Gadgetory

hey guys it's Brandon minimun from PocketNow and in this video I'm gonna share a little bit of news with you guys as of January 1st I will no longer be involved from the day-to-day operations of PocketNow and I'll no longer be editor-in-chief now before I tell you who's taking my place as editor-in-chief and what that means for the future of pocket now I wanted to share a little bit about the past of pocket now to help color in everything so pocket now was established in the year 2000 by my brother Jared minimun and his colleague Derek Snyder now back in the year 2000 mobile devices were so incredibly different than they are today they didn't have color screens they didn't have Wi-Fi they ran on single-core 166 megahertz processors with like 32 megabytes of RAM incredibly different but there was a future promise with these low-end devices but at the time they were pretty revolutionary that one day these devices would become so powerful so thin and light that they would transform society that one day we would have a device that we would always carry with us we'd put it in our pocket and it would be as powerful if not more powerful than the computers that we use for work and of course we're living that reality today but that was the thinking behind pocket now it was a labor of love it was never intended to be a business or a company that could support multiple full-time employees Derek and Jared did it out of love a couple of years later in 2002 I finally became involved I was around 16 years old and I was getting very jealous seeing my brother always come home with the latest I pack or giornata if you guys were following the tech industry back then those names sound familiar to you and he finally let me come on as a news writer but he wouldn't let me use my last name because I think he was embarrassed that his little bro was was writing for the website that he was a part of so I went by just Brandon news writer um so over the next couple of years I got more and more experienced in the industry and around 2004-2005 after Jared had left the site to pursue his studies Derek also decided it was time to leave to pursue his studies so he sold PocketNow to a family friend of mine and made me editor-in-chief and I was super excited about that promotion because finally I got to take control of this thing and I had some ideas on where could go and what we could do and around that time we decided that we could no longer cover only Windows Mobile devices and then there was an evolution where we decided to cover you know iPhone and Android and tablets and now PocketNow is expanding into wearables so there was an evolution there and if we fast forward a couple of years later to 2008 I was finishing my studies I was running pocket now all throughout my college because college was kind of boring and so it was great to have this outlet on the side and in 2008 I decided that I really didn't want to get a traditional job getting a job having a boss just wasn't something that I wanted to do and if possible I wanted to do something entrepreneurial so I decided I wanted to try to buy to buy pocket now from its current owner back then and I didn't have the money to buy it so I went to the bank I've got a loan right before the financial crisis thankfully in 2009 so if I had waited a year I probably wouldn't have gotten a loan at all and because I had no collateral my dad had to put his house on the line and I'm very thankful for him for allowing me to have that opportunity so in 2008 I became the owner of pocket now and I finally got to really do things with it and over the subsequent years we hired our first full-time employee which was just a complete dream for me because to take pocket now from where it where it was to where we are today we needed to have full-time employees people that would spend 40 hours a week thinking about and doing things for pocket now and today we have five full-time employees and I just feel so lucky that we've been able to do that but over that time period since 2008 the entrepreneurial itch in me hasn't stopped itching and I've become involved with other things around 2010 I became involved with xda-developers as one of the main admins over there this is a site that I've used personally for for many many years to tweak my my windows mobile device and then tweak my Android devices so to be a part of that is amazing and then recently I became involved with a start-up that's making an app called femur and I did a video about this not going to advertise it too much on here it's a an app I'm very proud of it's a free app for Android check it out it changes your home screen on your device and makes it look really beautiful and there are about 150 themes to choose from so over the years I've been involved with other things besides PocketNow and as a result you've probably seen my video contributions go down I write fewer reviews and really I haven't been able to give PocketNow the full attention that it deserves which is why I'm extremely excited to announce that one of the hardest-working humans on the planet and one of my closest friends and a guy you know very well will become the new editor-in-chief in just a short period of time January 1st Anton de Nagy I cannot pronounce his last name Michael Fisher can do it really well I need lessons I guess but Anton or Tony as we call him around here again is one of the hardest-working people I know and he has an amazing vision on where he wants to take PocketNow because we want to grow we want to grow and get bigger and better we want to hire more people we want to be an even better website and video channel for you guys so that's the story of pocket now that's where it has been and where it's going I'm not going to disappear completely I'm going to be working with Tony over the the coming months to make sure that he's comfortable and and help him in any way I can I'll also be contributing to pocket now because my obsession for for phones and tablets isn't going anywhere so you'll see me write some reviews and do some videos I might be on the podcast here and there so I'm not going to disappear from the earth here and of course if you want to follow me and see what I'm up to i'm on twitter at brandon minimun and and that's and that's pretty much it so kind of a bittersweet video to do but but things are changing but I think things are change for the better and I hope you stick around and I want to thank you guys again I know we always do this and it's becoming cliche but if it wasn't for you guys if you didn't watch our videos if you didn't go to our website and read our articles we we literally couldn't do this we just would not exist so thank you for your support and I also want to thank the whole PocketNow team for giving me so many opportunities and and really allowing me to live a dream here and I guess there's nothing left to say so happy New Year to everyone and I'll see you around don't worry again I'm not disappearing and that's it for now that means thumbs up if you like this video I always do that the wrong time