Reviews

Here is a blog that food-lovers will really enjoy. The blog is called Chow Times. While there is no About Page or direct information about the blogger, it will not take you long to discover what this blog is about. Chow Time! Pretty much anything you want to know, see, or find out about food can more than likely be found on this site. The most recent bloggeries take the blogger on vacation where different areas of the country and their foods are highlighted. These bloggeries include: Bay Area Vacation – The San Jose Flea Market, Bay Area Vacation – U Pick Apples at Apple Barn – Great America Park, Bay Area Vacation – In-N-Out Burger, Yosemite Vacation – Glacier Point, Yosemite Vacation – Sequoias in Mariposa Grove and Dinner at the Yosemite Lodge, and Yosemite Vacation – The Yosemite Valley through Arkensen’s Lens, Atlanta Trip: Snack Box from Northwest Airline.

Navigation on this site is a little more awkward than some, but I attribute that to the wealth of information that is on this blog. The blog opens with this very appealing scrolling header with a slideshow of foods that will make your mouth water. Bloggeries are left marginalized with black text on a beige background and an orange border around the blog. Each post contains a host of pictures that add to the relevance of the post. The right navigation system is extremely extensive with a google search bar that also translates, Recent Comments Menu containing MANY entries, and an extremely comprehensive categories menu that contains just about any food type of information that the food lover might be looking for. There is also an archives menu in this bar that lists the number of entries by each month which I thought was a nice touch. The blogroll is an interesting feature as well, as it includes not only the link to the blog but a description of each blog as well. The blog also contains a visitors widget that shows the visitors online and sorts them by number and by country.

The blog gets a 4 from me and I would only offer a few suggestions that would get this to a 5. The content is well written and speaks to the readers, involving them in the posts by asking questions. Navigation is easy on this blog as well, and I really like the different array of features the blogger has added in the navigation bar. The archives menu, visitors menu, and blogroll – are all unique features that add to this blog’s appeal and really show the blogger connects with the readers. The blogger has a healthy readership with almost 150,000 visitors since January 2006 so I think if the blogger used monetization strategies they would do very well. The changes I would suggest would be some tweaking in the areas of photos and comments. I think the recent comments menu is a little too extensive, and while it is good to highlight your comments, there is too much there and the appearance would be improved if this was shortened to say, the last 5-7 comments. I also think there may be too many pictures in each post as scrolling through each post does take some time. This could be changed by adding an album with categories to it on the blog and putting a main picture in each post and then adding links in the blog posts that take you to further pictures. I also really appreciate the time the blogger takes to connect to their readers, and this could be even further enhanced by the addition of an About Me Page. Otherwise, I find this to be one of the better food blogs I have seen yet, and would not have a problem recommending this to fellow food lovers.

-Chrissie

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If you are looking for a little getaway, but can’t actually take the getaway, why not stop into the Who’s Your Mama blog. Make sure you are using Mozilla Firefox when you check out this blog, as there were some serious issues with Internet Explorer when I first checked out this site. When you get to Who’s Your Mama, you will meet Kuanyin who describes herself as being a 250 year old Virgo in the Communications Industry. Kuanyin is a blogger from Maui, and blogs about Maui and other related personal interests. You can find out more about both Maui and Kuanyin through any of her recent bloggeries: Summer’s Last Hurrah, Thursday Thirteen – Memories of Elvis, Have you ever noticed that…., Hurricane Flossie Watch and Wait, Blog Contest – I’ll Remember You!!, What If?, Back to Life…Back to Reality, and Thursday Thirteen and Deliberations.

The blog is fairly simply laid out, and if you are not straying too far off the main page you will not have too many navigation issues. The blog opens up with a pretty header of a Maui sunset, and posts are right marginalized with a left navigation system. Bloggeries are black text on white background and most bloggeries contain relevant pictures that add to the feelings of the posts. In the left navigation bar, you will find the about information, advertising, subscription information, a clickable link for blogs that link here, archives listed by date, an extensive link roll, an extensive array of blog awards, and a scrolling menu for a blog roll which I thought was a nice feature on the blog. At this point I do not see any recent posts menus or categories menus, though I do notice there are labels attached to each of the bloggeries.

I am going with a 3.2 on this one. There are just a few formatting issues that can be changed to assist with some of the appearance issues. I found the left navigation bar to be extremely distracting with a little bit of everything everywhere. I would suggest moving the blog awards for example to one corner of the blog as it seems to distract from some of the links that are being highlighted. These are fairly hefty images and could benefit from being highlighted on their own elsewhere. I think moving all of the blog directory icons to one central location would have the same effect and neaten up the navigation bar a little bit. Navigation scores need some help as well as with no recent posts or categories menus the site is a little difficult to navigate. The blog has a unique enough niche that it would certainly benefit from the categories addition. I think the content is well written, and the blog is active enough to sustain a healthy readership. I could see this blog growing even more with some of these formatting changes. However, this blog with its beautiful pictures certainly does relate a wonderful appeal of Maui, and if you have interest in going, it is worth at least a peek.

-Chrissie

If you have ever found yourself wondering ‘I wonder if I could find a website on….’ then this blog may appeal to you. The blog is simply called Website Reviews. The blogger is Malthy Badri and she offers a wealth of websites and blogs that you can ‘stumble onto’ in any field. Malathy is a Math teacher in India and blogs for both fun and money. She will also review websites that appeal to her, but may take consideration for other reviews based on content, design, presentation, utility, and navigation. You can get a good feel for the types of sites that interest her through her recent bloggeries: Tools from Highfivez for blog promotion, Plug and play VOIP phones from Nimbus, Why Satrnum changed to Friend2Friend, Enter the Indian Thought Terminus, Read your Feeds through IM, The news feed merger, Join review bloggers blogroll, Listen to your own posts, free podcast, Adsense Alternative by Ask.com, and many more.

I generally like to say that blogs are easy to navigate, however this particular blog is fairly loaded with AdSense that I found it to be distracting from either navigation or content areas. The content is centralized and there are both left and right navigation bars. Bloggeries are a blue text on orange background and links are highlighted in red. The header is standard text with no graphics, and directly below is a large span of space that contains the About Page and some AdSense. In the left navigation bar you will find the about page and an Archive Menu that lists Recent Posts by link. In the right navigation bar you will find AdSense, sponsored links, tag clouds, and a feedburner that contains 1 reader. You will also find here the blogroll and a link of frequently visited links. There are labels attached to each post but at the time of review I did not see a categories menu. There also at this point no pictures associated with the bloggeries.

I will go with a 2/5 for this one, there is just too much going on here that has little to do with content. I think the AdSense is far too overloaded and it is the first thing you deal with on the blog. Also, while the site is very colorful, it loses some appearance points for not having pictures as well as the advertising issue. Content is well written but needs some activity. Currently there have only been 10 posts in August and more frequent posting would definitely help with traffic here. Being that this is a site on website reviews, a categories menu would benefit readers in knowing what kind of websites are reviewed. Also, some information as to how one would obtain a review would be extremely beneficial. For a blog that has been around since 2006 I am not much surprised that there is only one reader in the feedburner as this blog has too much distraction going on to allow the reader to focus on content. I hope the blogger can make some changes and consequently see this blog succeed.

-Chrissie