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chrissie

Florida Mortgage Blogger – Review

If you live in the state of Florida, and are having troubles getting financing for your dream home, you may want to check out the Florida Mortgage Blogger. Here you will find the blog written by Kevin, a Mortgage Professional in Florida who has as his life mission to ‘help good people achieve their Florida Home Loan goals’.  Kevin’s blog is all about serving the people of Florida, and you can get a good feel for this through his header which states he is ‘building better relationships one step at a time’.  Kevin’s work is focused on the Winter Haven, Florida area, and he works both with clients and real estate agents as you will see on his blog.  He has been in the mortgage industry for two years now, and works to assist clients in obtaining financing that meets their unique requirements.  He does so by primarily working with FHA and VA loan programs to offer more flexible and affordable options in mortgage loans.  You can see this for yourself through any of Kevin’s most recent bloggeries: Weekly Winter Haven Mortgage Rate Report: February 9, 2009; Home Buyers Are on the Move as Rates Stay Low and Pending Sales Rise; Would You Buy a Home for $15,000?; FL Mortgage Rates Finally Hit Bottom?; and Winter Haven Sees Lower Mortgage Rates After Geithner’s Speech.

This blog is set up more like a business website than a blog, and thus is missing some blog meat that is making the blog a little cumbersome to navigate.  Bloggeries are centralized with both left and right sided navigation bars with a lot of information on Florida Home Loans.  In the top navigation bar you can find standard links to the About Page and Home page.  The left navigation bar will give you subscription information as well as a Recent Comments Menu and Yahoo widget showing you how many Yahoo links the blog has.  In the right sided navigation bar, you will find Contact Information, and a form you can fill out to get onto Kevin’s mailing list, as well as a Pages Menu.  In the Pages Menu you will find links to the About Page, Interviews and Podcasts, Orlando, Florida area, Testimonials, and a link to subscribe by Email.  Bloggeries are primarily textual with a few pictures and charts within the bloggeries, so you get a strong business sense from the blog’s presentation.

This blog gets a 3.4/5 at the time of review, and needs a few tweaks to look more like a blog and less like a business page.  Activity is up to date, so this blog scores well on how it feeds the search engines and meets the needs of its readers.  Is the blog for loan clients or for real estate agents?  For realtors, terms and language used on this blog would be useful, but the average home owner to-be is not familiar with terms such as ‘Absorption Rates’ and the like.  Sales reports mean little to the home owner, but would be useful for the real estate agent.  Content needs to be ‘dumbed down’ for the average Internet reader perhaps.  Some relevant pictures, perhaps of homes for sale in the area, would speak to prospective home owners and add some meaning to the bloggeries for them.  And regardless of who the blog is targeted to, essential blog items such as a Categories Menu and Recent Posts Menu would make this blog much easier to navigate and look more like an information resource on the topic.  This blog is off to a great start as far as reaching the real estate market, but needs some tweaks in terms of user friendliness if it is trying to reach as many potential prospects as possible.

-Chrissie

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Keys and Bars Blog Review

If you are looking for a great blog about nothing specific, then you will want to check out the Keys and Bars blog.  Originally the blogger intended this to be a music blog, hence the phrase Keys and Bars, however once the writing began, it quickly turned into a blog where thoughts are shared and the masses are entertained.  One of the first things you will notice about this blog is the creativity and wittiness on the blogger’s part, which always makes for a great read regardless if the topic is specific, or about nothing in particular.  The blogger brings a wide range of experiences to the table such as having beat the 8 ranked Uno player in the world, twice, among many other fantastic feats.  Get a taste for this great blog by checking out any of the recent bloggeries:  sup hitler, hippo fail, review: strawberry jam, oh lord it’s big lee., and how to beat a movie psycho.

hippo fail The blog is well organized and this makes it easy to navigate.  Bloggeries are left marginalized and appear in black text on a white background with colourful accents throughout the blog.  There is a right sided navigation bar that contains all of the necessary blog meat, and here you will find a Search Bar, Contact Information, Recent Posts Menu, Categories Menu, Blogroll, and some advertising.  You will also find a handy navigation bar in the header of the blog where you can move to the Home pages or About page from anywhere in the blog.  The Categories Menu is extensive, and indicative of the wide range of topics discussed on the blog, and include such topics as 5 Questions, Accidents Happen, Cool Hair, Don’t Get Cocky, Eli Porter, and G.O.A.T. which stands for ‘Greatest of All Time’. These are just a few of the unique topics that you can read about at the Keys and Bars Blog.

