be going back to this blog as I want to make sure I enjoy it all.
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I love when blogs have very obvious names to them. Food Mayhem is one such blog. It is going to be a foodie blog and since this is the first foodie blog, I decided to create a new category of “Food” since “Entertainment” doesn’t quiet fit the picture enough.

Being that this blog is about food, I expect a lot. I read a lot of food blogs and I own more cookbooks than any of my friends. Ok that’s not saying a lot, but I still own a good share. I also go out to eat at least two times a week if not more. I worked in the restaurant industry for about four years and at one time was going to go into management before I found a job in IT. With that said, lets get onto this review.

The blog is written by two authors (as far as I could tell, Lon and Jessica). Both of whom live in NY and the site focuses on meals in NY city. Sometimes they post a recipe (as was the case in older posts) other times just a review of a restaurant and other times just stating opinions on all things food.

My favorite part of this website has to be the reviews of restaurants. While living in NY does provide with more outlets of restaurant reviews, most places in the US do not have very many. Each review of a restaurant either made me want to eat there, or never eat there. I know that if/when I travel to NY I will definitely be searching this blog to find out if the restaurant is worth going to.

The design of the site is very crisp and clean (like a kitchen should be) and functions very well for the site. The site uses some Web 2.0 stuff for expanding a couple of the sections which is a nice touch. The archives leave a little something to be desired. I have never been a fan of linking each and every post. Instead I would recommend having the archives be similar to the main page where they are listed in order – full text and all.

My only other complaint would be the lack of addresses for the restaurants reviewed. Sometimes the authors link to the restaurant’s website, but in doing a review, I would expect to see an address and/or phone number for each place. I am sure they could even find a little widget to auto link in google maps to give people directions.

Overall this is a great food blog. It doesn’t strive at all from its goal and it does what it is supposed to do very well. The information is laid out nicely and it doesn’t hurt that the blog is well written. This is a definite must read if you live in NY, and a should read for everyone else.
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By the name of the site “intellectualmusician.com,” I began to think about what this site could be about. I imagine a site where music is taken to another level – thought. I would imagine that the owner of the site is probably either a musician or someone in an academic world. I expect to see music from the eyes of the mind instead of the ear. I hope to see this take place. Hopefully someone can help the world understand the thought behind putting a music piece or composition together displaying the musicians thought behind the music rather than a catchy tune that all of us seem to enjoy as we turn on the radio today.

The site has a simple interface. It does not render well in IE 7.0, but there is a disclaimer on the site stating to use Firefox. I am not sure if this is done on purpose for kickbacks based on downloads of Firefox from the site or not, but since the majority of the world does use IE, I don’t feel this is a good thing. It is easy on the eyes and can clearly be placed into different categories. There is an area devoted to forums. These forums could be of use to many musicians. It provides a means by which musicians can discuss their opinions of music, and how to develop new music.

The site is, as expected, about teaching music and brining a new level of music to listeners. The site has 4 authors, Henderson, Mylotte, Gerson, and Oakleaf. Oakleaf appears to be the reason why intellectualmusician.com is currently in existence. The authors wanted a place for musicians to work together and grow as an organization – a group of musicians. All of them have extensive bios in music and education.

The site takes on a new meaning for beginners on the web. If you want to learn about playing an instrument, I would recommend you to check out intellectualmusician.com. It appears they have the knowledge and the professional skills to take a beginner with no knowledge and get them playing quickly. They focus on not just telling you what keys or strokes of the instrument to play, but they actually inform you about the instrument itself. They want the beginner to not understand music, but understand how to create music through the instrument. I feel their skills would be beneficial on any college music program. Their skills are not only growing together as a group of musicians, but they are providing information to help the world grow into music.
If you want to learn how to play the guitar any beginner should check out their articles on the composition of the guitar. I am sure that more instruments will be coming as releases on this site as it grows. They are currently trying to build their reader base and their membership so that intellectualmusician.com can be a centerpiece pushing the music industry to new levels.

This is a good site for any musician. Currently it is probably more geared toward beginner musicians, but as the site develops, I think the concepts will develop. I am sure the authors of the site would love for more advanced players to subscribe to their forums and offer up their personal advice as well. This site is highly recommended for the beginner musician.

I rate this site at a 3.75 for 2 reasons: the first is for a good site to be used it must be able to be viewed with many different browsers and the second is that it is still in the growing stages and is geared toward beginners and not the advanced musicians. I do believe that this is a good starting point and that it will grow with time to truly become the “intellectual musician”.
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I used to consider myself a musician about 12 years ago when I was obsessed with my high school band teacher. Since then, the only music I’ve been playing comes through my iPod. Why am I telling you this? To let you know in advance that I’m far from the target audience that the authors at IntellectualMusician.com were probably targeting when updating their blog.

The first thing I noticed, and I hate it when this happens, is that the layout was rather distracting. Instead of listing the last several posts down the page, there’s a table set up with the first sentence or two listed of the post and a link where readers can read the rest of the article. All of the authors do a good job of giving readers the gist of an article in the first several words, but I just found all of the clicking a little unnecessary. That’s why I scrolled to the bottom of the page so I could click on “View All Posts”.

April 9th was the very first post of the site and it does a straightforward job in explaining what the site is about and how those interested can also become a contributor to the site. From that point on, posts are made on a regular basis about a bevy of subjects, including Composition, Ear Training, Improvisation, Practice, Theory, and many, many more.

Each of the four authors have their own specialty they focus on when posting and their own writing style, all of which are key components on what make this blog work as well as it does.

As I mentioned before, those best suited for reading IntellectualMusician.com are, well, intellectual musicians, or at least those aspiring to be such. Former high school musicians, like myself, may have some challenges understanding each of the posts, but may also be able to pick up a new tip or two in their reading.NULL