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Neowin |
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This article does not cite any references or sources. Please help improve this article by adding citations to reliable sources. Unverifiable material may be challenged and removed. (May 2007) |
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| URL | www.neowin.net |
|---|---|
| Type of site | News |
| Registration | Optional |
| Owner | Neowin LLC. |
| Created by | Steven Parker & Marcel Klum |
| Launched | October 2000 |
| Current status | Online |
Neowin.net is a technology news website that actively focuses on Windows, PCs, Mac and Linux. Neowin runs under the slogan, "Where unprofessional journalism looks better."
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Neowin was started as a hobby in October 2000 by Marcel Klum and Steven Parker, known within the forums as "Redmak" and "Neobond" respectively, reporting news about the Windows XP alpha and beta release (then known as "Windows Codename Whistler").
Neowin has broken several stories, such as the leak of Windows 2000 source code onto the internet.
Significant Post Marks
July 19, 2006, surpassed the 5 million post mark at or around 6:30am Eastern Time.
October, 2006, surpassed the 6 million post mark.
July 27, 2007, surpassed the 7 million post mark at 3:12pm.
Sept 28, 2008, surpassed the 8 million post mark at 4:00pm.
Neowin has past a milestone of its 8th birthday, and surpassing 8 million posts and awarding a forum member for their participation on helping reach that milestone. lylesback2 received the copy of Windows Vista Ultimate, which was announced on October 1, 2008 (Neowin's birthday) in this announcement: "You may remember the forum thread where I asked, 8 million by Oct 1st 2008 & Win! a copy of Vista Ultimate on May 7th of this year, when it looked like we might miss the target. Well today we are well over 8 million and I'm proud to announce that lylesback2 won the copy of Windows Vista, congrats to him! A big thanks also go out to our community for standing by us all these years, and as I say every year: Here's to another X years!"
Neowin is ranked in the top 2000 most visited (traffic based) web sites in large countries such as Australia, United Kingdom, Denmark, Finland and smaller ones such as Gibraltar by Alexa. USA & India find Neowin in the top 4000 ranks which clearly indicates a wide-spread online readerbase.1, a global traffic rating portal.
The hosting for Neowin was upgraded in December 2005, and Neowin version 3.9 was launched. This upgrade, codename "Swift", is a progression from the version 3 theme and introduces subtle visual differences as well as a major overhaul of the content management system. Its focus was on semantic XHTML and CSS technologies as well as replacing the outdated nested table design. The forum system was also upgraded to IPB 2.1.3 as part of this move.
On 1 July 2007, Neowin developers updated the forum skin to Shift, along with a board update to IPB 2.3.1. This update gave the site the consistent look they had been planning for some time.
Initially it was denied that they were planning an upgrade to Shift in an attempt to make it a surprise for members, and although members suspected Shift was ready to be deployed, nothing was confirmed.
Unfortunately for the staff, the copyright notice and the ability to choose the Shift skin was noticed by members on their IRC channel during the update, and thus spoiling the surprise.
A new design was released on 14th October 2008, which was announced on 1 October 2008, Neowin's eighth birthday. Screenshot
Neowin focuses its attention on advanced computer users and technology enthusiasts of all kinds, although it is composed mainly of users of the Microsoft Windows operating system. It is worth noting, however, that it has active users of Linux- and Unix-based operating systems, including Mac OS X. Neowin also has its own Linux distribution, based on Ubuntu, currently being actively developed under the name of Shift Linux.
The site is strictly moderated, at least relative to some other sites. Neowin does not allow personal attacks between members and flamewars are usually extinguished quickly. Users who do not follow the rules are generally warned several times before being banned from the site. The current staff count is 48.
The website is composed of several areas which all provide different services:
There are three news sections that involve different areas of technology.
This part of the site contains content that is original to Neowin and not linked from other sites.
These parts of the website provide users an area to talk about technology and other topics.
The Neowin forums are Powered by Invision Power Board forum software. Neowin has an active technology forum consisting of 208,652 registered users (as of May 11, 2008) and over 7,650,066 posts. At its peak (February 28, 2008 at 04:20 GMT), Neowin's forum had as many as 11,724 users online simultaneously.
While the primary topics on Neowin are generally perceived as being Microsoft and Windows-centric, the forums have a large community for other discussions, including, but not limited to:
The blog extension of the forum, which allows Neowin users to post things they find interesting in their own personal blog, was only recently introduced with the latest update to the website's forums (3.8). However, it should be noted that Blogs are currently only available for the forum staff and subscribers, and regular users cannot make their own.
In 2006, Neowin.net debuted its own podcast, branded the NeoCast. After copyright issues arose, the name was changed to the current NeowinCAST.
The NeowinCAST originated as a discussion based show centered around the video game industry (NeowinCAST Gaming Edition). The show was created by Paul Krevs and Todd Tanner. Weekly topics would range from newly released software patches to the latest gaming hardware. The show, however, was short lived and exited weekly production after only the fourth show.
Originally intended to expand on the NeowinCAST lineup, the NeowinCAST News Edition was also created as a weekly show. Early episodes featured host Paul Krevs and a discussion panel consisting of Shane Pitman, Christopher Vendemio, and Don Smith. As the name implies, the show would center around the latest news in the entire technology industry, with Paul leading the discussion while the other three participants shared their opinions on the subject matter. Paul soon left the show and Christopher took over the hosting duties. However, the NeowinCAST News Edition went on hiatus in September 2006 after commitment issues prevented the show from being done weekly. A consistent panel of hosts could not be found and the project was put on the side.
In January 2007, the NeowinCAST News edition was brought back online with former NeowinCAST members Christopher Vendemio and Todd Tanner being joined by a new member, Rob Wright for episode 15. Returning to the former weekly schedule, the second version of the News Edition featured a slightly more light hearted vibe with deeper discussion and a greater willingness to go off on tangents. The show was also scaled back in length, shortening from an average of one hour to an average of forty-five minutes. Christopher has often stated this change in length was done to help cut back on editing time, thus helping to guarantee a weekly release.
Neowin have now released an RSS Feed, which can be used to track the weekly podcast releases in your favourite RSS reader.
Neowin has also been known for helping people to release new freeware programs to the public. Some examples of programs that started life on Neowin are:
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