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Gosh, it's so long ago that even I am not really sure which year I kicked off Aardvark -- but to play it safe, I think I'll opt for 1996, although it might have been 1995.

Back in those days, Aardvark was a weekly, quickly cobbled together late on a Sunday night and placed on a server at Voyager or Actrix for consumption on Monday morning.

Writing a weekly column was pretty easy in those days. The industry was in its infancy so there was always something new happening. Even better, there were only a small handful of "net-celebs" and people of importance so it was really easy to find out who was doing what and why.

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As the Net industry started to pick up speed I found myself with too much material for a weekly publication and thus launched Aardvark Daily.

At that stage I also added the daily news links to help keep people informed about relevant happenings around NZ and the world.

Despite the (now) daily deadline, it was still very easy to come up with new and interesting stuff for each edition because Net-related things were really bowling along at quite a pace.

In 1997 I started 7am.com, a publication with a continuous publications schedule. Despite committing some 17-18 hours of each day to 7am.com, Aardvark was still published each and every week-day.

Then the dot-com boom came and, for a while, I even started updating Aardvark during the day -- just to keep pace with the relentless flow of important things that were happening.

It wasn't until about 2001 that things started to slow a little in the IT/Net industries and I was able to take a little time to reflect.

I had contemplated reviving a weekly edition of Aardvark at that stage, in order to summarise the week's events and add some breadth of material, such as product reviews, third-party opinion-pieces and more in-depth articles.

Unfortunately I soon found myself just as busy with my jet-engine development work so that was put on hold and I simply retained the daily schedule.

Fortunately, thanks mainly to the efforts of the Wood brothers, I also picked up the sponsorship of iHug -- a small but valuable stipend that has guaranteed the survival of this column for several years now.

But things change. IHug was sold some time ago and have now decided not to renew their sponsorship. I (and I'm sure many regular readers) thank them kindly for the support they've shown over the years and appreciate the lifeline they've provided.

So now, on what is probably the 10th (possibly 11th) anniversary of Aardvark's first issue, I'm left wondering where to go from here.

The Net has changed significantly since those early days. Aardvark is almost certainly NZ's (possibly one of the world's) first blogs. In fact Aardvark was blogging way, way before the word blog was even invented.

It's becoming increasingly difficult to sustain the "daily commentary" format in a mature industry. Let's be completely honest -- just about the only newsmakers these days are Telecom, Microsoft, Google and the other big players.

Website design has improved out of site when compared to those early days so there's not much scope for ridicule there and I get bored writing about Telecom's broadband monopoly (yet again).

Despite these hurdles, Aardvark's traffic is still very healthy and still reaches a fist-full of eyeballs each day -- but I'd really like to give things a kick in the pants.

I think what's needed is a change of perspective and perhaps a broadening of scope so as to provide more room for fresh material -- but this is where I need readers' help.

Where to from here?

Keep the same format? Diversify more into science and other technologies? Include more reviews, feature articles, in-depth material? Rake up some regular guest commentators?

Oh, and of course I'll be needing a new sponsor too :-)

Tell us all and see what others have to say in The Aardvark Forums

If you feel that this is a good thing and/or you hold a "geniune affection" for yours truly -- then you are welcome to gift me some money using the buttons provided. In gifting this money you accept that no goods, service or other consideration is offered, provided, accepted or anticipated in return. Just click on the button to gift whatever you can afford. NOTE: PayPal bills in US dollars so don't accidentally gift more than what you were intending :-)

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