Reviews

We are taking a look at another political blog, and this one is called Phronesisaical. This blog is about politics, philosophy, international affairs, and fruit. There are two main contributors to this blog, Helmut and Barba de Chiva. Helmut is a Professor of Philosophy and International Affairs and is located out of Washington D.C. Barba de Chiva is an English Professor writing out of Texas. Both of these bloggers offer a unique appeal and excellent writing as can be seen in any of their recent bloggeries: Gurbanguly Berdymukhammedov at Columbia; Friday Dinner Party Conversation Stopper; Noncombatant Immunity, Blackwater, and the State Department; $1 Billion vs. $1.2 Trillion; Seas and Genes; Ian Hacking on Creationism; Brazil vs. Germany; La Franqueza; and William Faulkner.

The blog is fairly simple to navigate and offers a clean well-organized design. Bloggeries are left-marginalized and are black text on a light green background and links are highlighted in dark green. In the right navigation system you will find the contributors profile pages, ‘Phronesisaicality’ Menu, Bloggery Menu (perhaps a blog roll?), News and Commentary Menu, Magazines, Philosophy, Ethics, Policy, Policy Information and News, Development and Environment, Photography, Fruit Photography, mp3 Blogs, Miscellaneous, Previous Posts Menu, Archives going back to June 2005 and Blog Widgets. What I don’t see in blog navigation is a categories menu or labels attached to the posts, so I don’t think the blog is organized by category. I think this may help the blog given its healthy nature of topics and issues that it covers.

I will give this blog a 3.4/5. The blog is very well written and is updated almost daily, so it scores well for content and activity. I would suggest working with the length on some of the posts as they are currently very lengthy and can get difficult to read. I would either break these up into more frequent posts or perhaps adding pictures to each post to break up the length a little and make the reading go a little smoother. I also think the current location of the recent posts menu is not doing this menu any service. It is currently located at the very bottom of the right navigation system and would be very difficult to find if you didn’t spend a lot of time with the blog. I also think a deeper connection with the readership could be established if the contributors expanded on the purpose of the blog in the About Pages, or even define the term ‘Phronesisaical’ a little deeper. I don’t see any comments or hit counters, so I am not certain what the readership of the blog is. But I think this blog could reach a larger audience with these simple changes and I wish it the best of luck.

-Chrissie

If you are at all looking to travel the Eastern Hemisphere then you should take a moment to check out a professional looking Asia travel blog.  The blog is a blog that operates under the business of Asiahotels.com which is a leading Asian accommodations reservations site. As a reservations network from Asia, you will find it very comprehensive as it offers blogging with a personal voice, yet access to destination guides, travelers tales and guest reviews. Have a look at any of the recent bloggeries to see what I am referring to: Beautiful Sceneries in Japan, Pho King Strange Shirts, Top Noosa Holiday Accommodation, Typical Asian Photo Poses, How to Take Photos in Beijing China, Environmentally Friendly 5 Star Hotel in Beijing, How to Overcome Con Artists in Asia, The Three Most Luxurious Airlines, Best Beaches in Asia, and Ten Things to Do if you are Trapped on an Island.

Navigation on the blog is very easy, and very straightforward. The blog has a well-organized template and a clean layout and design. Bloggeries are black text on white background and the blog has yellow bordering with yellow accents on the menu titles. Bloggeries are centralized and there is both a left and right navigation bar. In the left navigation bar you will find the categories menu, recent posts menu, and the About page. In the Right navigation bar, you will find Hotel Club Blog information, and ‘On the Go’ menu, and an ‘Accom Blog’ menu. The categories menu also is very comprehensive, and for the Asian traveler contains all of the vital information – Airlines, Asia, Australia, Beaches, Japan, Things to Do, Vietnam, and much more. Most of the bloggeries also contain relevant pictures which adds to the overall design and aesthetic appeal of the blog. I took some time to visit a few travel guides and found the guide to Taj Mahal very informative.

This blog is definitely raising the bar for other travel blogs in terms of almost all other criteria we score on here. For this reason I am giving it a 4.5/5. The blog scores perfectly on almost all accounts – Navigation, Appearance, Uniqueness, and Content. The blog is designed with a very professional appeal, and this gives it much credibility to its readers which are obviously the travelers demographic. This lends well to the success of the blog given that travelers looking for information are always looking for credible sources. The pictures and the professional but good personal voice in the blog serve this purpose well for Asia Hotels. The only thing I would suggest is more frequent activity and this is the only section where Asia Hotels lost points. Currently bloggeries are coming in every other day, but I am seeing periods where the posts lapse with a couple of weeks in between. The blog would definitely get more traffic with daily updating and thus, be an even bigger success than it clearly already is. Otherwise however, I am taking a mental note of this one should I ever see the opportunity to Go East.

-Chrissie

We are going to look at a personal blog by established writer and author Bruce Eisner. This blog is a perspective on ‘creating a sensible culture’ and is named “Bruce Eisner’s Vision Thing” . This blogger is a Ph.D candidate and is currently writing out of Las Vegas, Nevada. He is the President of Island Foundation and is working on the Island Sanctuary Project. You can find more of his writings, publications, and random musings at his blog. You can also get to know this blogger a little better by checking out his recent bloggeries: URTH.TV Consciousness Movement Social Network, The Shock Doctrine A Short Film by Alfonso Cuaron and Naomi Klein, Apple Co-Founder Steve Wozniak Looks to Robotics and Artificial Intelligence – eWeek, Horizons – Contemporary Perspectives on Psychedelics October 27 New York City, Singularity Summit 2007 Complete Audio Downloads and Kurzweil Video, Peter Max (and a lot more) on lines and colors at blog, Top 10 Video Search Engines, and Remember Jack Kerouac on the Smithsonian Magazine.

You will find navigation on the blog straightforward as the blog offers both left and right navigation systems as well as a very handy top navigation bar. Posts are centralized with the two navigation bars, and are black text on white formatting. The header is in red and there is no other specific color scheme which is fine on the eyes as the blogger offers a lot of other features to the blog to add color and life to the blog. The top navigation system is very handy with each link opening up in a new window, and offers links for Home, About, Writings, Links, Everything Bruce, Blogroll, Archives, Search, and Subscription methods. In the left sided left navigation bar you will find the About Page, Vision Thing Widgets, an extensive categories menu, software downloads, AdSense, Everything About Bruce Eisner (publications), Bruce Eisner on the Blog Critics Blog, Mind Media Blog topics, and Deal of the Day. In the right sided navigation system you will find a Google search bar, AdSense, Subscription info, Archives pull down menus both by month and by category, Recent Comments mnu, Swicki search bar and tag cloud, Bruce’s other sites menu, Amazon ads, Blog widget buttons, and more AdSense.

I am going to give this blog a 3/5 with my biggest suggestion being some clean up and organization of the advertising. There is so much advertising that it is affecting many aspects of blog scoring criteria. The ads are extremely distracting from what appears to be very well written content. The excess ads also affect the appearance scores as well. Navigation would be improved with a recent posts menu, though otherwise navigation is very easy on this blog. The content is well done but again, it is difficult to focus on this with the amount of advertising that is currently there. The activity ranges from a week between posts to a couple of days, but it does seem to be picking up. I am not sure what the readership is currently as there are not a lot of comments, though this sometimes is not a reflection of readership. I think if the activity was picked up a bit and the appearance organized a little more efficiently, this blog would be a very good read and this would be reflected in the readership.

-Chrissie