I always thought that MEGATechNews had the potential to be a great little spot for quality bite sized chunks of tech news on a variety of topics, from computers to consumer electronics to weird tech that captures the imagination. While the site has been really good at being a repository of news posts for all the great sites that link back to the content produced at Futurelooks, it wasn’t until I decided to post a story about a “finger mouse” from COMPUTEX 2007 that it dawned on me that one day, MEGATechNews could be as great, if not greater, than Futurelooks. That story was actually DUGG to the front page on DIGG. However, being one man with all my time devoted to Futurelooks made it impossible for me to create the quality of content I wanted to maintain at MEGATechNews. Then at CES 2011 this year, things started looking up for the future of the site.

Deals Are Really Made at CES

During the week of CES this year, we actually posted a few things that totally fit the gadget focus of MEGATechNews and sent it out to our affiliate sites. The response was fantastic as over night, traffic tripled on the little site that no one really looked at. I had also floated out bids to have some direct ads finance the growth of the site and long term supporter of Futurelooks, ZALMAN, stepped up as our first advertiser. You can see the banner in the 728×90 spot at the top so make sure you check out the great products they make.

In the meantime I’m working on closing other deals that will ensure that we get to grow MEGATechNews and give it the love it deserves. But the biggest competitive advantage that MEGATechNews has is the 10 years of relationships that I’ve built at Futurelooks. While many sites fail within the first year, this one has almost everything it needs to succeed.

The “Kwan” Factor

Michael has worked with me for a very long time and he’s written for many tech related sites including MEGATEchNews and Futurelooks where he specializes in mobile products including laptops and phones and gadgets. He is known for a no nonsense, straight to the point evaluation style that would really work well for this new site. Something that he could continue developing as the new Managing Editor. While he is best known as a “freelance” writer, I knew that he was perfect for this post when he finally liked it and put a ring on his long time sweet heart. Clearly he’s not just a freelancer that hops around. He could commit and that was the last thing on my checklist before making an offer.

If you want to write for a fresh new gadget blog, you might want to keep an eye on MEGATechNews for your chance to shine soon!

Like It. Follow It. Subscribe to It.

Michael’s first post as “The Man” gives us all the things we need to keep up with MEGATechNews. We’ve given it the power of Twitter, Facebook and soon YouTube. So make sure you go out and social media up with the new site. Give him all the support that you’ve been giving Futurelooks and make sure you let him know every day that he’s doing a fantastic job because at the end of the day, I might be around in the background, but this is his ship. I’m just the the “Number One” to his “Jean Luc Picard” on this voyage.

Futurelooks – Digital Lifestyle and Technology for the Masses. Home to reviews and articles on cool electronics, computer hardware and gadgets.

2010 has been a very busy year for me as many of you know. Those of you that follow me on Twitter and Facebook have been getting the play by play while the blog has sat dormant for most of 2010 until now. But there was a lot that kept me away.

I found out I was going to be a father and then in August of last year, my beautiful baby daughter, Alexis, came into the world. Yes, she does have a Twitter Account, naturally. I’m changing a lot of diapers these days and that’s in addition to my day to day duties running Futurelooks.  Around the same time she came into the world, we also had to deal with the tragic loss of her grandmother, her mom’s mom, who finally succumbed to cancer.

Before that, I was leaving my pregnant wife, who at the time, could have actually popped at anytime, and headed off to COMPUTEX in Taipei. Thankfully, Alexis didn’t pop out while I was in Taipei. Those of you on Twitter seemed to enjoy my never ending stream of pics and short messages about where I was and what I was seeing in one of the coolest cities in the world.

Luckily, we’ve been taken care of by a company called EZP.NET that specializes in FAST, FINELY TUNED and RELIABLE web hosting. The best part of this is that he’s basically my neighbour. I really owe Shane and his team for bailing us out.

Yes, this past year has been full of life altering experiences. And for 2011 I’m hoping that I’ll be able to share a lot more as I’ve made a promise to start updating my blog again right after CES 2011 which I can’t believe ended just a little over a week ago. It was definitely something to blog about as I won the Build Your Own PC Race for Charity which takes place every year. I’ve come in second and fourth before but I’ve never won. What a GREAT way to kick off 2011. The best part is that the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children will get $10,000 US and 30 computers. I’ve got a post coming with some more pics and vids for you to enjoy a bit later.

