Artoo-Beatoo: R2-D2 Punching Bag
October 31, 2007
From an industrious Swedish man, we have the blog about cool stuff masquerading as nerdy. Until last June GeekAlerts was exclusively in Swedish (www.smidigt.se, for all those capable) but luckily Robert Birming, the creator, finally put up an English version.
“I noticed that quite a lot of the traffic came from English sites, from authors who liked the content although they couldn’t understand a word of what I was writing. So I finally decided to start GeekAlerts as an English version of Smidigt under the slogan ‘Gadgets and design Geekiness’”.
Robert not only has two versions of the site, but also does almost all of his own heavy lifting regarding site maintenance and especially finding fresh content for the site.
“I answer all of the emails and I try to reply to all of the comments. …I have a loooong (sic) list of RSS feeds that I try to check on a daily basis…I’m really not reliant on tips from readers at all, although I really appreciate getting them.”
That’s where the industrious part comes in, because all that surfing and replying can be mighty time consuming. We’re talking between three to six hours a day that he uses of his own free time to maintain his sites. And he doesn’t even have a tech job, so none of it is company time. In fact, he’s a musician. He finds that immediacy is what keeps his readership loyal.
“I think and hope that it’s the somewhat unique content that drives the readers back. You will often find stuff on GeekAlerts that haven’t yet been covered by other blogs.”
Who doesn’t want a Simpson’s Donut Maker? No, I’m serious.This may reflect poorly on me, but I think that you don’t have to be a geek to dig most of the stuff posted on the site; after all, I thought all of it was cool.
