Author: admin

Seeing as this is my very first review for TWR, I thought I would pick something that just by title could be randy and naughty and exciting. “Love Across Borders” was submitted under the “artistic” category, so I was afraid it might really be a business weblog about trafficking under-aged foreign girls into arranged marriages and destinies of woe. Ooooh! Potentially scary and not safe for work weblog for me to review!

Instead, I find that it is a navel-gazing Emo blog of poetry. It is set up to be a “community,” but the only poster is the ubiquitous Shaun, who has posted every single poem and news announcement. His little thumbnail avatar picture is on every single page, about eighty thousand times. This is Shaun’s blog of poetry.

The header tag of the website describes Love Across Borders (easily abbreviated to LAB) as “open community publishing for poets through forums; features the works of amateur and professional poets, tagging, and books.” The “About LAB-P” page states that “Love Across Borders is an international community that seeks to host and promote open art and discussion in a community of caring people. You can share words in our Share Forums.”

Indeed, we are encouraged to post into the forums and share our thoughts and ideas. We are encouraged to search poetry by genre, or type. Unfortunately, all the searches return Shaun’s poems, and the forums and books tab announce that the page cannot be found… but list out the press releases about Community Publishing and LAB’s mission.

To be fair, it appears the site was launched in late April 2007, so the fact that Shaun is alone in his poetry posting is a little sad. I sure hope other poets will join him and post their poems about “dieing” too.

The site design itself is not very artistic. It is an obvious cookie-cutter blog template, with google ads and ridiculously huge navigation bar hogging up the screen “above the fold” as it were. The meat of the site, the poems, are all down the screen on the page and one must scroll to read the double-spaced free-form “poety” goodness below.

Don’t get me wrong — I was an English major in college with a minor concentration in Irish dramatic arts and poetry. I enjoy poetry very much. This isn’t a community blog though. Yes, yes… the launch was in April 2007, and perhaps we should give it more time so other poets can join in. Perhaps this review will encourage others to join… but I think not. Shaun should drop the whole “Community Publishing” and “Love Across Borders” labeling and philosophy of the site and get honest and re-brand the blog as “Shaun’s Blog Of Poems,” and be honest about it. The site is all Shaun. All the time. So it needs to be recreated in that image. With that change, with that honesty, the blog shows a little more potential. And I think I’d rather see it set up as such. In conclusion, I give Love Across Borders a 1.5 rating NULL

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I really had no clue what to expect with FusionCharts for Blogs so lets just get to it. When I first got to the site, I didn’t find a link to a blog, in fact, I only saw 3 links – “Get Started”, “How to use”, and “About”. No blog.

Well since they decided to use our Pay Per Review option I feel obliged to at least give the site a review of some sorts. The design of the site is a nice web 2.0 type site. Rounded corners, smooth gradients and nice big easy fonts are all a plus.

I read the about section. Basically FusionCharts allows you to create nice 3d charts for your blog, google page, pretty much any web page. From what I understand you can use it with any programming language and any database. Other than that, I don’t know to much else.

I didn’t go through the instruction manual because I am not going to test out the product. I am not going to review said project. I review blogs and as I said earlier since the author decided to use the Pay Per Review option I would at least review the website. The site looks nice, and it functions like it should for a product site. Will you use the product? Doubt it. This site could benefit from a blog where they show it in action and give demos. Take the manual and turn it into a blog of sorts and boom – good blog site. But since there is not blog and I am just reviewing the site – I give it a 1.NULL

Last time I checked, this website that you’re reading right now was called The Weblog Review. Now, for me, that means we review these things called weblogs (or blogs). Maybe you’ve heard of them.

The name of this site is FusionCharts for Blogs – Animated flash charts, and I guess it didn’t really sound like a weblog from the start, but I decided to give it a chance. And guess what? It’s not a weblog at all and there’s not a blog hiding anywhere at all.

The products on the site seem like they’d definitely benefit a blog, and adding a weblog into the site would be a great idea to help readers know about the development process of it all. With addition of an actual blog, I’d be able to rank this site a lot higher. Without? It doesn’t really fall into the type of site that’s reviewed here at all.

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“Mourn” is a powerful word and evokes images of great sadness and loss. Oftentimes, someone who keeps a blog may be mourning for his or her own life (or lack thereof) or the death of a family member or friend. Mourning a change in a relationship, whether internally due to change or externally due to a romantic break-up or death is something just about every culture has some experience with.

The title of the blog “Mourn for YeYe” is subtitled with the following: “A time has passed since former “YeYe” died, leaving Tantiratapong family to ponder the man and his legacy. But YeYe (Mr. Serm) has not faded into the historical shadows, and the family’s heart is still with him.”

Our author has set up a blogspot site to commemorate the life of “YeYe,” or Mr. Serm. I presume this is a family member. But that is never explained through the “about” page, or through any of the entries. The very first entry in October of 2006 features a photograph of Mr. Serm. But the author does not say “My grandfather just passed away” or “My uncle has died…” so we as readers are left to wonder the nature of the relationship. Suffice to say, someone passed on and the keeper of the blog has decided to set up a memorial to the individual.

Sounds nice. But it isn’t really. This isn’t a loving tribute to a dead relative, unless your idea of “loving tribute” means plagiarized content dumped into a blog. What we have here is a collection of text culled from many different sources across the internet, from wikipedia to poemhunter.com, outlining the process of disposal of human bodies and traditions surrounding the handling of the dead. Each entry is embellished with a photograph (or photographs) taken from the web.

We can tell pretty much immediately by reading that the writer is simply cutting and pasting content into one this one location, and the lack of proper (or any) sourcing is disturbing. My high school English teacher, J.J. MacGillicuddy, is rolling in his grave right now.

Traditions of Christianity, Islam, Judaism and Buddhism are outlined in one entry, and then “what happens when your body is cremated” follows. Different options of what to do with the ashes, from burial at sea to creating a “diamond” from the remains are outlined.

There is one entry where the writer wishes us a happy new year. Aside from the first entry where the name of the deceased is written out, this seems to be the only entry written by the blog author.

While it is educational and interesting to read all about what happens to a body during his or her cremation process, I hardly think that copying and pasting content about funerary processes is necessary. I fail to see the point and fail to understand exactly how the Tantiratapong family is dealing with the loss of YeYe. We all deal with mourning in our own way. My heart goes out to anyone who has lost a relative and tries to find ways to properly deal with the loss. So it is difficult for me to really thrash this blog and the writer. I see no purpose in this blog, or a future for it once all of the sources on the web have been cut, and pasted, and improperly sourced. I see no future for its existence, unless the writer plans to write about YeYe and his thoughts and feelings surrounding the loss.

The entire thing reads like a research paper done for a 10th grade science class, and that is sad. I would have rather known more about YeYe so I can also join in mourning him. I give a rating of 2.25, and wish the blog owner well in his mourning process. NULL