2011 – It’s Time To Come Back to Blogging!

Wow. It’s been nearly a year hasn’t it?

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.

After COMPUTEX, came the worst time in Futurelooks’ history as our hosting solution through Amazon failed miserably. Despite some conjecture that we may have been “mismanaging” our instances, the company eventually took the blame for the issues, admitted the fault was with them, but refused to compensate for losses. To those that blame mismanagement, I’d like to know how you manage server instances that simply disappear? Amazon EC2 is a horrible service that has oversold itself and was the root cause of a 50% drop in traffic for an otherwise thriving site. It was a very rough time indeed.

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!

A Proud Moment For Futurelooks at COMPUTEX 2008

Probably one of my proudest moments at COMPUTEX this year was seeing Futurelooks recognized as a site that matters. While perusing the FOXCONN booth, I noticed what appeared to be a Futurelooks award logo featured on one of the large walls of the booth.

As I neared the booth, I could make out a Futurelooks’ Editors Choice award. We gave this award to their 9800GTX Video Card earlier this year and thought it was a very solid performer. However, I never expected our award to be important enough to earn a space on a large prominently featured display wall at an international trade show. I was so proud! However, this recognition would not have been possible without the hardwork of Futurelooks Hardware Editor, Jason Landals. I’d like to thank him for producing such an outstanding review that got the attention of one of the largest OEM component manufacturers in the world. It was his review of this card that got us this recognition. Jason couldn’t make it out to COMPUTEX this year, but next year, I’ll make every effort to ensure that he’s on the plane and in Taipei for the only computer show that matters.

Why is this show so important? If you think about it, all the engineering and development of potential products is done in Taiwan and many proofs of concept are shown there. Based on the interest or the number of orders they get on a product, a manufacturer can decide whether or not a product even goes to production. If you’re here, you get to see things that won’t be reality until CES or even CeBit. Although I love CES, by the time you get there you’re already looking at old stuff, at least on the computer hardware side. That show really is about new consumer electronics, not so much about new computer hardware.

For any site that covers computer hardware, being at COMPUTEX is important. It means that you’re serious and that you want to be on the cutting edge. Most importantly, it means you matter and the fact manufacturers feel the same way too by proudly displaying your award logo means that your opinions and feedback are important to the development of future products. It’s funny, but I noticed a couple sites trying to get in on the action without being there by trying to “Regurgitate” press kits. How can you form a real opinion of a product on a press kit? Also, much of the information on early product is not included in those kits. For example, during my meeting with Thermaltake, they showed me something that won’t see the light of day till CES 2009, but more likely, CeBit 2009. It was so secret, proof of concept stage, that I had to convince the CEO of the company to show it to me. It was a great scoop and you can only find out this stuff if you’re there.

Even though it’s only been a few days after the show, I’m already starting to see the impact of our presence there. I’m starting to get requests to take product reviews, straight from Taiwan, bypassing the North American wait. I also spoke directly to the people that sign the checks when it comes to advertising dollars and where to spend it. You can bug your local reps all you want, but it always pays to talk to the boss and build that relationship directly because at the end of the day, where does the money come from?

So I have to ask, knowing that webmasters from other sites occasionally stroll by here, what is stopping you from coming to the only show that matters for the latest Computer Hardware? If your only answer is cost, then my friends, I have to tell you, it’s costing you more to stay on the sidelines.

COMPUTEX 2008 Booth Babes Anyone?

While I figure out how to reset my internal clock to Vancouver time and dig through all these videos and pictures, I’ll keep you folks occupied with the Futurelooks COMPUTEX 2008 Booth Babe Gallery. This gallery contains over 168 photos for your viewing pleasure. If you want to know who we thought were the best, you can check out the top ten right here.

Just in case you’ve missed it, the Futurelooks crew has been busting out article after article on the latest techie goodness. Check out all the stuff that a geek should care about right here.