I really hope the momentum keeps going for the rest of 2011 as I work on bringing Futurelooks back to its former glory and begin plans to kick MEGATechNews into high gear. My little side project will finally get the funding it needs and will have the talents of the formerly non-committal, freelancing writer, Michael Kwan, at the helm. Yes, his life is about to change too in 2011. Let’s just say he liked it so he put a ring on it

Well, enough rambling from me. What’s up with everyone for 2011? Let me know what’s happening!

I was cruising by my blog the other day and realized that I haven’t updated here in over a month. I’m sorry for the lack of updates. It appears that Twitter has ruined me due to the instant gratification provided by a simple tweet out to my followers. I’ve also been quite busy with Futurelooks. As you may have noticed, there is a ton of new content over there and I hope you have a chance to head there and enjoy it. I will try to update here a little more often.

Yes, the picture above is me once again taking down something that is too large for a regular human being. They call it “Bob’s Big Burger”. I had it at some weird eatery that I’ve forgotten the name of while in Fort Saskatchewan for Fragapalooza. The menu”Dared Me to Finish It” so of course I finished it. There is apparently a bigger burger at some dinner which I will need to try next year.

Here are a few noteworthy points about what I’ve been up to in the last while…

Fragapalooza 2009

Fragapalooza is one of the first official LAN Parties I’d ever been to. It is also one of Canada’s longest running events of its kind. Sure, I’ve been to LAN Parties in the past. Heck, I’ve even been to LAN parties before LANs were LANs and we still used modems and phone lines. However, nothing prepared me for being sealed up in a room with nearly 400 gamers for three days and sleeping on Astro Turf: The itchiest substance ever!

The event took place this past August in sleepy Fort Saskatchewan, Alberta. Jason Landals, Eric Garay, Michael Kwan and myself made the trek out to the middle of nowhere to spread good cheer by handing out prizes and schmoozing with Futurelooks’ adoring fans that came out from all over Canada and even across the border from the US. We even volunteered Michael to be the “Randy Jackson” at the Rock Band Competition as one of the judges.

Even though I don’t really game (except for playing Portal and Command and Conquer 3) everyone had a fantastic time. It was really great to rub shoulders with PC hardware enthusiasts across the land and we look forward to returning to Alberta for Fragapalooza 2010 next year.

For more coverage from the event including our exclusive videos, check out our coverage at Futurelooks. Dont’ forget to check out our YouTube Channel as well.

Taking My Name Back

Because StephenFung.com wasn’t available, I had to settle for StephenFung.net. However, I never gave up hope of some day owning that URL. So I waited, and waited and waited till the squatter stopped renewing the name. After putting in my bid with GoDaddy, I won my URL for a measly $10. Hoorah!

So from now on, you can either go to StephenFung.com or StephenFung.net to come to my blog

Watching People Pick Up Big Weights

A couple weeks ago, I went up to Lake Country, BC Canada (somewhere near Kelowna) with Kelly “The Machine” Frankson to watch her compete in a local Olympic Weightlifting event known as the Ogopogo Open. Here’s a video of her performance…

Kelly did extremely well and won her weight class and the overall women’s title at the event. We were both rather amused by the fact that the women’s overall trophy had some “dude” on it. Kelly is back in San Jose right now training with some members of the US Olympic team. She also recently launched a nutrition site called Fit4YouNutrition where you can learn how to eat better and be healthier with customized nutrition consultations.

I firmly believe that if it wasn’t for the fact that Kelly kept all the crap food out of the house, I would be absolutely huge based on the way that I eat.

I Really Want One of These!

The Panasonic GF1 is not your ordinary camera. It does look like a point and shoot, but at its heart is the sensor of a DSLR camera and it shoots RAW just like a real DSLR. It also has the speed, manual features and the picture quality and the interchangeable lenses, which are based on the Micro Four Thirds standard.

I’ve always shot NIKON DSLR’s but this new standard has got me seriously thinking about changing over. The reason is because most of the time I use my camera for Trade Shows and Events. Lugging around a huge bag with a large camera body and lenses is quite tiring and having to unleash it each time I want to take a picture gets tedious.I do have to admit that people tend to stand aside when they see your big lens poking through the crowd.

