Category: Uncategorized

This is one site that captivated my attention right from the top to the bottom. The blog and the design are simple and pleasing to the eye without any glare to the brains.

This weblog is all about world news with a touch of satire. It has latest scoops from all over the world and makes good reading for taking good-natured pokes at any person or any socially established fact. This may not be the stuff one may find in the biggest newspapers around you. However, as one reads through the posts one will find some insights and playful banters on things that are instructive as well as witty. As this blog is supposedly (I could not find profiles for the other “correspondents” on the blog) by eight different persons / personalities the variety of news and daily scoops are very interesting to read. This is one definite blog for the reader who likes varied news and doesn’t mind, sometimes chilling, looks into the author’s scoop on scoops.

The design of the site is quite simple and appealing as I have mentioned earlier. The links and other information provided on the right are many, but organized. One thing that was bothering my eye now and then was the amount of text-ads and other ads. The number of ads on the page could be reduced.

I would put this blog as witty and satirical. This is a terrific blog for anyone who can look at two or perhaps three sides of a story. And it may not be as interesting for any one who wants the scoops straight.
BYLINE : Sam Ernesto

I thought: what is this about? Small businesses? No. In fact, it’s written by Jonathan, a self-styled entrepreneur, who just sold his business (type unspecified) in order to go on a “trip around the world” with his wife, Soyan.

This is a brand new weblog. In fact, there are only seven posts. It might be interesting to read about someone planning a trip around the world, but so far, this weblog isn’t interesting. It might, possibly, be a lot more interesting to read about someone taking a trip around the world. It would also be a lot more interesting not to read about Jonathan’s 30th birthday skydiving trip three times. (One full exposition, two additional mentions. That’s three separate posts that mention one event. That must be some important event.) The skydiving has clear symbolic meaning for Jonathan, but he never explains what it is to the reader. The first post about the skydiving is the best. Further mentions are not necessary. They are, I fear, boring.

In fact, this whole site is boring. I so wanted it to be interesting, but it’s not. There is no humor, no perspective, just a lot of smug back patting. How sad Jonathan is about leaving his company, how excited he is to start his trip. Yawn. I clicked through to Soyan’s blog and she thinks Jonathan is pretty great too. Then again, her blog only has three entries. A blog about a trip around the world is a great way to keep in touch with family and friends. But it’s not clear that this site holds any interest for a wider audience.

The design is fine, but overly busy. There is a huge logo in the upper right hand corner. It is kind of pretty, but mostly just takes up space without adding to content. There are no ads, which is nice. There are a couple of links, a handy search box (at least it will be handy when there is content), and a few buttons for feeds, all intuitive and inoffensive.

The weblog has potential to be interesting because there is something inherently interesting about a trip around the world. However, I won’t be coming back to read about it. The self-congratulatory tone and uninformative writing style leave a lot to be recommended. A vivid style and strong voice are needed to make travel writing interesting. When the author of “World Unfurled” develops those, it might be worth reading. I give it a 2.5.
World Unfurled

Creative Process is a blog documenting the process through which an idea becomes a finished product. In this case, we see how Elizabeth Torak goes from a series of sketches to the painting of a work entitled ‘The Feast of Venus’. Seeing as to how the painting itself remains unfinished, the blog mirrors this work-in-progress sort of feel. Nonetheless, given the unique subject matter, Creative Process is definitely still worth a visit.

What is particularly interesting in this blog are the sketches and photographs of the work in progress. The artist captures each days work with her camera and posts many images of earlier sketches and studies as well to give us an idea of what is, in essence, the process behind the work. She also, very competently, relates a couple of the concepts behind her work, as well as the ups and downs of the process she goes through in creating her art. She occasionally also talks about some related works, presumably in the hope of giving us a more complete picture of her work.

