OFFICIAL
78.8
pretty good |
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Content
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| Quality : |
17.0 / 20 |
| Quantity : |
13.0 / 15 |
| Entertain : |
12.5 / 15 |
| Updates : |
8.0 / 10 |
| Exclusive : |
5.0 / 05 |
| Download : |
2.5 / 05 |
| sub-total : |
58.0 / 70 |
| Navigation |
| Easy : |
7.0 / 10 |
| Features : |
2.0 / 05 |
| Design : |
3.0 / 05 |
| sub-total : |
12.0 / 20 |
| Other |
| Temp Fill : |
7.8 / 10 |
| sub-total : |
7.8 / 10 |
Scoring Criteria New
New Update!
As of Aug 15th, 07, price of a site is no longer factored into the overall score/rank. |
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1. Nice network.
2. Good update schedule (I think).
3. Very nice-looking pictures.
1. No cam shows.
2. No diary.
3. Videos are difficult to find.
"She offers a good bit of content at a decent price here, though I wouldn't mind a few more extras." |
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Sing with me everybody!, "Brandi for me, and Brandi 4 U. Let's eat Brandi in my big brown shoe..." Anybody else remember the Thanksgiving Song?? Hopefully so ;-) Brandi4U is the amateur site of our star, Brandi. She's a 40-something petite brunette who apparently loves missionary and doggy best. Her site is part of the Wild Rose Network, which kinda crept out of nowhere a few months back. They offer up some great amateur sites for one low price, and it's a must see if you're into these individual's sites. You pay $20 to get into one girl's site anyway, so might as well join here and get more for your money.
Her member's page is pretty simple, and I'm starting to notice a theme of white all around the site. She has her latest updates in one column, and starts a menu of sorts in another. They blend together a bit, and it took me a minute to figure out where to click exactly to get to some galleries. Towards the bottom, there's a link to her galleries which will get you there.
Besides her latest few sets, the gallery section is divided up into years. After you pick a year, you get a thumb of each gallery from that year. It appears that each set is divided up into three parts. I think they're all added at the same time, and that this is her way of putting them on separate pages. It does make for easy browsing if you want to jump right to the end of a gallery. I wanted to check out if the pages always had a different number of thumbs on them, and in the process was surprised just how uniform everything is. A good majority of her pages all have 28 pics on them, while a few jump up to 32. She must have larger galleries, and picks the best 28 for each page or something. They're all just too similar.
The pictures themselves are actually pretty decent. Amateurs usually have a lighting problem, or a picture size problem, but not Brandi. Her photos are larger than usual at 900x675 or 1024x768. Some of the older ones drop down to 800x600, which seems to be the amateur industry's standard. The pictures were all bright and clear, which is a great change. The one thing I did notice, that I mentioned earlier, is that there's a lot of white backgrounds in her sets (and even on her website). I'm not sure if that's on purpose, or if she just has white walls where she shoots. The outdoor ones are a nice change with blue or green in the background to provide a fresh look.
Some of her galleries have video clips listed on the last page of them, while they all can be seen on her video clips page accessible from the front page. The videos are all in Windows Media format, and usually are broken up into minute-long clips. Specs are average at 320x240 and 250kbps. The videos don't look quite as good as the pictures did. They're definitely watchable, but not as clear as I would have hoped. Also, a lot of them had this glowing white feeling, probably from the lights they were using. The thumbnail representation was not what you saw on the video, rather it was a thumb taken from the photoset.
There's a few extras to check out including a store, daily photo, stories, jokes/random thoughts (aka chronicles), and some e-zines. This is in addition to the main extra content found in the form of the Wild Rose Network. The only few things I see missing are webcam shows, and dates on her galleries. I have no idea how often she updates, except that there have been almost 40 updates so far this year, which seems like a decent schedule to me.
I like the photo sets on Brandi's site a lot, even with the repetitive backgrounds. The quality and amount are better than a lot of amateur's sites. The videos didn't look quite as good, but at least they were available and had lots of hardcore. The site is priced well at $20 a month, and gets you access to lots of amateur content. I can't help but like the site, and suggest if you like Brandi to check it out yourself.
| 1st Follow-Up Review |
Review: 03-24-06 |
While things initially look pretty similiar around here (photo section has grown nicely, pictures still look pretty good, etc), we all seemed to notice that we didn't see a video section anymore. I thought they were gone completely for a while, but it turns out you can find them at the end of her photo galleries if they're available. I'd much prefer to have them in their own section as it's really hard to find them with the current setup. There's still no real interaction here via a cam show or diary, but you do get access to all her content and the Wild Rose network that should keep you busy for a while. Hopefully in time she can add a few more extras to round her site out, as the content count is pretty good here.
Score increased from 78.3 to 78.8.
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