As editor in chief, I am supposed to make sure that this blog stays afloat, and all of the sister blogs as well.

Sad news is that we are shutting down GamesArena. It appears that a dedicated games blog did not suit us. The site will still be around until the end of this year, as most of the content will be added into TECHGEEK.

Good news is that we will replace it with another blog. We have several options, and we will be starting them next year. One of them will be focusing on the media.

Another blog that I want to do is an iPhone and iPod touch blog. This will be mainly a reviews site, but it will also incorporate daily or weekly ramblings and news.

You can also add your voice for a blog idea. Basically, we will host that blog for you on the servers, with you having full control over it.

All ideas will need to be discussed by the team - but the iPhone/iPod touch blog is a one of the main ideas.

Terence

Here is the gameplay trailer for Perimeter 2. You can download the HD version of it here (Thanks Big Download).

Source: Big Download

In celebration of 1,000-plus worth of posts since our birth, we decided to recap on our favourite posts. This time, it is our reviews and rantings that we love to make so much off. And yes, this is like a recap show. On with the best reviews and rantings:

Ten HD, Teh Sucks (18/12/07) - Ten HD had launched at that time in Wollongong (under a different name) and he hates the experience.

Flashdance around the playback (08/04/08) - Before iView, there was ABC Playback; and it got me so mad that it was useless, until they revamped it and made it usable again.

The Blogger’s Code (10/04/07) - I hated the blogger’s code of conduct; but now, maybe I’m changing - no wait, I still hate it.

Welcome to the Rapture (21/11/07) - Read Kenny Yeoh’s take on the most popular game of 2007, Bioshock. Does he like it, or not - you just got to read it to find out.

Glide your crap … (24/04/07) - I find that this had to be the worst service ever; and it was so complicated, I just gave up on it, ignored it and had to return to it to finish the review.

Ping.FM review (16/08/08) - We finish off with the latest review, and also the service that I like the most. A good service, a good interface and it does what it says.

After over 1 year, with five redesigns and additional members of contributors and staff; TECHGEEK.com.au has made it past the 1,000+ posts mark. From daily news to tips and tutorials - we are slowly building up and also getting praise for our designs and also for our content.

But it would not be a celebration without a special recollection of our favourite posts:

Idiot buys US$999 iPhone app, tries to get his money back (08/08/2008) - This has to be one of the most hilarious things that has happened this year alone. I mean, why would you buy a $999 iPhone application - or in his case, stupid enough to ‘joking’ clicked on the buy link.

Major Outage in QLD (15/07/08) - Optus made a big screw up after an outage in one of its exchanges crashed and caused the entire telecommunications network in Queensland to fail. This is one of Stewart’s favourite posts.

Google’s April Fools Joke! (01/04/07 - in the US) - Google’s April Fools Joke about a internet connection made from your toilet. Now that’s innovation!

Late Night Screw Up! (28/06/08) - Optus screws up my internet usage meter, and who better to report the screw up is Stewart Wilson.

Apple offers TV Shows on iTunes - Finally! (24/06/08) - Apple finally makes a move to bring television shows to Australian viewers. Too bad we had to spoil on their parade.

Our Entire Election 2007 Coverage (24/11/07) - Kevin Rudd v. John Howard. Who would win? Covered on TECHGEEK and Twitter, it brought some new found respect on our part. Now only if we had those laptops…

It is Sunday and it is time to bring you the news from TECHGEEK, The Journal and GamesArena in one whole blog post. If you haven’t realised by now, TECHGEEK has a brand new design - called Crystalline (Blue). You can read more by Terence Huynh, the Editor in Chief and Lead Designer for the ambitious project.

The Owners of The Guardian Newspaper, The Guardian Media Group, has bought paidContent’s parent company ContentNext Media for $30 million. It will also own three other blogs from the company, paidContent UK, mocoNews.net and contentSutra.

In Australia, Seven has made some indication that it wants the Olympics back. Seven lost the rights for the 2010 and 2012 Olympics, but it may get the 2014 and 2016 Olympics.

In Gaming, Konami has sued Harmonix and Viacom over their popular game Rock Band, saying it violates several patents including a “musical-rhythm matching game”.

Square Enix has made an iPod game, titled “Song Summoner: The Unsung Heroes” , that will allow you to use your songs on your iPod to determine your character’s skills.

Activision shareholders have agreed to merge with Vivendi Games, the owners of Blizzard (who created World of Warcraft). The proposal will see Vivendi becoming the major shareholder - having a 52% stake in the new gaming powerhouse.

EA and Hasbro brings Scrabble to Facebook, to compete with Mattel’s version for international users and Scrabulous. It will also be on pogo.com and have plans to release more Hasbro games to other social networks.

