journal

Michael Arrington, the founder and co-editor of TechCrunch, is forming a venture capital fund to invest in some of the startups his bloggers write about, according to a Fortune report.

The $20 million CrunchFund will reportedly be funded primarily by AOL, which bought TechCrunch last year, as well as venture capital firms such as Sequoia Capital, Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers, and Greylock Partners.

Arrington and AOL did not respond to requests for comment.

Although the arrangement flies in the face of traditional journalism's principles of avoiding conflicts of interest, Arrington told The New York Times that the fund'… Read more

Updated 3:50 p.m. PT to reflect Barnes & Noble updating its Nook iOS apps.

Apple has finally brought the hammer down on e-reader apps, enforcing its new in-app subscription rules that require app developers to strip out any links to external mechanisms for purchasing digital books or subscriptions.

Amazon, Barnes & Noble, and Canada-based Kobo have all updated their iOS e-reader apps, with Barnes & Noble temporarily removing its Nook for iPad app from the App Store and sending out a press release late in the afternoon saying it would soon update the app to offer the "… Read more

Too busy to keep up with today's tech news? Here are some of the more interesting stories from CNET for Wednesday, July 13.

• Customers are not happy that Netflix increased subscription prices for its DVD and streaming video combo plan. Customers who want access to DVDs and streaming video must pay $15.98, up from the $9.99 they were used to paying. The 60 percent price hike didn't go over so well in the digital world; new community pages such as "I Unlike Netflix Today" sprung up to get the masses to quit Netflix. But … Read more

Journaling is a great idea, whether you're keeping track of your daily goings-on at work or recording your most intimate thoughts. My Daily Digital Journal is a portable program that makes keeping a journal fun, easy, and secure. We can imagine anyone from tweens to executives using this program.

The journal's interface is plain and intuitive, resembling a mini word processor. There's a formatting toolbar across the top, and the program comes with a full complement of formatting features. You can change the font style and color, set the background color, and create bulleted lists. You can … Read more

If two bucks a week just sounds like too much to pay for access to a slew of content, and you don't mind crossing Rupert Murdoch, then Read WSJ is the Chrome extension for you. A free download in the Chrome Web Store, this rather simple bit of code provides easy access to much of the articles and other content that more upstanding Journal readers actually pay for.

The app is basically a script that automatically searches for cached versions of WSJ stories on Google and then places a special icon next to a headline if one is available … Read more

NASA proves Einstein is still a genius, just in case you forgot. Anonymous officially denies being involved in hacking the Playstation Network, Facebook and Google want Skype, and we're getting even closer to a world of digital distribution. Apple and EA are going to make sure of it.

It's difficult for the columns on a Twitter client app to resonate with emotion, but late Sunday evening, as the news unfolded that U.S. special forces had killed al-Qaeda leader and 9/11 mastermind Osama bin Laden in Pakistan, they certainly did.

There were, at the beginning and end of President Obama's speech announcing the victory, 4,000 "tweets" per second, an estimate that the company increased to over 5,000 on Monday morning. Twitter also elaborated further and said that it experienced its highest sustained rate of tweets ever, with an average of 3,… Read more

commentary Is it OK for AOL's TechCrunch editors to invest in companies they write about?

It's a question we once had figured out but a new generation of editors says it's OK. As long as it's disclosed. But is that enough?

Mike Arrington, editor and founder of TechCrunch, an AOL company, yesterday disclosed his investments in some high-profile start-ups.

He said he had refrained from making investments in start-ups since 2009 because of distracting accusations of conflicts of interest, but that he had recently changed that policy (following the sale of TechCrunch to AOL).

AUSTIN, Texas--The horrifying consequences of the recent earthquake in Japan have been yet another proving point for the promises of "citizen" journalism, K.C. Estenson, general manager at CNN Digital, said at an event that the news network held at the South by Southwest Interactive Festival (SXSW) this evening.

"We now have over 50 people on the ground from CNN, the men and women of CNN who report on these things, there in Japan," Estenson said. "(But) in the 36 hours that led up from Friday through the weekend, we just couldn't get people … Read more