In a little over a month from now, I’ll be announcing what has been going on, why I’ve been half-offline for all this time, and what’s coming next.
I will say one angle of this does involve publishing. As PhoneNews.com approaches its fifth birthday, it’s time to expand.
Now, publishing is just one part of what’s up, but it is a key part. So, I do have a question for you. If PhoneNews.com was not about phones, what would you want it to be about?
Weird question, I know. PhoneNews.com isn’t just a blog. It has everything from a five-figure community, to a wiki stretching into the four-figures (page-wise). It’s got a mobile version, and it has a Facebook community that is on track to out-pace Sega’s (teaser: we’ll have a campaign soon to make that happen).
But, I do want to know… because it will really help things to come together. In 2003, PhoneNews.com was relatively alone in the mobile media. The mobile media is now clearly a saturated marketplace. But, don’t worry about that. I want to hear all your outlandish ideas, all your great ideas, and everything in-between.
Gaming would be a logical choice, I suppose you could expand PhoneNews into a general technology or gadget site.
In my opinion, the best part of PhoneNews is the editorials, there are plenty of sites where you can just read a copy and paste of the news, however it’s the in depth articles and reviews that keep people coming back. Then again, I understand those types of articles take a lot more work and time, and obviously there’s plenty of behind the scenes work that keeps you from pumping them out on a regular basis.
For example, I wish you would have continued the “Five Years Later” editorials, It would have been nice to, let’s say, have an editorial for each carrier and compare their phones, technology improvements, coverage, plans, etc., from five years ago to today.
One more editorial on my wish list would be about the state of cell phone gaming, I never recall actually reading anything on PhoneNews about cell phone games, and even though most games suck on phones, it would be cool to have a guide to the good games, and an opinion on what can be done to improve the cell phone gaming market.
Well, keep up the good work Chris!
Chris … long time reader … I think I first discovered pcsintel.com around the time of the T608 … man, when I had one of those (once I followed your instructions of how to order it), I thought I was so cool. haha.
My suggestion is for a site that teaches you how to get the most out of the gadgets you currently have, or gives compelling (alternative) reasons for purchasing new ones. For instance, I have an old XBox, but figuring out mod-chips, soldering, flashing it, FTPing to it, and ROMs would have been possible, but with a simple (and not too technical) guide, I wouldn’t have had to pay a friend to do it. I also have a Wii, and am thinking about modding that – but what are the advantages? Why would I want to do it? If I didn’t own a Wii already, is that fact that it can be modded a compelling enough reason to buy one?
I think the same holds true for other devices. For instance, I have a laptop (HP DV2000t w/2GB RAM and Vista Home Premium) which states that it supports a max of 2GB RAM. I didn’t realize that when I purchased the device, and I planned on keeping it at least a few years, and upgrading the RAM over time – to be told I couldn’t was very aggravating. Well, through reading forums and hounding HP, I have learned that my laptop actually can support 4GB of RAM with Vista 64 bit – which can be installed with a Vista Home Premium license (provided it’s Vista 64 bit Home Premium). I don’t think most people know that they can do that sort of upgrade without a problem, and without paying extra.
I could go on with other examples. For instance, I have a PPC-6700 (Apache) on Verizon. Reading PPCGeeks.com and figuring out how to flash my ROM was no big deal … but making a kitchen of my own seems like a lot of work, and darned if I can find any huge advantage to doing that myself … however, I’d love to read an article comparing those sorts of things.
I’m also looking at installing “Wubi” to set up a dual boot of Ubuntu. Do a lot of people know that software like that exists? Could you explain the installation process to someone who might be hesitant to try Ubuntu or even of dual booting?
Those are my suggestions …