Category: Uncategorized

Every now and then I come across a blog who’s name is original. It is almost impossible to find something truly original in this thing we call the blogosphere, but this name of Sensibilities just struck me as original. I didn’t know what to expect, so I dove right in.

The blog tells us that it is “An attempt to make sense of things in a random universe.” That’s quite a burden to impose upon oneself, but nevertheless it is still a task.

The blog is not quite about the universe, more about the author. Which is fine and a little more manageable. The blog talks about all kinds of different things the author has been through. She also likes to talk about the books she has read, and by the looks of it, she reads a lot.

The design of the site looks like a blogspot template only slightly modified. It works for this site, which is a rarity amongst the blogspot templates. The biggest complaint is that the left hand navigation is obscenely long. Sometimes longer than a month of posts.

Overall I enjoyed this blog. The posts aren’t all that frequent, though they do typically contain a lot of content. The navigation for archives is at the top of the left hand column so this also makes a little annoyance, but overall this is a good blog to read.NULL

It’s every bloggers dream to wind up being able to quit their jobs and live life a rock star solely based off the revenue their weblog generates. Anyone that keeps an online journal and says they haven’t thought about that is quite possibly lying. Personally, I make enough money off of my weblog to afford an addicting tattoo habit, but I never want to make that the prime focus of my personal weblog.

Because of this and all of the different “opportunities” (and I use that term loosely) that present themselves online, my eyes tend to roll across the floor when I find a site that’s geared towards nothing but that. Case in point? A weblog called “Online Income Opportunities”. Sure, I’ll review the site and boost your Google page rank, so more people will advertise on your site. Why not? Then maybe I can get rich for my superb writing skills and never have to work again.

The site loads and I’m instantly greeted with ads all over the three-column layout. A gigantic banner fills some of the top part of the screen, and a column listing all 15+ different sites where the author makes money while blogging fill one of the sidebar columns. It’s drab and boring. The most aesthetically appealing item on the weblog was some sort of widget the author of the blog has installed to allow people to review this site on the spot.

I wasn’t thrilled when I realized I was going to have to be reading entries dating back to September 06 that serve no purpose, but to make a few bucks here and there. The first post lets readers know that the author has been investing online for almost a year and she’ll be sharing her experience with the programs she’s joined.

Along one column of the blog, she mentions she lives in Bangalore, India. If that’s the case, it doesn’t really make much sense why she’d be blogging about house loans in the UK unless she was getting paid for it, right? And how the post written about the Beverly Hills Plastic Surgery office that she writes about and includes a nearly 600 x 500 pixel image of a photoshopped girl? This is the way about 99% of the entire weblog is written. The rest of the posts are the author telling the advertisers, I mean, readers that she’s going to be gone for a couple of days.

It’s a money-making blog. There’s no rhyme or reason to it. I can’t rank it any higher than I have.
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“Canvassing my Friends” is a blog created by graphic designer and painter Sarah Ritchie to showcase her wonderful art, and as she puts it: “….to make myself accountable, for my painting, to all my ‘friends’ on Facebook. One by one I will paint my way through my list of friends, using each person as the source of inspiration for one painting – their personality, life story, my memories, our interactions, etc.”

As someone who makes her living through her obvious artistic talents, it surprised me to read that Sarah has felt constrained by a bit of fear in allowing the painter inside of her to emerge. But of course, most creative people have self-doubts regarding their talent and are often reluctant to actively produce.

It is a credit to Sarah that she is confronting this fear, and is brave enough not only to admit it on her website but to push through it by actually producing as she has promised herself, her friends and–through her site–the whole world. At the moment there are nine canvases featured on “Canvassing my Friends”, each one of them inspired by a person in Sarah’s life. While this is Sarah’s way to hold herself accountable in her stated effort to produce more, one has to believe that the world is a better place for her having executed her plan as well.

This is an absolutely inspired format for a website! Just imagine how honored any of Sarah’s friends must feel to have a painting dedicated to them featured on this site. Apparently it’s working for Sarah too, as there are over 100 blog posts on “Canvassing my Friends” already, and the blog is only six months old. Keep going Sarah!

I also found Sarah’s musings on art and creation interesting; it’s a pleasure to read the thoughts of a creative person as they consider their world, and one gets the feeling that Sarah’s written expression of her thoughts on art history and related subjects informs and potentially expands the scope of her art.

Blogging lends itself very easily to presenting the fruits of a creative person’s labors, and it gives them a way to give meta-commentary on their art and their life at the same time. In this way a fuller picture of the artist emerges, one that complements the art without complicating it or diluting its impact. “Canvassing my Friends” is a perfect example of this, and also a reason why Facebook, wonderful as it is to help us reconnect and stay connected to friends, isn’t quite enough to adequately present the work of a person who has a lot more to reveal than what they had for dinner last night.

I hope Sarah continues painting–having created a perfect context in which to present her art, as tributes to/celebrations of friends, I suspect the momentum evident on this blog will continue.

One very small suggestion I would have for the site is to give us a larger photo of each of the canvasses: they are obviously deserving of it!NULL

Chances are that most people don’t wonder too much about the business of packaging fulfillment, packaging solutions and designs, even though our lives are touched by these basic business functions every single day. The Heritage Pioneer Corporate Group’s blog and website is an absolutely outstanding example of how business-to-business websites can have attractive web presences that avoid feeling “corporate” and boring.

Instead this site does a great job in getting people excited about sustainable packaging for instance, incorporating biodegradable and recycled packaging for almost anything you would need to have shipped anywhere.

The website features an engaging, informative Flash presentation on the home page that immediately makes a visitor aware of the different services or solutions offered by hpcorporategroup.com, and then efficiently directs the site user to one of four categories of information as to the company’s brand, as well as ways to immediately get in touch with a specialist who can help with moving and storage, order fulfillment or packaging solutions.

One element of this attractive site that is example of a feature we’re seeing more and more on business websites is the link from the front page to a blog area where customers and potential customers alike can be notified as to updates either in the company’s business or new developments in packaging fulfillment and solutions and design.

This blogging element has become a fixture in websites that require a dynamic, constantly changing area that can be easily updated. For both the quality of their site and the apparent professionalism of their packaging business, Heritage Pioneer corporate group gets high marks from me.
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For a weblog that is basically made of all links, this guys has a really good site. He finds some of the best links out there and posts just a small comment about each one making it that much more enjoyable. Not much more to the site other than links to other sites.Off on a tangent