November Poll: What would you give for better Nifty Tech Blog?

Chaos has reigned in my life as October ends and November begins. In last month's poll, I asked everyone how well they liked the polls and if I should continue them, or just halt them and move on to something else. I have to admit that I'm still concerned about the fact that each month a smaller percentage of readers are responding to the polls. I'm wondering if I'm really asking the right questions. So how did things turn out for October's poll?

Help Support The Nifty Tech Blog

Have you been enjoying The Nifty Tech Blog? We certainly hope so. And we hope that you'd be willing to give something back. We want to bring you more features, more reviews, and better on site services. But we just don't have the resources to do these things on our own. We'll continue to do what we can, but there are a few things that you could do to help us bring you the reviews and features you've enjoyed up to now, and make things better for the future.

October Poll: Do you want to see more polls?

September has come to an end and it is once again time to tally poll results. In September, I asked what people thought of Apple's new Ping Social network for Music. Apple calls it a great new way for people to discover new music on the iTunes music store. Reader of The Nifty Tech Blog called it a snoozer and a loser.  Here is the breakdown.

September Poll: To Ping, or not to Ping?

August's poll asked your opinion on the podcast series of review that I've been doing in conjunction with Tee Morris and Bird House Rules. We didn't get quite the number of votes that I'd hoped for but I'm glad that folks were willing to stand up and be counted.

Nine people responded in the poll. Three of them said they were enjoying the series and were looking forward to the rest of it. Glad to hear that. I hope it lives up to your expectations.

August Poll!

It has been a more hectic week than I had expected. But despite the delay, I've got a new poll on line for August! I hope that everyone has read last Monday's review on Tweet Flow, and listened to the attached mp3 file from the Bird House Rules podcast. Because that is what I'd like to talk to you about for August. Tee Morris and I are doing a whole series of reviews in connection with his Podcast. And while you don't have to listen to the podcasts, I'd like to know if you like them. It has been suggested that I should be podcasting these reviews instead of blogging them. So, do you love the podcast? Is it nice for special events like the crossover? Or should I just stick with the blog? You're my readers, so you should get some say in how you'd like to see the reviews and other features. Right?

We've got a few more podcasts coming up in this series, but the poll ends with August, so don't wait too long before casting your vote.

July Poll Wrapup

July's poll has come to an end, but before we look at the results, I'm afraid I've got a little administrative news to impart. I've been working to provide a special review for tomorrow, and coordinating everything is going to take a bit more time than expected. So instead of tomorrow's review showing up at 12:01 AM, it is going to be delayed until 7 AM. It shouldn't be any later than that. And hopefully, you'll enjoy what we've got in store for you.

But enough about me, let's talk about You! The subject of July's poll was You, the reader. I asked what you felt your level of expertise is. The Nifty Tech Blog is intended to be accessible to everyone, but I wanted to know if I've been successful in attracting a cross section of potential readers. Thirteen people responded to the poll, the best turnout we've had to date.

You've heard that there is one in every crowd? Well we've got our one, and this person responded "I don't read your blog, I'm just here to skew your poll results." I guess one way of looking at it is that 7% of my readership is a technical smartass. Two respondents said they know how to use a few programs, and another two said they were regular users, but wanted to learn how to use more. To those folks, I say, "Welcome!". You're the ones I most want to reach with this Blog. Technology isn't something to be intimidated by, and I hope that I'm helping you find new ways to be productive and explaining things in ways that you understand. If you've got questions, please ask! And if you have problems you'd like to find solutions to, tell me about those, too. It may take a while, but I'll do what I can to find the answers.

Four more respondents said they were power users. I hope you've learned some new tricks here, but I also hope that you'll be willing to share some of your tricks with everyone else. I love volunteer submissions from the community, be it a review, or just a suggestion of a product to review. Even tips or tricks would be welcome. The more we share, the more we all know.

