Tech Sites You Should Know

There are literally billions of sites on the internet and a plethora of technology sites out there. Which ones are worthwhile? Sometimes it’s pretty hard to keep them all straight. So, if you want to follow technology news and keep up with the latest news, you should check the following sites.

The Big Ones

Engadget is probably the best known technology blog on the internet. It’s owned by AOL and is part of a network of blogs that cover all imaginable subjects. Engadget mostly covers gadget and consumer electronics news. It’s pretty mainstream and easy to read. The posts are quick and there are usually 20-30 posts per day. If you’re looking for more interesting news, check out alt.engadget.com. It’s much more interesting.

Gizmodo is probably second in popularity to Engadget. It runs essentially the same content and is owned by AOL rival Gawker media. The problem with these types of sites is that they cater to the lowest common denominator because they are based on the premise of getting as many page views as possible.

Ars Technica strikes a great balance between lots of coverage and in-depth articles. They have everything from video game reviews to in-depth articles on setting up servers and virtualization. A lot of the writers for Ars are software designers and programmers, so they understand what they are writing about. When they review a product, they go in-depth and really dig into what makes a product work or fail (their review of Mac OS X Snow Leopard was 26 pages long).

All Things Digital is probably the best mainstream site for the general public. Walt Mossberg and his crew cover a whole range of topics but they also manage to write more than just a few sentences on a give topic like Engadget and Gizmodo do.

Aggregators

TechMeme is an extremely mainstream site but it’s not necessarily a bad thing. They take all of the latest news topics and show you the various stories being written about them. This works well because it allows you to get a whole range of perspectives on one story. Say the big news item of the day is the RIM Playbook, Techmeme will have a headline for the Playbook and then underneath it there will be a long list of the most popular articles about it.

Reddit is a site that gets over 1 billion page views per month. While the main page is just a bunch of images and stupid internet memes, the technology subreddit (along with the Apple subreddit) are actually quite useful. Reddit is comprised of user submitted stories on which people vote and comment. It’s very similar to Hacker News.

Hacker News is a great place to get your news if your more technologically inclined than most people. It’s essentially a nerdier version of Reddit. Users can submit stories and people can comment on them. They can also vote whether or not they like stories. Since the stories with the greatest number of votes are at the top of the list, the system is self filtering. It also serves as a great gateway to discover new writers. Most of the articles submitted are longer form and come from blogs but they are some of the most current and informative stories out there.

Blogs

Daring Fireball is the most popular Apple blog out there. Gruber has been at this since 2005 and he knows his stuff. He has cultivated a number of sources in Apple and his writing is smart (and somewhat snarky). While Gruber is definitely an Apple Fanboy, he is a smart guy and knows what he’s talking about.

Monday Note is the home of Jean-Louis Gassée and Frédéric Filloux. Gassée founded Be, Inc. which developed the BeOS operating system. They are both extremely competent writers and they provide excellent insight into both technology and the marketplace. They only update the site every few days, but their posts are in-depth and fully-formed.

I, Cringely, which is written by Bob Cringely, provides smart and somewhat sarcastic commentary on not just technology but the world in general. He doesn’t update the site with any real frequency; sometimes the site is updated multiple times per week, sometimes it will be two weeks between updates. Either way, Cringely is smart and funny.

The Daily Report is a blog about technology and many other things. Run by Jeffrey Zeldman, who sits on the board of SXSWi and founded Happy Cog Hosting, The Daily Report is part personal blog and part technology blog. He provides commentary on a variety of technology issues and news.

• John Gruber
• Charlie Miller
• Techmeme Firehose
• TechCrunch
• Leo Laporte
• Michael Arrington
• Loren Brichter