When we flip the switch, heading to Technologizer.com will take you to the new version that’s part of TIME.com. You’ll also find Technologizer posts, and scads more stuff, at TIME.com’s all-encompassing tech section, Techland.

The Technologizer Facebook page will continue to link to our new content, and both my own Twitter feed and the Technologizer one will continue unchanged. And all of our existing content, including this post, will remain available in its original form.

As part of TIME.com, Technologizer will certainly look different–here’s a sample–but I don’t plan to change my approach much. If you’ve liked what I’ve had to say here, I think you’ll like what I have to say there, and I very much hope that you’ll continue to be part of the community.

(When people tell me that tech-blog commenters are nothing but a bunch of trolls, jerks, and assorted other goofballs, I say “Not at Technologizer!” It’s true: You really are a savvy, affable group, and I learn from you every day.)

One other difference between stand-alone Technologizer and Technologizer on TIME.com is that it’ll be a one-man show. Since Techland is TIME’s multiple-contributor tech hub, I’ll be the only contributor to the new Technologizer.

So now is the right time to thank everyone who’s written for Technologizer up until now. It’s been an honor to publish their work. Just as important, it’s been fun to read it, and to hang out here with such a great gang of bloggers.

Four people in particular have been prolific, long-serving, intrepid Technologizer mainstays. I’m pleased to report that you (and I) will be able to enjoy their work at other sites:

• Ed Oswald joined me here shortly after Technologizer launched, hit the ground running, and has blogged for us ever since. You’ll find Ed’s new posts over at BetaNews and ExtremeTech.
• Jared Newman started out writing exclusively about games for Technologizer, and continued to cover them even after I convinced him to bring his smart perspective to the broader world of tech. Like me, Jared writes for TIME.com, and he also contributes to PCWorld.
• Benj Edwards’ specialty is the history of computing and technology, and he writes about it better than anyone I know. He continues to wax nostalgic at sites such as PCWorld and PCMag.com, as well as his own home base, Vintage Computing & Gaming.
• In recent months, David Worthington hasn’t contributed as frequently to Technologizer as he once did, but one of his 2011 posts–”My Mom Reviews the iPad, Her First Computer” was a blockbuster. Dave writes regularly for CBS Interactive’s SmartPlanet.

I’m also grateful to Christian Johnson, who’s silently and conscientiously copy-edited Technologizer posts behind the scenes, eradicating many a typo. The WordPress VIP team at Automattic–especially Lloyd Budd–has been wonderfully patient and supportive. And Federated Media–particularly John Battelle and Neil Chase–played an invaluable role in making Technologizer a reality in the first place.

I consider myself exceptionally lucky to have had the opportunity to start this site from scratch in 2008.  I’m only joining TIME because I’m even more excited about the things I’ll be able to do there. Thanks again for everything, and see you soon.

My interests are eclectic enough that Technologizer has tended to be eclectic. And when other folks started writing for the site, it sometimes got eclectic in ways that surprised even me. One of the great pleasures of blogging here is that so many of you have gotten what we do here, even in cases when the subject matter has gotten a tad peculiar.

Now that Technologizer is about to end its life as a stand-alone site and become part of TIME.com,  I wanted to look back at some of our most popular stories to date. Here’s a month-by-month accounting of the most-read items we’ve published, by unique visitors. (Unless otherwise specified, I wrote all of these.)

July 2008

Microsoft’s Mea-Sorta Culpa

(Windows Vista gets an ad campaign that’s very slightly apologetic.)

August 2008

Are Macs More Expensive? Let’s Do the Math Once and For All?

(I try to do an objective Apples-to-Windows comparison on the price of computers.)

September 2008

The Ten Greatest Error Messages of All Time

(This was our first blockbuster. Actually, it remains the most popular story we’ve ever published.)

October 2008

FireWire Isn’t Alone: A Brief History of features That Apple Has Killed

(When Apple yanked FireWire from the new MacBook–it later restored it–I looked back at other items that it had mercilessly done away with.)

November 2008

The T-Grid: BlackBerry Storm vs. iPhone 3G

(The first–I think–of many concise comparisons of two kinda-comparable products.)

