Blog Reviews by Bloggeries

Bloggeries is going to look at another personal blog today, and this is the blog of Czian Contreras. To see a personal blog from someone of the ripe age of 13 doing so well is always inspiring to other bloggers. Czian lives in the United States but originally hails from the Philippines, and he is proud of it. He uses his blog to show his insights, ideas, opinions, and any other commentary to the things he sees. You may enjoy it, you may not, you may not even agree with it. But the blog is definitely a fun and excellent read. He is hoping, as some people say, that you find it extraordinary nonetheless. You can get a feel for Czian and his thoughts from any of his recent bloggeries: Eagle Pride, Shopping Against Laptop, Czian’s Official Soundboard, I’m Back!, Geek or Gifted?, and What’s the Spelling of Furniture?

The blog is well organized and thus this makes it easy to navigate. The bloggeries are right marginalized in black text on white background and accents are in blue. There is a left navigation system that includes a search bar, About link, ‘Czian to the world’, Shout Out Box, Link Exchange Box, Categories Menu, Archives Menu, Recent Comments Menu, and blog achievements. The categories menu is eclectic, just as is the nature of the blog, and if you enjoy reading about Czian and his life you can find it neatly sorted out into the categories of Opiniated Side, iLife, Tagalog, Rude Czian, Must Read, Interests, and many more. Almost every bloggery contains a relevant picture associated with it giving the post meaning. And it’s fun to read, because some pictures you don’t really understand the relevancy until you read the entire bloggery. But this is the blog of Czian, it’s quirky and fun and offbeat, and you will enjoy it.

I give this blog a 3.4/5 for now. The blog generally scores well on all aspects with the exception of activity. Appearance scores are good as the blog is well laid out and easy on the eyes and it offers a clean presentation for a personal blog which further lends to its navigation scores. A unique header would add lots to its personality though; especially as a personal blog. The blog is also very unique in both its niche and its content. Currently however the blog is not being updated enough with only 73 posts in 2007 and this is hurting the blog tremendously. Even the most attractive blogs with good content can not do well if they are not kept up to date. So I do recommend that Czian work to update his blog to see continued success. Czian however clearly has an excellent readership, and thus, he could definitely sustain that and even make it grow further with just a little bit more blogging. Keep up the great work, Czian!

-Chrissie

For those that enjoy a good tongue in cheek blog, I recommend you check out the Omnipotent Poobah Speaks Blog. The blog is certainly a running commentary and opinion piece on a variety of issues with the blogger being self-proclaimed as the Omnipotent Poohbah or the Grand Maven of all that is media. The blogger ‘speaks the truth’ is ‘all knowing and all powerful’ by his own admissions, and also believes in the “Constitution, Motherhood, and applie pie” in that order. He thinks religion is a wonderful thing as long as you don’t bother him with it, that political correctness should be extinguished, and also that the truest test of democracy is how it deals with its ‘loathsome’ practitioners. Still not sure what the blog is about? I wasn’t so much either, but you receive an invitation from the Poohbah himself to ‘genuflect’ in your own right on what the blog stands for. You can easily do this through any of his recent bloggeries: Randomness: Piggy Style, Blackwater Takes to the Waves, In Defense of the Human Powered Dildo, Humans are always Mucking up the Works, Randomness AARP Style, The Energizer Craphound, and Purge the Surge.

The blog is fairly easy to navigate with a few different navigation systems. Bloggeries are left marginalized and appear in black text on white background with links highlighted in blue. Each post also has relevant pictures attached to it as well. There is a top navigation system that contains menus in pull-down format and these links contain a Pages Link that pulls down to pages for comment policy, contact information, Privacy Policy, Poohbah Toys, and a Photoblog link. You will also find the Archives menu and Categories links in these top pull down menus. The right margin contains two right sided navigation bars. In the left bar contains the blogroll, and in the far right navigation bar you will find a search bar, pull-down Archives Menu called the Dead Sea Scrolls, and Skype links. The blog also contains funny and relevant pictures attached in each post and a good example of this is in the post called “The Energizer Craphound”. I don’t see a Recent Posts Menu in this blog, and given that some of the posts are fairly lengthy, I think one would definitely benefit this blog to add some ease to the overall navigation.

I will go with a 4/5 for this blog as I found it to do very well on almost every criteria for scores. Navigation was very easy with the two right menus and the top pull down menus, though I would suggest the two right sided menus be combined to make one longer right sided menu as due to the little content in each navigation bar, there is a lot of white space on the opening page which affects the overall appearance of the blog. I think moving the two navigation bars into one will fill up the blog a little more and take out some of that white space. The writing is very well done and contains flavor that will definitely appeal to its readership. It also keeps in touch with its readers on a very regular basis which is always beneficial to any blog. The blog has a very obvious healthy readership judging by its wealth of comments, and given this, it may do it some service to monetize the blog a little with some advertising. Overall however the blog is a fun read with some very good tongue in cheek points that I think its healthy readership would find very appealing.
-Chrissie