Three and a half years ago, I quit a cool job and started Technologizer. It’s been the best gig I’ve ever had. So far.

As a sideline, starting in September of 2010, I’ve been writing for TIME.com and TIME magazine. That too has been huge fun, and an honor. Over the past few decades, TIME has influenced my editorial brain as much as any publication. Just as important, I’ve been impressed by its current incarnation online, in print, on tablets, and elsewhere.

I’m pleased to announce that my relationship with TIME is about to become way more than a sideline: I’ve agreed to join its staff as an editor at large.

Continue reading this story…

2011, as you may have noticed, is finally over. And what a year it was in tech. The news just kept on coming, and while some of it was sad (the passing of Steve Jobs), alarming (the PlayStation Network break-in), or just plain weird (Qwikster!), it was never tedious.

Technologizer has never set out to be a plain-vanilla tech news site, so what gets read around here isn’t a snapshot of the year’s most momentous stories. Instead, it’s something a bit more idiosyncratic: a gumbo of major events, personal observations, history, and more. Basically, it’s what I and my fellow Technologizer scribes thought you’d find interesting.

And here are the 25 stories that you found to be most interesting–as ranked by the number of people who read them.

Continue reading this story…

Every once in awhile, an old Technologizer post gets rediscovered and read all over again. That’s happening today over on Reddit, where someone linked to “Mr. Edison’s Kindle,” a story on unsuccessful visionary inventions which I wrote last year. The Reddit user liked Thomas Edison’s dream of 40,000-page books printed on nickel rather than paper. And so do I.

Yesterday, we celebrated the twentieth anniversary of Sega’s Sonic the Hedgehog series by publishing Benj Edwards’s Sonic the Hedgehog Oddities–a retrospective not of the speedy little critter’s greatest moments, but of his oddest ones, from his ill-fated collaboration with Michael Jackson to his work as a spokesbeast for ketchup and canned pasta.

You might almost have been able to predict that Benj would compile such a tribute and that we’d publish it–for more than two years now, we’ve been marking major anniversaries of big-name products (especially game-related ones) this way. They’re among the most popular things we’ve ever published.  So here’s a box set for you–with all of Benj’s Oddities slideshows to date. Click on the images below to enjoy them again for the first time…

Continue reading this story…

I attended the Western Publishing Association’s 60th annual Maggie awards last night in Los Angeles. Technologizer was a finalist in three categories, and I’m delighted to report that we were also a winner–”Fanboy! The Strange True Story of the Tech World’s Favorite Put-Down,” which I wrote last May, was honored as the best Web or digital article/consumer. (The other two categories that we were finalists for were won by exceptional contenders: Mother Jones for best Web or digital publication blog and Chow for best Web publication/consumer.)

Here’s a full list of winners. As I said in my fifteen-second acceptance speech, I wrote the story mostly to please myself, but I’m sure glad that the Maggie judges liked it, too…

I’m tickled to report that Technologizer is a finalist in this year’s Maggie Awards, a sixty-year-old competition conducted by the Western Publishing Association, an organization of print and online publishers located in the western US states. In fact, we’re in the running in three of the Web categories:

Best Web Publication/Consumer (hey, we’re up against our friends at PCWorld here)

Best Web or Digital Publication Article/Consumer (for Fanboy! The Strange True Tale of the Tech World’s Favorite Put-Down)

Best Web or Digital Publication Blog/Trade and Consumer

The winners will be announced at an awards gala on April 29th in LA. I’ll let you know how we do.

From a standpoint of tech newsworthiness, how did 2010 rate? Pretty high, I think–it certainly had more than its fare share of surprises. And we at Technologizer had fun covering them. After the jump, a look at some of our stories on major (and minor) events from the first half of the year, plus some of the oddball historical stuff and other random weirdness that’s also part of our stock in trade. If you read all this stuff when we published it, I’m impressed and grateful…

Continue reading this story…

[NOTE: Here's a story from our most recent Technologizer's T-Week newsletter--go here to sign up to receive it each Friday. You'll get original stuff that won't show up on the site until later, if at all.]

It’s been Google’s wont for a number of years to publish a year-end wrap-up reflecting what people searched searched for. It calls this report Google Zeitgeist, and several other sites  produce counterparts, such as YouTube Rewind and the Yahoo Year in Review.

If the big guys can do this, why not Technologizer? Here’s a recap of 2010–what you folks were reading and searching for, which sites sent you here, which browsers and operating systems you used, and where in the world you came from.

Continue reading this story…

We’ve done our random drawing and found winners for the cool prizes we offered to induce you to tell us about your favorite products of 2010. Here are the folks who’ll be getting goodies.

Continue reading this story…

Say, want to win a cool prize? Here are eleven chances to do just that. We’d like members of the Technologizer community to nominate the best tech products and services of 2010. If you participate, you’ll get a shot at winning one of the following prizes.