When I travel I strip my D200 down to a single 50mm f/1.8 and no grip. Even still,  it is too large to pocket and there are still places that don’t allow professional cameras. Having a camera like the Panasonic GF1 that gives similar performance in a much smaller package definitely appeals to me and will give me opportunities to shoot where I wouldn’t otherwise.

Even though I know that a true DSLR will still take better pictures overall, this new camera and its small but growing selection of quality lenses really makes it hard not to consider. Any reasons why I shouldn’t?

Going Back To School

Every Fall I try to take a few courses to fill in skill gaps that I might have. Whether it be in Photography or Mandarin, I do try to make an effort to stay sharp whenever I can. Yes, learning to ride a motorcycle counts.

This year, I’ve decided to return to school to finish a Marketing Management Diploma at Douglas College. This will be the first time that I’ve set foot into a real academic classroom in nearly 10 years! It’ll be both terrifying and interesting as I’ll probably be one of the oldest students on campus (besides the instructors).

I’ll be taking two courses starting tomorrow and then one more course in January to finish off my program and grab my piece of paper.

Depending on how heavy the workload is, I might also take another course at Langara College in Video Journalism; a new course that was just introduced this year and is part of their Digital Film program.

When Will I Blog Again Next?

What? You want more? I’ve basically given you FIVE POSTS in one! Well, knowing me, I’ll probably be doing something I’m not supposed to be doing in class so maybe my next post will be LIVE from the land of Academics. That’s of course, provided that I don’t fall asleep in class. I’ve always been very good at that.

For more random updates, you definitely have to Follow Me on Twitter.

Sorry for the lack of updates. I’ve been pretty busy in the last little while and now I’m at the E3 Expo in LA with the Futurelooks Team. The crew is staying at the Wilshire Plaza Hotel in LA and it was going great till we discovered that another media outlet, Area 5 (The CO-OP Video Game Show Guys on Revision3) decided to setup a Mac Pro in their room to upload their videos, sucking up all the available bandwidth. At one point, I saw about 10 MacBooks on the network, probably uploading and rendering video onto that thing. Luckily the connection is far better at the E3 Media Lounge.

Yesterday, we put together a quick video of the things we really want to see on the floor. Check it out:

As you can see, there’s going to be quite a bit more console coverage at Futurelooks at E3. It’s pretty much a Michael Kwan show at this point, but Jason Landals and Eric Garay are both doing their best to find stuff for PC Gamers. Definitely follow Futurelooks on Twitter to see what we’re up to. We’ll also be doing a daily wrap up video so keep an eye on our Fututurelooks YouTube Channel as well.

I gave our friends at Kingston Technology a shout to see if they could help us out. I totally expected to pay for the RAM since I would be getting some anyway. I was just hopping for a deal and a couple more gigabytes to keep the machine from dying. Our man over there, Dave, has always offered to help us out with whatever we needed. We’ve just never needed anything aside from the usual review products that we check out on occasion. Instead of giving us what we needed, he went above and beyond and made sure we’d never need RAM again…

So that means we’re going from a measly 2GB of ECC DDR2 to a whopping 12GB’s of ECC DDR2 RAM! Want to see what 12GB’s of RAM looks like going into our DELL PowerEdge 1850 Server? Check out the video below…

Wayne Au from Auphan Software gave me a hand with the upgrade. Despite the fact that he’s successful and busy as hell, he still took the time to help me out with the servers (at 1AM in the morning no less) so I’m really thankful for his generosity. His company builds some of the best restaurant software in the biz (way better than that expensive Squirrel or shady Profitek stuff). That’s why his company has been doing extremely well, converting some huge chains over to his system including Blenz Coffee.

Wayne’s a real standup guy and he only hires the best so if you’re looking for a kick ass POS system for your restaurant, cafe or major restaurant chain and you want something that saves you time and money and stays running 24/7, make sure you check out his company. Also, if you’re looking for some exceptional quality RAM, you have to give Kingston Technology a ring or just find it at your favourite store because it’s everywhere. It’s definitely good stuff and it wouldn’t be in our mission critical servers if it wasn’t. Big thanks to Dave at Kingston for the hook up once again. You guys rock!