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Russpd - Scribnia.com

Russpd

Member since 2009-02-18 18:10:10

About Me:I helped start Scribnia with the goal of being able to express my unadulterated love for Bill Simmons. Now I have a forum to do so!

Russpd's Reviews

Russpd has not reviewed any authors! Check back later after has had a chance to submit some ratings.

Review of Matt Loede

Avg. rating

4

Great for headlines poor for analysis

June 24, 2009

Living in Boston, I always struggle finding breaking
news about the Bengals without the name Chad Johnson (i
mean Ocho Cinco). Bengals Gab is great for headlines
and Matt is the most frequent poster. However, I would
love to get more than just headlines and hear more
analysis from him.

Review of Leo Babauta

Avg. rating

4

Nothing too innovative

June 15, 2009

I am a bit surprised at the meteoric rise of Leo
Babauta. Apparently, he started his blog a year ago
and it is now in the Technorati 100. This is certainly
impressive but I don't find any of his ideas to be that
earth shattering. He recites a lot of the easy ways to
increase productivity but what I respect so much about
Tim Ferriss is that Ferriss is constantly throwing
himself into interesting life experiments. This is just
not the case with Babauta. I expected Zen Habit to lay
out a novel framework for enhancing productivity and
happiness but this is just not the case. I love
productivity blogs so I will continue reading Leo and
hope to change my opinion.

1 / 1 found this review helpful:

Review of Michael Arrington

Avg. rating

8

Very enviable job done well

June 08, 2009

On the surface, Michael Arrington has one of the most
enviable jobs in the world. He runs the largest tech
blog with millions of readers every day and is privy to
every new Internet or technology release. However, a
few incidents last year highlighted the negatives of
his job. Apparently, he has received numerous threats
before and there was an incident with a woman spitting
on him a conference.

I gained a lot of respect for the way that Michael
handled these events and I think the time he took away
from Techcrunch allowed him to come back with a renewed
zeal for his work. Some might call him arrogant (and
perhaps its true) but he has set the tone for
Techcrunch and made them one of the largest blogs in
the world.

Review of Matthew King

Avg. rating

9

Makes me regret not going to Dorcester

June 01, 2009

I used to live in Boston and never went to Dorcester
(probably because I had heard that it was dirty and had
nothing work seeing). However, I realize now the error
in my ways after reading this fantastic blog.

The Dot Matrix is a cool blend of local history and
local pride that you don't see today. People are so
transient nowadays that its hard for us to develop any
real attachment with a particular place. I love how the
author refutes Boston resident's elitist notions toward
Dorcester without flinching. He is truly proud in the
Dot

3 / 3 found this review helpful:

Review of Josh Gans

Avg. rating

7

Not as humorous as I anticipated, but asks probing
questions

May 27, 2009

One of our new users Adam P told me about Josh Gans's
sports blog. I got a chance to check it out and was
pretty impressed though not for reasons that Adam
brought up in his review. In particular, I liked the
discussion that Josh has on steroids in baseball and
the lively discussion that it generated.

I think this is a great blog for any avid Boston
sports fan. I don't follow the Red Sox (being a
Cincinnati Reds fan) but for BoSox fans, this is a good
addition to your daily read.

3 / 3 found this review helpful:

Review of Danny Brown

Avg. rating

8

Exemplifies "building a community" around blog

May 06, 2009

Danny has a much different style than many PR and
social media bloggers. He asks deep and interesting
questions rather than spoon-feeding reader with advice
and his experiences. More often than not, Danny's post
will have a challenge to think about what type of
marketer you are, when should you quit, and even what
is a hero. This strategy wouldn't work for most
bloggers but Danny is fortunate enough to have a very
strong community which immediately chimes in. Danny
does an excellent job of fostering debate by responding
to the comments very quickly.

Overall, a cool experiment in blogging and its been
fun participating in it.

2 / 2 found this review helpful:

Review of Adrian Grabicki

Avg. rating

7

Makes me wish I wasn't freezing in Boston...

April 24, 2009

Adrian is lucky enough to spend the early spring months
in Saudi Arabia where the temperature is warm (unlike
Boston where its April and still freezing). He writes
about the cultural differences of living in Saudi
Arabia, a country where women dress extremely
conservatively and alcohol is not served. Luckily, you
can follow Adrian as he travels throughout the Middle
East and recounts his adventures(my favorite Beirut).
The Middle East was never high on my list of travel
destinations but after reading Adrian's blog I am
almost ready to buy my ticket to Beirut.

1 / 1 found this review helpful:

Review of Bob Gilbreath

Avg. rating

9

The real deal

April 23, 2009

There are a number of marketing blogs on the Internet
written by those without any formal training in
marketing. Gilbreath is completely different. As a
former brand manager for P&G (a company with a history
of training innovative minds), Gilbreath has the
experience to be taken very seriously. One thing that I
really enjoy about his writing is that it is clear that
he breathes and lives marketing. He is constantly on
the lookout for good marketing techniques whether he is
at the airport or exploring Twitter. Also, there is an
experimental element to his blog. I love the post when
he actually uses the "Featured Users" section on
Twitter as an attempt to determine whether it is a
cost-effective way of generating followers. Most
marketing blogs give broad advice but real marketing is
about quantifiably showing how the tactics you use help
you reach customers more and increase the likelihood
they will make a purchasing decision. Gilbreath always
seems to keep this in mind even when discussing
services like Twitter.

Review of Stuart Foster

Avg. rating

9

Authentic passion for social media

April 23, 2009

I first encountered Stuart Foster not through his blog,
The Lost Jacket, but through Mashable and also through
his comments on other blogs. Many social media experts
confine their insight and writing to their blog but
Stuart is very active in the comment section of other
blogs and this only confirms how authentic his love for
social media is. I think Stuart's strength is
understanding how every company today can use social
media to their advantage. He gives good general advice
and he would be a great consultant for a brick and
mortar enterprise that wanted to dabble in social
media.

Like all bloggers, he is infatuated with Twitter and
for good reason since its an awesome and game-changing
service. But there are a a lot of other cool
developments in social media (e.x. Scribnia!) and
sometimes I long for a pre-Twitter world.

4 / 4 found this review helpful:

Review of Jason Cohen

Avg. rating

9

Blog with a sense of community

April 22, 2009

I often comment on the blogs that I read regularly and
most of the time the author writes a brief response but
does not fully address the point that I am making. I
had a great experience recently while debating an
interesting point on his blog. Jason wrote a piece
entitled Underbelly: What Haughty Startup Bloggers
Don't Tell You. His post cogently expressed some of
the frustrations that I have with startup blogs: you
rarely get a sense of the founders being human. They
shower you with advice but rarely tell you about the
times where they were unsure about decisions. Jason
wrote a fantastic piece echoing the sentiments that I
(and almost every founder) experience.

I responded in the comment section and pushed him a
bit. I asked whether he would consider writing a piece
like this while his company was starting up and
publicly confess his emotions in real time rather than
a few years later. Jason responded with a long and
thoughtful response about why this was not a good idea
(you'll have to read the article and the conversation
at his blog). I am always impressed when authors
respond to comments from their readers and especially
when they write back something insightful and
interesting. Kudos to Jason for making the experiences
of his readers that much better.

1 / 1 found this review helpful:

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