The last group of four identified themselves as Tech Experts, but admitted they don't know everything. I'm glad you guys are here. I'd like to see suggestions and tips from you, too, and the occasional review. But more than that, I depend on you folk to keep me honest, spot my mistakes, and make sure the right information gets out. Nobody's perfect. I make my share of mistakes. I catch them where I can, but I'm more interested in making sure that good information is available for everyone. Thanks for the help, guys. Glad to have you along.

Tomorrow is a new review, even if it is a tad late. And I hope to have August's poll up on Tuesday. So, it is going to be a busy week. I hope you enjoy it!

June Poll Wrapup

Back in June, we had two polls running. This was mostly because I failed to expect the vast numbers of consumers who were going to rush out and preorder a new iPhone 4. Since the iPhone 4 seemed to have stuck a chord for a lot of people, I started a second poll asking what feature most influenced your decision to buy a new iPhone 4. The responses really weren't what I was expecting.

Eleven people took the time to answer the poll. Of that number, over half had NOT bought an iPhone 4. One person declared that they would not buy an iPhone 4 under any circumstances, three more were not going to touch one unless they could get it without having to use AT&T, and another three were undecided about making a purchase. It is pretty clear that a lot of people have strong feelings against AT&T. And these responses pretty much mirrored the way I was thinking at the beginning of June: Even if you can deal with AT&T as a carrier, the iPhone 4 doesn't have a lot of compelling features, just minor upgrades to what was there already.

Of the four persons who said that they were purchasing a new iPhone 4, two of them were replacing an older iPhone, one was getting one for the fast A4 processor, and the last was just getting one because it had an Apple logo on it. Despite criticism, complaints, and allegations of improper business practices, Apple does manage to retain a lot of customer loyalty. While some people would label these loyal customers "fanboys" and dismiss them, there has to be some reason why Apple products gain such a following and an inordinate amount of attention from the press. It seems to be easy to love or hate Apple and their products, and very hard to ignore them.

I hope everyone has enjoyed June's polls, and that you'll all take a moment to vote on July's poll while you can. After all, this one is about You! I'l be back soon. See you then!

July's Poll: How tech savvy are you?

The first of the June polls is over, although there are a few more days for the second one.  I'm glad to see that more people are participating, although it is still a really small sample. But the results are kind of interesting.  I asked what missing feature would inspire you to buy a new iPhone 4, and a full half of the responders said that there was no feature missing. For half of them that was because they would never buy an iPhone of any kind.  For the other half the iPhone 4 already has all the features they're interested in. The half of all responders who wanted a new feature to entice them to get an iPhone 4 all wanted a choice of carrier other than AT&T. One wanted Verizon, one was happy with anyone BUT AT&T, and the remainder wanted their new iPhones to be completely unlocked so they could go to any carrier they wanted.

When the other poll ends, I'll post again to talk about why people went ahead and ordered their new iPhone 4s.

For July, I'd like to hear how tech savvy you consider yourself. I try to make this blog approachable to everyone, from the tech expert who already knows these products and is looking for a new way to apply them (or to explain how cool they are to his friends), to someone who just got their first computer and is trying to make sense of it and make it work for them instead of against them. So I'd like to hear from you, my readers, about where you fit in the spectrum.

This poll ends with July, so be sure to get your vote in. As always, feel free to comment about new polls you'd like to see, things you'd like to see reviewed, and what you'd like to see here in the blog. Or just give me a call on Google Voice and let me know what you're thinking about.

In which our author eats crow...

I was wrong.

In a BIG way. A little right, too, but mostly wrong.

In yesterday's editorial, and in the comments, I took the stance that despite the high demand for the new iPhone 4 it was unlikely that the pre-order inventory would be exhausted on the first day.

BOY, was I wrong.

Demand for the new iPhone was so strong that, despite the problems that plagued Apple and AT&T's systems from the high volume of orders, Apple and AT&T ran through their inventory of pre-order phones in less than a day. AT&T ran through their allotment very early in the day. Other resellers such as Best Buy and Radio Shack (now just "The Shack") exhausted their allotment within hours after they started taking pre-orders. And last night on the US Apple Store, the availability for the iPhone 4 quietly ticked over from "Delivered on June 24th" to "Ships on July 2nd".

