QOTD: Better the Highway Than the “AOL Way”

“I’d love to be able to keep doing this forever, but unfortunately Engadget is owned by AOL, and AOL has proved an unwilling partner in this site’s evolution. It doesn’t take a veteran of the publishing world to realize that AOL has its heart in the wrong place with content. As detailed in the ‘AOL Way,’ and borne out in personal experience, AOL sees content as a commodity it can sell ads against. That might make good business sense (though I doubt it), but it doesn’t promote good journalism or even good entertainment, and it doesn’t allow an ambitious team like the one I know and love at Engadget to thrive.”

– Now ex-Engadget Editor Paul J. Miller, leaving after a stint of more than five years

This week, the tech world is buzzing about a broadening competition between Apple and Google after both companies announced payment systems for digital content within the span of two days. But both Apple and Google are missing the point. Neither of them will become the successor to the newspaper because a single platform doesn’t benefit either the publishers or their consumers. Read More »

The social media wave is being followed by a big data tsunami. Ok, the imagery is getting a little outlandish, but the flood of information that must be stored and analyzed is generating excitement, especially in Boston, where many in the tech world worry that they were at the beach while Silicon Valley and New York enjoyed the fruits of the Web 2.0 revolution. Read More »

A year ago President Obama’s Administration tried to take chipmaker Intel to court over allegations that it was violating antitrust laws. Now Intel CEO Paul Otellini and the leader of the free world are the best of pals. Read More »

Here is the latest comic from our Joy of Tech friends at Geek Culture, Nitrozac and Snaggy. Joy of Tech appears three times a week in the Voices section of this site. (Click on the image to see a bigger version.) Read More »

Twitter suspended three popular mobile applications made by UberMedia today, affecting potentially thousands of Twitter users across both iPhone and Android platforms. Read More »

These babies were supposed to get delivered to the publishing company’s top executives, and never made it there. But now everyone can see them. Read More »

Intel Chief Executive Paul Otellini is not one of the liberal tech leaders who helped President Barack Obama get elected. But he is nevertheless heeding the administration’s call. Read More »

As U.S. regulators continue to ponder the fate of Google’s $700 million acquisition of ITA software, the American Antitrust Institute is speaking out against it. Read More »

The White House has posted a single photo from the Silicon Valley dinner President Obama attended last night. Beyond confirming the guest list that made the rounds Thursday, it’s largely unremarkable–save for one thing: the seating arrangement at the dining table. Read More »

In his first extended interview since being named Hewlett-Packard CEO, Leo Apotheker discusses his vision for the company, why it was important to overhaul the board, and his first impressions of living in California. Read More »

Here’s one way of retaining wavering developer interest following a jarring shift in platform: give away a bunch of free hardware. That’s what Nokia is doing now that it’s gone public with its decision to switch from Symbian to Windows Phone 7. Read More »

Here’s Bill Simmons’ reward for sticking with ESPN: His own piece of turf, where he can put people like Chuck Klosterman to work riffing on sports and pop culture. Perhaps even “literary” stuff. No name or launch date yet, but both are coming soon. Read More »

Top venture-capital firms including Accel Partners and Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers are riding the frenzy around companies like Facebook Inc. and Groupon Inc. to raise billions of dollars in new funds, even as the rest of the venture industry struggles to gather money. Read More »

BilltoMobile has secured a deal with Sprint to enable consumers to make purchases using their mobile phones. Read More »

Posting and reposting and posting about reposting… Read More »

It might not run Mac OS X or sport the Apple brand, but chances are your next laptop will look a lot like the MacBook Air. This according to Nvidia CEO Jen-Hsun Huang, who thinks the future of laptop design looks a lot like the one Apple revealed last October. Read More »

We now have a pretty good idea of how Twitter’s ad products work. How do they perform? One tester says they’d like to tell us, but can’t. Read More »

The rapid growth in internet sales is great for online retailers. But it’s not such good news for state and local governments. The Commerce Department reported Thursday that e-commerce retail sales totaled $44 billion in the fourth quarter last year, up from $38 billion a year earlier. E-commerce sales now account for 4.3 percent of total retail sales (which include lots of things that don’t get bought online, like new cars, gasoline and restaurant meals), up from one percent a decade ago. For the year, e-commerce sales totaled $165 billion. Read More »

The fast-growing social gaming company Zynga is close to completing a funding round of $500 million, valuing the company at $10 billion, said multiple sources. The round includes big institutional investors Morgan Stanley, T. Rowe Price and Fidelity Investments, as well as a token investment from existing venture investor Kleiner Perkins, in order to establish the huge valuation. Read More »