TargetPC.COM: 5th anniversary.
It is this time of year again where we once in 12 months thank all of you for your support. Today it's not just another birthday, it's our 5th anniversary. Its unbelievable, time flies! It all goes back in 1999. I decided to create a personal site where I would publish my overclocking findings on the at the time fast Pentium 2 processor. I wrote a simple article on overclocking and information on how to push your PC to its maximum potential. This article got discovered by benews.com; a leading BeOS Operating system resource at the time and then fallowing by Slashdot.org and Brandon Hill the news editor at Anandtech.com. The next morning I woke up doing my usual morning routine, checking the site stats. From that moment, I still remember getting the shock of finding nearly 10,000 hits in the past 12 hours alone. That was something big indeed; I couldn't believe my own eyes. That day I got anxious, impatient and most importantly interested in continuing this journey.
From my home basement and an initial budget of 70$ I started to what today we all know as TargetPC.COM. It wasn't easy during the first year. Finding interested companies to submit their products to a new site was a big challenge. The second big challenge was establishing a stable readership. Without the first step, you cannot provide information on regular basis and without the second step; you don't have a successful site. I spend days and weeks imagining of what I could make TargetPC.COM become. The next months were what I call the building phase. I still remember those endless nights in front of my computer finding potential companies to work with for reviews. Ok, these times have not changed. Instead, we now we spend endless nights testing and writing!
Finally, that day came 3 months after I started the project. A small company at the time by the name of 3DFXCOOL.COM decided to submit their latest pentium2 heatsink/fan combo. While it was a 20$ product, for me it was a big step towards the future. I wrote an article on it and this time was mentioned on Hardocp.com, anandtech.com and a few other good review sites. Once again, it got me motivated to go on. Opportunities that were more interesting came in when small companies started emailing and asking me to cover their products on TargetPC.COM. At that time I didn't have to contact companies as much for product samples. Instead, I was getting propositions to receive them. While it was small companies, it was where it all began; all those little guys helped us get our way up.
Special thanks go to Blake from Azzo computers. He provided me with a lot of hardware that then gave me the chance to build a test computer. I mean at that time we didn't have Intel or AMD sending us their latest products in order to the most recent benchmarking system. As time went by, I needed help. I posted a little note on the site asking for some potential writers that could help me around with news and articles. We weren't big at that time, not even enough to actually pay the editors, but we we're slowly growing.
Hours after that post appeared on the site, I got several dozens of emails from people all around the globe offering their help. It was a big pleasure reading those propositions and the offers were outstanding. I had to choose my team. The first help offer was from Eric Murphy that proposed to help me build the new Target PC.COM. He was a local web designer in a small town of IOWA. As time passed, with his help and knowledge we were able build version 2 of Target PC.COM, a much cleaner and professional design that replaced my personal layout.
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VERSION2 - 2000 |
VERSION3 - 2002 |
VERSION4 - 2004 |
My second choice was Victor Ohsiro, a resident of Palo Alto, TX. Victor has done a tremendous job with his technical writing skills. He was mostly taking care of all the network, main board and gadget reviews. A week after William Yale, an IT teacher in Ohio joined and became the official Audio editor for the site. With William's high engineering background, he provided some of the most technical oriented speaker reviews on the web. I still remember the fear of some companies sending their audio products for review due to William's intense audio testing methodologies. The last person to join was Andrew Oliver, a local from Saskatchewan, Canada. Andrew helped around with all the news and hard drive reviews. As time passed by, our staff was getting better and better. Later on Scott Salveson joined us helping with technical articles on today's biggest technologies concerns. Scott's DVD/RW article was mentioned in an USA TODAY issue, which is quite an achievement. David Dorgerville along Amit Rahman came onboard helping with reviews. Both are doing great jobs covering our computer peripheral articles. David was my partner from school who along the way became my good friend. I think our biggest strength here at Target PC is our dynamic staff!
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Working! 19hrs straight at our previous office. Very usual around here! |
The GX Network, at the time a leading technology network had invited us to join them. With their support we managed to start getting a bit funds out of the site, of course resources that we're getting in we're instantly going back in the site investments. Our first major investment was to build our own dedicated server. A year after, LUNA network an ABOUT.COM company signed us to be part of their technology corner. Luna network was the about.com technology resource that has tremendously helped us along the way with both exposure and different kind of funds.
Comdex 2000 was just around the corner. I was seeing this event as the next step towards success. Andrew and I we're planning to attend; however due to our school schedule it was a bit hard to manage. I was stuck in between. A week before Comdex, I decided to skip classes for one week and take a chance! I wanted to be there covering Comdex 2000 on the site and of course at the same time take this opportunity to create news contacts that could help us along the way.
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AMD Meetting |
Soyo Meeting |
D-Link Meeting |
During that week, Andrew and I managed to establish some very good contacts and meet with several people who were already in the business for a few years. I still remember meeting Anand Lal Shimpi from Anandtech.com, Kyle from Hardocp.com, Scott Wasson from tech-report.com, and quite a few others.
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Andrew, myself and
Anand (anandtech.com ) |
Andrew, myself
and Kyle (Hardocp.com) |
When I came back in Montreal that's when things started rolling. Companies started noticing us more, more advertising opportunities started showing up and not forgetting the feedback we we're getting from you was becoming more and more interesting. During the next 12 months we we're getting better and better, 2002, 2003 we're very good years indeed.
As we matured, Comdex and CES taking place in Las Vegas once a year became an important scene for us. While we get to meet new people there every year, we also get to become friends with different people in the Industry. While I could name dozens, I would like to mention John Chow from TheTechZone and Carl Nelson (Hardcoreware.net) who we always ended up having a blast at parties there.
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Myself and Carl (Hardcoreware) |
Myself along John (Thetechzone)(upper) and PR people |
What more can I say than the fact that working at TargetPC is one of my favorite things. I don't even see it as a job; it's a thrill. Thanks to all of you who helped us build that dream and got us to where we are now. While I could still keep covering our history with endless information, I decided to describe them as great memories. Thanks for all of your help! I don't want to name all the people and companies that supported us because I know I will forget to mention some but you all know who you are. To what was a dream one day, operating from a home basement turned into operating from independent offices in Montreal Canada with editors from all the corners of world serving dozens of thousands of people a day!
For the 5th year anniversary, we are announcing the Target PC.COM official car. In collaboration with Acura and our sponsors, we are currently in the process of building the car of the future today. Our car is an Acura TSX 2005 that we are totally re-modeling from the inside/outside to a highly technological level. LCD screens, Navigation system, Wireless Internet, on board computer system and several other features that we will be officially announcing in the next few weeks. In the mean time, you can catch a glimpse of the car below.
Inside view. 3 LCD screens for Navigation, DVD and Wireless WEB.
2005 is announcing better than ever!
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