A new look at Techgoondu

In June 2008, in a Crystal Jade restaurant at Bishan, an Eureka moment came to my friend Ong Boon Kiat. Having thought hard over lunch about our new blog’s name, he came up with something that captured our frustrations at the time – Techgoondu.

As technology journalists at Singapore Press Holdings then, we felt we were “dumbing down” too much. More than half of Singapore had broadband, but I still remembered being told by senior editors to describe it as a “high-speed Internet service”. Nobody explained what a birdie was in golf stories.

With Techgoondu, we wanted to speak to both the geek and the real “goondus” – self-professed tech idiots who wanted the low-down, not always the gory details, of the latest tech stories. After all, technology mattered to every user, not just geeks.

Thus, Techgoondu became a pet project which Boon Kiat and I, and another friend and colleague Oo Gin Lee, started privately the very same day on WordPress. Gin Lee had discussed writing a blog previously and the three of us decided – why not.

It wasn’t supposed to be serious. We had no plans to run any ads or even let many people know about it. But we wanted to test the waters by putting our real names next to the stories. Remember, this was when blogs were seen as something “underground”.

How would our bosses react? What about newsmakers? Most importantly, what would readers think of the other stories we were putting out besides the bylines in our newspapers?

I never found out about the bosses’ reaction because I left my job as The Straits Times’ technology correspondent a few months after Techgoondu was born. In the six years since, however, I’m proud to have seen readers and newsmakers take increasing notice in Techgoondu stories.

Today, the site attracts about 100,000 views a month – a modest number – and draws readers from consumers to IT leaders to government decision makers. We know we are read because we frequently get praise and brickbats.

Though the makeup of the Techgoondu team has changed over the years, and it is now published by a privately-owned company, it is driven by the same desire to report, explain and demystify some of the biggest technology stories.

As we revamp the site today, we hope the stories will continue to make a difference. Whether this is a commentary on the latest security breach or a review of the most desired smartphones around, Techgoondu strives to provide insight to some of the hottest technology topics.

One area we hope to beef up our reporting on is enterprise computing. Look to more coverage on data analytics, security and mobility, as companies tackle increasingly complex challenges.

Our regular Q&As with technology leaders will now be joined by another new section – Techgoondu Think. It aims to go beyond the headlines and discuss more deeply some of the most important trends and issues affecting technology users.

Here, we’d like to thank our readers, advertisers and past contributors for supporting Techgoondu.

We hope you’ll like the new site. Let us know how we can improve. And please be patient, as we troubleshoot some of the bugs we may have missed!

Don’t forget we are giving away a number of tech gizmos to our readers on our Facebook page starting this week. Check out the first one – a Xiaomi Redmi Note.