Link roundup

1. My Twitter feed today had twice the number of Tweets as usual today - - all Nick Denton retweeting people telling him how incredible i09's new design is. (If that's progress, I don't want any part of it. It's certainly easy on the eyes, but it's like the front page of a newspaper, with even less information.)

2. The BBTS has preorder listings for 3.75" Assassin's Creed action figures.

3. Headlines today: (1) Apple rejects Sony's eReader app, are Amazon and Dark Horse next?; (2) Microsoft caught stealing Google's search results for Bing; (3) Google works to help Egyptians use Twitter via a voice connection. Which company are you routing for?

Link roundup

1. Topless Robot describes the good and bad after seeing a screening of Spider-Man Turn Off The Dark. But the "good" is so negative, I never made it to the "bad."

2. Clippers owner Donald Sterling taunts his own players during games.

3. Sounds like Gawker was hacked a month ago and that Gawker staff was very slow to act on warning signs. Via.

Link roundup

1. Gawker's been hacked.

2. S’mores Marshmallow Pops recipe. Via.

3. Great photo of a squid. And this one, and this one, and this one, too.

Link roundup

1. iPhone wallpapers by Dan Matutina.

2. Long article with many fascinating observations about Gawker's strategy. I highly recommend the read, but here's a few excerpts:

As a result, I suspect that Gawker Media’s pageview numbers will fall substantially when the new design is introduced. A lot of sites have tried to emphasize the primacy of audience metrics over clunky old pageview metrics, but the chase for pageviews stubbornly persists—even sites which carry no advertising have been known to do things like break stories up into multiple pages so that they can bask in artificially-inflated pageview numbers.

That’s maybe why no other major site has decided to adopt this kind of design, and it might also help explain Batty’s departure. The way that Denton explains it in his memo, he’s chasing audience while Batty was chasing revenues, and as a result “Chris and I diverge seriously over strategy.”

Denton spins this admission as a result of being “allergic to corporate boilerplate,” but it still sounds like corporate boilerplate to me. So let me try to be more specific still: if there was one area of disagreement between them which took long-simmering tensions to the point at which the two had little choice but to part ways, it was the fate of the sponsored post. Batty is a huge fan of the format.

[p]

The CPM game, then, is looking increasingly like a race to the bottom, where publishers desperately try every trick in the book to boost their pageviews and ad impressions, just to compensate for the fact that their revenues per page are very small. The results — sensationalism, salaciousness, and slideshows — only serve to further erode the value of the sites in the eyes of advertisers, and put ever more downward pressure on those CPMs. It’s a vicious cycle, and Denton has decided that now is the time to break it: no longer does he want to deal with advertisers looking idiotically at clickthrough rates. “Clickthroughs,” he writes, “are an indicator of the blindness, senility or idiocy of readers rather than the effectiveness of the ads.”

To break out of the current painful loop, Denton has decided to emulate his beloved television and move to “a programming grid which owes more to TV than to magazines.”

That last observation makes me a little sad. I love magazines, and love blogs even more because they're basically magazines, only better. I never liked tv very much, and typically just used it as background noise for whatever else I was doing (playing gameboy, reading magazines, doing homework).

3. But speaking of TV, don't forget to watch the Twin Peaks episode of Psych tonight. It's the most excited I've been about a tv show in ages.

Link roundup

1. Comment and win art prints.

2. Comment and win Threadless credit.

3. Nick Denton wrote a long explanation of the new design for the various Gawker blogs. Key points: original content ("scoops") is crucial to attracting new readers; major stories should hold key real estate and not be pushed off the page by new posts; people like watching video; and posting more video allows for shoehorning in more ads. (But will people still kill time watching short videos on blogs when they can reliably stream premier Netflix content on their smartphones at work?)

*The HTC Droid Incredible is one penny at Amazon.

Link roundup

1. A.J. Daulerio on the Favre story: "I’m kind of walking around New York with an envelope full of cash, more than I’d ever seen, meeting mysterious X-person in a hotel to go see a picture of Brett Favre’s penis."

2. Somewhat relatedly, Ernest Borgnine hilariously reveals the secret of a happy life on Fox News.

3. Hulk lamp.

*Buy Brett Favre toys at eBay.

Link roundup

1. NY Mag looks at Nick Denton's successes, failures, and sexuality.

2. The BBTS has a new preorder listing for Marvel Universe 3.75" 2011 Series 01: Captain Marvel, Doc Samson, World War Hulk, Iron Man, Spider-Man 2099, and Spider-Woman.

3. New portal demon by Melissa Sue Stanley.

*Buy Marvel Universe figures at Amazon.

Link roundup

1. A look at Christopher Batty, head of sale for Gawker Media.

2. "A British businessman who bought the Segway company less than a year ago died after riding one of the scooters off a cliff and into a river near his Yorkshire estate." (Not from The Onion.)

3. Threadless's latest themed-competition is Tron.

*Buy Tron toys at Amazon.

Link roundup

1. Nick Denton's latest advice to Gawker staff on pulling in a big audience.

2. Terrible story about an Air Force general forced to retire and stripped of his rank for supposedly ordering unauthorized airstrikes against North Vietnamese military targets. He actually acted by order of President Nixon. Via.

