So I first found a blog post on reviewing a blog. the blog is called Adsense Tracker (an tongue-in-cheek title) which calls itself a blog about blogging. It contains, amongst many other interesting posts, a blog about how to review a blog, which gives a handy list of what you should try and cover in your review:
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| (AdSense, 2007) |
I've decided that i'm going to use this criteria to review Ethan Hein's blog on Music, Technology and Evolution (Hein, 2015).
Purpose
This blog is geared towards music technology and their enthusiasts. A lot of it is based around the interests of the author himself who regularly posts on new technologies and theories as well as occasionally delving deeper into previously covered topics. The blog rarely leaves it's intended purpose, almost every post is about some interesting topic and seems to be constantly reviewing different related topics. It occasionally takes more of a teaching approach than a review approach, but this seems to fit with the CV of the author.Layout / Usability
The blog layout is very clean yet also manages to contain a lot of links. It comes across more like a website with a focus on the blog. The whole blog flows very well; the posts do not necessarily link into the next post, but the topics aren't scattered enough to make a reader feel disorientated or confused as to the topic or purpose. The links around the page are well laid out - the links at the top make sense and there is just the right information on sidebar for any peruser.Content
All of the content is quite obviously original with many links to other pieces (such as videos, documents etc). The blog is written in a very knowledgable tone and does not come across as condescending. Rather than being either formal or informal it simply comes across as factual, akin to reading a textbook that has kept some element of the author's voice. The layout of each post is very simple with chunks of text being well broken up with images, videos etc. This is actually done extremely well as, just as you're getting disinterested with reading you are given an image or some other media to interact with. The author's spelling and grammar are quite perfect, perhaps owing to his academic background.Activity
The author varies between posting 2-3 posts a day for 2 weeks stretches to occasionally not posting for about 3 weeks. This is presumably because the author is to busy during certain times of the year, but it doesn't give the impression that he becomes disinterested in his blog. Dues to the shoe amount of posts in this blog it is hard to judge the comment activity. Some posts have no comments, some have just one and others have entire conversations between multiple commenters. I think it's best to say that the comment activity depends greatly on the popularity of the individual post as opposed to the blog in general. I have not seen any comments that the author has responded to, but then again I have not noticed any comments where specific questions are being asked.Believability
the blog is very believable. As noted before, the tone of the posts come across as very knowledgeable, and the other backs up a lot of his discussion with lots of links to other articles and research. As an academic I would quite happily take the authors word on most of the statements he makes as he never seems to make any comments that are challenging unless he has support for his statement.Using this criteria actually made reviewing the blog very simple and made me look at parts of the blog I would't have actually considered. In summary, Ethan's blog is very informative and very factual. I could only aspire to achieve a level of blogging such that Ethan Hein has reached.
References
Hein, E. (2015). [Blog] Music, Technology, Evolution. Available at: http://www.ethanhein.com/wp/category/technology/page/2/ [Accessed 19 Nov. 2015].
I've never had my blog reviewed before. Glad you liked it!
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