Orion commented on yesterday's iPhone 4 Preorder Madness editorial that, the the new phones "are also not in infinite supply" as a rationale for the massive drive by customers to put in their pre-orders. While this is correct, we should also remember that the window for acquiring an iPhone 4 is roughly 11 months long, and the penalty for waiting to long to get one is the opportunity to order an iPhone 5. So, I was right in that there really isn't a great need to scramble to get your hands on a new iPhone. They'll be around for a while, and most of us already have perfectly serviceable phones to use in the meantime. I mean, we got this far, didn't we?

But I clearly didn't understand how strongly the desire for the new phone ran. For those, like myself, who didn't get a pre-order in, we now have the choice of standing in line at the Apple Store on June 24th in the hopes of being early enough in line to get one of the units set aside for walk-in customers on the release date, or place your order now for the July 2nd ship date and expect to see your new phone the following week, or just wait until the rush dies down and the phones are plentiful and easy to find.

I have to wonder what feature has made the iPhone 4 so irresistible to so many. Is this just the mass of iPhone and iPhone 3G users whose commitments have expired looking to get their hands on a phone that can take full advantage of iOS 4? Or new users who have been waiting for multi-tasking before buying in? Is it Facetime that has tipped the scales for users new and old who now have to have the ability to place video calls? The new Retina Display? The LED Flash? The ability to take and edit video right on your phone? Or the combination of all of these?

I guess June is going to have a second poll so I can find out.

I hope everyone got their pre-orders in.  And next week, when you get your hands on the new phone, let me know what you think.

Poll time.

Last month's poll was about ways to process text, and the results were a little disappointing. The three respondents were equally tied between TextEdit, Pages, and Open Office Writer. It is hard to draw any kind of conclusions with such a small sampling, but if I had to hazard I guess, I'd say it is an indication that there isn't a lot of strong feeling in favor of any given text editor.  At least not among my current group of readers.

With yesterday's announcement of the iPhone 4 coming to stores in the US on June 24th, and IOS 4 being released on June 21st, we're going to be hearing an awful lot about them in the coming month. So for the remainder of June, I'd like to hear about what the iPhone is missing. This month's poll question: What single missing feature would make you want to get a new iPhone 4 right now?

I'm taking the July 4th weekend off, so this month you get a little extra time. Poll closes at Midnight, July 5th, Eastern Time.

And if these polls aren't interesting you, tell me what would.

A (Long overdue) new Poll

The iPad poll closed way back on April 3rd... and the few of you who voted made it pretty clear that you intend to wait for next year's version of the iPad before investing any of your hard earned cash.  Perhaps you're hoping on a forward facing camera for video chatting?  Or maybe you just feel that the first version is to work out the bugs and the REAL release comes after that?  Time will tell.

Well, the chaos that was April has given way to the chaos that is May.  Funny how that happens.  And it is long past time for a new poll to grace these pages.  This time, I want to know that tool you use for working with text.  When you have to write something, how do you prefer to write it?  Part of this is because I have a friend who is looking for a writing tool for her PC, and she's not fond of MS Word.  But part of this is because I'm curious to see how people choose to releate to text.

If your answer is something that isn't on the list, please comment here so we can all see what your favorite writing tool is.

This poll closes with the month of May, and I'll be looking at the results when I get back from Balticon.

How The Nifty Tech Blog Works

Recently, a reader was asking me about the kind of compensation that I receive for doing The Nifty Tech Blog.  He seemed to think that companies were paying me to review their products, or were providing their products to me free of charge in exchange for a review.  Nothing could be farther from the truth.  So I thought I'd add this article to the feed to clear up these kinds of misconceptions.

I receive no funds, goods, or services for producing The Nifty Tech Blog.

In fact, I'm losing money on the proposition.