Overall this blog gets a 3.4 for review as it does well on all review criteria. From a content perspective, the content is fresh and funny, even on topics such as strawberry jam, so this blogger definitely has a flair for writing and expressing that to his readers.  The only comment I would have on the content is to perhaps make some of the bloggeries a little longer than where they currently stand which is often nothing more than a few lines. With content this good, this blogger wants to leave more food out for their readers, and longer bloggeries will do so.  The activity score is what is keeping this below a 4 at the time of publishing this review. It was good until halfway through the December, with activity coming in daily. Considering the range of topics it should not be too difficult for this blogger to post from time to time. It would be a shame to let an otherwise good blog to waste.  Navigation wise the blog is very easy to move around with its clean and organized template, and the Appearance of the blog is aesthetically pleasing and designed in such a way that the blog is enjoyable to both look at and read.  As far as unique, this blog scores well for that as well, with its unique take on anything and everything in its creatively managed content.  For a fun blog about nothing in particular, check out the Keys and Bars blog as the great content will be more than enough to make you a regular reader.

– Chrissie

BloggersBase Review

Bloggeries is stepping a little outside the box with this review, with a look at a cutting edge website known as BloggersBase. If you have been looking for a one stop shop for heaps of quality content from the blogosphere, then BloggersBase is where you need to be.  BloggersBase is an online magazine created by and for bloggers, providing a community and online publishing forum where all bloggers can contribute and influence the readership and on site content.  In a few words, BloggersBase is a website where you can add and read content on just about anything, and quality content is what you will find.  The authors of BloggersBase are bloggers just like you, with each one having something different to say and an edgy twist by which they say it.  True quality content that sets the bar for excellent reading is the type of material that you will find here.  By joining the site you can both contribute and influence the content you come across.  Posts are submitted by bloggers who join the community, and you can use your own blog posts, or create something different.  And, if someone likes you post, they can rate it and influence the readership at BloggersBase.  The more you rate, and the more professional your ratings are, the greater your influence.  BloggersBase assures you that you will get the highest quality content in the topic of your choice, and you can see this for yourself through some of the most recently published bloggeries:  Educational Value of Youtube, Best Places to Buy an LCD TV, Dealing with Teenagers, You do not need anyone’s permission to be your true self, and 25 Top Blogging Mistakes to Avoid.

BloggersBase is not a blog, but a community of authors, and so it will take you some time to get used to the navigation.  While at first glance it looks a little confusing and complicated, once you understand the concept of the website, you will breeze through the many navigation systems.  There is a top menu you will want to check out first, where you can find links to the Home Page, a What’s Bloggers Base page that explains the site, Blog, Readers, and Bloggers.  You can join as a reader or a blogger and influence the posts online accordingly.  Navigate through the left navigation bar and you will get a better idea of what to expect here.  Here you will find the categories you can read or publish on, such as Entertainment, Lifestyle, Technology, World Affairs, Special Events, Partnerships, and Suggestions. You can read the Most Recent Posts, check out who is faring the best at BloggersBase through the Statistics Zone, or subscribe to the feeds.

This blog gets a 4.8/5 for  being  near perfect for the requirements of our reviews.  The website is definitely cutting edge when it comes to the world of blogging, and provides a fresh spin on blogging.  The content is top notch and the site design is laid out in an easy to navigate and well organized appearance.  Overall, for the avid bloggers that are looking for a new means to market their blogs or exceptional posts, this is a concept that will definitely work well in the blogosphere.  And judging by the amount of content and the statistics zone, this web site is not taking long to catch on with the reading public.  If you have a blog or something really neat to say, you will want to check out BloggersBase and get in on the action sooner than later.

-Chrissie