Technologizer’s Greatest Hits, 2008-2012
Whenever people ask me what the topic of Technologizer is–which they do all the time–I have a stock answer which happens to be true. This site is about the intersection between the tech-related stuff that I’m interested in, and the tech-related stuff that a critical mass of other people are interested in. You see, I’m not very good at covering topics I don’t care about–but I do like people to read what I’ve written.
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
(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
(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
(Who says that Apple’s co-founder never personally invented anything?)
June 2009
(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
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
(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
(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
(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
(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
(Its owners claimed it was the greatest computer of its era–and they just may have been right.)
August 2010
(32 early iPad rivals–from knockoffs to gizmos that had very little in common with Apple’s tablet.)
September 2010
(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
(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
(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
(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.
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By Harry McCracken | Wednesday, February 29, 2012 at 11:53 am