Fallout 3 has been given a “Refused Classification” rating, meaning that it is banned for sale unless, like Grand Theft Auto IV, it creates a modified version that meets the MA rating. The game does contain a number of mature subjects like drug abuse and extreme violence.

TECHGEEK, however, has gone iPhone mad - with information and pictures of the Apps Store on iTunes and reporting that the iPhone had activation problems. Oh, if you are wondering who has the best deal - Analysts have said that Optus offers the most flexible and affordable plans.

Meanwhile, a regional high-speed broadband in Victoria only serves three companies in only three years - wasting $702,000 in taxpayers money to maintain the network.

And in weird and wacky news: Malware authors have declared its World War III and Windows 3.11 gets its marching orders - 15 years since it was launched.

Oh, last but not least; TECHGEEK has now started supporting OpenID credentials for you to login and for some of you to help contribute. This will allow you to comment on posts more quickly since there is no reports of spammers using it as their advantage.

TECHGEEK, starting today, is now officially allowing you to use your Wordpress.com, Yahoo, LiveJournal, AOL and Vox Accounts on TECHGEEK to comment on posts and for some of you to write on TECHGEEK with one ID.

Basically, this is done thanks to OpenID. OpenID allows you to use, for example, your LiveJournal account and lets you log in to many other sites that support it. One of the benefits is that all comments made using an OpenID-supported account are automatically approved, allowing you to have your say much faster and no longer needed to wait for approval.

However, those who have a TECHGEEK account already - you can link your account with your OpenID-supported account. But those who do not have a supported one, you cannot use your TECHGEEK one. We are working on how to make one with Wordpress, but it is going to take some time.

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TECHGEEK is pleased to announce that we have a brand new design and we have ditched the dreaded red colouring (as many have said - like James, Stewart, Kenny, among others) and brought on this new design.

We, along with the editors for GamesArena (as they will be soon using it) and many of our editors and our design team at Antinomie Designs, have been working on this theme for over three months after launching the TECHGEEK’s “Celebration Theme”. That theme will be a back-up theme if we need to do some upgrades, etc.

As well, our new archive pages will now show you the content directly, and not make you click to view the content. Also, we have added Mixx, StumbleUpon and Reddit to the list of social bookmarking tools that you can use to help.

On a technical level, we have reduced the amount of coded pages from 20 to 12 - a dramatic reduction, as I have just discovered “Conditional Tags” - I know, but I’m slowly adding more skills to the site. As well, we have also reduce the page loads to have the site run on one stylesheet, and have less “wide” components (and that’s true - from three to one, the footer).

The design is also 990px wide, making content to appear not squashed. Though we know it will cause problems to many of you with resoulutions less than 1024×768, many of our visitors have a higher resoultion than 800×600.

The design, however, is not expected to start appearing at those CSS galleries as we don’t want to focus on vanity but on content. However, it is okay to have a bit of vanity - and that allows us to present content in a way that looks good on the eyes.

The official name for all the blog redesigns is Crystalline, and TECHGEEK will recieve the blue edition of this. The Journal will recieve black and GamesArena will have a colour that I have no idea to call it. As well, this will be an offering to all blogs on Reawaken Media - so that’s a good chance that you may see this on blogs under our name (P.S - We are looking for those who want to create an anime/manga blog with us).

The design will not be avaliable as a download, as we want to be exclsuive.

- Terence

Here is some site news. Our parent company, Reawaken Media, has launched today. It was previously known as reawakennetworks, but we decided to change that as we broke the partnership in March or something.

As well, we have a forum. You can now find it at http://forums.reawaken.info. Make sure you go to Categories and go to the TECHGEEK section.

-Terence

TECHGEEK is soon going to launch a new design in a couple of weeks - however, we will release it for those under our Development team before it gets released as a beta for the public.

The new design will be based of suggestions on our Dev forums, over at http://dev.reawaken.info/forums.

We also have some news as well. Kenny Yeoh, our gaming Editor, has been promoted to Senior Editor status - having the same role with James and Stewart. As well, we have added three new contributers, all which we will announce in the next few days.

Other than that, it is back to work over at TECHGEEK HQ.

- Terence

Hello everyone,

We want your opinions about what should we do on the new TECHGEEK Theme. Why do we want your opinion? Because it will help us suit the needs of a majority and not a minority.

Since TECHGEEK is part of the Reawaken Media, our parent company has released a special developers forums. You can find it at http://dev.reawaken.info/forums. You do need to sign up to view the forums.

After that, you just look for the "TECHGEEK Dev" Section. Simple and Easy. Unless you are a developer, which allows you to view some of the source code and template ideas.

As well, if you want to have a special dedicated TECHGEEK forums, please do say. We will be using bbPress so it would integrate with our Wordpress CMS - unless you like having two separate accounts.

- Terence