Engadget

Vorlage:Out of date Vorlage:Infobox website Engadget is a multilingual technology weblog and podcast about consumer electronics. Engadget currently has nine separate websites, all operating simultaneously with each having its own staff, which cover technology news in different parts of the world in their respective languages. Engadget won a 2007 Weblog Award for tech sites.

Founding and Leadership

Engadget was co-founded by former Gizmodo technology weblog editor and co-founder, Peter Rojas. Engadget is a member of Weblogs, Inc., a blog network with over 75 weblogs including Autoblog and Joystiq and formerly including Hack-A-Day. Weblogs Inc. was purchased by AOL in 2005. Engadget's editor-in-chief, Ryan Block, announced on July 22, 2008 that he would be stepping down as editor-in-chief in late August, leaving the role to Joshua Topolsky. On March 12, 2011 Joshua Topolsky announced that he was leaving Engadget leaving Tim Stevens (Editor) in charge.

Writers

Blogger	Position
Tim Stevens (Editor)	Editor-in-chief
Darren Murph	Managing Editor
Thomas Ricker	Senior Editor
Vlad Savov Sean Hollister	Senior Associate Editors

Engadget Blogs

Engadget operates a number of blogs spanning seven different languages including English, Chinese (traditional and simplified), Japanese, Spanish, Polish, Korean and German. The English edition of Engadget operates four blogs which, like the international editions, have been assimilated into a single site with a sub-domain prefix. These include Engadget Classic (the original Engadget blog), Engadget Mobile, Engadget HD and most recently Engadget Alt.

Launched in March 2004, Engadget is updated multiple times a day with articles on gadgets and consumer electronics. It also posts rumors about the technological world, frequently offers opinion within its stories, and produces the weekly Engadget Podcast that covers tech and gadget news stories that happened during the week.

Since its founding, dozens of writers have written for or contributed to Engadget, Engadget Alt, Engadget Mobile and Engadget HD, including high profile bloggers, industry analysts, and professional journalists. These writers include Jason Calacanis, Paul Boutin, Phillip Torrone, Joshua Fruhlinger, Nilay Patel, Marc Perton and Susan Mernit. Darren Murph, who became the World's Most Prolific Professional Blogger as recorded by Guinness World Records on July 29, 2010, is an Associate Editor at the site and has written over 17,212 posts (and growing) to date. Industry analyst Ross Rubin has contributed a weekly column called Switched On since October 2004.

Engadget has been nominated for numerous awards, including a 2004 Bloggie for Best Technology Weblog, and 2005 Bloggies for Best Computers or Technology Weblog and Best Group Weblog; Engadget won Best Tech Blog in the 2004 and 2005 Weblog Awards.

Google Reader, as well as many other RSS readers, has included Engadget as a default RSS feed, pulling the latest articles which appear at the top of all user's mailboxes.

To extend readership, the blog is available in several languages including Spanish, Japanese, German, Polish (until 1.04.2010), Korean, and Chinese (traditional and simplified).

Engadget uses the Blogsmith CMS to publish its content.

The Engadget Podcast

The Engadget podcast was launched in October 2004 and was originally hosted by Phillip Torrone and Len Pryor. He was the host for the first 22 episodes of the podcast at which point Eric Rice took over. Eric Rice is known for his own podcast, called The Eric Rice Show and has also produced podcasts for Weblogs Inc. Eric hosted and produced 4 episodes of the podcast for Engadget until the show was taken over by Peter Rojas and Ryan Block. The podcast was hosted by Editor-in-chief Joshua Topolsky along with editors Paul Miller and Nilay Patel with occasional special guests, until their 2011 departure. The podcast was produced by Trent Wolbe under Topolsky's editorship and continues to be under Tim Stevens (Editor).

The topic of discussion for the podcast is technology related and closely linked to events that have happened during the week in the world of technology. The show generally lasts an hour or more. The show is normally weekly, however the frequency can change, especially during special events. When events such as the Consumer Electronics Show (CES) and the Electronic Entertainment Expo (E3) occur, the podcast has been known to be broadcast daily.

The Engadget podcast is credited with the creation of the acronym 'F.O.F.' or FOF. FOF stands for Frown On Face and is the sad equivalent to LOL, or laugh out loud.

