03-29-2006, 09:00 AM
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Executive Editor
Join Date: Aug 2006
Posts: 29,160
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Brighthand Acquired by BargainPDA.com
"Brighthand.com and BargainPDA.com have combined to create one of the largest handheld computing focused sites on the web, bringing the latest industry news, reviews and support to consumers around the world. Going forward the Brighthand.com brand will prevail and the key personnel from both sites will continue with the combined site, including site management by Ed Hardy. First off, we're ecstatic about merging Brighthand and BargainPDA. I'd like to give credit to Steve Bush and Ed Hardy for building a tremendous site, a true authority when it comes to all handheld computing devices. As noted, Ed will continue to run the site and will cover the industry with his professional and on-point style. Steve, the founder of Brighthand, has decided to pursue other ventures; we wish him all the best, he has been instrumental in making sure the Brighthand transition has gone as flawlessly as possible."
They say that all markets eventually converge, so this doesn't surprise me at all. It's an end of an era though - Brighthand was around right from the beginning with Pocket PCs.
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03-29-2006, 10:31 AM
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Oracle
Join Date: Aug 2006
Posts: 841
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Wow... This is really interesting and unexpected news. Surprising to see the Bargainpda.com brand overtaking the Brighthand branding all over the site, even though Ed Hardy is "leading the charge" with site management. I would have expected to be the other way around!
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03-29-2006, 12:43 PM
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Mystic
Join Date: Aug 2006
Posts: 1,520
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I don't know any numbers or anything. And I'm not that familiar with BargainPDA.
That being said, as a once frequent participant over at Brighthand, it seemed to me that the communities were diminishing. While Brighthand had name recognition, it possible that they needed an infusion of new blood. Meaning both contributers and forum community members.
Or perhaps Steve Bush simply wanted to do something else.
I find the front page too busy for my taste though, but I wish them luck.
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03-29-2006, 03:57 PM
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Intellectual
Join Date: Nov 2003
Posts: 181
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I remember back to when Steve first announced he was moving on to other things. I noticed that after that the site just went downhill. The front page stories weren't particularly interesting anymore, the reviews (the few that there have been) seemed late and uninvolved, and the forums pretty much died. Maybe this newest change with get something going again over there. I think I became a member there before buying my first PPC, a Jornada something-or-another with that flip downcover...I would not have gotten to this site if it weren't for Brighthand, but I don't even have Brighthand as a bookmark anymore.
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03-29-2006, 04:58 PM
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Mystic
Join Date: Aug 2006
Posts: 1,520
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I don't recall Steve's announcement but I did recognize the change.
Basically an editorial every now and then. And a slow trickle of news.
I guess its not fair to compare to the ThoughtsMedia family since they were meant to be fundamentally different.
I can however credit the Brighthand for helping me find this sight.
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03-29-2006, 05:39 PM
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Philosopher
Join Date: Mar 2004
Posts: 555
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Quote:
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Originally Posted by Phillip Dyson
I don't know any numbers or anything. And I'm not that familiar with BargainPDA.
That being said, as a once frequent participant over at Brighthand, it seemed to me that the communities were diminishing. While Brighthand had name recognition, it possible that they needed an infusion of new blood. Meaning both contributers and forum community members.
Or perhaps Steve Bush simply wanted to do something else.
I find the front page too busy for my taste though, but I wish them luck.
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Ditto. After Bush left the community didn't seem that vibrant or enthusiastic any more. The forums became more poorly moderated. News were slow in coming, and slowly it became more of "Hardy's blog" than a PDA news site. As for the reviews, they were horrible and smacked of laziness; most of them used press-release pictures rather than taking pictures of their own. There was also no evaluation criteria (heck they even took down the pro/con thing), and some times their review opinions were just plain off-based.
I'm sorry if that seemed more of a rant than anything, but I've felt that way about BH ever since Bush left. It's a pity, since BH was my favorite site until then. And it was painful to see it spiral down like that. Hopefully joining with BargainPDA will bring back some life.
