TecnoSquad gets it´s facelift

TecnoSquad, our consumer electronics weblog, has a new design. With the help of the guys at Woof, we managed to have a new website in just two months. The new design has a focus on reviews, we´ve reviewed quite a few cellphones and gadgets, and we want people to know they are there.  On the looks, we wanted a fresh and clean look, and I think we made it. There are still lots of stuff to fix, and they had to be worked online on the actual server, but we hope that next week everything will be working perfectly. Now we have just 7 weeks to work on the new theme for ChileHardware and have it working for CES 2008.

The million pesos rum

One million chilean pesos is around 1,000 pounds or 2,000 american dollar, and yesterday, Havana Club announced it´s newest and most exclusive rum, Havana Club Maximo Extra Añejo with that price tag. Maximo is a blend of several aged rums, including some of them that are 100 years old. It´s bottle is made of man made blown crystal, and in it´s recipe there´s years of Cuban perfection. Yesterday I attended it´s launch in Chile at the Ritz Carlton, and had the chance to try it. I must say it´s the best rum I´ve ever tried and of course the most expensive one. If you want one you should hurry, it´s a 1000 bottle limited edition and in Chile it´s already sold out.

Dopplr: Where next

I received an invite for Dopplr, a new web app where you can share with your contacts where you are and where you are travelling next. I would love to feel all the experience of this service, but I need to add some contacts to do so. Anyone else has a Dopplr account? Anyone wants an invite?

Quoted on microblogging article at El Mercurio

El Mercurio is probably the most important newspaper on Chile. Even though it´s not the most read, it´s a high end product, for influential people (or so they say). Yesterday my collegue Gabriel Esteffan wrote an article about microblogging (i.e. Twitter) and gave me a call to hear my thoughts about it, today he published it.

Usually when we get linked from a newspaper, it doesn´t drive too much traffic, but it helps indirectly. Executives in IT companies read El Mercurio, and when they hear about ChileHardware – which was mentioned in the article – they will remember us. For example, if I met them in the past and they already heard about it, now they heard it again, or if I meet them in the following weeks, they will at least heard about us before. Anyways, being quoted either online or offline always helps, and help is what will make us even more important.

This week won´t be too busy, which is good, because I will have time to pick up with some articles I left behind. Next week I will be travelling to Rosario and Buenos Aires… again.

Blogging chit-chat with Nokia´s VP of Multimedia

During my stay in Buenos Aires I had the chance to be in a panel with Nokia´s VP of Multimedia, Mark Selby. We talked about content, technology, web 2.0 and social content. My friends at MobileCloseUp recorded it, and you can see the first part of the presentation in this video.

I´m feeling a lot more comfortable about talking in public, I think I´m doing much better than in the past. I will also be speaking at a LANParty in two more weeks, which I hope will help in my experience talking to large crowds.

Stats for October

After the so called “Wena Naty effect” we started October. For our surprise, our stats for this month finished quite healthy.

I´ll start with our newest proyect, BotonTurbo, which in it´s first month of life had 74600 unique visitors. This is the first time one of our websites performs this good in it´s first time, we are really happy about it´s performance.

TecnoSquad on it´s side, had a good traffic during the month, 159296 uniques. Let´s remember that in the past, TecnoSquad also covered videogames, something it´s not doing nowadays – because of BotonTurbo – and all it´s videogame posts are redirected. This means less indexing in Google and less traffic, but even though, if you add BotonTurbo´s and TecnoSquad´s traffic, you will se that it´s better compared to the traffic TecnoSquad alone had in September.

Finally ChileHardware, our biggest website, had 903446 unique visitors. This is according to ExtremeTracking, because Google Analytics is saying it´s something more (in fact according to GA on September we broke the 1M barrier), but I like to stick to only one method, and Extreme Tracking has been quite transparent about or traffic. Even though we had a better performance last month, as I told you, it wasn´t a regular month, because of the “traffic effect”.

Things to come

As I´ve been telling you, TecnoSquad will receive a new face lift the last days of December. This will arrive just a week before CES, and CES is an impressive month for TecnoSquad. I´m confident we will break the 200k barrier during January, and the new PR6 will help us on that. On ChileHardware, we are also working on a new design, which will fix some “design mistakes “we have in the present, that should help us a little bit, although we are not expecting to much, we just hope to make our place a better place for our actual readers.

