“Its time to expand.”

techAU has been growing phenomenally over the past 4 years, but there’s an opportunity to do even better. With an ambitious goal of increasing traffic to the site 5x-10x in 2011, I’m going to need some help. I’m looking for 5 Australians who are passionate about technology and want to share that experience with the world. If you think you’ve got what it takes then, then go ahead, prove it !

There’s no complicated rigmarole.. just send an email including which tech categories your passionate about and an example post. I’ll play editor, for the first few, but once I’m comfortable you’ll get to post directly to the site.

Update 1
Great news! We already have our first new writer on board, taking care of Mobile and Home Theatre.. best be quick if you want in.

Update 2
Even more  great news, we now have a second writer on board who’ll take care of Hacks, Tips and tricks as well as how-to.

Update 3
You guys are amazing, looks like we’ll have 5 new writers in a variety of categories, the latest are photography and design. Don’t let that stop you from applying, there’s still some categories uncovered.

Suggested categories include:

As for the reward, your name will be on each post you write. This can form a portfolio of writing that’ll follow you wherever you go. There’s no cold hard cash on offer for a couple of reasons. The first is that I want techAU writers to write because they have something valuable to contribute, not because they are financially motivated. The second reason is that the site’s income goes straight into hosting costs and equipment upgrades to improve in the future. There will likely be some fringe benefits along the way, potentially attending conferences, getting the latest products to review etc.

Applicants should read and understand the unique flavour that is techAU. Covering the latest news, product and service reviews and sharing your personal experience in your categories of interest/s is all part of the gig. There’s no minimum or maximum amount of posts, just write as often as you can, the more content we produce, the more visitors to the site will increase.

Being part of the team, you’ll also have the opportunity to make suggestions about future direction of the site. So if your a creative person who like to blog, then send me a damn email ! If your not right for the gig, please pass it on to your friends, spread the word !

Join one of Australia’s leading tech blogs by emailing jason@techAU.tv now !

The Christmas holidays have provided an opportunity to take a breath and consider new ways to monetise the site. At first I considered donations like many other do, but then decided a you guys should get something out of the deal as well. This leads to the launch of the techAU Merchandise Store.

If you like the content on techAU and want to support its future development, then head over to http://techAU.tv/store and buy one of the techAU branded products. There’s plenty to choose from, coasters, t-shirts, stickers, hoodies, key rings and even a calendar made from tech photos. On each purchase, techAU collects 10%, there is an option to increase the percentage, but this would increase the overall cost, so 10% it is.

The techAU Merchandise Store uses zazzle.com.au as the backend. If you’ve not heard of it before it’s definitely worth checking out. It’s pretty simple to setup a store and create new products using your images and text. If you get in before the end of today (3/1/2011), you’ll get 20% knocked off as part of a new years promotion.. so be quick!

There’ll continue to be new products added over time, also happy to take requests and suggestions.

Stop reading and start buying @ http://techAU.tv/store

By now most of our hangovers from last night’s NYE celebrations should have subsided. With 2011 now officially underway, I’d like to take a second to reflect on the success that was 2010. Last year was undoubtedly the biggest yet for techAU its continued growth and participation from readers continues to amaze me.

Let me throw some stats at you, in 2010 techAU..

Website/Podcast
- 235,293 unique visitors
- 6.15 Million hits (68.6% Windows, 18% Mac)
- 340GB bandwidth consumed
- Podcast episode 41 downloaded 14,020 times (HD version: 11,392)
- 46,665 YouTube channel views
- 6,042 Flickr views
- 2,127 Twitter followers
- 143 Facebook Likes

Most successful story
10 minutes with Windows Phone 7 simulator unlocked
- 31,988 views
- Video 1: 50.5k views, Video 2: 24.4k views
- Picked up by Engadget, cNet, Buzz Out Loud

Featured on TWiT
Episode 228: The TWiT Of The Decade – http://twit.tv/228
Episode 244: Pork Chops and Apple Sauce – http://www.twit.tv/244

As you can see it’s been a phenomenal year, made so by you, the techAU community that share stories, tell friends and family and help spread the word. I appreciate all the time that goes into leaving comments, questions and feedback and especially those who continually allow me to crowd source solutions.