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03-29-2006, 06:34 PM
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Philosopher
Join Date: Jun 2002
Posts: 498
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The last year of brighthand.com is almost like pdabuzz.com, a dead fish. I am happy to see that brighthand.com was acquared, not abandoned to death.
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03-29-2006, 09:27 PM
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Intellectual
Join Date: Mar 2004
Posts: 165
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When their search indices were lost and they didn't rebuild them for the two years that were indexed, that's when I quit monitoring the forums there and came over here. Since then, the e800 forum has still been fairly active, but it's definitely not the same as it used to be. Seems the forums kind of survive on their own, with very few mod posts. It's kind of a depressing site to be at anymore.
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03-29-2006, 11:06 PM
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Contributing Editor Emeritus
Join Date: Aug 2006
Posts: 1,097
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Quote:
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Originally Posted by Phillip Dyson
I can however credit the Brighthand for helping me find this sight.
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Ditto!
What's that say under my avatar? Member since when?
Since Brighthand stopped being an interesting site and I found the lively forum over here...
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03-29-2006, 11:44 PM
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Pupil
Join Date: Mar 2002
Posts: 14
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Brighthand brings back memories.... 
Sorry if this seems a little emotional, but there was a time when I could not live without it! I was one of the first members, back in 2000/01 (I think) when the first pocket pc's came out: The iPaq and the Jornada as well as others. I went from Jornada, to iPaq, to Casio, Zaurus, Dell, iPaq 4700 and today I use an i730. Can't remember details or all model numbers right now, but Steve was totally devoted to the new revolution that Pocket Pc's were promising to be at the time. I can remember, however, the day that things went a bit sour for some of us PPC hardcores: Steve had just come back from some tech convention and declared he had an "epiphany". He described how the president of Palm at the time, arrived to the show in a VW Beetle from the 70's. Palm's CEO idea was to draw a parallel between the simplicity of the BUG and Palm's OS. Unfortunately some of us thought that it was a bad move and that like the metaphore of the VW BUG, Palm's OS time has come and gone. In hindsight, now history tells the truth. How many times is Palm going to change their OS?
What some people really suspected at the time was that Palm was trying to work a deal with Steve, since Brighthand had virtually no competition at the time except for Dale Coffing's "pocketpc passion" , Jason's "pocket pc thoughts". and a few others and it was generating a lot of traffic. Steve tried to create a place for Palm users and encourage their input. At the time, there were many sites dedicated to this, but Brighthand was probably the best haven for pocket pc users. I complained and thought that Brighthand was growing too much, too fast. But this was Steve's baby, his creation.
Things got a bit unpleasant at one time, mainly because Steve's tolerance for disagreement was low sometimes and he tended to challenge people and try to call them on the phone, etc.... (I was banned temporarily, somebody broke into my email account, I then realised that the internet is not the best place for disagreements, since there ARE A lot of FREAKS OUT THERE).
After sometime, Steve emailed me and others who had migrated mostly here (although I just became a lurker and stayed away from shenanigans) and invited us back, that he appreciated the contributions, etc. I moved on to other things and regretably never really made a comeback to Brighthand.
But overall, I am very thankful to Steve for creating Brighthand, a place where I would hang into the wee hours of the night back when I had no life and I was lucky to meet some great people. We were like a band of brothers and sisters (there were female members too). One beloved member, Disco Tiki, passed away and it caused a lot of pain and sadness to all.
If you asked me, it was that fateful day sometime in 2001, I think, when Steve had his Palm "epiphany" that made Brighthand lose focus; slowly, but surely. People really appreciate when something that is really good and satisfying stays that way. How many times have you found a really good "hole in the wall" little restaurant and then come back sometime later to see they have expanded their menu, etc, but the original quality is not there anymore? sometimes you can't cater to everyone. In a way, one of the reasons why I always come back to look at the news here at pocket pc thoughts, is because this page has not changed much since it's inception....anyway, this might just be fiction after all, just an opinion. But if it is true that he was courted by the folks at Palm, I hope he made a lot of money on that deal!
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