Dig ‘N’ Share is a bit similar to a blog I used to run called Free Funny Junk, in that it is basically a collection of little gems from across the net. There’s really no central topic - it seems to cover pretty much everything. There are topics for animals, health, internet stuff, photos, etc. It kinda reminds me of a tumblelog in a way.

The first thing I noticed is that the auto-discovery code for your RSS feed does not point to the feedburner feed. The previous two blogs I reviewed did the same thing as well, perhaps a guide is needed?

The second thing is dump the tags search field - the categories are right underneath it plus you have a regular search field right above. I really can’t think of any reason to search for tags like that.

As far as the content goes - it is very random, and most of it seems to be just links with little text. Since it is a bit like a tumblelog, where people post short blurbs about things they find cool, I doubted there would be much actual text. However, I still think some of the randomness should be fixed up. I was looking through it and saw one post about cool hurricane photos, then a few posts below there was stuff on Leukemia, then just a couple of posts below that was a collection of cat videos. So, you get my point, it’s random.

The posting schedule also seems a bit erratic. One day will have 12, and the next will have 4.

Rating

My overall rating for Dig ‘n’ Share is:

Content: 5/10 - Lots of randomness, and very little actual text (from what I could see).
Design: 7/10 - Just needs that auto-discovery problem fixed, maybe remove the tags search field, and it should be fine.
Uniqueness: 6/10 - There’s quite a few blogs like this. Maybe post your thoughts/opinions on each post to make it more unique and add more content?
Overall: 7/10 - There is a lot of potential, and for only being 23 days old I’d say it looks like it is doing well.

If you like looking at neat pictures, funny videos, or if you’re into good ol’ random stuff - you can check out Dig ‘n’ Share here (feed).

Oh, and one quick thing I’d like to add in - if anyone who’s blog I’m reviewing (or anyone in general) needs any help implementing something (fixing auto-discovery code, changing a color, etc) in Blogger just drop me an e-mail or leave a comment and I’ll try to help you out.

Delve into the Mind of A Budding Blogger is a blog run by 12 year old blogger Meghna. It is about school, writing, books, fiction, as well as the occasional completely bizarre news article about cows being arrested.

Alright, so let’s jump right into this, shall we?

Subscription Info - The first thing I looked for was feed subscription buttons, and to my surprise they were tucked away in the left-hand column. I kinda expected them to be in the right hand column above or below the “About Me” section. I also noticed (like with the last review) the feed for the button and for the auto discovery point to different URLs.

Need A Different Ad? - The square ad on the left sidebar runs right to the edge of the sidebar (and even a bit past that). Nothing too big - but it was a bit distracting when reading the top post.

My Best Posts - Excellent! A big, big plus! It is actually one thing I’ve been meaning to redo here for a few days. One quick thing, however, the “My best posts” label is a bit hard to read, it’s showing up orange/red instead of white.

Big Space - There’s a really really large gap between the archives and the MyBlogLog reader list. It was just a bit of a shock to the eyes to be reading, see a good chunk of whitespace on the side, then all of this sudden see another item.

Rating

My overall rating for Delve into the Mind of A Budding Blogger is:

Content: 7/10 - A bit random at times, but well written.
Design: 6/10 - Fix some of the things with the RSS button placement, gaps, and the “My Best Posts” label and this’ll go up to an 8 out of 10
Uniqueness: 9/10 - I haven’t really run into any other blogs that cover the same topics and such.
Overall: 7/10 - Some work needs to be done but it is coming along nicely, keep up the good work

If you’re into creative writing you can check it out here (feed).

How many good blogs about graphic design and Photoshop are there? Not very many - which is one reason why I chose to review Graphics Illustrations. Graphics Illustrations is a blog about Photoshop and graphic design, which contains some excellent tips, tricks, tutorials, examples, and a whole bunch of other stuff.

Overall I really like the blog, but there’s a few things that came to my attention once I started getting into the nitty-gritty details of it all. Most of these are minor layout issues - the content is excellent though.

