gawker media

A probe into a prototype iPhone 4 purchased by a gadget blog is nearing its end, with investigators expected to report their findings soon.

Stephen Wagstaffe, district attorney for the county of San Mateo, Calif., told CNET today that "the investigation is ongoing" and he expects it could conclude as early as next month. Investigators are close to finishing their interviews and will present him with their findings, he said.

The investigation began early last year when Robert Gray Powell, a 28-year-old Apple computer engineer, left an unmarked prototype iPhone in a German beer garden in Redwood City, … Read more

When blog network Gawker Media announced last year that it would be completely redesigning its portfolio of media properties--which include Gizmodo, Jalopnik, Jezebel, and the namesake Gawker.com--it created a wave of banter in the media industry. With only one story fully highlighted on the front page and a frame serving up alternate stories' headlines, Gawker honcho Nick Denton is steering the company into a theoretical post-blog age.

But, when the redesign went live on several Gawker properties Tuesday, there were still a few surprises to the notably tablet-friendly experience. For one, Gawker sites have now completely eliminated … Read more

Web publisher Gawker Media plans to drastically change the way users interact with its network of sites with a redesign launching next year that lets users jump through stories and interactive advertising akin to using an RSS reader.

The new design was unveiled earlier today by Gawker founder Nick Denton as being the "most significant change in the Gawker model since the launch of Gizmodo and Gawker in 2002," and something that "represents some convergence of blog, magazine and television."

What that means to end users is that they'll be able to cycle through news … Read more

Hope you've sated your curiosity about Sarah Palin's upcoming book: Gawker Media, which published unauthorized excerpts of the book on Thursday, has pulled them off the Web following a federal court order.

The ruling comes following a lawsuit filed Friday by Palin's publisher HarperCollins. AP:

A federal judge on Saturday ordered Gawker Media to pull leaked pages of Sarah Palin's forthcoming book "America by Heart: Reflections on Family, Faith and Flag" from its blog.

The injunction prohibits Gawker from "continuing to distribute, publish or otherwise transmit pages from the book" pending a … Read more

Want to read parts of Sarah Palin's biography before it's officially released? Head over to Gawker, which has been displaying excerpts from the book since Thursday.

That's despite the fact that Palin's publisher, HarperCollins, filed a lawsuit yesterday against Gawker Media, citing copyright infringement. The post in question is still up there for anyone to read. Palin's new book, "America By Heart," will be officially released Tuesday.

I'm not sure what legal case HarperCollins can make here. Prepublication book leaks are exceedingly common, and happen most often because news organizations simply buy the books, … Read more

The father of Gray Powell, the Apple engineer who reportedly lost a prototype of the iPhone 4G, says his son was reeling following the incident.

"Of course he was devastated," Robert Powell told CNET in a phone interview Wednesday. "He loves the company."

Gray Powell, 27, finds himself in the middle of media frenzy after losing a handset that appears to be a next-generation iPhone, a device that has yet to be released or even acknowledged by Apple. We've been trying to reach the younger Powell directly and passed along an interview request through his … Read more

There was no bidding war between Gizmodo and Engadget over the now-famous, misplaced iPhone 4G, Joshua Topolsky, Engadget's editor in chief, told CNET on Tuesday.

Engadget managers never tendered an offer for the leaked phone, never were sure of the legality of buying it, and, of course, never got their hands on the device, Topolsky said.

Instead, as is well-known by now, it was Gizmodo and its parent company, Gawker Media, that were willing to buy the phone from an unnamed source for $5,000 and detail the device's features in a story.

The handset appears to be … Read more

The unnamed person who now famously found the lost prototype iPhone approached both Gizmodo and Engadget, rival technology blogs, with an offer. Gizmodo came away with the device.

How Gizmodo and parent company Gawker Media ended up in possession of what appears to be a prototype of an unreleased and as-yet-unannounced iPhone 4G is just one of the burning questions answered Tuesday by Gawker CEO Nick Denton in an interview with CNET.

On Monday, Gizmodo published photos and analysis of what Denton and editors there said is the next generation of Apple's era-defining iPhone. Apple has bolstered Gizmodo's … Read more

Hackers launched a distributed denial-of-service (DDOS) attack that sporadically downed popular blog network Gawker Media over the weekend and on Monday, the company confirmed in a blog post early Tuesday morning.

When CNET News spoke to Gawker Media representatives on Monday, they were not yet sure what was causing the outages but had not ruled out malicious behavior.

The attacks appear to have been launched at Consumerist, a blog that Gawker sold to Consumer Reports last year but which is still hosted on the same servers. The motivation behind them is not yet clear.

The New York-based Gawker Media has … Read more