Name: Nhat Linh Vu

Student number: 148707

Non-commercial

1. Working Title:

PILF hunter: PCs I Love to Fiddle - it's a wordplay, inspired by the MILF thing from the movie American Pie. I have created a poll on a computer enthusiast forum (who will be the majority of my target audience, and are also the target audience of movies like American Pie) asking whether people like it or not, and the replies are all positive so far. It is still open for future changes. It aims to catch people's attentions in a similar way to FCUK. It is supposed to create a not so serious feel for the site, which (please see below) is based on a geeky hobby.

2. Brief description:

My website will focus on computer tweaks – optimizations to enhance the operations of the computer by improving performance, security, enabling hidden features and removing useless ones or troubleshooting/debugging. These will be presented to the readers via guides such as “Tweaking Windows XP for gaming performance” or “3DMark* FAQ”. (* It's a very popular system and graphics card benchmark).

The site will also provide analyses of computer product reviews (mainly Internet-based ones), which have great influence on customer's buying decision nowadays. My guides will aim to educate the readers about the benchmarks that are used in these reviews i.e how they operate, what they assess and how to read the results they return. Being fully informed, the readers can then form their buying decisions properly. I will also provide my own reviews of these reviews, in which I will gather information/facts extracted from them to assess the products, and list the positives and negatives of the reviews.

3. Target audience:

I frequent a lot of computer enthusiast forums on the Internet, such as Overclockers Australia, FutureMark, and my own forum for Vietnamese overclockers (www.vnoczone.com) and have written many guides and short reviews for them. These forums range from small communities (a few thousand members) to very large (50,000+). My target audience will mainly be these forum goers, and hopefully people whom they recommend to my site, which means it will rely on word of mouth advertising.

The content of the website will target hobbyists and amateurs (or newbies) who have an interest in fiddling with their computers, so it will be kept simple and more on the amateur side. It is not meant for professionals who study or work in these IT fields, as they can (or should be able to) learn such things by themselves anyway.

4. Genre

The website can be classified as an educational site, or a hobbyist/enthusiast one, on computer technologies, with more focus on hardware products and related software programs.

5. Sources of content

The majority of the content will be written by myself, with occasional references to other more advanced guides or tutorials when, for example, I need to explain certain computer terminologies in my articles.

6. Competition

The “Tier 1” websites, such as www.tomshardware.com , www.anandtech.com, and www.hardocp.com Actually I have no hope of competing with them, as they are big review sites, have been around for ages, and are sponsored by the major computer equipment manufacturers. These sites have big influences on manufacturers and consumers, and recently, due to certain “scandals”, they have become a joke in the enthusiast community. A part of my website will be reviews of their reviews, to inform the average consumer.

Enthusiast websites, such as www.overclockers.com or www.beyond3d.com , which have been around for years, and have very highly intelligent people, or real experts in the area of interest working on the content. However, these sites are too technical for most people, and some are too American-oriented. My guides will have reference to these sites, but will be paraphrased and explained in layman's terms.

Small review websites, similar to the “Tier 1” sites listed above, except for the size. An example is www.tweaktown.com . The content of such sites mostly consists of reviews of new products sponsored by computer shops or some hardware manufacturers, or a few guides, and daily news on IT. Content-wise, their advantage is that their articles are very easy to read and understand for clueless people. However it's also their disadvantage, because the majority of these reviewers are clueless themselves, and don't know what they are reviewing. They are also held back by the sponsored products they get for the reviews and the advertising deals, so their product reviews always produce a score between 9 and 9.5, which isn't very helpful for consumers.

7. Points of differentiation

The main difference between my site and the similar sites I list above is that mine will be kept as a hobby site, which is not bounded by advertising or any kind of non-disclosure agreement. I'm not motivated by any financial reason to lie to my audience, and they can expect all the facts that I know.

The section containing reviews of reviews is a quite new idea (please refer to part 2 – Brief description) as it will (hopefully) help people to be fully informed about the products they are interested in, instead of getting bombarded with zillions of fancy flashy graphs and numbers in most web reviews, which are prone to typographical errors, or editing due to affiliations, synergies, or simply incompetence.

As I am a Vietnamese, and a co-founder of the first Vietnamese website for computer hardware enthusiasts ( www.vnoczone.com ), and as there are very few of these sites around, some of my articles can be translated to Vietnamese and cross-promoted on the other site and therefore can possibly attract a niche audience (Vietnamese people very much like bilingual articles on technology, as they want to learn the other language as well) to my own one.

8. Raison-D'etre

I enjoy fiddling with computers (both software and hardware) and have written a fair amount of articles on my findings in the last few years, which have attracted lots of hits on Internet forums. I also like helping people with their computer problems. Therefore, I have chosen this topic for my website to satisfy my own hobby and to inform people of computer technologies and techniques they are interested in, by sharing my knowledge.