There are many things I like about this time of year, and not just all the cool stuff left under The Geek Beat tree (although that is a pretty big part of it.) In a life filled to the bursting with stuff to do and never enough time to do it, the Holiday break is always a good time to catch-up, take stock and plan for the year to come.

This time of year is special for another reason: Almost as if the holiday itself simply can’t contain all the gadgety goodness of an entire season, we get CES and Macworld Expo, all in one week, to sate our techie greed.

You can depend on us to filter through the news and bring you the best these two annual celebrations of geekdom have to offer. We’re already gearing up a shootout between our current favorite big screen TV, the Sony Bravia 46V2500, and VIZIO’s new $1,899 47-inch, 1080p LCD. VIZIO is an exciting new company that has seemingly come out of nowhere to challenge the grand masters of the big picture, Sony and Sharp. We can’t wait to get their latest offering into our lab and see if this upstart can change the quality/value proposition in high-end displays.

Then, of course, there’s the annual Apple jamboree – Macworld Expo San Francisco – where Mr. Showbiz himself always has “one more thing” for the faithful.The rumors abound as to what The Next Big Thing will be out of Cupertino. Our money is on a big screen iPod, or WidePod as we like to call it, and the much-rumored appearance of the iPhone, an Apple-branded cell phone/media player that has gained almost mythic status in the Mac community. I’m especially interested in the latter, as I’m in desperate need of a new cell phone and haven’t quite found the perfect mix of functionality and service to pull me away from my trusty, but aging, Motorola V710.

Rest assured, whatever Steve Jobs’ Flying Circus brings to town, we’ll be among the first to get ourselves one and write about it here.

Capsule Reviews. In the months since The Geek Beat launched, you, our readers, have been generous with your praise and feedback. Feedback is especially welcome, as it’s the only sure way we know of to make thngs better. The Geek Beat is still a new website and constantly evolving – we’re always working behind the scenes on new features and capabilities to wow you, one or two of which we hope to launch in the coming months. We don’t want to tip our collective hat too much just yet, but I will tell you that we’re working on rich media, especially video, as well as a much better, more extensive gallery section.

Feedback is also important to improve those things The Geek Beat is already doing. We’ve heard from many of you that you love the reviews, but wish we could cover more products. The Geek Beat crew is still a relatively small team – a team we’re always looking to expand, in case any of you think you’ve got the stuff.

We won’t compromise our results by rushing products through testing, but we will be implementing new capsule reviews in hopes that we can pump a few more features out a month. These reviews will continue to have all the high-quality testing behind them as on our full-length reviews, but will be in a shorter, more summary format.

We will, of course, continue to do our full-length reviews when a product requires it. However, for a lot of products we review, 1,500 words is just plain overkill. And if getting to the point a little quicker means we can bring you the information you need, faster, I’m all for it.

Forums. As with any new publication, building a relationship with your audience takes time. Thanks to regular appearances on KGO Radio’s The Pete Wilson Show, our site traffic is constantly growing. In fact, our traffic has expanded so much in the last month we are looking to migrate to a bigger, faster server to keep up with demand.

As those of you who have taken your relationship with The Geek Beat to the next level know, we always try to respond to reader posts in our forums within 24 hours. So, if you have questions about our coverage – our about any geek-related topic – I’d like to encourage you to post them on our forums. We’re here to help you navigate the sometimes arcane waters of technology, and we will get back to you quickly.

I’d also encourage you to use our forums to share your own experiences with the products we cover. The point of this site is deliver reliable information about geeky subjects. The more our community becomes involved with that effort, the better The Geek Beat will serve it’s prime directive.

And, as always, if you’re a little shy about posting on the forum our on the stories themselves, please feel free to write me directly: andy@thegeekbeat.com.

And here’s to an amazing New Year of tech, entertainment, toys; plus health and happiness for us all.

This entry was posted on Friday, January 5th, 2007 at 3:25 pm and is filed under HOME, COLUMNS, IN THE WORKS. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.