A year of independent tech blogging!

The Tech News Blog is a year old this week!  The blog started ‘officially’ last June, after a fellow geek (Jake Landers, the former editor), and myself decided to write a blog about technology that was fully independent.

Independent?

You may (or may not) know that many of the bigger tech blogs are unable to post what they want to, because of conflicts with sponsors, advertisers and those who provide ‘perks’ for positive reviews. It’s typically the smaller /amateur tech blogs, which are free from these conflicts, who are free to post whatever they want.  However, they tend to have smaller readerships - so we wanted to create a well-read tech blog, which had that same freedom to post whatever it truly believed.

We have a 100% disclosure policy here and refuse to do ANY paid reviews – even though we get emails almost daily, from people offering us money for favourable reviews.  We will also let readers know if we comment on or review anything, which we have been sent to us for free.

Thanks

Over the past year, our transparent approach to tech news has seen us gain many friends within the tech news industry.  People may not always agree with what we post, but at least they know it’s based on what we believe.  We have also seen many of the biggest names in tech news, list us as a recommended news source. These include Dave Winer, Leo Laporte, ReadWriteWeb and CNET’s Buzz Out Loud.

I would like to say a massive THANK YOU to all our readers, especially those of you who comment here. We have also added a few well-known readers and have comments here from many of the best known names in tech, including (in no particular order); Robert Scoble, Veronica Belmont, Cali Lewis, Jason Calacanis, Molly Wood, Jason Cross, Loic LeMeur and many, many others.

As we enter our second year, we promise to continue with the same independent approach to tech news.