As an update to my last Spinning Gears Column, Lessons from the Lost iPhone Saga, Simon Owens, the man behind Bloggasm wrote me to let me know he had had the opportunity to exchange messages with Nick Denton, the man who founded and is still behind Gawker Media – the company that owns Gizmodo, as well as other blogs like Lifehacker, io9, and more.

Quite simply, and I was skeptical when I read his first message, he pointed out that Nick says that Gawker and Gizmodo have made no direct revenue from the now-famous “This is Apple’s Next iPhone” post that made Gizmodo one of the most popular sites on the internet for a while, and is probably still raking in the page views. In my column, I made a point to note that Gawker paid their source, the person who found or otherwise obtained the iPhone prototype $5000 for the device – something that’s brought up a number of questions around journalistic ethics that I’m not going to try and dissect here – I think other voices have done it better than I have, and I made my thoughts known in the last column.

But I assumed that Gawker would get the $5k back easily in terms of ad revenue and such from the post that went up (and no I’m not including any bandwidth charges Gawker would have had to absorb in order for their servers to support the traffic) and according to Owens’ email and his post at Bloggasm, Nick says that’s just not true. I thought it would have something to do with a fancy definition of “direct” versus “indirect” revenue, but it’s nothing so complicated – it’s just that ads are sold in advance:

Given that Gawker Media charges about $10 CPM, then one would think the media company raked in somewhere in the neighborhood of $100,000 in advertising, making the $5,000 Gawker-owner Nick Denton reportedly paid to get his hands on the found (stolen?) iPhone well worth it.

But at a recent Paid Content event, Denton said that the scoop brought “”no immediate revenue benefits whatsoever,” and that instead it garnered “hundreds of thousands of dollars worth of publicity for the site.”

After reading this I emailed Denton asking him to confirm the no-direct-revenue claim and explain why the high page views didn’t result in more advertising dough.

“Internet advertising is sold a few weeks ahead of time,” he wrote back. “So you might guarantee 2m impressions at $10 per thousand, for instance. If you get 4m impressions, you can’t go back to the advertiser and renegotiate. It’s either a bonus to the advertiser or wastage.”

Yowch. Now granted, Gawker is likely doing much better for itself in terms of advertising now than it used to, but that doesn’t capitalize on the massive spike that came with the publication and breaking of the iPhone prototype story, and maybe some of those increases will be considered “indirect” revenue, but that’s pretty perception shattering on its own, and I’m grateful to Owens for bringing it to my attention.

It’s pretty remarkable though that even the massive Gawker, which is larger than a number of newspapers and publishing companies with a massive blogging empire that spans multiple topics and sites, still has to deal with marketing and advertising the old fashioned way, and while advertisers may be seeing the benefits of all of those pageviews, Gawker gets to absorb the costs, hoping to capitalize on them later.

Here’s hoping they can – regardless of what you think of their journalism, Gawker is a leading company in this new media space, and a pioneering organization that’s paving the way forward when it comes to journalism on the Web.

[ Bloggasm :: Gawker’s Nick Denton Says Gizmodo Made No Direct Revenue from Leaked iPhone Post ]

Facebook announced some pretty broad and sweeping privacy changes recently, and while they aren’t garnering the attention that past Facebook privacy changes have, these ones are pretty serious and open the door to a number of apps, pages, and external sites and services to know a great deal about you that you may automatically assume is data that’s confined to Facebook itself.

Writing for PC Mag, Dan Costa has some suggestions to help you crack down on how Facebook handles (or mishandles, depending on how you see it) your information and what the service can and can’t do with your data, and who – even among people who use Facebook and are your friends there – can and can’t see certain things about you.

In a fabulous 8-step tutorial rich with screenshots to guide, Dan shows you how to change your Facebook privacy settings to something that benefits you, as opposed to the defaults, which for all of the credit Facebook is due, are designed to benefit the service while offering you some privacy protection – just not as much as you likely assume you have.

I’ll be walking through these steps myself very shortly, I strongly suggest you do too.

