Yep, I’m leaving Engadget

It’s true, my last day as Engadget’s editor-in-chief will be late next month (my official announcement is here).

Without question, this has been the hardest decision I’ve ever made, but I know it’s the right one. And as much as I’m looking forward to new challenges (and grateful they’re not Motorola-related), I’m also really excited to see Engadget continue its evolution with Josh at the helm, and as part of the AOL Tech network (where I’ll continue to play an advisory role as editor-at-large). Pete and I are both pretty happy with how things worked out, and are definitely looking ahead. (You’re following us on Twitter, right?)

As much as wish I could, for the time being I really can’t talk very much about the details of the new company (which does not yet have a name). I’m pretty stoked though — promise, you’ll hear more soon.

Who would you rather sit next to on a bus?

Been pretty caught up over the last couple of weeks — especially in our iPhone 3G review and coverage — but one lasting memory I’m definitely going to take from 2008 is Bill’s last day at Microsoft. One Engadget commenter made a poignant remark that kind of brought it all home: Who would you rather sit next to on a bus, Bill or Steve?

That rumor going around today

Well, looks like my man Mike finally found occasion to write about me (little does he know, I’ve spent years plotting my way onto TechCrunch). Granted, I’m not commenting on that (or any) rumors about my career and future, but it’s never a bad thing to have people interested, right? It’s certainly a lot better than the alternative.

What I will say — and it’s the same thing I told Mike earlier today — is that, as I enter my fifth year at Engadget, I’m still totally focused on it, our team, and living up to the enormous level of trust our readers place in us day in and out. (As I’m sure Veronica would tell you, I’m probably actually too focused.) I can also say that I had no idea until today that I owned 39+ domain names, but that’s pretty awesome.

Biggest day ever

This is Engadget.

This is Engadget when Apple launches a new iPhone. Any questions?

Thanks again to everyone who stopped by today to read our coverage of the iPhone 3G launch — it’s always an extraordinary amount of fun and a real honor to be the go-to place for big news in the gadget world.

And yes, I was fortunate enough to play with it and definitely can’t wait to really put the spurs to one.

Joy of Tech brings me joy

I know Steve is a daily Engadget reader, but I never fully understood why until now.

Potential conflict, what do you think?

So last week I was invited to attend and speak at a semi-exclusive pre-trade show press event; not at all unusual or noteworthy in and of itself, but there are some things about it that some might find gray. In the interest of transparency, I figured I’d see what you think.

Among other things, our long-standing editorial policy at Engadget strictly prohibits junkets — paid airfare and accommodations to visit a company and engage their staff — of any kind. Since the event is on behalf of a major trade show, what’s proposed is not technically a junket, and they do appear to be sensitive to editors’ need to steer clear. But there are aspects that certainly feel a bit like it is: CE companies make up the governing board of the trade show, and the offer is to pay my way to Spain to stay at a four-star resort for three days, as well as speaker’s fee (a few thousand) to be on a panel and “share my perspective on US trends” in consumer electronics. (The audience would be comprised of journalists and execs from tech companies participating in said trade show.) There are no expectations of coverage on Engadget, although there will likely be something there worth covering.

Some other big names in the space have apparently received and accepted the offer under what may be different terms. My take? I’m leaning on the side of passing — there might be too many red flags and too much ambiguity. What do you think?

Going magenta

I didn’t really have the time to re-tool my site to go magenta the right way like the Phone Scoop guys, but feel free to swipe the above image — that’s Engadget Mobile magenta #ed008c with Linotype’s VAG Round (which can be found online for free with a bit of searching).

On a personal note, I feel kind of bad for T-Mobile US on this whole thing. I’ve always had a really positive relationship with their teams and they’re the ones really feeling the blunt end of this reddish-purple-hued fiasco, certainly not their clueless parent company Deutsche Telekom, which initiated it. (And yes, there is a difference between T-Mo US and Deutsche Telekom, just like there’s a difference between Engadget, AOL, and Time Warner.)

P.S. -Not an April Fool’s joke. (Still!)

Vimeo pulls Engadget video with no notification

Apparently we jumped from the frying pan (YouTube) into the fire by hosting Engadget video on Vimeo. It was nice for a little while until they pulled our BlackBerry 9000 video down “as a result of a third-party notification by Research In Motion” without so much as emailing to let us know what’s up. (FYI, the video in question is of an unreleased cellphone, but not belonging to or copyrighted by RIM.) Of course, Vimeo was a lot more forthcoming once I emailed to find out why our first upload of the video was killed, and the second immediately dropped into private mode. Guess we’ll be taking our traffic and exposure elsewhere until we get the new version of our own embedded video player finished.

Amusing Live Search result for Engadget

Certainly no one can ping Microsoft’s Live Search for weighting down anything fruit-related.

Nielson / Comscore traffic numbers vs. reality

If it wasn’t clear by now, I find discussing traffic numbers pretty passe and gauche (always have). Yes, Engadget is at or near the top of the heap in tech news — but as an editor, to me, that’s not really what’s important. The numbers are an effect — not a cause — of reputation, engagement, and doing as good a job as you possibly can.

Anyhow, Saul Hansell wrote up a piece on the high-flying performance of Engadget and other blogs at AOL — the only problem is that he used Nielson numbers to back it up. For those not in the know, professional traffic metrics business like Nielson and Comscore (and to a lesser extent Alexa, Compete, etc.) make use of panels and cross-sections to estimate traffic and usage relative to the rest of the internet. Unfortunately these panel-based metrics are not only notoriously inaccurate, but they’re also frequently passed off as cold, hard numbers (as in the case of the NY Times piece, as well as a follow-up bit by Silicon Alley Reporter).

Just how far off are the numbers? As it turns out, somewhere in the range of 6x! In February of this year, over 12 million unique readers visited Engadget (not including RSS users or Engadget Chinese, Japanese, and Spanish), and in January it was over 14m. (January is always tech news’s biggest month of the year, thanks to CES and Macworld.) As usual, I’m not going to get into page views, RSS readers, and all the other methods of measurement, but the bottom line is that — specific numbers aside — in the last year and a half we did, in fact, add more readers than any time in our history, and we’re continuing on a rate of acceleration that tends to astound even me!

P.S. -And no, Saul did not get in touch to fact-check this story. He also did not update his post despite an email I sent providing him the more accurate numbers. Go figure!

Update: Saul got in touch, turns out he didn’t receive my email. His take on the numbers is in comments. Thanks for clarifying, Saul!