Happy Birthday, Nifty Tech Blog!

A year ago today, the Nifty Tech Blog launched with our first review of Delicious Library. So much has changed in a year. Since that time we've published 29 other reviews,  43 Follow Friday recommendations, and 5 editorials. In February 2010, the blog was a one man show, hosted in a corner of my .Mac account space using iWeb. Now Scott Roche has joined the staff, and we've had contributions by Odin1Eye and Philippa Ballantine, and a crossover event with Tee Morris' Bird House Rules. We moved our hosting to Blogger, and thanks to the generous contributions from our readers, we're getting ready to move to our own servers and to stand up a WordPress version of the Blog.

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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.

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!

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.