Thank you and Happy New Years !

Regards
Jason Cartwright

Unfortunately today techAU had its longest outage since launching. After around 9 long hours, the site is finally back up and running. Obviously having the site offline for any length of time is incredibly frustrating and frankly unnacceptable. I want to make this clear, today’s downtime was due to issues with the current host AustDomains, not with techAU. I’ve decided to call them out in an effort to get them to share more information on the issue.

Despite having various social networks available to them, AustDomains left customers in the dark, with no response to emails, phone calls and worst of all no ETA. During the outage many other AustDomains customers began discussing the outage online, without a whisper from AustDomains. This is a major failing in customer service and I sincerely hope they use today’s outage as an example of how not to handle a disaster.  

At 8:10pm customers received an email from AustDomains giving a vague explanation of what occurred today.

Dear Customers,

Customer Outage – Resolved, 22 June 2010

Unfortunately we have been experiencing some packet loss of both our primary and secondary data links. This affected most of the network, client websites/services, including our support phone and email systems. This outage meant we could not provide a prompt notice, either directly or via our website.

This issue has since been resolved and safe guards been put in place to prevent future reoccurrence.

We sincerely apologise for the inconvenience this would have caused.

techAU is investigating alternate solutions to ensure this doesn’t happen ever again. Once again, I’d like to apologise to our readers.

Ho, ho, ho, Merry Christmas. It’s been another fantastic year for techAU. With continued growth, new sponsorships, lots of new friends and best of all, there’s more Australian tech coverage than ever.

I had planned on getting another episode of the podcast out before xmas, unfortunately it seems the podcast has been too successful. With around 10,000 downloads of the last few episodes, we’re reaching the 2TB per month bandwidth limit at our host box.net quite quickly. It’s a great problem to have, but realise it sucks for you guys. I’m working on a solution as quickly as I can so this doesn’t happen again.

Pleased to announce the site is getting around 350,000 hits per month, with around 17,000 uniques. I’m very excited to see this growth and hope to see more sponsors come on board in 2010 so I can bring even better Australian tech coverage to you.

I hope Santa is kind to all of you, have a fantastic Christmas !

View Full Album

There comes a time in every podcasts journey when things need to be upgraded. That time has arrived. I’m investing in the podcast with some serious new audio gear.

New items include:

• Heil PR40 Microphone
• Heil PL2T Mic Stand
• Heil SM-2B Shock mount
• Vinsheild pop filter

Check out the video below to see the unboxing and setup of the new audio equipment.

Update
The new audio setup is now complete. I’ve recorded some audio, check out, see what you think.

Microphone Test – MP3 (668kb)

The new formatting happens automatically just by visiting http://techAU.tv and comes with all the AJAXy goodness you’d expect, as well as access to any additional pages you have on the site, like your about page. There’s also a search option so users can find posts quickly.

Those of you running a WordPress blog can also achieve the same clean, simple formatting of your blog by installing the WPtouch. The current version is 1.2, it’s easy to install and customize.

Thank to Chris from http://techtwistblog.com for pointing me to this one.

More @ http://bravenewcode.com/wptouch

After purchasing Camtasia Studio earlier in the year, screen recording of video walk-throughs, reviews, tips is now all possible. Capturing video from sources other than the PC is a little more challenging, made even more difficult when trying to keep the quality all in HD, so inclusion in the HD version of the podcast is possible.

The Intensity Pro will allow for high quality video to be captured from a variety of sources including gaming consoles, video cameras, or pretty much any video source available.

Further investments in the development of techAU is made possible thanks to sponsorship. Thanks to Shoutoo for their continual support of techAU.

So look out for many more reviews in the future.

More @ BlackMagic

I’m very happy to announce and welcome http://shoutoo.com as a sponsor of techAU for the next 12 months. Shoutoo is a great Australian-based service that lets you communicate with your friends, whilst allowing you to not only send short messages, but images, videos, links and even post to a number of other social networks.

Over the past few months I’ve seen the service develop quickly, I’ve also been able to get a sneak peak of some of the great new features they have on the way.

I couldn’t be happier to have the guys on board and look forward to watching the service expand.

Please head over to http://shoutoo.com/techAU, check out the service and friend me up.