Archives for August 2007

If you are looking for a site that is geared towards simplifying your life and making it less expensive you may want to have a look at Apples 2 Apples Blog. Here the author welcomes you to gain more out of your life by simplifying it. The author says if you wish to live simple AND large, share your world with Apples 2 Apples to find cheaper ways to be both stylish and simple. The site covers a broad range of ‘simplifying’ methods, all geared towards finding you the lowest prices on products you already purchase. Included in the blog are also tips on how to make things easier in your daily living, for example renovating at cost or spending less time getting ready in the morning. You can get a true feel for the blogger’s objectives through any of the recent posts: Give your Furniture a Quick Make Over, More Coupons, How much Time do You Spend in the Morning, Six Tips to Help You Save Money on Makeup, Stock up on Swimwear, Atlantic Reviews, and LV 07 Fall.

The site is very colorful and extremely easy to navigate. Posts are left marginalized with black text on white background and an array of relevant pictures with each post. There is a right navigation bar that includes a welcome note, blog poll, categories menu, ads, search bar, and a link me button. Missing from the right navigation bar are a recent posts menu and an archives menu, so I am not too sure how old this blog is. The categories section is very comprehensive so if you are a coupon grabber or professional discount shopper, there should be something here for you. You can search through the Apples Café, Apples2Apple news, Cool find – Hunting for Stylish Products, Getting to Know Brands, Simple and Fabulous – Beauty and Fashion, Simple Home Style – Home Sweet Home, and there are so many other categories for simplifying your life here as the list is extremely comprehensive.

The site scores well on activity, as posting is every couple of days at most, and navigation scores well also. The site is easy to navigate but I would like to see some additional navigation features to make blog browsing more simple, such as the recent posts menu and the archives menu. The uniqueness marks are average, I do not find this niche to be one that is extremely different from others in its category, so it garners average points here. The content is well written for the most part, though I do wonder if English is a second language here just through some syntax issues and contextual comments. However, this does not take away from the readability of the blog and the posts are extremely easy to read and follow. Appearance is where the blog suffers the most, I find there to be more advertising than posts, and in facet a few posts are advertising in themselves. While at first glance the purpose of the blog is geared as such towards this kind of writing, I would still like to see more of the authors personal voice and less advertising in the specific posts that are marketing a product. Having AdSense in every post also distracts from the readability of the blog, at least for me it does, so that has affected appearance marks as well. Overall however, this blog rates a 3 from me and I wish it continued success.

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– Chrissie

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If you are feeling a little metaphysical or spiritual, you may want to open up the Religious Study Blog. to see if anything there can pique your awareness. Here you are going to find a one-stop center for all religious articles, insights, and views. This site proposes to contain a vast comprehensive collection of articles, and they encourage you to read, understand, and appreciate the various religions in the world. They are not one that seeks to create animosity or debates on difference of opinions but they do want to create a greater understanding of the various religions and consequently promote harmony in the communities people live in. What I liked about this blog as far as content was concerned was that it was not strictly about religion, but about spirituality and metaphysical concepts as well which anyone can relate to regardless of denomination. You can see this in their recent posts that include Types of Psychic Groups; Moving on, Moving Forward, The Q & A to Happiness and Freedom – Who are you?; The Spirit of Hinduism; Overcoming Unhappiness, and Touch Not My Anointed.

The site is easy to navigate with posts left marginalized and a right navigation system split into two bars. The posts are black text on white background with a sun, moon and stars theme in the header. The right navigation bar contains a recent comments menu, categories menu, links menus, and advertising. The categories are very comprehensive and sorted by the different religions in the world in addition to a general category, testimonials, and spirituality category. I did notice there were two general categories listed, so the authors may want to tweak that a little bit. There are currently no pictures on the website, which may be an advantageous feature to add. Reading blogs that are strictly text can get mundane regardless of how well the content is written, so pictures is something they may want to consider. Though there was a recent comments menu, I did not see a recent posts menu or an archive menu so these are also features I would recommend to make the navigation system easier to work with.

It is very difficult to determine the age of the blog or even the relevance of content as date stamps are missing from the posts and there is no archive menu. There are dates listed on the recent comments menu which are as recent in May but it is very difficult to guess how recent the posts following these comments are. I would definitely recommend adding date stamps to this blog. I also find the content to be beautifully written, though the posts can be broken down into pieces. They are currently a little lengthy, and Internet readers do not always take the time to go through long pieces. I think they could be broken up into series and spread over a few days to keep readership interest, and break down content a little bit. I really did need to dig to find older posts so the site definitely needs to work on its navigation issues. On the topic of navigation I think it would benefit the blog and its readers if the author added more posts to the front page. Overall this will get a 3 from me and with a few of these formatting changes the mark would definitely go up. I think this is an excellent blog with good content, but it needs some work logistically in the meantime.

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– Chrissie

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