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The Random Forest is a personal blog that covers bits of randomness in a fashoin similar to that of our own techne-eikon. There isn’t a lot of content there yet, but what is there struck me as well written, and worth reading and/or keeping an eye on. A especially like his report on his AdWords experiment, it’s honest and detailed, always a good thing for those wishing to learn from other’s experiences.
On the design side, the blog needs a little work. The basic design is clean and easy to use. Unfortunately, there are two gotchas that should be addressed. The first is that the blog is wider than 1024 px. This could be simply a whupsie in the css, as has happened to me on occasion, or it could be something else. Either way, it doesn’t work, and spoils the professionalism of the design. The other is the link color in the side bar. Bright blue on another blue, and in a smallish font size, does not make for easy browsing. Either change the link color to something that will contrast better with the background, change the background.
My other beef is the use of Google Adsense ads. I have no objection to ads on a blog, in fact I heartily endorse it! I do, however, object to the very large ad spots placed between the top three posts on the front page. They are, IMHO, too intrusive, obscuring the content, at least on a psychological level. But that’s just a personal peeve of mine. If they are working, and making him a bit of $$, who am I to nay-say it?
Overall, The Random Forest strikes me as a nice read, especially if you’re tired of the never ending stream of “Authority” blogs. It’s nice to know that there are normal people around, people who aren’t trying to continually upsell you on their latest authority ebook, etc. etc. ad naseum…
Tuesday, April 15th, 2008 at 3:29 pmand is filed under Reviews. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.
Hey, thanks for the honest review. I promise I will write back about your site on my blog very soon. As for the comments, I was due to start making a few changes and this gave me the motivation to start so I have now made the blog 1024 wide and tried to address the adsense issue. To be honest I make next to nothing from Adsense. Even on days when I get a few hundred visitors no one clicks on them! When I write about your blog do you want a review or just a post mentioning that you honestly reviewed me? I have subscribed to your RSS so should be back often.
Awesome, thanks! For the review, whatever you feel like saying or doing is fine with me. If a review, honesty is good
I can take it! The new width works well (just checked it), and as for adsense, most people make pennies if they are lucky. One of my other sites sees anywhere from 150-500 visitors a day, yet seldome makes more than a dollar or so. Most days it's more along the lines of 40 cents… As you may have guessed, I'm not really in this for the money, I do other things for that, heh. Cheers, Marc