phosita news - stellar review

One of my favorite blog sites is The Weblog Review.  I often use the reviews as a starting off point to new blogs to add to my reading list and blogroll.  The reviews range from the sublime to the profound and from the erudite to the crude.  To give you a sense of the “tone” of The Weblog Review, this snippet from their About page should give some insight:

But what about lazy people someone asked. What about the people that only want to read the best sites out there and don't want to read a review of the site? This question kind of defeated the purpose of the reviews he thought, but then he realized the answer. A rating system. But not just by the reviewer, but by the people that read the reviews and the sites. Everyone knows that one person may love a site, but ten might hate it. Or even vise versa. Having people rate the sites would be very helpful.

Fortunately, we were reviewed this week by the very busy reviewers of The Weblog Review  and PHOSITA received a very nice and quite complimentary review from ODAAT.

This is my first experience of a “weblawg” (a weblog about law, dummie) and I was quite looking forward to it. After a while, reviewing blogs about somebody’s dog dying last week gets a bit dull and new subject matter always cheers me up.

So I clicked on the link and found a well constructed blog running off Movable Type. It is well put together and has a nice tidy titlebar at the top (which it looks like they have designed themselves) and the usual two columns. Apart from the title bar (which contains a useful subtitle: “A "blawg" (legal blog) blogging intellectual property legal issues of interest: patent, copyright and trademark law!”), you can also find out more about the blog by reading the little explanation in the sidebar about the blog and the company behind it. This was the first idea I had that actually this blog might be accessible to me (i.e. a complete layman with regards to law, patents etc.) It’s pretty nice that they have bothered to make it accessible- usually specialist weblogs are just that- great for those in to the subject, but a waste of time to everyone else. Not so with this blog.

I admit it. I am in to leftfield, counter-culture, “arty” kind of things as a rule. Law is not my thing at all in the usual course of events. So I ploughed in to the content with some trepidation. However I was quite amazed that I found a lot of the articles pretty interesting and informative. Most were about subjects which I have some experience of (the world of intellectual property is basically about new stuff, whether it be computers, the web, music, or the slightly more complex world of er…single-wall-nanotubes, whatever they are). I read through the front page and only found one or two articles which didn’t engage me at all, so ventured forth in to the archives with some optimism.

There are a lot of archives – as the blog has multiple authors, there is quite a high density of posts going back to January 2004. Having different authors also ensures that there are a wide variety of posts right the way through though. Of those that really grabbed my attention, there was one about sampling in rap music, and another about a cool new technology which (kind of) makes things invisible. I think there is something for everyone here though, at least everyone who pays attention to the world around them- there is quite a lot about blogging for example.

I have scored this blog highly, partly because it is visually sound and well constructed. But a far greater achievement, I think, is to turn a subject as (potentially) terminably dull as Intellectual Property, and making it engaging, accessible and informative to someone like me who had no prior knowledge or interest. Obviously anyone in the field will find the outstanding research and points raised incredibly helpful, but casual browsers and Google searchers will also find a lot of interest here too.

Thanks ODAAT!