nerd’s eye view

Travelblog Site Review: My Life of Travel

June 29, 2008 – 4:55 pm | by nerd's eye view

Disclaimer: The folks that run My Life of Travel paid me to review their site. I was on the fence, but an email exchange in which we agreed that payment for a review did not guarantee a good review put my hesitations at rest. For the opportunity to review their site and their purchase of an ad link, we say this: Thanks for supporting Nerd’s Eye View!

Face it, there are a zillion different travelblog host sites. I’m staggered by the sheer quantity of them and it seems that every other week a new one pops up. They all seem to be offering similar things - photo albums, journal entries, friends, and some have mapping.

Because there are so many, this isn’t a comparison. It’s just a straight review of My Life of Travel. I looked for a few specific things - how easy is it to set up, how does the content look, is the site easy to navigate, what do I think of the bells and whistles..etc. Here goes: 

Setup: Yup, it’s a breeze. You set up the log in, you’re good to go. There is absolutely nothing difficult about setting up your blog. Once you’ve got your login activated, you create a journal for your trip - P&J Vietnam Cambodia 08 for example - and then, you write the entries. Voila. You’re blogging. Thumbs up.

Photo albums: Pictures are priceless when you’re telling a travel story, we all want them. Here’s the thing, though… if you’ve got your laptop with you, it’s easy to pick your photos, do some resizing, park them all in a handy upload folder, and use the bulk uploader.

But what if you’re at an Internet cafe downloading your full size images from your flash card? You can’t use the bulk uploader - it’s not your machine - and your files are huge. Upload is slow, your files aren’t organized, yadda yadda. Granted, this isn’t a problem for My Life in Travel ONLY, it’s an issue with every site.

But even in an ideal situation, I didn’t love the uploader. At first,  I thought the interface was clunky and slow, but it’s not, I just wasn’t using it correctly. I found the tool a bit counterintuitive - a few simple instructions on the page would really help here.

Still, once the photos are up, the presentation is really nice. One thumb up (for presentation) one down (for use).

Design: I can’t stand it when I can’t read a site. I won’t spend one single minute looking at text that isn’t readable. My Life In Travel uses a clean, easy on the eyes presentation that meets my exacting (annoying) standards. No irritating flashy bits, no crazy color text on crazy color backgrounds, it’s all good. Cute icons, easy to read text, nice headline, hey, I even like the logo. Thumbs up.

Mapping: I’m a sucker for a map. I like the per-trip mapping feature that places a map pin and a link to the appropriate journal entry. It’s cool to click on the map and go to the entry. The animation, though? Honestly, I’m not sure why I need to see the map move. The route is marked out, I can see the journal entries, I can click on them, I’m good with that. Plus, there doesn’t seem to be a way to make the animation stop, it just plays until it’s done, and when it’s playing, I can’t click in on a destination to see what’s there. One thumb up (for geo-located entries) one down (for not being able to control the animation).

Other features:

• Being able to import your email address book from a series of other programs? Thumbs up, super handy!
• Integrated email? “Hey mom, I updated the blog, there are new pictures, go look!” Thumbs up.
• Featured members? The idea is to showcase the best journals on the site, but in practice, there’s no clear arbiter of quality - some featured members I clicked on had little more than one or two blurry photos. I like the idea of featured content, but the execution? Not happening. The featured members are featured, all right, but it’s not clear why. (Disclaimer: I am an absolute TYRANT about content, I don’t care if it’s “just blogging.”  You are really happy that I am not your editor.) Thumbs down.
• Travel buddies and friends? Hey, I loves me the social web, so even though I’m not using this particular site, anything that makes it possible to take your online world offline and meet fabulous travelers in person I am 100% for. Use it and love it. Thumbs up.
• Navigation? Wow, there are a lot of buttons and icons on these pages. The page isn’t cluttered, but I couldn’t be sure what’s clickable and what’s not. I found that frustrating.  There are a lot of additional clicky steps to get where you’re going. Thumbs down.
  

General conclusions:

Let’s get this out of the way first. If you have ambitions to be a professional writer/blogger, you should not be using a third party host for your blog. You should have your own domain - myname.com or something cute, like, oh, Nerd’s Eye View (dot com) or I dunno, My Excellent Adventure (dot com), or whatever and it should be uniquely yours. I’m not saying you shouldn’t submit your writing for publication to network sites, you go right ahead. I’m saying that for your own writing, if you intend to go pro, you should get a domain, already, it’s, like 6 bucks. It’s a branding thing. Look it up.

With all that in mind…here are my conclusions. My Life of Travel is a perfectly fine place to blog your GAP year, RTW adventure, or regular travels.  I like the look a lot. I like the selection of features, they’re good ones - but they aren’t as easy to use as they could be. I’d should reiterate that a lot of the trouble with the photo interface is true for ANY site, not just My Life of Travel - the best photo albums come from those who take time offline to do the prep work.

Should you host your blog there? I’d have to dig into the competition before I could say, plus, hey, I’m hosted on my own domain, so there’s that. You’ve got my pros and cons - go check it out for yourself.

If you have thoughts on the idea of sponsored posts, let me know. It’s important to me that the integrity of Nerd’s Eye View stays intact.