Eat at Joe’s - Today’s review is all about JoeTech.com. Joe Tech is a website dedicated to technology of all shapes and sorts. Also this Joe likes running contests and giving crap away.

Joe Blogging? - Personally when I visit a website called “Joe Tech” I assume I’ll be reading lots of posts about the newest technologies. I like technology. I’m a bit of a nerd myself. I’m cool with admitting that. But for some reason three of the last five posts on the blog have absolutely nothing to do with technology. Nothing. If I’m subscribing to the RSS feed of a tech blog I expect some tech news. I don’t want to have to wait a week between posts about technology. There are too many posts on this blog about blogging. If you want to start a blog about blogging, start one (and I’ll happily ignore it). Don’t start a technology blog and then spend half your posts talking about blogs and how to make more money blogging. If this is supposed to be a blog about whatever strikes Joe’s fantasy, it’s got a serious branding issue.

Nerds Ahoy - There’s a billion people out on the net who claim to love technology. They laud themselves as nerds and then start drooling when they see the latest form before function offering from Apple. I have zero desire to read another post on how amazingly cool the Macbook Air is from someone who claims to be a nerd. It’s a piece of shit computer that happens to look cool. Joe Tech is not the kind of techie who lusts over shiny pieces of ass. This guy is a serious nerd and I love it. He posts articles about code, writes script and loves some real nerdy toys. This guy is no poser. You might learn a thing or two from his more technical articles.

I’m going to put tape over the right hand side of my screen - Who came up with this new trend? Two full columns of links, images and ads that no one who reads lots of blogs click on anymore dominate the entire right hand side of the screen. The good thing about non-intigrated ads is that they’re so easy to ignore. Joe Tech, I thank you for this. I only have to ignore your in-text ads and then I can simply close my right eye and enjoy your blog to my hearts content. This trend is so common I might take my right eye and freeze it in liquid nitrogen so if my left eye fails I have a backup. I’m not going to click on your ads, I don’t want to see the 30 blogs that you link to. Now please click on my ads.
Are you allergic to search boxes? - I know how to search individual websites on Google. I’m smart like that. Does that mean you can’t put a search box on your blog? Most people aren’t as smart as me.

Can’t spell “contest” without “con” - Favorite thing about Joe Tech? The guy runs contests non-stop and for no good reason (except for the link baiting). Here’s one to win $100 and here’s another to get Entrecard credits (and ad space in that part of the screen I’ll physically be unable to see when the surgery is complete). $100 is a nice prize. Everyone likes cash. I know lots of strippers who’d appreciate the money (the contest does pay in singles, right?). Now how would you find these prizes without clicking the “next” button a hundred times? No idea. There’s no link to ongoing contests or a way to search for “contest” on this blog. Gee, thanks. On second look the $100 contest is linked from the side bar but it doesn’t say “contest” or anything to differentiate it from the dozen of other links most visitors are going to ignore. Free idea of the day: give something relating to technology away. Buy a $20 mp3 player and give it away. Something, anything.

I don’t really hate it - I guess that’s the best thing I can say. I don’t hate this blog as much as I hate others. There’s nothing unique or compelling about it. The tech stuff is well done and comes from a place of authority missed in most tech blogs (including the big boys). But it’s mixed up in the general swamp of “make money blogging” posts and other random unimportant things. Joe’s got to do himself a favor and start a second “make money blogging” blog. Also for a guy who knows so much about computers he’s missing some major things on his blog that would make it way more usable and readable.