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Paul Berry, the Huffington Post's CTO since 2007, is one of the best regarded tech leaders in New York. After helping build one of the biggest news sites in the world, Berry announced this week that he's leaving AOL soon to focus on two new ventures: A social startup called Rebel Mouse and an incubator called SoHo Tech Lab to goof around with a bunch of different ideas and see what works.

I caught up with Berry this week to learn more about his experience growing HuffPost and what he's planning for his new projects. Following is a lightly edited transcript of our conversation.

Several of the largest Interent firms - including Google, Facebook and Twitter - are backing alternate legislation being proposed to the Stop Online Piracy and Protect IP Acts.

The OPEN act sponsored by Rep. Darrell Issa, R-Calif., and Sen. Ron Wyden, D-Ore., would allow the International Trade Commission to order online ad networks and payment processors to sever ties withe foreign websites that are targeted by patent infringement claims.

SOPA, and its Senate counerpart, PIPA, on the other hand, would force search engines and websites to block links to sites that are listed as being "dedicated" to copyright infringement. SOPA has been widely endorsed by traditional media companies, but Web firms and free speech advocates have likened it to government-enforced censorship.

We've been watching with some interest - shall we say - as AOL attempts to secretly prepare for a MapQuest social network called mqVibe. It hasn't been announced yet, but we've been able to connect enough dots to figure out that it's a neighborhood social and business network. UPDATE: And it launches tomorrow.

Our intrepid gumshoe at Fusible.com has poked around some more, and now we have specifics about the kinds of features we can expect to see on mqVibe. It will sport tight Facebook integration, and it will combine reviews and popularity votes on neighborhoods and businesses into a "vibe score." AOL really is going to take a shot at Google Places and Yelp.

Something cool is coming to your neighborhood. AOL appears to be preparing us for some kind of neighborhood-based social network built around MapQuest (remember them?). It has registered a bunch of domains this year that all point to a page that says something called "mqVibe" is coming soon.

Earlier this month, we reported on a slew of domain name purchases and trademark applications that indicated some kind of AOL social network was in the works. At the time, we figured it could have just been speculative. But no, it looks like AOL is serious. MapQuest will be the hub of AOL's effort to get on the social networking map.

There wasn't a lot of outright prophecy emerging from the Dreamforce conference three weeks ago, but Salesforce.com CEO Marc Benioff did say this:

"Facebook is eating the Web. And the Web is getting smaller now, and we're trying to get our heads around it, and we're seeing it in Arab Spring."

Judging by trademark applications and domain name registrations, it appears that AOL is preparing to announce a social networking site called NVIBE. AOL registered NVIBE.com on September 9, and they applied on the same day for five trademarks that describe interest- and location-based social networking services.

AOL acquired Bebo, another social networking site, for $850 million in 2008 but sold it for around $10 million two years later. Ouch. AOL has not announced any news related to NVIBE, nor has the domain been linked to the trademark applications in any way other than the date of origin, but these trademarks clearly describe the features of a full-fledged social network.

Tech CEOs are getting a lot of attention lately. With the exception of exiting Apple CEO Steve Jobs, the attention is not a good thing. From Carol Bartz's abrupt firing to Andrew Mason's IPO-icing shenanigans, many tech CEOs don't seem to be earning a janitor's salary – much less the inflated compensation they're getting.

So I decided to take a look around and see, who are the worst CEOs in tech? I limited the selection to those CEOs currently (or very near currently) working. So that means that some of the worst tech CEOs in history (see, for instance, SCO's Darl McBride) aren't on the list.

AOL is launching its entry into the increasingly crowded iPad magazine space with the new application AOL Editions. The app is somewhat similar to other high-profile efforts like The Daily, Flipboard, Plus and Zite, but attempts to find its niche by offering a personalized, social, once-daily experience which is also publisher-friendly.

But most importantly, in an effort to further define itself, AOL has made the bold decision to forgo real-time updates in favor of a magazine that you can actually finish reading throughout the course of the day.

The recently launched digital payment and commerce platform from American Express known as Serve has just announced a new partnership with Patch, AOL's big bet on hyperlocal news and content. Under the new partnership, Serve will power the Patch Deals platform, which will now offer Patch users deals and discounts, Groupon-style, with local merchants on the American Express network.

Pero Subasic, chief architect of R&D at AOL, will present at the Erlang Factory event this month in London on AOL's Erlang framework for real-time computational advertising. You can find the a paper that includes some of these details here. Subasic describes the company's Erlang framework as "experimental." It's not clear whether this is in production yet.