Brian Lam
It’s 1989, and an American kid roams the streets of Hong Kong in search of gadgets. In shop after shop, he finds an amazing array of high-quality electronics, things that will never make it to the Western world. It’s an endless treasure hunt in an alternate universe, where vast stockpiles of advanced technological gems are constantly replenished….Sound like a tech geek’s dream? This was Brian Lam’s childhood during the late 1980s and early 1990s. From the age of 11 or 12 on, his summers were spent with his grandparents in Hong Kong—an epicenter for technology shop - pers. He hit the streets almost daily in search of the latest high-tech wizardry from Japan and other sources of the gadgets of the future. And he was rewarded with unbelievably low prices and high quality. “Everything was a lot smaller, cheaper, and better,” Lam notes. “It became really hard to justify buying anything during the school year [in the United States].”
It was a perfect situation for someone with as much interest in gadgets and electronics as Lam—an interest he came by naturally. His father, a Hewlett- Packard engineer, was obsessed with gadgets, and this heavily influenced the younger Lam.
All of this turned out to be the ideal foundation for Lam’s future as a technology journalist. After studying journalism at Boston University, Lam “bumped into” an internship with Wired magazine. He then made a series of career jumps and rose to assistant editor at Wired.
Brian Lam’s evolution into blogging is one of the more unusual stories in this book, but you’ll find that his advice for successful blogging is not very different from the advice that other top bloggers offer. Here’s a summary of his tips:
• Providing up-to-the-minute news can contribute greatly to a blog’s success.
• You cannot stay ahead of the news all the time.
• Competition among blogs can be a positive motivator.
• High-quality writing and editing will attract and keep readers, as will surprising them.
• Blog statistics can tell you what works and what doesn’t.
• Check your facts before you publish.
“If you keep the editorial quality up, people show up and they stay.”
It’s 1989, and an American kid roams the streets of Hong Kong in search of gadgets. In shop after shop, he finds an amazing array of high-quality electronics, things that will never make it to the Western world. It’s an endless treasure hunt in an alternate universe, where vast stockpiles of advanced technological gems are constantly replenished….Sound like a tech geek’s dream? This was Brian Lam’s childhood during the late 1980s and early 1990s. From the age of 11 or 12 on, his summers were spent with his grandparents in Hong Kong—an epicenter for technology shop - pers. He hit the streets almost daily in search of the latest high-tech wizardry from Japan and other sources of the gadgets of the future. And he was rewarded with unbelievably low prices and high quality. “Everything was a lot smaller, cheaper, and better,” Lam notes. “It became really hard to justify buying anything during the school year [in the United States].”
It was a perfect situation for someone with as much interest in gadgets and electronics as Lam—an interest he came by naturally. His father, a Hewlett- Packard engineer, was obsessed with gadgets, and this heavily influenced the younger Lam.
All of this turned out to be the ideal foundation for Lam’s future as a technology journalist. After studying journalism at Boston University, Lam “bumped into” an internship with Wired magazine. He then made a series of career jumps and rose to assistant editor at Wired.
Brian Lam’s evolution into blogging is one of the more unusual stories in this book, but you’ll find that his advice for successful blogging is not very different from the advice that other top bloggers offer. Here’s a summary of his tips:
• Providing up-to-the-minute news can contribute greatly to a blog’s success.
• You cannot stay ahead of the news all the time.
• Competition among blogs can be a positive motivator.
• High-quality writing and editing will attract and keep readers, as will surprising them.
• Blog statistics can tell you what works and what doesn’t.
• Check your facts before you publish.