Okay all, I received four submissions from people that wanted to advertise their lenses for free for a week. I was a little surprised that the interest was that low for a free competition, but hey, we are just getting started.

Contest Changes : After some thought, I’m not going to offer the spots in the profile for rent after all. The only way to get on the profile will be to submit your lens to Lens of the Week and win.

Since there were only 4 contestents this week, and I happen to have 4 open slots so everyone’s a winner this week!

Here’s a brief ‘technical’ review of each. I’m not going to comment on subject matter in these reviews because that is totally subjective. If you don’t like baseball cards you probably will never like baseball cards. However, if I can point out a few things that might make the lens read better or rank better then we’ve all learned something useful.

Lens 1 – Tour of St. George Utah – Submitted by Damon

Good:

Damon uses the new(ish) SquidZipper format which has been recently revamped and is looking quite slick. If you haven’t tried it out yet, do.

Tons of awesome pictures, good use of various picture sizes through out. This keeps the eyes ‘busy’ and you never feel ‘bored’ right off the bat. Alt text is also used in the HTML of all the images outside of polaroid modules, which is good.

There are very useful links spread through the content of the lens pointing to other lenses, official sites, etc. These natural ‘jumping off points can add some good value.

Ideas for improvement:

I kind of guessed that St. George was in Utah but outside of the Lens Title itself, you don’t see ‘Utah’ used in the copy anywhere until quite a ways down the lens. In a geographic lens, I’ve found including the state name reasonably often helps google ‘associate’ a zip or city with a particular state.

The Titles of some of the modules aren’t quite as descriptive as I personally like in some cases. For example, instead of ‘Hotels’ it could be ‘The Best Hotels in St. George, Utah’.

I think this lens could really use a google map module well that shows the town, gorge, and national park as destinations on it. I (being a farm boy from kansas who now lives in the south) have never been to utah and am not too familiar with the geography. I think a maps module could help a ton to show all these cool places that are being showcased.

Lens 2 – 60 Day Squidoo Challenge – Submitted by I.C. Jackson

Good:

This lens has a very cool concept behind it and it is presented very well as a whole. A lens a Day for 60 days and a support network behind it – excellent.

The ‘updates’ area is really nice as a ‘journal’ of your 60 day experience so far. It’s probably due for an update but I think it really helps to keep the reader engaged.

Liberal links to other lenses and sites that provide information and re-inforce your ideas is very good.

Ideas for Improvement:

I would move the ‘goal’ module (most important thing module) up closer to the top of the lens. It is well written and makes an impact. It should be near the top.

More descriptive module titles and a little bit better organization would really help me find my way around the lens. For example, having the Goal, then recent updates (cool use of CSS on those by the way), then the rules/regs, then the personal journal and guest books etc would make it easier to find what you wanted. In a lens with this many modules, a full table of contents module right at the top could help also.

How about a link plexo with all the participants (or people that have completed the challenge) that links to their bios?

Lens 3 – Resources for Enlightenment – by Alban

Good:

Good use of different modules to break the lens up a bit.

The individual modules are very well formatted with good use of bold text and smaller paragraphs.

There is a lot of information presented and a bunch of links to other resources including videos etc.

Ideas for improvement:

While packed full of information, there is so much information presented in one place that a casual visitor could be a little overwhelmed. Whenever the table of contents is an entire screen long, it becomes a little tough to find what you need.

It might be worth considering turning all of the information on specific people (eckard, Toll, Oprah, etc.) into their own lenses that are linked to from this lens (i.e. Oprah on enlightenment).

A few of the modules towards the end of the lens lose focus a bit. Why is there a module of e-book readers at the end of the lens?

Lens 4 - Legally Blind Golfer by Joan

Good:

Exceptionally cool and unique story. There are a ton of legally blind people out there and a lot of people don’t realize it.

Good Resources for both golfers and legally blind people. Links are also used pretty well in the content of the lens.

Modules are broken up into unique ideas and presented well.

ideas for improvement:

Remove the ‘google cache date’ and the Jelly Belly banner at the bottom of the lens. They aren’t really on-topic. The other ‘family’ lenses are a good touch but I’d move them down a bit. The twitter module isn’t just about golf and a little off topic so I’d probably think about dropping that as well.

Your tags are off to a pretty good start but could use some more general tags to get you more exposure. I’d probably throw in ones like ‘inspiration’ ‘hero’ ’sports’ ‘athlete’ etc.

Does he use any special equipment or clubs? He used to be a club professional, what kind of golfing equipmment does he use and why? You could add a bunch of subtle sales items in the lens that would improve the content even more.

Conclusion

Overall, I was incredibly impressed by the quality of this first weeks entrants. There really were no major shortfalls in any of the lenses and at times I had to stretch a bit to come up with ideas for improvement.

Make sure and leave a comment on this post with your lens if you want to be in the running for next week’s Lens of the Week!