Ten years ago, the original iPod came out, changing Apple inexorably from a snooty little computer company whose best days were seemingly long behind it to one of the greatest powerhouses of the consumer electronics industry. Today it seems likely Apple is going to kill off the last vestige of that original hard-drive-and-music-player-only device. Yesterday Gizmodo took a look at some of the complaints and erroneous predictions of low sales surrounding the original device, and pointed out a CNet review by Elliot Van Buskirk predicting that descendants of the iPod might replace the PC. The funny thing is,...

Netflix recently caused a stir when it decided to split its formerly-all-inclusive, DVD-rental-plus-streaming subscription fee into two separate subscriptions, effectively nearly doubling the price to those who wished to continue both streaming and receiving DVDs. A number of Netflix subscribers have been up in arms over this change. Gizmodo points out that this shows demand for DVDs is still tenacious—perhaps more so than Netflix expected when it bet so heavily on the streaming future. It costs Netflix as much as 75 cents each time it rents a DVD through the mail, while it may only cost 5 to 10...

I keep seeing the Gizmodo article picked up around the web - that is the one that incorrectly says that you will lose your Kindle back issues of a magazine if you cancel your subscription. This is just wrong and is an example of one of the downsides of the web - it perpetuates and spreads misinformation. Andrys Basten commented on our article on this subject and, therein, explains the facts. Her original comment is here. In light of the continuing spread of misinformation I thought I should publish this edited version on our front page: ... BEFORE,...

The Adobe Reader PDF viewer is now available for Android (requires version 2.1 or higher). I don’t use Android so I don’t know how well this reader works versus whatever PDF viewing capabilities already existed for the platform, but if any reader wants to send in a review we would be happy to run it! Speaking of Android, apparently a Verizon employee left a next-generation Motorola Droid Shadow in a corporate gym. Gizmodo has the details and some tech specs (though they didn’t get to buy and disassemble this one). With a 4.3” screen and 16GB...

It’s no secret that Paul Biba and I are both enjoying our iPads. I find it makes a great machine for e-book reading, web browsing, and Twitter, even if it is a little heavy. Even so, it wouldn’t replace my laptop for serious mobile computing needs, even if I had a Bluetooth keyboard to use with it. But that’s not what Gizmodo’s Joel Johnson says. He finds the iPad makes such a fantastic travel computer that he is going to sell his MacBook Pro laptop. Of course, as Johnson admits, the only two things he really needs to...

Steve Jobs’s anti-porn and anti-Flash vendettas for the app store have been much in the news lately, and we’ve covered them here a time or two. One of the articles I came across last night brings them up again, in the form of an email exchange between a Gawker reporter and the normally-laconic Steve Jobs. (Gawker is the parent company of Gizmodo, which is much in the news lately concerning the hullaballoo over the “stolen” prototype iPhone.) Reporter Ryan Tate was so upset by the new iPad commercial’s rhetoric, calling the iPad a “revolution,” that, upon seeing it, he...

The Gizmodo “4G” iPhone prototype story continues to get play in the blogosphere. Dan Gillmor posts a look at Apple’s behavior—apparently prompting a police raid on Gizmodo editor Jason Chen’s house—and New York Times columnist David Carr’s editorial about it. Gillmor quotes Carr casting the raid as only the latest of a number of hostile actions by Apple toward journalists, then Gillmor asks the same questions he did in another column I covered a month ago: When I read that, I thought, Aha, now he’s going to address his own organization’s flagrant questions of...

Gizmodo has a piece on an author who is trying an interesting e-book promotional gimmick. Albert-László Barabási has put his new book Bursts: The Hidden Pattern Behind Everything We Do on-line—as a hidden-word guessing game. Unfortunately, thanks to the mention on Gizmodo and other websites, the Burst game seems to be overloaded and not working entirely right at the moment, so I wasn’t really able to try it out to its full extent. But the theory is that you “adopt” a word, and then you guess words to gain points, which you can use to reveal or...

Would you like to be able to move e-books from your computer to your iPhone wirelessly? Of course, if you use the Calibre Stanza server and/or the Calibre/Dropbox method, you already can, at least with Stanza, but what about iBooks which loads by hotsync? If developer Greg Hughes has his way, you’ll be able to do just that. He’s submitting a wireless sync app to Apple for approval, which would let you sync your iDevice via wifi just as you can over USB. Of course, as TechCrunch points out, if Apple wanted you to be able to...

BoingBoing reports on a benefit to raise funds for Jeanne Robinson, wife of Baen SF writer Spider Robinson, who is battling cancer and needs assistance with medical funds. A number of renowned artists are donating works to an eBay charity auction held by SF podcast Sci-Fi Saturday Night. Journalist Alan D. Mutter, whose “Reflections of a Newsosaur” blog we’ve mentioned a few times before, has a post in which he talks about the best model for newspapers to charge for on-line content, as opposed to the models newspapers are currently trying: The only way...

As I mentioned in a Quick Notes post the other day, Gizmodo lately acquired and posted photos of what turned out to be a prototype of this summer’s coming 4th-generation iPhone. But they did not stop there. Subsequently, Gizmodo actually revealed the identity of the poor schmuck who lost it—an Apple software engineer out on the town celebrating his birthday. Then Gizmodo posted yesterday that they had received a request from the Apple legal department to return the phone, and would be complying (in as smarmy a manner as possible). Gizmodo also explained why Apple couldn’t simply...

TechCrunch reports that the 3G iPad will be shipping as of May 7th. This is the model that costs $130 more than the equivalent wifi-only version and includes the no-contract-required ability to buy 3G access from AT&T on a monthly basis. That will certainly be good for downloading e-book when wifi is not available. Meanwhile, our sister site Gadgetell reports that Sprint has come up with a clever way to make a “4G iPad”—an iPad case with a built-in pocket for Sprint’s “Overdrive” mobile wifi access point. Like the MiFi I’ve discussed as a way to “retrofit 3G”...