A Sip of The Beer Blog

Hello Writing for New Media Class, my post today is going to focus on reviewing the blog belonging to Tom, who is most well known in our class for his tour of the social networking site Fubar. If those of you in our New Media Class who have not checked out Tom's blog it is entitled The Beer Blog which means that it is dedicated to giving reviews on beer along with news about Chicago based bars and restaurants.

Here is my review of The Beer Blog formulated by the four parameters which you can review by looking at my previous post...

Layout

When those of you in our New Media Class visit The Beer Blog you'll find that Tom keeps the blog decently organized thanks to the help of a template provided by Blogger which centers Tom's post in the middle of the web page to draw your eyes directly towards them. The choice of the color scheme seemed to be well thought out on Tom's part because the dark blue and tan complimented his choice of text color and gave off the sense of night life that comes from drinking at a bar. The only issue with the layout is that there are giant spaces between the pictures and the text in each post because I could see it frustrating those of you in our class or other internet users that are impatient when it comes to finding information on a web page due to Tom's blog forcing you to constantly scroll down while reading.

The layout of Tom's blog.

Writing
As those of you in our class actually get into reading Tom's posts on The Beer Blog you'll notice that there are very few or possibly not any spelling and punctuation errors. The writing also comes across as if Tom is a professionally artistic person through him describing the process of drinking a beer in a very poetic fashion. For example Tom describes to you that drinking a Hoppin' Frog Double Pumpkin is like being knocked out by a frog's delight.

Tom's use of poetic dialogue on his blog

Even though Tom's writing comes across showing his love for trying different types of beer it has a tendency to look very unprofessional based on the fact that he switches fonts right in the middle of his review instead of separating the different fonts between the sections where he gives an overview of a beer and the actual review. By being inconsistent with the fonts it feels as if Tom is rushing through his blog posts without taking the time to proof read his work to give all of you in our class and the rest of his audience the best experience while visiting his blog. In fact this issue may even cause people to go ahead and turn away.

Content
As those of you in our class explore deeper into The Beer Blog you will find that the content that Tom put on his blog when it comes to reviews of individual beers are consistent based on the fact that he sticks to the four categories that he focuses on when tasting a beer. However the content in these beer reviews could be stronger if he would space out the sections contained within each review better and would solve the issue with text mentioned in the writing section.

The categories Tom uses when reviewing a beer.

The biggest issue with the content exists in the news or reviews about Chicagoland bars and restaurants that Tom claims to be on his site. Honestly there are so few of these posts on bars and restaurants that those of you in our class looking at The Beer Blog will feel like Tom is off topic when he is not reviewing an individual beer. Due to this issue I feel like Tom would be better off just having his blog focus on reviewing individual beers or he should try to make one of the two posts required for our New Media Class about a bar or restaurant and the other should focus on reviewing a brand of beer.

Media

This is the biggest problem that those of you in our New Media Class will find with The Beer Blog. I'll give Tom credit for his blog having pictures of the individual beers he reviews in various blog posts but when it comes to hyperlinks they are no where to be found. Hyperlinks missing from Tom's blog is a serious problem that he needs to address immediately because he has all these extremely knowledgeable quotes, facts, and statistics that he uses to support his reviews but without linking this information to its original source it is hard to see Tom's blog as legitimate because it feels like he is pulling everything out of the ether.

Facts and statistics that can be found on Tom's blog

The Bottom Line

In conclusion I think that those of you in our Writing for New Media Class will find that Tom's blog could be as passionate about beer as Trevor's blog is on special effects make-up and it can be as informative as Andrea's blog if he follows my advice that derived from reviewing his blog. Based on this analysis Tom has the knowledge to make his blog truly something spectacular for the members of our class and the rest of the internet. He just needs to get a better grasp on the rules of the blogsphere.