One of the many, many things I don’t like about Engadget, is when they chose to write something completely biased and opiniated, and just slip it into the middle of a sentence. Like, in this article:
“Granted, we fully understand Creative’s right to disallow the distribution of untested, potentially harmful third-party drivers…”
Stop. Where in the world does Creative have the right to prevent third-party software? Perhaps I should go check the flag to make sure it’s still red, white, and blue.
My point here is two-fold. One, Engadget makes these comments not knowing that the non-newsmakers (that’s you, the reader), can mis-interpret such off-handed remarks as fact. A reader may not know that Creative doesn’t have a right to block software simply because it is third-party. There are many other examples of writer bias slipping into their writing, such as declaring WiMAX dead in favor of LTE (last time I checked only WiMAX was actually up and running).
The other point is that Engadget doesn’t seem to have journalistic standards when it comes to choosing to push the walls. When we post links to software that used to be free at PhoneNews.com, we’re doing so to build a case history such that some bully multi-million dollar company can’t shut the site down at a moment’s notice. Same thing with Windows Mobile ROMs and Motorola ROMs on our Phone Encyclopedia.
Not ignoring the obvious, Engadget makes a lot more money than PhoneNews.com does. That’s what happens when you get a cash infusion from a giant like AOL (not to mention not needing to enlist other advertisers, AOL sells AOL’s ads on Engadget). But, as AOL’s investment has not been as rosy as AOL thought it would be… one wonders what the future holds for Engadget and the rest of Weblogs, Inc.
It’s also interesting to wonder how Weblogs, Inc could have grown had they not been bought by AOL. I remember the old days, when the company was promising to release their publishing software (Blogsmith) free to the public to use as a competitor to (at the time) PHP-Nuke and Mambo. I remember all these brilliant ideas that got sold into corporate lunacy. I remember a time when PhoneNews.com almost was going to be part of the company. This kind of idea driving does not need to die at the point of corporate takeover… but it did.
I wouldn’t be surprised if the only buyer in the room left is CNET (remember, ZDNet is bankrupt). You can ask Bear Sterns shareholders how a one-buyer situation plays out, to the tune of pennies on the dollar.
Update: Aparrently, Engadget doesn’t like when folks point things like this out, and have deleted multiple references to this blog post, and pointing out the original logical fallacy referenced in this article. I could understand if readers were bring crude/rude/offensive (I delete those type of comments daily)… but censoring cogent feedback? Tsk, tsk Engadget.