Now, some of you will note that there are ads on the sidebars and on the bottom of the page.  These are an attempt to defray some of the costs of running The Nifty Tech Blog so that I can keep it running longer.  Unfortunately neither Google nor Amazon ads pay off until there have been sufficient click throughs and purchases to hit a minimum amount of activity, and I'm no where near that level of activity yet.

But I'm getting a bit ahead of myself.  Let me go back to the beginning and explain how things work at The Nifty Tech Blog.

Currently, The Nifty Tech Blog has a staff of one.  That's me.  When I'm not working at my day job, and keeping my wife happy, I put what time I can into researching, writing, editing, and producing the Blog.  I have been lucky enough to have some friends step up and volunteer their help from time to time.  Most notably, Odin1Eye who stepped up and did a guest review a few weeks back.  And hopefully in the next month or so I'll be welcoming a new staffer as a PC expert bringing his expertise and insight from the Windows side of the world.  And nobody gets paid anything.

Each of the products reviewed in The Nifty Tech Blog are products that I, or my guest reviewers, have had personal experience with.  These products are either free, or are things that we have paid for with our own money.  And by recommending them, we're saying that we would pay for them again.  If a product isn't good enough to buy all over again, it doesn't make the Blog.  What we're trying to provide is a view into the best products available on the market.

And towards that end, The Nifty Tech Blog is completely community supported.  I rely on you the reader to suggest new products to review, in addition to the research I do on my own.  No one receives any compensation or considerations from the manufacturers.  Now there are some products out there that I want to review, but I just don't have the funds necessary to buy a review model of a product.  And there is no way I can afford to buy review models of every new product out there!  Eventually, I expect that I will have to resort to asking manufacturers to send me review models to examine.  If that happens, I will be sure to state right up front that the review is based on a piece of equipment loaned by the manufacturer.

The domain registry and hosting costs are paid by me.  And all of the layout and web work is done by me.

So, if this is a losing proposition, why do I keep doing it?

Well, for me, The Nifty Tech Blog is a labor of love.  There is so much cool stuff out there, I want to let people know about it.  And I want your help to find it so that I can play with it!  Would I like it if I could make a profit?  Yeah.  But I'll never get rich writing a blog.  If I could break even, that would be enough.  But for now, I'll keep going as long as I can.

If you'd like to help support The Nifty Tech Blog, leave a comment.  Send me e-mail.  Tell a friend about the Blog.  Suggest a new product to review.  If you really want to support the Blog financially, then check out the ads, or buy something from the store.  Or just keep coming back and reading.  That's what it is here for, after all.  For you to read.

Time for a Poll?

Now that Apple has announced Pre-orders, I thought it was time for a poll to see how you feel about the new iPad offerings.  The press has been filled with glowing reports, and brutal criticism.  There has been very little in between.  I'm not making up my mind until I can get my hands on one.

But I want to know what YOU think.  Go or no go on the iPad?  I've added a poll over on the right so you can vote on when and how you'll be looking at picking up Apple's latest offering.  This poll will be open until the iPad goes on sale on April 3rd, but future polls will typically be open for about a week.

So vote, or comment here, and tell the world what you think.

New ways for you to follow The Nifty Tech Blog!

Now you can follow all the goings on at the Nifty Tech Blog in one of three ways.  You can subscribe to our RSS Feed and get every post as it comes out.  You can follow NiftyTechBlog on Twitter, and see all the behind the scenes banter that is part of the making of The Nifty Tech Blog.  Or you can support The Nifty Tech Blog by becoming a fan of The Nifty Tech Blog on Facebook!  On Facebook you can participate in the forums with other fans of The Nifty Tech Blog, and talk about the best and the worst of what is available in Tech.

And as always, you can contribute to The Nifty Tech Blog directly, by writing to NiftyTech@NiftyTechBlog.com to give us your opinion, recommend something to be included in the Blog, or to just say "Hi!".

We want to hear from you!  Y26H8SP9AUG3