I Review You

Have you ever wondered if that web software works well? You better check MyTestBox. MyTestBox is a web software review site.

Design

There are a lot of pros on the MyTestBox design. I like the way it’s “all there”. The three columns theme works great, with the main sections right on top of it. Categories and Archives pop in a first glance, while the Popular and Recent Posts show up later, after you’ve scrolled through a post or two. I wonder why the subscrition options are separated. At first, I thought “shouldn’t there be a RSS icon near the subscription-by-email option?”, but, when you think about it, feedreaders usually look for the famous little orange icon, while the ones who want to subscribe by email look for a form field. Getting it a bit afar from the search field is a great option. I’m no fan of the “black-gray-primary color” style, but I can’t argue it suits perfectly the MyTestBox theme. It does get things apart. “Ok, here’s the main post, here’s the categories menu”, you think. So: it works.

Content

It was a bit back when Mircea Goia first contacted me about writing a review for MTB, so I’ve been reading the site for a while now. It’s so hard to highlight two or three posts from this site. The reviews are incredibly exhaustive, although they are very objective. Each review comes with an installation/configuration guide and a bit of background on the softwares. Their choices for what to review are great: (links lead directly to the reviews) open source softwares range from the new e-commerce soft Magento to well established scripts like WordPress; and - if someone thinks that OS is the only way - there are reviews on paid products like AbleSpace and AbleDating (social network/dating software).

The Widget
One of the things I love about this widget is its name. It’s THE Widget. The MyTestBox.com Widget displays the latest web software reviews on your site. It’s easy to configure and to install. A good thing about it is that you don’t have to use a WordPress based site to display it, you can use it in whatever webpage system you want. If you use WordPress, just download and install the plug-in. If not, just tweek the configuration on The Widget page, copy and paste the code on your site and you’re done.

My Mobile Adventures won this free review from our contest. Stay tuned for the next one!

The first time I got on Tink’s site was via Entrecard. I thought it was awkward. A really wide banner with a small and simple logo picture, posts in huge font sizes and all this general idea of “big simplicity”. And then I saw its title. That explains the…

Design

MMA is a blog optimized to be seen on cellphones (mobile anyone?), so there you go: big fonts, not too complex imagery to be loaded, primary colors. It all makes sense if you forget you may be browsing the site on a PC/Mac. (if you still want to read the blog on a big screen, reduce the font size twice, it will be a perfect fit)

The primary colors of the design are great for these small screens on smartphones. It’s easy to suffer from low contrast while browsing on them, so it’s a great call.

Content

My Mobile Adventures is a travel blog, a tourist journal. Tink claims the posts place are most oftenly SW Florida, Orlando and New York. Sometimes, something outside of those boundaries does pop up. Like ranting from texting on a non-smartphone, Tink, be sure you’re not the only one that hates that.

Small tips on blog tools also helps keeping the freshness of her blog: talking about RSS or about a Photobucket feature make a good break from the usual pictures and travel updates. Also, I’m a big fan of people that bring some good tips about something that they don’t talk about usually. It helps to spread the word out of the niche.

Her repertoire of photos is just great. The shore pictures deserve a honor mention.

What else deserves a mention is the destruction caused by MMA on our contest. Competing against 10 bloggers, Tink got 68% of the votes. Yeah, 68%. That’s what I call a major victory.

Congratulations, Tink!