If you would like to take a few minutes to read about a different culture and industry, then I urge you to have a look at the Tessellar Blog. Here you will find the author Mazlin Ghazali writing from Kuala Lumpur in Malaysa about houses and neighborhoods around the world. He is curious about people and places and interested in finding out how to create better homes for more people. You can never read enough about improving the lives of others in this world, and I find this site a fascinating difference from some of the other blogs I have seen. He offers a link to his alternative site: http://www.tslr.info where you can find more information on Tessellation planning if you are interested. If not, have a look at some of his recent posts to see what he is talking about: Growing up in a Xhosa Village, The Yanomamo: ‘shabono’ and ‘waiteri’, Communist condo, Building the Iban Longhouse, Hakka Clan Houses, Roots, Everybody Needs a Home, Slum-Like Tokyo, Are Architects living on Past Glory?, and Unlikely homes.
The blog is about as standard as it gets for a blog making it very easy to navigate. Posts are right marginalized with black text on white background and orange header as borders. The posts contain a series of relevant pictures in each post which are all very well done and appropriate in both size and quantity. They also lend true flavor to every post, and in a blog like this they are critical elements. There is a left navigation system where you will find favorite blogs, a blog comments and discussions menu, pictures, squidoo lens, copyright information, and a blog archive. At first glance, it seems that the recent posts menu is missing from the blog, but if you scroll through the top navigation system you will find a recent posts menu on every link in that menu. In the top menu, you can find the links to the blog, Home, Theory, Research, Practice, School, Library, and an FAQ’s page. These seem to be a categories menu of sorts for the blog as they are all located on the blogspot domain.
I will give this one a 3.3 for now, it is fairly new so I would expect in a few months time it would probably get a higher mark. The blog scores well for uniqueness, appearance, and content. Navigation will bring the mark down a little as the search for the recent posts menu threw me off a little, but if this menu is placed on the main page in the left navigation bar I can’t see it being a continual issue. The blog’s discussion menu in the left navigation bar shows that it also has a nice readership already, which is great to see in such a young blog. Activity is a little sparse, with 7 posts in June and 16 in July. The improvement in July is a good indicator of the blog’s growth, so as mentioned I would expect to see more activity as the blog goes on. The author is clearly passionate about this work, and writes beautifully about it. The content is informative and well researched, and if it stays at this level, I anticipate this blog doing very well on content alone. Overall I think this is a great blog that many will find informative, but being only a couple of months old, it is difficult to say much more than that. However, if the topic interests you, bookmark it and keep an eye on it. This one should do very well down the line.
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– Chrissie
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