December 2008

Apple Patentmania: 31 Years of Big Ideas

(One of our first slideshows. Our policy has always been to try and make them so good–and do them rarely enough–that very few people complain about clicking.)

January 2009

Atari’s 1984 Touch Tablet: A Retro-Unboxing

(Benj Edwards’ first Technologizer story. He found an unopened Atari graphics tablet, opened it up and used it, and documented the process.)

February 2009

Do You Think This is Sony Ericsson’s Answer to the iPhone? iDou!

(A very brief post on a little-remembered phone.)

March 2009

The Last Will and Testament of Circuit City

(When the venerable electronics retailer folded, I mourned in my own, quiet way–by visiting my local branch and shooting photos of sad, unsold products.)

April 2009

Game Boy Oddities

(The first of what was to become a tradition that continues to this day: Benj Edwards stories on the sidelights of iconic games, applications, and other tech products.)

May 2009

The Patents of Steve Jobs

(Who says that Apple’s co-founder never personally invented anything?)

June 2009

15 Classic PC Mistakes

(Benj on why the Apple III, DEC Rainbow, Coleco Adam, and other notable flops…flopped.)

July 2009

The Amazing World of Version Numbers

(Technologizer has always done well with stories on subjects that sound like they should be boring, but which are actually interesting.)

August 2009

15 Classic Game Console Design Mistakes

(Benj returns to the topic of bonehead design errors and their impact on the products that suffer from them.)

September 2009

Old Operating Systems Don’t Die…

(The fates of seven once-mighty computing platforms, starting with CP/M.)

October 2009

Windows Vista: A Review Recap

Everyone knows that Vista was terrible–but most of the reviewers who covered it when it was released didn’t think so.)

November 2009

The T-Grid: Verizon Droid vs. iPhone 3GS

(A quick comparison of the first Android phone that people got really excited over and an Apple phone that’s still on the market as I write this.)

December 2009

This Dumb Decade: The 87 Lamest Moments in Tech, 2000-2009

(Ten years of bad products, strange decisions, and other weird, weird stuff.)

January 2010

Mr. Edison’s Kindle

(Forgotten inventions that were brilliant–which is not necessarily the same thing as good.)

February 2010

Silicon Valley’s Isle of Misfit Tech

(A visit to the Weird Stuff Warehouse, where old products go to die–but often find new owners.)

March 2010

The Secret Origin of Windows

(Tandy Trower, the Microsoft product manager who shipped Windows 1.0, shares the traumatic birth of the most successful tech product of all time.)

April 2010

The True Face of Mario

(Benj investigates how a famous video-game character got his name.)

May 2010

The PalmPilots That Never Were

(As HP bought Palm, I dug up the most interesting gadgets that its new acquisition invented, but never built.)

June 2010

The IBM Muppet Show

(When my friend Andrew Leal told me he wanted to write about films that Jim Henson made for Big Blue in the 1960s, I knew it would be a ginormous hit. And it was.)

July 2010

Amiga: 25 Years Later

(Its owners claimed it was the greatest computer of its era–and they just may have been right.)

August 2010

iPadversaries!

(32 early iPad rivals–from knockoffs to gizmos that had very little in common with Apple’s tablet.)

September 2010

The Curse of 3D TV

(A rant about a technology that’s lame in more ways than I can count.)

October 2010

Nintendo Entertainment System Oddities

(Benj pays tribute to the console that saved the video game industry.)

November 2010

The Ones That Didn’t Make It: Windows’ Failed Rivals

(When Microsoft introduced its graphical interface for DOS, it was an underdog with plenty of competition.)

Decmember 2010

This Dumb Year: The 57 Lamest Tech Moments of 2010

(The year in mishaps and mistakes.)

January 2011

PlayStation 3 on Sale at Amazon for $40? Probably Not!

(Ed Oswald on a great deal that turned out to be a nasty typo.)

February 2011

The Legend of Zelda Oddities

(Benj celebrates the birthday of another video game classic.)

March 2011

Is Samsung’s New Galaxy Tab Fibbing About Its Figure? And About Those Galaxy Tab Fans…

(I stumble across a mini-scandal that’s more amusing than scandalous.)

April 2011

PlayStation Network is Down for a Day or Two

(Jared Newman’s first report–of many!–on what seems to be a minor technical glitch for PlayStation fans.)

