Our featured blogs have sent us jetting around the world and straddling entire continents over the past few weeks. Today’s is no exception as we head to Malaysia. Please help me give a warm selamat datang to smashpop.net.
What is it?
Smashpop.net is a one man lifestyle blog with a big focus on cool technology. It’s a combination of observation, reviews, news, unboxings, people and jumping. Yes, jumping. More on that in a sec.
Who runs it?
It’s the blogchild of a guy known to his followers as – wait for it – smashpOp. Who else? Called Jason Goh by his mother, smashpOp is a Kuala Lumpur based photographer, blogger and web designer, who manages to bring a great appreciation of lifestyle and fun to his life online.
What we love about it
There are two layers to smashpop.net. There’s the main blog, which is very much a lifestyle diary. It’s smashpOp out and about – photography, food, technology, events and of course jumping. But click down a level and you discover Discovr, a pure technology blog, full of mobile reviews, comparisons, news and more. We love this blog-within-a-blog approach. They look very different – smashpop.net feels like a lively personal blog while Discovr feels like a technology website – but it’s the same personality and interest that drives them along.
His videos are a great mix of unboxings, reviews and feature tests. Not that we’re biased but see what you think of these head to head comparisons – this low light test of the Nokia Lumia 925 vs Samsung Galaxy S4 and this low light stabilisation test of the Nokia Lumia 925 vs iPhone 5.
Given the content, it would be easy for smashpOp to lose a follower or two by getting too technical. But he knows his audience well and manages to avoid that. We love the balance he strikes, on the one hand giving us just the right amount of lifestyle focus to show how a piece of technology might fit into our lives, while on the other hand sharing exactly the right amount of not-too-technical know-how so we know what we’ll get in the box – like this hands on with the Nokia Lumia 1020.
And did I mention the jumping? We think the smashpOp JUMPilation rocks. Nothing to do with technology. It’s just 8 years of smashpOp doing very cool jumps in some very cool places.
What’s its stand out feature?
Well, what’s worth a thousand words? Mr pOp has an awesome eye for what works visually. His main blog is light on text and big on images. In fact you’re as likely to find sumptuous pictures of his dinner as of the gadgets he writes about. The information on Discovr is more in depth, but he keeps the paragraphs short and punchy, illustrating them with his own gorgeous column width photography.
Hooking up beyond the blog
You’ll find him on Twitter, Facebook and of course YouTube – but a great way to follow him further is on Techduology, another tech blog which he runs with radio DJ Ben Jern (note the awesome Lumia Superman giveaway in their latest video).
So then – food, gadgetry, people, travel and international jumping. That’s what defines smashpOp’s lifestyle. But how about you? What drives your lifestyle? And how does Nokia help you capture it?