[ PC Mag :: Facebook Privacy: 8 Ways to Protect Yourself ]

If you’re a big Hulu viewer (like I am) you’ll probably be bummed to hear this, but Hulu is planning a subscription service to view older episodes and back-catalog shows that it currently hosts for free. Hulu announced that they were moving to a subscription “freemium” type of model several months ago to the dismay of people who had grown dependent on the service for their regular television viewing, but I think most people assumed that this was coming.

Now though, Hulu has solidified its plans, and has proposed a $10 per month subscription to access all Hulu videos, including old archived episodes that it has in its library and to access old episodes of shows like Lost that it currently posts as soon as the new episodes air. New episodes of currently tracked shows will continue to be free, it’s just that episodes more than a few weeks old or episodes that “expire” will require a subscription to access.

What do you think? Does this throw a wrench in your plans to get rid of your cable or satellite company in exchange for IPTV, or is the money reasonable for you? Are you planning to just seek your Web video elsewhere (through legal or illegal means?) Let us know in the comments!

[ PC Mag :: Hulu Plans Subscription Service to Access Old Episodes ]

The folks over at Ars Technica had the wonderful opportunity to tour the headquarters of massive video game and entertainment company Blizzard recently, makers of such fabulous games as World of Warcraft, Starcraft, and Diablo.

The photo-heavy walkthrough is fantastic for people like me who both love office tours and photos and a window into the workspaces that help create some of my favorite products and favorite services, but also because I’m a huge World of Warcraft fan and love to see some of the creative inspirations littered around Blizzard’s offices.

Among some of the great things are a massive poster-sized map of Azeroth, standing sculptures of Kerrigan from Starcraft and the Ghost from the now-cancelled title, Starcraft: Ghost. One of the things that really shook me though is the fact that Blizzard employees who have served at the company for 5 years get a sword, and after ten they get a shield, and each year the company switches up the logos and designs. It’s a really unique and interesting way for the company to show appreciation to their employees, and I really dig it.

Check out the whole tour at the link below!

[ Ars Technica :: Earning Your Sword: The Magical Inner Sanctum of Blizzard ]

I had all but written off Gawker/Gizmodo’s exclusive This is Apple’s Next iPhone as an item that everyone and their mother has covered at least once – and while I admit that I was as intrigued as anyone else at the story and found it incredible and unbelievable as anyone else, I have to say that it probably is the biggest scoop pulled on Apple to date, and the biggest gaping hole in their veil of secrecy anyone’s ever found.

The poor guy who was field testing the next iPhone is likely out of work at the very least (although I hope Apple realizes he just made a mistake) and probably would like to find another job quickly at the very best (I wouldn’t want that rep to live down at work every day). Still, it was a pretty rookie mistake, but it’s not one that hasn’t been made by people at all levels of an organization in any company in the past.

This is why I was particularly interested when Anil Dash, a man for whom I have nothing but the utmost respect as a member of the technocrati, said this at Twitter earlier this week:

A simple case of human error shouldn’t be a big story. A company that treats such things as a firing offense is what’s worthy of criticism.

Now on the surface, I completely agree with Anil – he’s absolutely right. Every time someone in a company makes a mistake, it shouldn’t be some of the biggest news on the Net for the next several days, or if it keeps up like this, weeks. Additionally, I’d hate to be in his shoes, and hate to risk being fired or laid off because of a simple mistake – having a few too many beers at a bar and forgetting to pick up my phone.

Still, something about the statement nags at me a bit, and I wonder if Anil is being a little harsh because it’s clear we’re talking about Apple and the next iPhone here. Would he be as forgiving if, for example, a Microsoft engineer lost the next Zune HD prototype in a cab somewhere, and someone was smart enough to know what it was and sold it to Gawker for $5000? (the amount that Gawker paid – omitted from most of the articles about it – to get their hands on the prototype iPhone from their anonymous source)

Honestly, a Zune HD prototype found in the wild likely wouldn’t stir up quite so much media attention, but is that fact a good or bad thing? The reason why everyone’s busy covering this story – including mainstream media outlets like CNN – is because the iPhone is ridiculously popular in America and Apple has a long-held reputation for secrecy. Microsoft, for example, doesn’t have the popular product and doesn’t have the cone of silence over its labs. But when a 64GB version of the Zune HD was leaked on a couple of Web sites a few weeks back, tech blogs still covered it. Is that a bad thing, according to Anil?

