aol

Other links from Monday's episode of Loaded:

AOL buys The Huffington Post

Sony uses Super Bowl ad to officially announce the Xperia Play

Motorola Xoom pricing

The NASDAQ hacked

New Canon dSLRs

The expected in-depth analysis of Sunday's Super Bowl advertisements was almost completely wiped from the media punditry's agenda when, at midnight on Monday, AOL announced its deal to acquire The Huffington Post for $315 million.

It's "the equivalent of a fourth-quarter Hail Mary pass," Ken Auletta wrote in The New Yorker. Or "a slow-motion train wreck and will end in disaster," according to Dan Lyons in The Daily Beast.

Even those who were more bullish on the deal expressed surprise and a bit of skepticism at the idea of AOL CEO Tim Armstrong, … Read more

In a shocking post-Super Bowl announcement, AOL said tonight it has agreed to pay $315 million for the Huffington Post and form a new media powerhouse by combining the content of both organizations.

The resulting new outfit, which will be headed by HuffPo co-founder Arianna Huffington, will be called Huffington Post Media Group and feature all the content from previous AOL acquisitions including Engadget and TechCrunch. By doing so, AOL seems intent on convincing the world that it is deadly serious about reclaiming its place among the leaders of the digital media world.

In a story posted at midnight … Read more

If you're still paying for AOL, there's a good chance you don't need to. Molly Wood shows you how to switch to a free account for AOL e-mail.

AOL's advertising revenues have dropped yet again, according to the company's 2010 fourth-quarter earnings report, issued today. But the good news? Wall Street had been anticipating that things would be even worse.

Revenue for the quarter was $596 million, down 26 percent year over year as the company continues to lose subscribers to its waning dial-up Internet access service. Advertising revenue--which AOL sees as its future--was $332 million, down 29 percent from last year. There has been continual restructuring taking place at the company since Tim Armstrong was named as AOL's CEO nearly two years ago and … Read more

AOL is targeting its editorial divisions to teach them a new "way" of doing business.

BusinessInsider is reporting that it has acquired a leaked document from AOL that outlines the company's editorial strategy through 2011. Dubbed "The AOL Way," the 58-page document is reportedly designed to be a guide for editors, writers, and other content creators on what is expected of them in the coming months.

The document first discusses the company's traffic goals for the next few months. It claims about 31,000 pieces of content were produced by AOL editors and writers … Read more

Some of AOL Mail's users have been unable to log in to their accounts since yesterday, and they're starting to get upset.

AOL announced on its Mail blog yesterday that it was performing scheduled maintenance that was "taking us a little longer than expected." It said in the post that users would see older messages in their inbox, while others wouldn't be able to log in.

As the day wore on, the issues users were experiencing continued, prompting the Web company to update its blog with another post last night, saying that "some" … Read more

Brian Tong returns from the islands in time for us to get collectively punked by a surprisingly elaborate rumor about Keanu Reeves and two more Matrix sequels. But that's nothing compared to the punking that is AOL's subscription service, which generates 60% of its profits and isn't needed by pretty much anyone who pays for it. Ouch. Plus, the tech bubble is our new drinking game and the white iPhone ... never mind. We're not talking about that damn thing anymore. --Molly

Scientific Conservation, a company that specializes in energy consumption forecasting, has received $15.65 million in Series B funding, the start-up announced Tuesday.

The company is just one example of the way traditional IT is now intersecting with green tech.

Scientific Conservation offers software as a service (SaaS) that allows the company to monitor a building's energy consumption in real-time, apply that data to energy management diagnostics and analytics, and then use that created knowledge to predict the building's energy consumption in the future.

The result is a customized energy plan for a building that is always being … Read more