May 2011

PlayStation Network Down Indefinitely, Again

(More Jared: What happened to “a day or two?”)

June 2011

“Why Should Somebody Buy This Instead of an iPad?”

(An important question which other tablet companies keep failing to answer.)

July 2011

A Brief History of Apple Not Buying Things

(Such as Barnes & Noble. And Sony. And Disney. And Pixar. And Sun…)

August 2011

Steve Jobs Steps Down the First Time: The 1985 Press Coverage

(What pundits thought the first time Steve Jobs resigned from the company he co-founded.)

September 2011

Qwikster: Not to be Confused With Quixtar, QuickStar, Kwikster, Quickster, Kwik Star, Quik-Star, or Kickstar

(Among the many problems with Netflix’s later-aborted plans to rebrand its DVDs-by-mail service: the new name was too damn confusing.)

October 2011

Whatever Happened to the iPad Rivals of 2010?

(I follow up “iPadversaries!” by trying to account for all the tablets it covered–and the results aren’t pretty.)

November 2011

Inside Facebook’s Amazing Oregon Data Center

(A photographic tour of the giant building where your Facebook profile lives.)

Decmember 2011

How the iPad 2 Became my Favorite Computer

(In which I give up my MacBook Air for an iPad with a keyboard–and end up a happier tech blogger.)

January 2012

Why History Needs Software Piracy

(Benj’s impassioned argument for saving our digital legacy–by any means necessary.)

February 2012

Atari Oddities

(Benj’s final Oddities slideshow–at least for now, at least on the stand-alone Technologizer site.)

I’m going to complete my switchover to blogging at TIME.com soon, where my oddball beat will remain what it’s always been. (All of the above stories, plus everything else we’ve published here, will remain online in their original form.) I’ll let you know once we wrap things up here, and I hope to see you over at TIME.

[UPDATE: The original video, with Dylan soundtrack, is still playing for me here at home in Daly City, California. But Network World's Paul McNamara, commenters, and others are saying that it's blocked for them. Sounds like the geolocation technology that YouTube uses has decided that Daly City isn't in the U.S. Or something like that.]

Back in October, shortly after Steve Jobs passed away, I uploaded a wonderful video to YouTube. It was called “To Steven Jobs on his thirtieth birthday,” and was a film created by Jobs’ Apple coworkers in 1985 to show at his birthday party. (Craig Elliott, who worked at Apple when it was made and shown, was the generous soul who shared it with me.)

I’d never seen the video or many of the Jobs images it included, and thought they deserved to be more widely known. Now they are: The YouTube version has been viewed almost 240.000 times.

But Paul McNamara of Network World noticed something about the video which I didn’t know: It was missing. As he explains, when he tried to play it, he got a message saying it violated Sony Music Entertainment’s copyright and was therefore blocked. After reading his post, I checked, and got the same alert that he did.

And…I guess the video did violate Sony’s copyright. The (perfect) soundtrack was Bob Dylan’s “My Back Pages.” SI didn’t regret uploading it–YouTube is bursting at the seams with copyrighted music. But if Sony took action against it, I’m not outraged. Just sad.

Here’s the thing, though: I just checked the video again, and it’s working again. For me, at least. As of right now. Here it is:

I see that it has a link letting you buy “My Back Pages” from iTunes, the Android Marketplace, or Amazon; maybe Sony is just as happy leaving the video up in hopes of monetizing it. If so, good!

But just in case: Here’s another version of “To Steven Jobs on His Thirtieth Birthday.” Without any audio at all. It’s nowhere near as good as the Dylan one, but far better than nothing…

The Vita’s design turns out to be a good metaphor for the gaming handheld itself. It’s a device that makes some small concessions to the rise of phones and tablets as portable entertainment–things like the touch screen and motion controls, the bare-bones web browser and the obligatory Twitter, Flickr and Netflix apps–but then it ignores them in favor of playing kick-ass, modern video games. Not Angry Birds, Doodle Jump, or Sudoku, but Uncharted, Rayman, and Marvel vs. Capcom. Almost everything else seems like an afterthought.