Different Languages? - The blog is in English, but the comment label is “komentari” and the tags/category label is “Oznake”. I’m not 100% sure what language those are in, but I can see how someone may get confused when they first visit. Best bet is to try and keep everything uniform and in the same language. Then again, for all I know they could be some hip new Internet slang… I haven’t been keeping up with that stuff lately

RSS - One thing I’d highly recommend doing is making the little RSS Button point to your feed in addition to the subscription text on the sidebar. Maybe I’m the only one who does this, but when I see an RSS button I usually click it instead of any text around it. I also noticed the URL for the subscription link and the URL for the feed auto-discovery are different. One points to FeedBurner and the other points here. Keeping them the same is a good way to ensure Feedburner is doing its little calculations correctly.

Snap Shots - I’ve never been the biggest fan of anything that pops up on my screen when I mouse over a link, whether it is a service like Snap Shots or an ad program like Kontera or Intellitxt. While this is a big turn off - the excellent content made me stay.

Post Spacing - The posts are a little cramped together. Maybe a few extra pixels between them would space everything out.

Sidebar Length - The sidebar is a bit on the long side. I’m not 100% sure what can be changed there though. If it is bringing in good click-through rates then leave it as is.

I’m just a picky fellow though, most of those things are really minor issues and the good content both on the blog as well as the downloads easily makes up for them.

Rating

My rating for Graphics Illustrations is:

Content: 9/10 - Excellent job! You’re a really talented designer - keep up the good work
Design: 5/10 - The Snap Shots were a big turn off for me in regards to the layout. The sidebar is also a bit on the long side.
Uniqueness: 9/10 - It’s hard to find a good blog about graphic design these days - I’ll definitely be adding this one to Google Reader (in fact, I already have).
Overall - 7/10 - If it wasn’t for the Snap Shots this would definitely be an 8 or 9 out of 10.

Graphics Illustrations is a very good blog - and if you love Photoshop or graphic design in general I’d highly recommend checking it out (feed).

As promised yesterday, here is a blog review of Jake’s blog, Jatecblog. He had the closest guess in the “Guess My Birthdate” contest.

Jatecblog is a blog about technology, Linux (lots of Ubuntu stuff), web design, and a lot more, including the occasional rant about stupid 12 year olds posing as AOL workers.

Jatecblog has all sorts of useful information, a lot of which is stuff that would normally take you several searches in Google to find, and covers tips and tricks that I never knew were possible.

There are some things that can make it greatly improve, however.

I think it should cover two more things more than it currently does: web design and open source software. How about some posts about cool things you can do with GIMP or OpenOffice? Heck, a post about converting a GIMP image into a full web design would be really nice, I’d imagine there is some easy way to do that. Even a post on the best Firefox extensions would work.

I am also a bit curious as to why it doesn’t use a FeedBurner feed, are feed stats tracked some other way or something?

And while we’re on the topic of feeds, Jatecblog needs some sort of RSS button on the blog. A while back I wrote a post about adding a Javascript Feed Subscription popup menu, it is what I use and it works great, although I also added a RSS logo that links to the feed as well - just in case the user has JS disabled.

Other than that I’m pretty happy with it, and I look forward to seeing the future posts there.

Visit: Jatecblog (feed)

Over the past few days I have been fiddling around with the brand new Adobe Dreamweaver CS3 package… and wow I am impressed. Let me put it this way - anyone who uses the 2004 suite must upgrade to CS3.

2004 was slow, buggy, slow, and oh did I mention slow? The thing was slow as hell! Heck, the trial version of it brought both of my computers to a screeching halt and crashed 5 minutes after I installed it.

I haven’t had those problems with CS3… the entire thing runs so much faster, and in the few days of using the trial version I have yet to see it crash. The only thing I am disappointed with is the interface was really not updated at all, but oh well, that negative was definitely offset by the great new features.

For starters, it gives you many more options when creating a new file, and all pre-built layouts use CSS and are completely standards based - a big plus. Let me put it this way, this is part of the new file dialog box:

CS3 also gives you access to a well built framework called Spry. It lets you use a bunch of pre-built AJAX scripts that let you do stuff like form validation, integrate XML data, create dynamic menus, and so much more.

As I said above, anyone who uses Dreamweaver MX 2004 (or any version) must upgrade now - it is just that good. And that is saying a lot, I have previously said that I would stick with Dreamweaver MX, but now I am seriously thinking about buying this as soon as I get enough cash.

You can download the trial version of Dreamweaver CS3 from Adobe’s Dreamweaver page.

If you have tried CS3 out feel free to share your thoughts.