The Engadget podcast is available as a subscription through iTunes, Zune Marketplace and as an RSS feed. Alternatively, it can be downloaded directly from the site in either MP3, Ogg, AAC or m4b format. The m4b version features images related to the current topic of discussion and can be displayed in iTunes or on a compatible player.

Engadget has started doing live podcasts, usually broadcasting Thursday or Friday afternoons on Ustream. The recorded podcast is usually available the day after.

The Engadget App

On Dec 30th 2009 Engadget released its first mobile app for the iPhone and iPod touch. The app's features included sharing articles through Twitter, Facebook or e-mail, the ability to tip Engadget on breaking news, and the ability to bookmark and view articles offline. Engadget then released an Engadget app for the Palm Pre and Palm Pixie phones on January 1st 2010 claiming it was the "1000th application in the "PalmOS" Catalog". A week later, on January 8th 2010 they launched the app on the BlackBerry platform. Finally, they released an app for Android devices on March 25th 2010 making the app available on all major mobile smartphone platforms.

The Engadget Show

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The station identification logo first used on 'The Engadget Show' on 1st June 2011

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The original station identification logo used on 'The Engadget Show'

On September 8, 2009, Josh Topolsky announced that Engadget would be taping a new video show once a month in New York City. The show will be free admission and will later be put onto the site. It features one-on-one interviews, roundtable discussions, short video segments, and live music. At first it was taped at the Tishman Auditorium at Parsons The New School for Design, but after the 5th show they began taping at The Times Center part of The New York Times Building.

The show is hosted by Joshua Topolsky along with editors Paul Miller and Nilay Patel. It is directed by Chad Mumm and its executive producer is Joshua Fruhlinger.

The first episode was taped at Parsons The New School for Design on September 13, 2009, and featured guest Jon Rubinstein, CEO of Palm Inc. The second episode's guest was Microsoft's CEO Steve Ballmer and was taped live on October 22, 2009 at the Times Center. Episode three featured HTC's Drew Bamford, Joystiq's Chris Grant and was taped live on November 22, 2010 at Parsons The New School for Design. The fourth episode taped live at Parsons The New School for Design on December 20, 2009, featured guest Peter Rojas. Episode five taped live at the Times Center on January 16, 2010 and featured Erick Tseng, a former Senior Project Manager for Google (now employed by Facebook.) The sixth episode was filmed live on February 27, 2010 at the Times Center and featured guest Avner Ronen, CEO of Boxee. Episode seven featured Nicholas Negroponte of the MIT Media Lab and was taped live at the Times Center on March, 20th 2010. The eighth episode was filmed live at the Times Center on April 21, 2010 and featured guests Ryan Block of GDGT and Dr. Dennis Hong, a mechanical engineer who specializes in robotics. Episode nine featured guest Kevin Lynch, Adobe Systems CTO and was filmed live at the Times Center on May 22, 2010. The 10th episode was filmed on June 23, 2010 and featured Jimmy Fallon and was taped live at Cooper Union in New York City. The 11th episode was filmed live at the Times Center on August 4, 2010 and featured game designer Peter Molyneux. Episode 12 was filmed on August 27 live at the Times Center and featured guest Omar Khan, CSO of Samsung. The 13th episode featured guest Bobby Braun of NASA and taped live at the Times Center on September 14, 2010. Episode 14 was taped live on October 23, 2010 at the Times Center and featured guest Aaron Woodman of Microsoft.

The show's end is always marked by audience prize give-aways and Chiptune music with visuals from a variety of different artists.

