Due to a few technical problems with the back-end of the site we’ve updated the software running the site, which touch wood seems to of resolved all problems but if you encounter any oddities please let me know.

We’ve also added a past searches page so that we can see what people are interested in finding, which I’m sure will reveal some interesting keywords.

Finally we’ve now got an Arabic translation service, like the other languages it’s fully automated which means it’s far from perfect but good enough to get the general gist.

We do have some exciting changes, competitions and additions planned for CG over the next few weeks, so watch this space

Due to our increased traffic we have now moved Coolest Gadgets to it’s own dedicated server. Thanks to all our readers, story submitters and writers for making this upgrade necessary.

We’ve kept with the same host A Small Orange (no idea why they choose that name) who have given us outstanding support and service over the last year, they may not be the cheapest but we’ve found their excellent support second to none and well worth the money.

A massive thanks to Tim, Mack and all the support ataff at ASO who happily held my hand and made the migration as smooth as they could.

So if you’re looking for a host check them out and say we sent you.

I added a spam filter to our comments yesterday and since then we’ve blocked about 200 spam comments which is great. Whilst I was checking that no legit comments had been blocked I thought it may be a good idea to check the junk folder in Outlook!

I now humbly apologise to the 100 or so senders of valid emails over the last 3 months, unfortuantely dumb Outlook sorted them in my junk folder and dumb me didn’t check for 3 months. I’ve belatedly replied to many but if I missed you I do apologise so feel free to comment here or contact us and I promise that I will check.

Now off to investigate a proper spam filter that I’ll write about in our sister site SoftSift.

I hate spam though I now hate false positives even more!

Coolest gadgets are looking to recruit some new writers.

Essential characteristics of writers are:

• Keen technology and gadget follower
• You find the best stuff before all your friends
• Write like (or be) a native English speaker
• Wicked sense of humour
• Enjoy beer (or coffee if you’re a coder)

Hard cash is available for the right people, along with “sample” gadgets to review and the odd paid trade show trip.

If you think you’ve got what it takes please send us a sample of your work and a few sentences explaining why you’d like to join the CG team.

The Coolest Gadgets site has seen an exponential increase in visitors the last couple of months, which is great news so thanks everybody.

This has meant we’ve upgraded our hosting package 3 times this month and are on the waiting list for a nice new shiny dedicated server.

In order to reduce our memory and CPU usage we’ve implemented a caching mechanism which will greatly reduce database accesses. If you encounter any problems please let us know.

If the above sounded like complete gobbledygook just ignore it, normal gadget posting will resume shortly.

Our England flags give away proved to be very popular and we’ve been busy sending flags all over the world. I was expecting most comments to be from readers in England and was quite surprised when the majority of requests were from abroad. I ended up sending flags out to Germany, Brazil, Argentina, Canada, USA, South Africa, France, India and Malaysia. Thanks again to The Gadget Store for providing the flags, though next time can you give me some cash as well to cover international postage costs . So now come on England.

Last month I did a thank you post to the gadget sites that have linked to us recently, this seemed to go down well. I don’t know if it was coincidence or not but we did get a fair few more quotes and links afterwards. So here comes another round of thanks to some of the good guys in the blogosphere.
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Our friends over at The Gadget Store have noticed we have a small affection for the beautiful game (football to those that don’t know what I’m talking about) and have kindly donated a box full of England flags to give away to our readers.

So if you want a free St. Georges flag (3ft x 5ft or a car flag) leave a comment to this post saying what you like about gadgets and football. Make sure your leave a real email address (which we will never ever share) so that we can get a physical address to send the flag to. All flags will be given out on a first come first served basis.

Thanks again to The Gadget Store for this cool freebie.

Problogger Darren Rowse is doing a feature called Habits of Highly Effective Bloggers, I certainly don’t class myself as a highly effective blogger but as I tend to post here a fair few times a day I guess that still makes me a blogger. So here are my opinions on what makes an effective blogger (or not).

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