The Playstation Vita owes much of its gaming prowess to its controls, or more specifically, to the pair of tiny thumb sticks that sit on either side of the 5-inch display. No other handheld has included dual analog sticks before, and although the Vita’s aren’t as easy to master as those of a full-size controller, they put to shame the sliding analog pad of Nintendo’s 3DS. At last, no more compromises for first- and third-person shooters.

To get these games running smoothly, the Vita’s CPU and GPU each have four processing cores. This processor combo is so powerful that some publishers have ported their full-size Playstation 3 games down to the Vita without much compromise. Ultimate Marvel vs. Capcom 3 is just as fluid on the Vita as it is on home gaming consoles. Wipeout 2048 had its framerate knocked down on the Vita, but you can actually race against players of Wipeout HD on the Playstation 3.

The rest of the hardware takes a backseat, with the battery lasting for maybe four hours on a charge, and the front and rear VGA cameras taking grainy photos. But it’s easy to forget about those drawbacks when you’re playing a game that feels like it was made for an Xbox 360 or Playstation 3. That’s when the Vita is at its best.

At its worst, the Vita tries to shove touch and motion controls down players’ throats. Uncharted: Golden Abyss, for instance, breaks up its action sequences with tedious tasks, such as rotating an artifact around with the rear touch panel while brushing off virtual dirt with the touch screen. You can almost picture the touch control mandate coming down from a Sony board room, and although some games handle it gracefully–I liked how FIFA Soccer lets you aim on goal with touch controls–most touch and motion options are better off ignored.

I’m also troubled by the inflated prices of some Vita games that are already available on phones and tablets. Gameloft’s Asphalt: Injection costs $30 on the Vita, while Asphalt 6, a nearly identical game with slightly fewer courses and cars, costs $1 on the iPad. Plants vs. Zombies costs $7 on the iPad, but it’s a $15 download on the Vita. The markup, especially for boxed retail games, is a slap in the face to consumers, and I hope the market quickly discourages that kind of pricing.

Of course, using the Vita isn’t just a matter of popping in a cartridge and playing. Sony created a new operating system for the Vita, with bubble-shaped app icons and an iPhone-like home button on the hardware. Yes, it’s another nod to smartphones, but Sony does things its own way. Open apps, for example, are represented as sheets of virtual paper called “LiveAreas,” named for the information they contain. These LiveAreas show friend activity, software updates and news from the publisher, and users can multitask by swiping from one sheet to the next, and can close apps for good by peeling away at the page. As far as app management goes, the Vita is as capable as any smartphone or tablet.

Yet some of the frustration of traditional gaming remains. Sometimes, you’ll load up a game, only to find out that you can’t play online without going back to the LiveArea, downloading an update, then relaunching the game. For some apps, multitasking is out of bounds, so you can’t run a game and the Web browser at the same time, nor can you jump back and forth between two games. This wouldn’t be a major headache, except that the games themselves often suffer from long load times, so if you exit a game completely, you’ll have to wait a while to start playing again.

The Vita’s online system is also a bit of a mess. Instead of offering one social app for all friend interactions, Sony separates friend lists, messages, voice chats, and nearby players into four individual apps, which is silly considering you’ll often get bounced from one to the other. Even worse, some games, such as Uncharted, will sign you out of Sony’s online network for no apparent reason, so you can’t tell if someone’s trying to reach you without going to the home screen.

The main hub for online activity is an app called Near, which lets you find nearby players, look at what other people are playing, and send and receive gifts. It’s a neat idea, but it’d be better if games themselves could handle the gifting and player tracking directly. Also, I never quite understood why I was receiving a particular gift, or how to control who’s getting presents from me. With the Vita, all the right social features are in place, but the execution needs improvement.

When it comes to buying new content online, however, Sony nailed it. Although most of the games sent to me for review came in boxes, all of them can be downloaded from the Playstation Store as well. The online shop also includes old PSP games, PSP Minis, movies and TV shows, so users who splurge for Sony’s overpriced proprietary memory cards–starting at $20 for 4 GB–will have lots of content to choose from. That seems like the way to go unless you don’t mind carrying around a bunch of tiny game cartridges in your pocket.