3. How conservatives bury liberal stories on Digg. Via.

Link roundup

1. TechCrunch calls out Gawker over ethics.

2. The Mattel toys from Comicon will go on sale 8/2.

3. Wild, wild testimony in the Karen Sypher/Rick Pitino sex/blackmail trial.

Link roundup

1. The Los Angeles Times looks at highrise penthouses in Los Angeles that the owners can't seem to rent out. "The top two floors of a premier Westwood high-rise have been empty since the building was completed in 1989."

2. There's now a website for the new American McGee Alice in Wonderland game.

3. Gawker has picked a fight with 4chan.

*Buy Alice in Wonderland toys at eBay.

Nike 78 gallery now online (link roundup)

Most of the entries in the Nike 78 project I previously mentioned have now been posted here.

And a few more links:

1. Interview with Gizmodo's Brian Lam.

2. Starship viewing platform desktop wallpaper. Via.

3. Orlando forward Mickael Pietrus won a $17,000 bet by not cutting his hair all season.

*Previously: If Giger designed shoes for Nike.

*Buy Nike posters at eBay.

Alien Queen prop (link roundup)

Alien Queen prop by Mandala Studios. Via.

And a few more links:

1. Ana Marie Cox calls Gawker "a soul-sucking, pleasureless attitude factory (maybe even a sweatshop)." Via.

2. ABC news essentially paid $200,000 for the legal defense of an accused child killer (and tried to keep it a secret). Via.

3. There's 158 billion gallons of water on the moon.

*Previously: Aliens/Space Invaders mashup.

*Buy Alien toys at the Big Bad Toy Store.

Castlevania/Luigi's Mansion mashup (link roundup)

Castlevania/Luigi's Mansion mashup by Shane Hill. See also: Animated Thwomp. Via these sites.

And a few more links:

1. Sander Cohen from Bioshock cosplay.

2. Fearsome motorcycle concept.

3. Gawker has once again changed how it compensates its writers, this time emphasizing unique visitors instead of page views.

*Previously: Fanmade downloadable video game based on Luigi's Mansion.

*Buy Nintendo toys at eBay.

Big Daddy Snowman (link roundup)

Big Daddy Snowman via these sites.

And a few more links:

1. Deadspin editor talks about competing with TMZ and details the one time he paid for a photo.

2. A serious scientific discussion about space battle.

3. Han Solo and the Economics of Rebellion Against Repressive Regimes.

*Previously: Melting snowman cookies.

*Buy Star Wars sketch cards at eBay.

Hip girl finds a dragon egg (link roundup)

Girl with dragon egg by Victoria Maderna. This should be a series, right?

And a few more links:

1. Positive review of the extras on the Inglorious Basterds DVD, which is heavily discounted at Amazon.

2. A nice sentiment from Michelle Obama: "We wish everybody a happy holidays, a Merry Christmas, a Happy Hanukkah, everybody out there who’s celebrating anything: Happy." (I noticed that an insulting image is once again the number one Google image result for Michelle Obama's name. I linked to an image on the second page of results to hopefully do my part in driving that terrible image out of the first page of results.)

3. An update on Eric Dane and Rebecca Gayheart's lawsuit against Gawker. Round one to Gawker because the couple failed to copyright their sex tape.

*Previously: World's Smallest Easter Egg Gift.

*Buy Obama toys at eBay.

Dogs wearing costumes (link roundup)

Good roundup of photos of dogs wearing costumes.

And a few more links:

1. Sean Salisbury is suing Deadspin for defamation.

2. T-Mobile now has a $79.99 unlimited plan with no annual contract. I can't believe that's considered a good deal. I'm never going to get a smartphone at this rate.

3. Gawker was tricked into running ads that hid malware. The emails sent by the trickster were quite sophisticated. (I believe this happened to the New York Times quite recently as well.)

*Previously: Bumbledog.

*Buy pet costumes at Amazon.

Where the Wild Things Are . . . made of fruit (link roundup)

Where the Wild Things Are made out of fruit by Vanessa Dualib. She has an art book on sale here, and don't miss her potato octopus. Via.

And a few more links:

1. The Okami sequel for the DS is called Okamiden and features a chibi wolf.

2. The major New York newspapers have a policy of not crediting blogs for stories. Via.

3. The latest issue of GQ has an article criticizing Vladimir Putin, but Condé Nast has done its best to prevent the story from being show in in Russia. Gawker has posted the entire article and is well on its way to posting a full Russian translation.

4. Here's Gawker's Nick Denton talking about the decision and whether he's worried GQ will sue him for copyright violation.

*Previously: Where the Wild Things Are paper toy.

*Buy Where the Wild Things Are toys at eBay.

Personal movie theater visor (link roundup)

The Only 52 Inch Widescreen Personal Movie Theater:

This is the only personal media viewer that provides a private viewing experience equivalent to watching a widescreen 52" television from 9' away. It connects to a video iPod, portable DVD player, or personal video game system and uses two high-resolution LCDs and dual stereo headphones.

$250.

And a few more links:

1. Gawker bloggers not happy with working conditions, and former Gawker bloggers having a hard time finding new employment. Via.

2. Pitchfork's 100 best tracks of 2008.

3. The ultimate mustache.

4. All of the gold produced worldwide in one year could just about fit in the average person's living room. Via.

*Previously: Hierarchy of beards poster.


*Buy "The World Beard and Moustache Championships: The First Official Book" at Amazon.

Gawker Media fired 19 of its 133 writers

You can read Nick Denton's explanation for the move here. My favorite of the Gawker sites, Valleywag, fired three of its five writers.

*Previously: How top bloggers earn money.

*Buy The Gawker Guide to Conquering All Media at Amazon.