Boot up: Arrington departs, British Airways tests…

Boot up: Arrington departs, British Airways tests iPads for cabin crew, and more

Arianna Huffington, the co-founder of The Huffington Post and Arrington's boss Photograph: Daniel Barry/EPA

A quick burst of 7 links for you to chew over, as picked by the Technology team

TechCrunch editor Michael Arrington steps down >> Guardian

"Arrington will partner with many well-known Silicon Valley venture capitalists - including Digg-founder Kevin Rose, Yuri Milner, Marc Andreessen, Ben Horowiz, and Accel Partners - to invest between $100,000 and $200,000 in fledgling internet firms."

TechCrunch Editor Resigns >> WSJ.com

"TechCrunch founder Michael Arrington is resigning as editor of the popular technology blog, and will run a $20 million venture-capital fund backed by TechCrunch-owner AOL Inc. and several venture-capital firms.

"Mr. Arrington "will run the fund and will continue to write for TechCrunch, but will have no editorial oversight," said an AOL spokesman. Erick Schonfeld, who has served as co-editor in New York, will become interim editor while AOL searches for a replacement for Mr. Arrington, the spokesman said. AOL purchased the site last year."

Arrington gets the exit that one suspects he always wanted. Now the interesting times start for Techcrunch and AOL.

Windows Phone, the third ecosystem? What are the odds? >> asymco

Horace Dediu, analysing the comScore numbers for US smartphone users: "In the last 12 months, Android gained 25m users in the US. iPhone gained 9.5m while Blackberry lost 3.2m and Microsoft lost 1.6m. Other platforms had a net loss of 1.2m.
"The total net gain of smartphones was about 29m new users.
"RIM switched from being a consistent net gainer of users to a consistent net loser of users in October 2010. Windows Phone is showing signs of holding the line on user base erosion but share remains below 5% (now at 4.7% vs. 4.6% last month). To put the mountain-sized hurdle in perspective, Android now has 7 times more users in the US while iPhone has about 5 times more. To become the largest mobile platform in the US, as some analysts are predicting, Microsoft has a 12:1 disadvantage that looks to continue to grow.
"Those are some pretty tough odds."

British Airways testing iPads for cabin crews >> AllThingsD

"Add British Airways to the list of airlines putting iPads in crew members' flight bags.

"The U.K. carrier recently began a pilot program that will see some cabin crew members using the tablets to improve in-flight service and replace the paper clutter of the passenger manifests, seating charts and flight timetables they typically carry.
"BA will initially outfit just 100 crew members with iPads. But if that initial deployment is successful, it plans to give them to 1,800 more in the coming months."

Shouldn't we be hearing about RIM, that darling of the enterprise, winning PlayBook contracts some time soon?