I enjoy technology, which is evident in the fact that I am the author of a technology blog. Since I have started writing free reviews, I haven’t really reviewed many technology-related blog.
This week I will look at a blog that actually has a very long title, but I will shorten it to Upcoming Technolgies. In case you are curious, the full title I was given was “Upcoming Technologies,Current Technologies,Reviews,News,Info and more!”
For many individuals blogging is like a full-time job, in fact there are many who have made a career from blogging. They rely on their blog for their financial stability and livelihood. For those that are in this category, updating the design of a blog can sometimes be a headache if something goes wrong, as potential new visitors are turned away.
I have changed Technically Easy many times in the past year, and each time it could have been difficult, except for the fact that I have developed a process. This process involves using two blogs to help ensure updates to the design of the one blog goes smoothly.
I recently wrote a post titled Using Google Alerts to Track Copies of Your Web Content. In that post I mentioned using Google search results to watch for duplicate copies of your work showing up on other Web sites. The example I used was a common Google search term used by probably many webmasters, but may not be known by the general public.
In this post I will explain some of the search terms that you can use in Google that can give you interesting results outside of just simple keyword searches.
I have read many personal blogs. These are the blogs that don’t have any true focus since the posts are what the author has felt like writing at a specific time.
I enjoy reading some personal blogs as they can provide quite a break from reality. This week I review a personal blog, that is geared more towards the college crowd.
Web Site: Tetsujin’s Blog
Description: It is about college life, general life on the internet, and random technology, it is a lot of personal blogging fun.
When I read the e-mail requesting the review I never clued in that I have seen this blog before. When I viewed the blog I instantly recognized the image in the header of the blog. The header takes up quite a lot of real estate on the blog, but the image will be associated with this blog.
Below the image is a menu consisting of links to a forum, suggestions, the “about me” and “contact me” pages, and a “One Buck Review” page. More on the “One Buck Review” later.
The actual content portion of the blog is split into three columns. The left column contains the Entrecard card, the BlogCatalog and MyBlogLog widgets, and recent posts from other blogs. The content is in the middle with another navigation bar on the right.
The right navigation bar contains the subscription link, sponsors and category links, favourites, archives, a calendar of post dates and other personal links.
The columns should be switched, with the blog related links on the left so the visitors can easily navigate the blogs. The BlogCatalog and MyBlogLog widgets, as well as the advertising should be moved to the right navigation bar. The personal links could be placed below the links on the left to make the left navigation bar a one stop shop for the links.
I’m not a fan of the green coloured text, especially against the light background. A darker colour would make it easier to read, especially if the text was also larger.
The design could use a few modifications to make the blog better to allow visitors to easily navigate and read the blog.
It is always difficult to rate the focus of a personal blog because there usually isn’t one. That is true in this case. There is no true focus of Tetsujin’s Blog but it seems to be more geared towards college life.
The content of Tetsujin’s Blog ranges from long posts to relatively short posts. The author doesn’t post on a regular basis and can sometimes leave large gaps of time between posts.
The author does include some appropriate pictures to enhance the point of a post. Some images, however, can be quite large and take some time to download. For the most part the images are small and download quickly.
In the top menu there is a link for “One Buck Reviews”, which I’m guessing means you buy a review from the author for one dollar. The reviews are small (about three paragraphs), but for one dollar it is a good investment if you want a backlink.
I did enjoy reading some of the content, which has a college feel to it. If you do like reading these types of blogs, then you may like reading this one.
There are a few spelling and grammar mistakes that did cause me to reread sentences a few times. All posts don’t contains sentences like this, but those that do definitely take away from the readability of the post. A spelling and grammar checker would help in such cases.
Tetsujin’s Blog is a standard personal blog in which the author writes about anything they are thinking about at the time. There are several issues with the design of the blog that could make it difficult for visitors to navigate or read.
The focus of the blog, like many personal blogs, is almost non-existent, but the content is interesting. It would be better if the author wrote on a more regular basis as large gaps between posts could stop people from subscribing to the blog.
A spelling and grammar checker would help correct some of the errors that appear in some of the posts.
Overall the blog is a good blog with a few minor flaws that could be easy to fix.
With some coding, you can easily create static pages in Blogger. For many blog authors, WordPress is the management system of choice. It provides the most flexibility and options for managing blogs. For those that are not using WordPress, Blogger is a good, free option. Blogger, however, is not nearly as flexible to use as WordPress. There are fewer options and templates for that system. The one drawback of using Blogger is the inability of uploading, and using static HTML pages.
There is a simple workaround that you can use to create pages in your Blogger blog that will mimic static pages. I will discuss how to create and use those pages in this post.