From Buenos Aires with good news

This has been crazy. If someone thinks that working at the internet full time is an easy job, he is completely wrong. Now that I´m full time internet, I´ve been working three times as hard. Good news is that we´ve already seen some reactions to this. I´m going to all press events and doing lots of networking, I have meetings almost everyday and we´ve been published full articles everyday. TecnoSquad, our one year old Consumer Electronics blog, achieved a PR6 rating and BotonTurbo our one month videogame weblog is averaging over 2.5k uniques a day. We have a new design ready for TecnoSquad which we should be installed during new year´s eve and ChileHardware will receive a new face lift which I hope will be ready for CES 2008 / MacWorld. As you can see the sun is shining and things are getting even better.

Nowadays I´m at Buenos Aires, for a Nokia event. I´m staying at the Faena Hotel, according to some, the best designer hotel in the world, and definitely the best in Argentina. This is full John Chow CES style! I also fixed some meetings during my stay here. I really hope to have some more time for blogging, I hope. One the meantime, feel free to check our GeForce 8800 GT review, the only analysis on this card in the hispanic world.

The start of a new life

I think I’ve just started the beginning of my real Internet Entrepreneur Adventure. On Saturday I moved in to a new apartment. The new apartment is quite cool, it’s very close to everything and my room mates are quite interesting. On one side there’s James and her girlfriend, they used to live in San Diego, CA and now they are working at their own bar in Santiago. On the other side, there’s Anikka and Patricia, Annika is German and she’s on an exchange program, Patricia on it’s side is working in a food related company and her family lives in Chicago, Il. This makes our flat quite busy, which is definitely fun.

On my personal side, I just freezed my studies. I will give all my attention to our Internet proyects, just like Shawn decided to do a long time ago. I really think we are in the right time, I’m not sure if I’m in the correct place, but time will tell.  I have lots of plans for the next 12 months, I’m looking forward for a big change that includes lifestyle and work. On the short term, I’m planning on studying Mandarin, and who knows, maybe even moving to Shanghai on the long term!

Business and Life Ramblings

This last week was quite busy. I spent sometime with a new potential editor for BotonTurbo and with Manuel. We just met for lunch and beers, and came out with the idea of a new internet proyect. We are still studying it´s potential, but I think we will start working on it soon. I´m really interested, because it´s nothing like we´ve done in the past.  I also finished my e-mail queue list and finished my short term to-do list. But what´s most important, I´ve been thinking. Thinking about me and our proyects, about the future and about a change in the way I live my life.  I´m moving on the next weeks and I will start a “new life”, and I have some ideas for it (health, eating, studying chinese, subway and not driving, handling with room mates, etc.).

The weekend was great. I met Cristobal, one of my best friends for wine and chat on Friday night, and on Saturday I met friends for a brilliant paella for lunch, and later a sushi dinner. I have to say my sushi skills are improving really fast and I´m even taking new “risks”, such as salmon nigiri and shrimp temaki.

This week will also be busy, we are still working on the new desing on TecnoSquad and I hope it finishes well. My personal goal is to have our whole network redesigned before new year´s eve. I still have to finish some writings (I hope tomorrow) and start writing our 2008 Media Kit. We are also building a showoff rig for MSI, which will be shown during the NVTrain (NVIDIA´s roadshow). But the best part of the week will be on Friday, when my new computer arrives, I will finally get rid of my old lappy =)

How I got my trip for free

On my way back home, my flight from Dallas to Santiago was oversold. Before leaving anyone behind, the airline had the obligation of asking for volunteers to give out their seat. Of course very few people will do it without something in return. This is why American Airlines offered U$800 cash vouchers for future flights in exchange of a seat on the plane, and considering it was a weekend and no I had no hurry to get home, I stayed a night in Dallas and catch the next plane to Chile, which would had a conection at Miami.

The next day, whe I got to Miami, the plane was oversold too, and again I stayed a night in Miami (barhopping at South Beach) and got the final flight home with U$1600 in airtickets in my pocket.

Today I spent my vouchers – 80% of their cash value – buying tickets for CES 2008 and MacWorld. I´ll fly during new years eve, stay in LA for a week and then fly to Vegas for CES and after that to San Francisco for MacWorld.

Although I think he is full of shit, I´m looking forward for El Jobso´s keynote, I´ve never attended one.