The one limitation to this blog, however, is that it is perhaps a little too specific; while it is fascinating to read about the process behind the painting that the artist creates, you are left wanting a little more – you want to know more about who the artist is, or what else she does with her life. While Elizabeth does provide links to her personal website as well as to another blog featuring the other work in her studio, it seems that all these sites could be combined into one, rather than being disparate entities. On its own, therefore, Creative Process seems, at times, to be a little thin as a blog.

Nonetheless, the aptly named Creative Process offers a fascinating look at the creative process involved in creating art, and is well worth a brief visit.NULL

As I loaded BeingSteve.com into Internet Explorer, the first thing I thought was – Wow, that’s big. There’s a huge logo that greets you. It doesn’t take long to load, but if you’re still using a 800×600 screen resolution, don’t even think about it looking nice. The header image is a 988 x 248. Even at 1024 x 768, I still had to do a little left-to-right scrolling to make sure I wasn’t missing out on anything.

The latest post on Being Steve is one of the neatest posts I’ve read in a long time. It was written on Friday, October 14th, 2005, shortly before he left for a weekend away with his girlfriend of two years. The post is the text of an email he’d written to ask her parents if he could marry their daughter. Instead of using the chicken way out, as he put it, he ended up asking them via telephone and has plans to ask her to marry him this weekend. So, hopefully, by the time this review is being read, Steve’s girlfriend will have said yes, he’ll return to blogging as a happily engaged man.

The rest of the blog, while not as lovey-dovey and sickeningly cute as the post I just mentioned, it’s fun to read. The way Steve writes is very conversational. He’s not writing a report on “What I on My Summer Vacation”, and he’s not trying to write America’s next great novel either. His posts typically describe his every day life – shopping for things in bulk, comparing nipples with his girlfriend, and his reaction to the “Who Makes Movies?” message they play at the beginning of movies in the theater. Steve has regular gripes just like the rest of it, and the way he writes them out gives many people, I’m sure, a feeling of familiarity with Steve.

Some of the posts are very long, but the majority of them are just the right length – you don’t get tired reading that much, but you feel like Steve really explained what it was he was trying to convey instead of leaving readers stuck with questions.

The color scheme is my biggest complaint about this site. Okay, it’s my only complaint. As I noticed when the site first loaded, the header image is enormous. The background of the site is black, and the font that was chosen is a turquoise-ish Comic Sans. It’s incredibly hard to read, and I often found myself squinting just to finish up a post. The rest of the layout is a typical two-column layout – the weblog portion of the site in a main portion, and a sidebar with the archives, photos, and links on the other.

In short, Steve is just a regular guy, with a regular life, running into the regular problems that anyone else will. That is what makes this blog enjoyable to read.

The site started back in June 2002. No, I didn’t read every post, but if I have bookmarked the site so I don’t miss any of the new posts. Besides, I have to find out what his girlfriend said to his proposal!
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This isn’t a blog. It is a dating site. This line of text from the page makes it clear what the site is about: “Russian dating, love and marriage: Russian women photo personals seeking men.” The site provides a list of Russian woman who are available for marriage, mostly to “European” men. If you click on a picture you are sent to a slightly more detailed profile of the woman and may view a few more pictures. There are no pornographic overtones to the site (thank goodness), though the enterprise is slightly distasteful. The favorite word the women use to describe themselves is “calm.” The favorite choice for body type is “sporty.”

There are no posts, only personal profiles. There is no “author.” There is a clear purpose to the blog: finding husbands for Russian women.

The design is ugly. There is white type on a black background, my least favorite set-up. There are Google Ads on the right side of the page, a mish-mash of fonts and typefaces and generally no unifying elements to the design. A basic blogger template would be more attractive. Getting off the front page is easy, but you are then forced to navigate archives without much direction. The site design serves its purpose, but just barely.

If you are a European man looking for a Russian bride, you may be interested in this site. If you are a potential Russian bride you may want to take a look in order to size up the competition. Otherwise you’ll want to skip this one. It’s not even good for a laugh–it just made me sad.

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