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.

30-inches: too much screen?

I never thought I’d question it, but is 30-inches too much for one screen?

I’m a serious resolution and screen real estate hog, so I’ll let that sink in for a sec as I recount my week spent with a 30-incher I bought (and eventually sold) earlier this year. There’s no doubt that productivity goes up and stress goes down as you add more pixels to your desktop, and like many over the last ten years I’ve gone from 14 to 17 to 19-inch CRTs, to 20-inch LCDs, eventually to 24-inch, and more recently to 30-inches. I’m not going to get too into the Dell 3007WFP-HC itself — which is absolutely amazing, and has color rich enough to make your eyes ache (in a good way) — but I could barely believe it when I discovered a display size that was simply too large for me to use comfortably.

Oh sure, I could fill up that amount of resolution easily. And since I’m not a MacBook Air user, actually powering that many pixels wasn’t really a problem. It all came down to the six inch jump, which necessitated dramatic eye movements from distantly adjacent windows, and, eventually, constant neck adjustments to reduce the strain of said looking back and forth.

Part of me thinks I’m crazy though, because I’d love nothing more than a wall of 30-inchers to work on. Guess I’ll have to check out those new 27-inch models — too bad they only add size, and not pixels over the 24s.

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?

Leica’s pixel dog

If I had a dog, it would absolutely have to be this breed. [Via Core 77 and Comunicadores]

Qore is go!

Veronica’s big, long awaited, heretofore secret project Qore launched for download last night — we grabbed it this morning to see how the final version looks. Very hot. And I’m not just saying that, because, well, you know. Also, I’m declaring myself the first (ok, maybe second) to have unearthed the Qore easter egg: press L2 from the home screen and you get taken to a mini-game called Death Orb. More from Joystiq and PS3 Fanboy, and Veronica; Death Orb shot after the break. More…

Joy of Tech brings me joy

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

Mentoring the next generation of gadget bloggers

Late last year Peter and I began a mentorship program with some students of the Torah Academy of Bergen County; Eli, Chaim, and later Charlie and Tzvi got together to begin writing an editing a gadget blog aimed at teenagers casually interested in technology, dubbed the TeenTechBlog. These kids have definitely made a lot of progress over the past six months. Starting a site and following it through isn’t as easy as it looks, and they’ve have been continually upping their game despite their demanding school schedule.

I think the question I’m most often asked by people not already in the industry is, “How do I break into writing about technology?” The answer is pretty simple: start writing, keep writing (even when the initial luster has worn off, even if you’re not collecting droves of readers and scads of review units), and with any luck you’ll hone your skill and catch your break — not unlike the path the crew at TeenTechBlog are already on.

Good folders to exclude from Time Machine backups

Time Machine is a really effective tool for backing up everything on your drive. And when I say everything, I mean it — Time Machine indiscriminately backs up a lot of junk on your drive. And because of the techniques it uses and the way some files are used by your apps, you might find that your 500GB external backup drive is getting full after just a few months of use.

It’s really easy to identify folders for exclusion from Time Machine, which will save time and space during backups. It’s worth noting, though, that if your machine’s drive does fail, you won’t be able to execute a full restore without having some of these locations backed up. Then again, if you’re anything like me, you’re far more likely to just do a full reinstall and just restore your lost user data. (Doing a full restore from backup just doesn’t have many advantages compared to a full system reinstall, anyway.)

These are just a few suggestions — you should NEVER exclude anything from backup if you’re unsure you have another copy, aren’t able to get it again, or are unaware of the possible ramifications. Of course, you’ve got any good folders you think should be added to the list, feel free to drop ‘em in comments.

Obvious
The duh stuff.

• /Applications - This will likely save you more space than any other single folder, especially if you have lots of apps. Just make sure you know what programs you’d want to get back if your machine were to die.

Caches and downloads
Big directories of files that should probably be excluded automatically, but aren’t. Unless you’re a crazy developer debugging code, you’ll probably never need a backup of your caches.

• /Users/[user]/Library/Caches and /Library/Caches - Between the two you can knock off a few hundred megs of constantly changing, essentially useless data.
• /Users/[user]/Downloads - Where all your internet downloads wind up. Frequently changes, and if you’re anything like me, it’s filled with gigs of garbage.
• /Users/[user]/.Trash and /.Trashes - Some people might see value in backing up their trashed files. Not I.

More after the break. More…

Microblogging needs platform independence

Although I’m fairly ill-equipped to delve deep into burgeoning distributed social networking “standards”, there are some clear trends in play pointing toward the need for microblogging to become a platform independent activity. (The multiple Twitter outages over the last week are only the icing on this cake.)

Although blogging can trace its roots to zine / underground publishing culture, it wasn’t until the first blog CMSs landed in 1999 and 2000 (like Blogger and Movable Type) that mainstream audiences experimented with self-publishing. Those blogging at the time might remember what a highly platform-based experience it was. RSS and other forms of one:any (not just one:many) aggregation hadn’t yet come into widespread use, meaning some of those early platforms fed right back into their own siloed communities. This was especially apparent in the case of LiveJournal, which was really popular back then. Way late to RSS, LiveJournal instead relied on a light social networking system that aggregated posts to groups of friends using the service. Sounds familiar. Of course, blogging eventually grew up and out of its early stages into something far more horizontal and platform independent, ensuring the activity of blogging didn’t tie users to just one system and set of relationships.

Although Twitter should be clearly wary of users eventually fleeing for a distributed, decentralized, relationship-based cloud of microblogging, I think most in the know would agree that ultimately it’s what the medium needs to make the next step. Because of Twitter’s dependence on relationships, though, that transition probably won’t come easily; perhaps that’s where services like FriendFeed and other meta-aggregators step in as the glue for disparate, distributed life-content apps. Or perhaps that’s the tack Twitter needs to build into its own business, ensuring it makes the transition from early platform to future technology leader.

Harry McCracken leaving to start a new site

So Harry McCracken is leaving PC World on June 2nd to start his own tech site. The man’s a titan in our industry, I can’t wait to check out what he’s got cooking — good luck, Harry!

P.S. -And no, the EIC gig I referenced the other day wasn’t this, so there you go.