What about a corporate employee or CEO who leaves a laptop on a plane or in a cab; a laptop that contains proprietary information about the company, or Personally Identifiable Information (PII) about their customers? Sure – it’s orders of magnitude of difference, but we’ve seen heavier media scrutiny when a government contractor leaves a hard drive in a cab than this kid leaving a prototype iPhone in a bar, and we summarily expect that contractor or CEO to be fired for their negligence.

Sure, sure – a laptop with personally identifiable data on it doesn’t just harm the company, it harms its customers and the people whose information has been compromised; the impact is much wider than a simple prototype cell phone, so the consequences have to be broader to match the transgression – but they’re both still simple cases of human error. If the government contractor or the bank that lost the personal data fires the employee who lost it, are they equally “worthy of scrutiny?”

I’m in the camp where I would sincerely hope that Apple doesn’t cut this poor kid loose – he’s obviously got talent and a history of trustworthiness or else he wouldn’t have gotten the prototype in the first place. Even so, I can’t deny that when a hard drive full of credit card numbers or social security numbers goes missing, we as the public expect someone to be held accountable – we’re not in quite the forgiving mood that Anil is in. It’s possible it’s just because one affects us directly and the other only affects people interested and even then in a tangential way.

Still – I have to wonder if Anil’s perspective is colored a bit. By what, I’m not certain. If he read this, he would probably take me to task for using the slippery slope argument too much, and acknowledge that 140 characters isn’t a lot of space to get into nuance, and I agree on both counts. Like I said at the beginning, I completely agree with him, I just wonder if we should be so forgiving in this case, or – more preferably – maybe we should be more forgiving in all such cases.

It’s been a year since PC Mag visited their guide, How to Buy the Right Headphones, and now they’re back with a revised version of the guide with new headphones and new reviews and new tips for people looking not only to replace the likely-cruddy earbuds that came with their digital music player but also looking for solid sound quality, noise cancellation, high-end performance, or durability and affordability.

From some serious Sonys to some very quiet Boses to some swanky Sennheisers, the guide walks you through the various types of headphones and earbuds you can buy depending on what you’re looking for. If you have to have the portability of earbuds, there are suggestions for you. If you’re huge on circumaural headphones, there are suggestions for you too. Take a look at the guide and see what works best for the device you have and the budget you’re willing to set!

[ PC Mag :: How to Buy the Right Headphones ]

Last week’s launch of the Apple iPad was probably a bigger splash than I expected in any possible way. I mean, I expected the product to be successful – any Apple product generally is, and the first Apple product to pave the way into an entirely new market will do well because it’s the first; but as of today Apple’s passed the 500,000 mark when it comes to iPads sold, and they’ve only been available for over a week. If trends go strong, Apple could very well rack up over a million iPads sold in its first month.

A lot of people like the iPad, a lot of people hate it, and there are both valid and completely invalid reasons on both sides of that line (I’ve written about as much about irrational Apple hate lately as I have about irrational Apple love) but the one thing that’s caught my eye is the visible explosion of the app market with the launch of the iPad. Selling apps is nothing new – the App store is populated with free and paid apps available for your iPhone, Android phone, Blackberry, and more, and for as much as I disagree with the people who claim the iPad is just a glorified iPod Touch, they’ve been available for iPod Touch users as well.

What’s different though is that with the launch of the iPad, all of the apps launched have made use of the iPad as a platform – somewhere between buying software for a shiny new computer (as well as downloading freeware) and apps for a mobile phone. Clearly Apple’s model is closer to apps for a mobile phone than software for a computer, but with the announcement of iPhone OS 4.0, Apple’s portable devices and tablets are looking more and more like computers every day.

