I was under the impression it was going to be available to download without registration, but the CEO pinged me to say it will be registration required. They've debated internally and this is the direction they want to go down.
This content wasn't sponsored. I spent time with the CEO and listened to his explanations, and did some digging of my own. I reported on the announcement and added in some of my own thoughts and opinions. I spent a decade doing exactly this at AnandTech, but now it's in video form (or on my substack).
So I'm not really sure where you're getting that feeling from. I've always done this. If I do sponsored content, it's listed as such.
I'd spent a month or so trying to come up with a good name, seeing which channels had success and what the drivers were. A lot of top channels have the presenter's name in it, but the problem with Ian is that most fonts don't have serifs, and the number of times I've been put down as LAN by people who can't distinguish between capital i and lower case L is infuriating. I concluded it would have to have a cadence, a rhythm, the word Tech, and some tie in.
In the end it was a bad subtitling transcription by YT on my first in person video with Wendell. Right near the end, it auto-transcribed something about me and AnandTech as 'TechTechPotato'. The tie in with chips and potatoes is an obvious one - 'twice the tech and all the chips' is a potential future tag for the channel.
About a month in, one of the community built the logo, completely unprompted. I loved it, and bought it off him.
My advice is to put your head shot on it. I have on mine. Going to events and getting 100 business cards and not remembering what people look like - but they all know what I look like.
There were stories over the years that I wanted to write but didn't get approval. Anything that might instigate a political discourse was discouraged, for example, such as a story about holding an event about wireless network connectivity in an area where locals struggled to get even basic phone service.
I mean, there have been times where PR have been rude and incorrigible. Nothing to the extent that it'd be worth putting them on loudspeaker for, as that'd gut any future relationship, and sometimes it's down to one person in the chain causing the fuss, not the culture.
Part of what I've learned at AnandTech is how these chains of command work - you're not speaking with Company X, you're speaking to Person A on behalf of company X, and sometimes the information they are feeding you goes through 15 hands before it gets to you and if there's a bad apple in that chain, it could cause it all to go pear shaped. That's also part of the 'behind the curtain' I've tried to showcase in my reporting, rather than just simply dealing with a big box with company logo on it that prints money.
Part of the balance you describe is, in my mind, simply the result of reporting on people. If you stick to the science, the research, there's less room for disagreement.
Then again, Samsung stopped sampling us smartphones because every Snapdragon/Exynos review we did, with industry standard tests and power measurements, showed Snapdragon ahead for several years. They felt it wasn't in their best interests to sample us anymore, so we ended up buying the hardware after launch. At least, that was the PR team who didn't want to talk. The SoC team still wanted our input, but the way Samsung works, it was always difficult to have those discussions. Compare that to Samsung Foundry, who have invited me to consecutive industry events to learn about new features - they loved the coverage, and the questions I ask. Same company, different BUs, different media list, different blacklists.
https://morethanmoore.substack.com/p/ibms-announces-07nm-pro...