The Playstation Vita launches on February 22, priced at $250 for a Wi-Fi model, or $300 for one with support for AT&T’s 3G network. (3G data costs $15 per month for 250 MB, or $30 per month for 3 GB.) The 3G is useful if you want to use the Near app or browse the web on the road, but it’s not a very fast connection, and some games won’t even let you play online unless you’re connected to Wi-Fi.

When I first saw the Playstation Vita last June, I said it was handheld gaming’s last stand, and I still think that’s the case. Like any gaming device, the success of the Vita depends how well it’s supported by game publishers and how affordable it gets with time. But phones and tablets are a growing threat. They’re getting more popular, and their games are getting better at a fraction of the cost of the Vita’s games. That’s probably why Sony is working on Android-based gaming as a backup plan.

For now, though, the Vita is what it should be: A defiant gesture in defense of elaborate, expensive, beautiful video games, but with quiet acknowledgments that something bigger is lurking.

There you have it, Microsoft’s new logo for Windows 8. It’s a dramatic departure from the logos of the past, where color and flashiness took an increasing role, and it looked less like a window and more like a flag. But why so minimalist? It accurately portrays Windows’ future.

Recognize the color? You should, as it’s one of the primary colors of the tiles in the Metro interface. The flag is now back to being a true window, and its size and shape are reminiscent of the tiled interface that will play such a big part in the platform from here on out. It says simplicity.

I have heard criticism already that the logo is an Apple copy, which I could not disagree more with. Microsoft’s Metro interface is built on simplicity, and really does not have an equivalent in OS X. I am the first person to criticize Microsoft for its blockheadedness in not adapting to trends in technology or in how it runs its business.

If anything, Microsoft is following a pattern that’s apparent across the entire technology industry, that less is more. Technology consumers no longer need flashy doo-dads to attract them; they have matured enough to want things to work more than just look good. Yes maybe Apple started this all, but Microsoft is hardly copying — it’s finally adapting, and we should congratulate them on it.

Windows 8 is a big departure from the “Microsoft Way,” thus it requires an completely different way of looking at the brand and a big shift from the past. This certainly captures it, and I am very impressed that the company seems to be thinking out of the box. For a company that was stagnant for so long, this is a breath of fresh air.

Good job Microsoft, you impressed me.

Consumers who may have otherwise snatched up the iPad during the quarter instead opted for the iPhone 4S, causing shipments to fall short of the company’s estimates. “The rollout of the iPhone 4S in October generated intense competition for Apple purchasers’ disposable income, doing more to limit iPad shipment growth than competition from the Kindle Fire and other media tablets”, tablet analyst Rhoda Alexander says.

While Amazon does not break out Kindle sales, IHS believes the device sold about 3.9 million units in its first quarter of availability. This pales in comparison to the 15.4 million iPads shipped in the same quarter, but the iPad ecosystem is much more mature. Instead compare it to the iPad’s initial quarter back in April through June of 2010. Apple sold 3.2 million units in its first quarter. Impressed now?

I would not call the Kindle Fire an iPad killer. At the same time, I think fellow Android tablet manufacturers now have some very strong competition: Amazon’s desire to link its entertainment services with a device at low cost is proving attractive to consumers.

The Kindle Fire isn’t for everybody. It’s basically a glorified e-book reader, with some tablet like characteristics. Either way, consumers are responding to it, and Amazon clearly has a success on its hands.

• I tried Apple’s upcoming OS X 10.8 Mountain Lion, an even more iOS-esque Mac operating system.
• I wondered if Windows for ARM-based processors is a stopgap rather than the future.
• I attempted to collect the most plausible-sounding iPad 3 rumors, from the most reliable sources.
• I mused about the rants of an understandably prickly member of RIM’s board of directors.
• I worried about Microsoft’s plans for Windows’ iconic Start button.

See you over there, I hope–and I promise to drop in here as well before the TIME.com transition is complete.

Visit Atari Oddities slideshow.

If you’re reading this, I suspect you know the Atari 2600, 5200, and 7800 consoles. You’ve played the hit arcade video games, and you may have even used an Atari 8-bit or ST computer. But the story of Atari is filled with many unseen and little known oddities. Here are 13 examples of weird Atari products and strange Atari marketing you can use as trivia at your next 1970s or 80s theme party. When they ask, “How’d you know that?”, just tell them Benj Edwards sent you.