Kobo Wireless eReader. Courtesy of Kobo, a Wi-Fi enabled e-reader with a 6″ E Ink screen.

Zune HD. Courtesy of Microsoft, two 32GB touchscreen media players with color OLED screens and one month’s access to the Zune Pass service apiece.

Ooma Telo. Courtesy of Ooma, its VoIP phone system, which lets you make U.S. calls for free.

Roxio Creator 2011 and Tron Premiere tickets. Courtesy of Roxio, its Windows creativity suite for editing, managing, and burning videos and photos (including 3D ones), music, and more–plus two tickets to see Tron Legacy (premiering December 17th) at an AMC theater.

eBooks. Courtesy of Kobo, electronic versions of five books about technology (picked by me) which are readable on Kobo’s ereader, PCs, Macs, iPhones, iPads, Android handsets, BlackBerries, and other devices:

• The Facebook Effect by David Kirkpatrick
• Googled by Ken Auletta
• iWoz by Steve Wozniak and Gina Smith
• Say Everything by Scott Rosenberg
• Twitterville by Shel Israel

You have until Monday, December 13th at 5pm PT to enter; we’ll draw eleven names from among those who entered at random and award each lucky person one of the prizes above.

Click here to name your favorite products (which will take no more than a few minutes) and enter the drawing. Good luck, and thanks!

Are you a fan of NPR’s Science Friday show? I am, and I’m going to be on it today at about 11:40am PT–talking about Google’s self-driving cars. I’m also going to be guesting with Leo Laporte on This Week in Tech this Sunday at 3pm PT, which is always a pleasure…

Neat news: Starting next month, I’ll be contributing to TIME.com, including writing a weekly tech column. It should be a lot of fun–I’ll let you know when my stuff starts to show up there…

Every once in awhile, we at Technologizer like to throw a party. We held one last May and another in November, both of which were packed with interesting folks talking tech. Party number three is coming up next week–we’re calling it SpringThing, and it’ll be on Tuesday, May 4th from 6pm-9pm in San Francisco. (The exact location: 12 Gallagher Lane, a cool gallery in the SOMA neighborhood.) SpringThing is sponsored by Seagate.

If it’s anything like our first two bashes, it’ll “sell out” quickly–but we have some tickets set aside for Technologizer readers. If you’re in the Bay Area, you can RSVP here. And if you tweet about it, please use our official hashtag–#springthing.

Hope to see some of you there!

If you’ve ever hung out with me at Twitter (where I’m harrymccracken), you know that it’s a kind of extension of Technologizer–an ongoing conversation among 16,000 people that’s mostly about tech-related matters. And if you ever joined Technologizer’s Facebook Group, you may have noticed that it’s…kind of quiet. Very quiet, in fact. Aside from the occasional note from me or another member, there hasn’t been much going on there.

Which is why we’re retiring the Technologizer group on Facebook and launching something much better: a Facebook page at http://facebook.com/technologizer. (I don’t completely understand why Facebook maintains a distinction between groups and pages, but pages are much more flexible and powerful.) Our page will be a central clearinghouse for Technologizer-related stuff: It’ll have links to every story here, plus all of my tweets, and you can comment on them or share them right there if you feel like it, or post a new question or idea on our wall. It’s also got some photos from our live events, plus discussion boards. Basically, it’s the sort of presence we always wanted but couldn’t implement in the group, and we plan to add more features as time goes on.

Three hundred folks have already joined the page during our quiet beta period. I hope you’ll join them by visiting us on Facebook and clicking the Become a Fan button. See you there…

If you’re human, your heart is going out to the people in Haiti in the wake of this week’s earthquake and its awful aftermath. And if you’re reading this, chances are that you’re in a position to chip in to help.

My friend Xavier Lanier of Notebooks.com stepped up to the plate by offering $500 in matching funds for contributions by readers who donate $10 to Haitian recovery via SMS. Several other bloggers joined in with additional matching funds. And I’m adding another $250 to the pot. (It’s a small gesture considering how unimaginably lucky I am–and have I mentioned that the San Andreas Fault runs right by my home?)

Here’s how the Technologizer community can contribute and help ensure that the maximum amount of relief money gets donated, as explained by Xavier:

To donate via SMS, just send a text message to “90999″ with the word “HAITI” in the body. You’ll receive a confirmation message confirming that you want to donate $10 to the Red Cross. Reply with the word “Yes” and you’ll get a $10 charge on your next bill.

Once you’ve made the donation, head to Xavier’s post at Notebooks.com and leave a comment so he can track total donations. Thanks in advance.

Quick reminder: I’m guest-tweeting a Webcast interview with James Surowiecki, author of the excellent book The Wisdom of Crowds, today at 1pm ET…