The point though is this: the app market has exploded and people are willing to do two things:

1. Buy apps by the bushel (but decline to pay for PC software)
2. Buy apps but demand Web content remain free (within reason)

Let’s dive into both of these below the jump.

Continue reading Spinning Gears :: Will the iPad Save Publishing and Content Producers?…

Admittedly I’ve had my Motorola Droid for several months now (and yes, I’m still mulling over a hands-on review on why I think it’s one of the finest technology purchases I’ve made in years) but thanks to AppBrain I can show the world all of the apps that I have installed on my Droid.

Among some of my favorites that I use all of the time? TripIt has been invaluable for all of the traveling I’ve done across the country in the past several months, Yelp has been wonderful for even finding things to eat in my own neighborhood, Shazam has helped me tag songs I’ve heard on the radio so I could identify them, and NPR news has helped me find radio to listen to no matter what state I’m in.

That’s not even the extent of the awesomeness – Google Sky is an app that has to be seen to be believed, and Key Ring has slimmed my wallet significantly. If you’re curious about any of these apps though, just click on them in the widget above to learn more about them!

Do you have an android phone? What do you have installed? Let me know in the comments!

This is the moment that a number of Apple fans have been waiting for: Intel’s new Core i5 and i7 processors have made their way to Apple’s highly successful MacBook Pro line of portable computers. Personally? I’ve actually been waiting a while for this moment to consider an upgrade to my MacBook Pro with the Intel Core 2 Duo (Penryn) chipset in it, and an i7 (like the one in my desktop PC) would do very nicely.

Over at PC Magazine there are some glorious unboxing photos (like the one above) of the new MacBook Pros; which haven’t really changed form factor or case design from the previous models, but the guts have gotten a huge upgrade from the Core 2 Duo line. The 13-inch MacBook Pros retain their Core 2 Duo guts (and their price point) while the 15 and 17-inch MacBook Pros have seen the upgrades. Only the 15-inch has an i7 processor in it, even the 17-inch Macbook Pro only saw an upgrade to an i5.

The price point has been bumped up a touch, but that’s to be expected with the kind of processor upgrade that the i5 and i7 represent. Aside from that, the new MacBook Pros have all been given discrete and switchable graphics and new Nvidia graphics cards, which allow them to switch between built-in Intel graphics for normal tasks, but kick into overdrive and use the NVidia graphics cards when you start gaming or doing a graphics-intensive task.

If you’ve been waiting to update your MacBook Pro, now is a great time to do it – the Core i5/i7 processor lineup will be with us for a bit yet, and this is the time of year where Apple updates their notebook line, so you’re fresh off of an update cycle.

[ PC Mag :: Apple Intros Core i5 and Core i7 MacBook Pros ]

Lifehacker just came off a massive “spring cleaning” week, and among the posts that really caught my eye is this set of tips on how to declutter your digital life and trim down on the number of things that demand your attention or distract you from the things you really should be doing. There’s a certain tipping point where the things you have to do to “stay on top of things” when it comes to your feeds, blogs, and digital tasks becomes more of a chore than something fun to do, and Lifehacker has a series of tips on how to make it more manageable and make your digital life fun again instead of a second job. Among them? This gem:

Compact and Manage Social Network Alerts

Facebook has a way of making you sorry you use it, at least if you regard your inbox as something more than just a junk pile. To trim down on the messages that Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitter, MySpace, and other services send you, we’ve suggested a two-part filtering and management scheme for social networks. The short version: use Nutshell Mail and a good RSS reader. Facebook has made email management a bit more convenient itself, offering in-email replies to comment mail, which we took as an opportunity to show off our Facebook-taming Gmail filter.

I’ve omitted some of the delicious links that are actually over at the Lifehacker post in question because I want you to go over and actually read it. I’m completely like this though; sometimes it’s easy to trim down your social networks and other times it’s difficult, and for those times when it’s tough it can be really helpful to know how to minimize the amount of distraction from your social Web services and from the other services that you actively enjoy.

[ Lifehacker :: Top 10 Ways to Declutter Your Digital Life, 2010 Edition ]