What’s a geek to do before Christmas? Buy a Techgoondu-approved gift to make others – and ourselves – happy of course. Granted, this year-end is shaping up to be more austere than the past few with the financial downturn already upon us. But austerity driving shouldn’t mean no giving for Christmas, right? So here’s a list of diverse geek gifts mooted by us, and we promise it is a cool one:

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by Kevin Lim (theory.isthereason.com), for creativecommonssingapore.wordpress.com

We’ve moved Techgoondu’s content to the Creative Commons 3.0 License (Singapore).

This basically means that as long as you attribute to the source (i.e.Techgoondu), feel free to copy and mash-up any of the content here as you see fit. You can see this license on our front page on the right-hand sidebar.

Why are we doing this?

We’re not deluded enough to think our content is popular enough that it will run into some legal issues over copyright. Far from it. In fact if you take stuff, we’ll be more than flattered.

The whole exercise is more about making a point: content like this should be free, and we are stating upfront we have no issues with that, now and in the future.

Call it a reaction to our backgrounds in media, where “content protection” is the norm. That is not the way the world is heading, and not the way we believe information should be handled. Many of us here at Techgoondu are open source advocates anyway, so we should walk-the-talk, so to speak.

Besides, the site was set up on passion to find an alternative tech voice outside our work, and profit is not on our high list of priorities for Techgoondu.

If you have a good tech blog in Singapore, we’d love to RSS feed your content in a sidebar on our site. I believe it serves the Singaporean readers out there better. Drop us an email.

Thanks to this Tech65.org post for sparking this idea.

I often hear laments from my friends about the dead tech innovation scene in Singapore.

“There is nothing new in tech coming out of Singapore”, they cry. Singaporeans in IT are nothing but glorified tech sales and marketeers for big name MNCs who have set up shop in this little dot that we call home. Or, they work for GLCs (government linked companies) or statuary boards trying to copy technology from elsewhere. And failing miserably on innovation.

Contrary to the belief that Singapore has no tech innovation and we only have Creative to talk about (and that was before its star started falling), there are lots of interesting small tech start-ups here. We have a bevy of innovators experimenting with business ideas tapping on social media concepts, web-based services that provide useful services to Singaporeans, and a small but growing games and media industry.

One of the biggest problems? Getting publicity.

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What do a few tech hacks in Singapore have in common? A love for gizmos, gadgets and all things that attract both geeks and goondus alike.

Here, you’ll find the latest talk about gizmos in town – straight from the best technology journalists from Singapore. Look out for more soon!