OFFICIAL
77.2
pretty good |
|
Content
|
| Quality : |
16.0 / 20 |
| Quantity : |
11.5 / 15 |
| Entertain : |
12.5 / 15 |
| Updates : |
7.0 / 10 |
| Exclusive : |
5.0 / 05 |
| Download : |
2.0 / 05 |
| sub-total : |
54.0 / 70 |
| Navigation |
| Easy : |
9.0 / 10 |
| Features : |
2.5 / 05 |
| Design : |
4.0 / 05 |
| sub-total : |
15.5 / 20 |
| Other |
| Temp Fill : |
7.7 / 10 |
| sub-total : |
7.7 / 10 |
Scoring Criteria New
New Update!
As of Aug 15th, 07, price of a site is no longer factored into the overall score/rank. |
|
| Editor: Spencer |
Initial Review: 05-28-04 |
|
1. Good-looking content.
2. Great network sites.
3. Site looks great.
1. Pictures are rather small.
2. Site needs to grow all around.
"A great beginning for a site, but it needs a little time to grow before it can stand on its own." |
|
|
Ahh, the Joy of Spex! Wait, what? Spex?? What happened to sex? I guess this clever play on words must mean the joy of spectacles - a.k.a. glasses. While I don't necessarily see the niche as something brand new, there's sure not a lot of sites out there that deal with it. Today's site isn't exactly new either, but it's on the smaller side for a paysite.
Also new today is the network that Joy of Spex is a part of. I've never heard of the Wild Rose Network before, but hey I'm always open to something new. The network is headed by Carol Cox, and features a lot of amateur sites it seems. There's currently over 40 sites included with your membership here, which is a huge bonus as a lot of these amateur sites have been around for years (and have a ton of content built up I'm sure).
Joy of Spex has a very clean-looking design and feel, and the navigation is pretty simple. Right on the first page, you get a list of their latest updates, as well as a list of their models. You'll also notice the list of models has two sections; the top list is models they've shot themselves I believe, while the bottom list has photos submitted to them from outsiders. There's 15 of their own models, and only eight in the "friends" section. Even considering all 23 models, the site feels pretty small compared to other similar sites. In time they should grow, but for now it may hurt them a bit.
Whoever shoots the pictures for the site has an interesting photography style. Thankfully it's a good thing, as the photos are usually pretty good quality-wise. The one negative here is that the pictures are pretty small at 720x540. Even most individual amateur sites these days are in the 800x600 range, so anything smaller just feels tiny to me. The quality is there, so I definitely wouldn't mind seeing these pictures enlarged quite a bit (even up to 1024x768 or so) to catch up to the norm these days.
They have videos as well, and how many each model has is listed on the main page. I wouldn't have minded seeing a section dedicated to just the videos, in case someone was just looking for them, but I was glad to see they let you know which models had them. All of the videos are broken up into clips, and play in your browser in Quicktime format. There's no download option that I saw, and no other quality options. The video looks to be a little larger than the standard 320x240, perhaps closer to 352x240. The quality looks good, although I did miss having it play in the player so I could enlarge it. The clips usually start out with an interview (about glasses, and other things), then get into some kind of action.
With the models they shoot, you get a ton of info on them (included specs on their "spex"). Other extras include a store (with a single DVD for sale right now), and the network obviously. You can get in for $20 a month, which isn't a bad price, especially when you consider all the extra sites you get access to. Since Joy of Spex isn't huge, it's a good candidate to be in a network like this, as the extra content makes the purchase price more worth it. The usually update once a week (although there's a couple weeks they missed), and if they continue that it can only help them. They definitely need to grow quite a bit to be a great site on their own, but they're off to a pretty good start. The only other things I'd like to see are larger photos, and better/more downloading/viewing options for the videos. Hopefully when we followup sometime down the road, the site will do much better.
|
