Join Prizes for Subscribing and Commenting
A few days ago we were dancing around as we found out we had 14,394 subscribers, still not really believing it we asked for comments and offered a prize to the funniest. We didn’t get the 14,394 comments (pah!) though 30 was a good start (thanks folks) and to celebrate the fact we broke the 15,000 subscriber mark the next day we’ll be sending out two random gadgets.
The 2 lucky winners are, drum roll please, Leanne for sending us this poem: Continue reading » Prizes for Subscribing and Commenting
Hello Google Subscribers
I was just looking over our stats for how many people follow Coolest Gadgets via our RSS feed, we usually have around 3,000 subscribers but yesterday we were showing 14,394, a whopping 380% increase!
After doing a bit of research (thanks ShoeMoney and FeedBurner) it turns out that Google are now reporting the total number of subscribers using Google Reader and Google Personalized Homepage (not just the number of times they index the feed). So this new figure may actually be true.
I am absolutely amazed (and very happy) that we have this number of subscribers but I still don’t really believe it, so if you’re reading this via our feed please come over to the site and leave a comment (I’ll post out some random gadget to the author of the funniest comment).
The next goal is 15,000 subscribers so if you’re a feed follower haven’t subscribed yet here’s the link 
.
Public Apology – Holding Hands Up Time
I’ve had a sightly distraught email from Michelle over at American Inventor Spot saying that we published a copyrighted image of theirs and worse still removed the copyright notice. This came to me as something of a shock and worse still, turned out to be true.
I’ve had a long chat with our writer of the post in question and it turns out he made an honest (albeit bloody stupid) mistake thinking that by crediting the source with a link he could remove the copyright from the image (though I’m not sure what is dumber, doctoring the image or believing the glasses were real in the first place 
).
Dan did offer to quit writing for CG because of this mistake, an offer I’ve not accepted. I’m a firm believer in learning from mistakes (though ideally other peoples) and Dan is a very valuable member of the cool team we have going here.
At the end of the day the buck stops with me, so apologies again to American Inventor Spot, you have a great site there that I’m sure we’ll be linking to and quoting from you (properly) in the future. I’d also like to apologise to any other blogs that picked up on the story from us and used our doctored image (the ones I’ve found so far are Gizmodo and SciFi Tech).
Coolest-Gadgets.com is Closing
I’m sick of it, every time I tell somebody about the site I have to spell it, coolest *HYPHEN* gadgets *dot* com, which gets some what annoying when you’re wandering around a show floor, so enough is enough! Continue reading » Coolest-Gadgets.com is Closing
Server Upgrade
We’ve had a bit of downtime recently and the site has been getting a tad sluggish, for which I apologise. This has been partly due to our traffic levels and also the fact some of the custom code was not well optimised (to which I will hold my hand up to).
Anyway we’ve done a bit of clear up, upgraded all software to latest versions and have ordered some extra memory for the server. This should improve the overall performance of the site.
The server will be offline for around 15 minutes later on today while the extra memory is fitted but if you notice any other problems please let us know either via the contact form or you can email me, al at coolest-gadgets.com. Thanks.
CES Coverage
This is a very exciting time for CG and I. Today is my final day in the 9-5 rat race and as of 5PM this afternoon I’ll be a fulltime blogger, webmaster and frugal tight wad.
Coincidentally this just happened to happen at the same time as CES (the largest Consumer Electronics Show in the World). So Marc and I will be flying out to Las Vegas tommorow morning to report on all the latest gadgets that are due in 2007. It should be a real eye opener so expect a load of posts over the next week or so. We’ll also be meeting up with some of the guys from Gizmodo, Gizmos for Geeks and Sci Fi Tech so it will be great to put faces to the names. If you’re off to CES and fancy meeting up please leave us a comment.
Now if only Google would give us our search rankings back that magically dissapeared on New Years Eve life would be perfect.
Merry Christmas
Here’s wishing everybody a very Merry Christmas and I hope you get all the gadgets you deserve and don’t suffer the head I did last year .
Merry Christmas one and all.
Are You an ‘A’ List Blogger
I was browsing Book of Joe today and came across this fun little tool, that tells you if you’re an A, B, C or err D list Blogger. It’s all based off Technorati rankings (how many other blogs link to your blog) and some what surprisingly we hit the A list. Although the tool is just a bit of fun (and pink!) I thought this would be a good time to say another thank you (deja vu anyone):).
First off hats to our current bloggers, it’s taken a long time to build our current team, so thanks Mike, Tiago, Edwin and to the new boys Dan and Fred. You’ve made my job of expanding and improving CG a lot easier than it could of been (I’m about to start Christmas shopping for the CG writers so keep it up guys ).
Second lot of thanks go to the blogs that link to us when quoting any stories we report on, so in no particular order and by no means complete, hat tips to:
- GadgetORama
- Jeff and his Wireless Weblog
- ubergizmo
- Phil at Wired Home
- Eglobe1
- Strategic Development
- Luxist
- Spluch
- TechnoSquad
- gadgetell
- Digital Drops
- Naik’s News
- Gizmodo
- Geek Chic
- Sci Fi Tech
- Chiqui World
- Uber Review
- Thrilling Wonder Story
(These are just some of the blogs that linked to us in the last 2 days, which is kind of cool. Thanks guys (and chics), if you’re off to CES in January let me know and I’ll buy you a beer (well not the 100 or so writers at Gizmodo).
Finally thanks to our readers, forum members and the folk who leave comments (especially Paz, Keith, GrimReeper, Lee, Andy, Matt,…) which proves it isn’t just bots that suck our bandwidth .
Cheers Kineda for the pink tool, but why Book of Joe is on the lowly B List (oh the shame) I don’t know.