List of The Engadget Show episodes

Season One

Series episode	Season episode	Host	Guests	Musical/entertainment guest(s)	Original air date
1	1	Joshua Topolsky	Jon Rubinstein		24 September 2009
2	2	Joshua Topolsky	Steve Ballmer		22 October 2009
3	3	Joshua Topolsky	Drew Bamford, Joystiq's Chris Grant		22 November 2009
4	4	Joshua Topolsky	Peter Rojas		20 December 2009
5	5	Joshua Topolsky	Google's Erick Tseng		16 January 2010
6	6	Joshua Topolsky	Avner Ronen		27 February 2010
7	7	Joshua Topolsky	Nicholas Negroponte		20 March 2010
8	8	Joshua Topolsky	Dr. Dennis Hong, Ryan Block, Rick Karr		24 April 2010
9	9	Joshua Topolsky	Kevin Lynch		24 March 2010
10	10	Joshua Topolsky	Jimmy Fallon, Kudo Tsunoda		23 June 2010
11	11	Joshua Topolsky	Peter Molyneux		6 August 2010
12	12	Joshua Topolsky	Omar Khan		30 August 2010

Season Two

Series episode	Season episode	Host	Guests	Musical/entertainment guest(s)	Original air date
13	1	Joshua Topolsky	NASA Technologist Bobby Braun, Tim Wu		17 September 2010
14	2	Joshua Topolsky	Aaron Woodman		23 October 2010
15	3	Joshua Topolsky	Sprint's Fared Adib, Google TV creator Salahuddin Choudhary		20 November 2010
16	4	Joshua Topolsky	Mitsubishi's Frank DeMartin		17 December 2010
17	5	Joshua Topolsky	Steve Wozniak		30 January 2011
18	6	Joshua Topolsky	GM's Micky Bly, Watson researcher David Gondek		17 February 2011
19	7	Joshua Topolsky	HP's Jon Rubinstein		28 March 2011
20	8	Tim Stevens (Editor)	RIM's Ryan Biden		25 April 2011
21	9	Tim Stevens (Editor)

Controversy

Trademark Infringement

In early 2006, Engadget reported that they were victims of their likeness being stolen and used as a store name at a mall in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia. However, they stated they would not be taking any action. The store has since changed its name (or possibly shutdown and a new store opened with a new name). In July 2007, another store had opened, also in Malaysia, with a logo bearing the same resemblance to Engadget's.

Apple Delay Hoax

In May 2007, Engadget published a story based on an email sent to Apple employees announcing that the company was delaying the launches of both the iPhone and Mac OS X Leopard. After the story ran, Apple's share price dropped 3%. Less than 20 minutes later the story was retracted after the email was discovered to have been a hoax perpetrated on Apple employees. Apple's shares eventually recovered and Ryan Block apologized for the mistake.

Misattribution

In March 2006, DAPreview, a website about digital audio players, noted that Engadget used a photo that had originally been taken by DAPreview, and then removed attribution by cropping the DAPreview logo off. Engadget's managing editor Ryan Block agreed that the photo had been copied and cropped, stated that it had been a mistake, and apologized and restored the image's attribution.

T-Mobile "magenta" accusations

On March 31, 2008, Engadget reported that Deutsche Telekom (the parent company of T-Mobile and T-Mobile USA) had sent a letter requesting that Engadget cease using the color magenta in its Engadget Mobile site, claiming that T-Mobile had trademarked the color. Engadget issued a response on April 1, mainly by repainting the Engadget sites and changing the Mobile logo for the day to a logo that looks as though it is saying "Engadge t-mobile". The site has since returned to normal format, with the exception of the highlighting color.

Mass Exodus

In early 2011 a mass exodus ensued at Engadget with eight of the more prominent editorial and technology staff members leaving AOL to build a new gadget site with CEO Jim Bankoff at SB Nation . On leaving, Joshua Topolsky, former Editor-in-chief, is quoted having said, “We have been working on blogging technology that was developed in 2003, we haven’t made a hire since I started running the site, and I thought we could be more successful elsewhere”. It appears the departure of the team from AOL which includes not only Topolsky but editors Nilay Patel, Paul Miller, Joanna Stern, Ross Miller, and Chris Ziegler was primarily the cause of an internal memo distributed by AOL detailing "The AOL Way", a 58-page long company plan to turn AOL into a media empire. Some employees suggested that AOL was destroying journalism for page views and that it would be difficult for the organisation to apply a 'one size fits all' business model to a business primarily made up of acquisitions with diverging outlooks. Paul Miller makes a mention of this on his blog where he writes "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.". The group set up a 'placeholder site', Thisismynext.com whilst they develop the new gadget site over at SB Nation.

External links

• Engadget
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