It’s e-reader preview week, apparently. Last night, Plastic Logic formally named its would-be Kindle killer; tomorrow, Barnes & Noble is supposed to show off its own branded device. This morning’s entrant: Spring Design, which says it has produced a reader that boasts two screens and an operating system that runs on Google’s Android. What it doesn’t have: Big-pocketed partners to boast about.
The new Wondertablet the guys at Gizmodo showed off last night looks cool. But you can’t actually touch one right now unless you know someone very connected at Microsoft. But you know what you can touch? Today? A PC you control by shoving your hands in a box full of mud. All you have to do is get yourself to Gizmodo’s awesome gadget gallery in New York during the next few days.
Now that Bill Gates isn’t running Microsoft day to day, he is primarily focused on the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, which is tackling big hairy problems like malaria. But apparently he still has enough time to moonlight as a free-lancer for Gizmodo.
Does the world need another gadget site? Yes, say two of the gadget world’s biggest stars, who are launching gdgt.com today. The site is the work of Peter Rojas, who helped build Gizmodo and Engadget, and Ryan Block, who took the torch from Rojas after he moved on. Gizmodo and Engadget are the best known and most powerful of the new generation of gadget sites, which makes Rojas and Block revered by the gadget gang and able to cobble together funding. But they’re still taking on a very crowded field.
What if Apple had made the first iPhone in 1983? What if you could turn a Nintendo controller into a bong? What would a 103-inch TV look like? Theoretical questions no longer. At least for people who visit New York’s Lower East Side for the next few days. That’s where Gizmodo, Gawker Media’s crazily successful gadget blog, has set up a gallery of odd, cool, and awesome stuff.
The Gawker Media boss puts his Consumerist site up for sale and folds his Valleywag tech gossip site into his flagship Gawker gossip site. More moves to come. In fact, it wouldn’t be Denton if there were not more moves to come.
A year ago, the conventional wisdom said that the online ad market would still grow in an economic slump because online ads were cheaper, and more effective. And they are. But if the slump is big enough–like the one we’re in now–then all bets are off. Which is why there’s no longer any conventional wisdom about the future of online ads. J.P. Morgan analyst Imran Khan, for instance, thinks growth will slow next year, and has just reduced his estimates. But Gawker publisher Nick Denton thinks we’ll be lucky if there’s any growth, period.
Peter Kafka has been covering media and technology since 1997, when he joined the staff of Forbes magazine. Most recently, he has been the managing editor of the tech and media Web site, Silicon Alley Insider. Read more »
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