I use Google Analytics to monitor the traffic on Technically Easy. It is a popular, free tool that provides a wealth of information about the visitors to your web site. The problem that I find with Google Analytics is that it doesn’t track outgoing links to my blog. I would be interested to know how many of my visitors click on some of the provided outgoing links, such as my RSS subscription link.
I recently found the answer to my problem, and how I can use Google Analytics to not only track links to other pages in Technically Easy, but also the outgoing links to other sites.
When viewing blogs I like original blogs. It seems most blogs today discuss the saturated topic of making money online, or SEO (Search Engine Optimization). When I see a blog that is not focused on one of those two topics, it is like a breath of fresh air.
This week I look at a sports related blog, specifically F1 racing. I am not a F1 racing fan, but this is definitely one of the best blogs I have seen. Lots of content, a specific topic, with a great design.
Web Site: F1-ToGo
Description: Dedicated to the fast paced world of F1 racing. Featured are original content news stories, opinions, and a bit of controversy along the way.
The design of F1-ToGo is well done. It is a standard design with the content on the left and two navigation sidebars on the right. There is also a menu bar at the top of the blog for easy access to important pages.
First let’s have a look at the content section. The titles are nice and large and easy to read. The font and font size chosen for the content is also nice and large. Anyone should have no trouble reading the posts.
The sidebars on the right are neatly organized, which is unusual considering the amount of information the author has provided. There are ads at the top, however, they don’t drown out the actual navigation links. There are a few ads on the right side of the sidebar, while the navigational links are on the left.
There are many categories in the sidebars with each one having a well-defined header. The categories, recent posts, and favourite posts are near the top of the left side of the sidebars. This allows visitors to find the posts without having to scroll down the page.
The only issue I found with the design was with IE7. When I viewed the sidebars in IE7 the “Recent Viewers” widget from BlogCatalog stretch from the left side to the right side.
The overall design of the blog is well done, and shows how a great blog should look.
The focus of F1-ToGo is simply F1. Every post is related to F1 racing, and includes discussions on tracks, results, drivers, teams, and rumours. The focus is clear and well-defined. No problems with the focus on this blog.
The design and and the focus are top-notch, and the content is also in that category. After reading some of the posts, I am amazed at how well each post is written.
Most of the posts discuss drivers, teams and upcoming races. For race results, the author includes the placing of all drivers as well as the fastest laps. The content of F1-ToGo shows the author’s passion for the sport without a question.
I found that the posts are well written and contain very few spelling and grammar mistakes. For those posts that do have a mistake, the mistake doesn’t reduce the readability, or distract from the point the author is trying to make.
This is one of the best designed and written blogs that I have reviewed. I’m not a fan of F1 but I still read many of the posts on F1-ToGo mainly because they are very well-written. The sidebars are well organized, and the fonts and sizes chosen make the blog very easy to read.
If you are a fan of F1, then you should definitely check out this blog. If you aren’t you should still check out this blog and see what a great blog looks like.
In my last post I wrote about What to Avoid When Designing Web Sites. I mentioned various points that you should not do when designing a Web site. One of the points talked about copying the work of others and posting it on your site as your own. It was then mentioned in the comments about monitoring such copying of your own work.
In this post I will look at one easy-to-use method of monitoring Google results for duplicate work of yours, which you can then use to take the appropriate action.
Google Alerts are simply e-mails sent to you when a specific set of criteria you setup is found. The search criteria are a set of search terms against the Google index, and when there are new items for those search terms an e-mail is sent to you.
An alert can be setup for searches against News, Web, Blogs, Video and Groups.
You can easily setup Google Alerts by visiting the Google Alerts home page and enter your search criteria on the form provided. You can then manage your alerts from your Google account.
Now that you have an idea of what Google Alerts actually is, let’s see how we can use that to monitor your Web content. Keep in mind that this isn’t 100% foolproof, but it can help you find those who duplicate your content.
Within my posts I try to link to other posts within my blog. This helps to provide more information to my visitors, but it can also help to monitor my pages with Google Alerts. Here is how I do that:
You can use any search terms you would like to use to monitor the Google search results. The search criteria above won’t work if someone were to change the location of the links, or if a post doesn’t contain another link to your blog or Web site. You can always come up with your own method of keeping track of your hard work.
As a side note, the above alert will also inform you of who has linked to your blog or Web site.
This post provided a brief overview of Google Alerts as well as step-by-step instructions for creating an alert. A simple example was provided that can allow you to track other sites that may copy your content and post it on their site. I have been able to catch a few sites that have copied my content.
If you have other ideas of finding those that duplicate your content, I would like to hear them. Just post your ideas in the comments section.