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On the eve of AOL’s official reemergence as an independently-traded company (although in reality its shares are already trading), CEO Tim Armstrong gives CNBC’s Julia Boorstin a lengthy interview on his message to investors and where he hopes to take AOL. He is fully aware that cost-cutting is only going to take AOL so far and he that investors are concerned whether the “newer business [is] gonna be able to overtake the declining business.” But he thinks it is just a matter of execution and promises to show investors the “metrics,” “changes,” and “great products and services” which will drive…

Skype CEO Josh Silverman can’t stop smiling in this video interview we recorded in Menlo Park this morning. And no wonder – despite serious legal and spinoff drama , Silverman has managed to close his multi-billion dollar spinoff of Skype from eBay. His legal troubles have evaporated . Skype is growing like a weed. And he’s managed to keep his job running the business. Life is good. All he has to do now is manage board meetings with two of the more forceful personalities on the planet – new investor Marc Andreessen and cofounder/new investor Niklas Zennstrom . Well, that and keep this train on the tracks . Skype has exploded to over half a billion …

Topics: Gaming , Software , Features , iTunes , iPhone , App Store , iPod touch , Music By the time you read this, Tap Tap Revenge 3 should have made its way to the App Store. The latest version of the rhythm game/music platform for the iPhone and iPod touch is a huge release for Tapulous — from the series’ humble beginnings as a pre-App Store bit of code to the more recent incarnations of artist-specific music collections , Tapulous has taken Tap Tap a long way in the still short history of this gaming platform. And now they’re trying to go even farther: they’ve introduced in-app purchases to the game (you can find a full list of songs available now as in-app purchases…

Topics: Other Events , Developer , iPhone About a month ago we reported that the 360iDev conference was going to be held in Denver, Colorado. The event is now underway, and since I happen to live in the area, I’m attending the event that’s billed as the premiere iPhone developer conference in the world. There are certainly a good number of iPhone developers on hand — Tom Ortega of 360|Conferences, the group that’s running the event, mentioned that the registration was at 225 developers, more than attended the last event in San Jose, CA. The sessions last for the next day and a half, and there are plenty of opportunities for developers to learn, meet, and party. Stay …

This is the third installment of our exclusive interview last week with Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer . In the first article we showed an overview and video footage of the main subject areas we covered: Big Opportunities, Operating Systems/Browsers, Mobile, Search and Developers. In the second post we did a deeper dive on his thoughts on big business opportunities for Microsoft in the next 5 – 10 years. Here we focus on his thoughts on the competitive landscape around operating systems and browsers. And Ballmer has lots to say on the subject. Particularly because Microsoft has fresh browser and OS products in the pipe: IE8 launched earlier this year and Windows 7 launches on October 22. We jumped right into the …

In venture capital, Vinod Khosla likes to go his own way , which is why he’s been so successful. He was the founding CEO of Sun Microsystems, and then moved to venture capital and became a star partner at Kleiner Perkins, where he backed Juniper Networks, Cerent (sold to Cisco for $7 billion) and NexGen (sold to AMD and formed the basis for its challenge to Intel). About five years ago, after becoming a billionaire, he left Kleiner and started Khosla Ventures to invest his own money. He was mostly drawn to clean tech at a time before it was popular, but still kept his hand in Web and other tech startups (Aliph|Jawbone, iSkoot, RingCentral, Tapulous, iLike, Slide…

There’s been a big brouhaha over comments Steve Jobs made to NYT’s David Pogue in an interview following Apple’s event on Wednesday. Basically, most people are interpreting what Jobs said about eBook readers to mean that Apple plans to completely stay away from the market. But that’s not actually what Jobs said at all. How do we know? Because before Pogue re-wrote his interview, he posted the transcription of the Q&A, which still resides in Google’s cache . Here’s the relevant part:

Following Facebook’s acquisition of FriendFeed , a lot of users in that community were up in arms. Basically, everyone was quick to jump to the conclusion that FriendFeed, as we knew it, was dead. And with the comments immediately following the deal, the parties on both sides did little to change that line of thinking, basically saying things along the lines of “we’ll see.” Many users were threatening to leave the service immediately, turning them into yes, FFugees. Well, now that the FriendFeed team is successfully in their new Facebook office and working to get up to speed on their new site, Steve Gillmor got a …

Reuben Langdon is a motion capture artist in motion pictures and games — you’ve probably directed his actions without knowing it in such games as Resident Evil 5 and Dead Rising. Most recently he’s been working on James Cameron’s epic CG film, Avatar . He took some time out of his busy backflipping schedule to talk to us about motion capture, having his own studio, and working with Cameron on the biggest and most ambitious CG movie of all time.

Vadim Lavrusik is a new media student at the Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism. He is @lavrusik on Twitter and blogs at lavrusik.com . With news organizations beginning to create special positions to manage the use of social media tools, such as the recently appointed social editor at The New York Times , journalism schools are starting to recognize the need to integrate social media into their curricula. That doesn’t mean having a class on Facebook or Twitter , which many college students already know inside and out, but instead means that professors are delving into how these tools can be applied to enrich the craft of reporting and producing the news and ultimately telling the story in the best possible way. And though many professors are still experimenting …