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Thursday, July 02, 2009
Wednesday, July 01, 2009
Gizmodo, Engadget Guys Launch GDGT (And Get Crushed By Traffic)
Gizmodo, Engadget Guys Launch GDGT (And Get Crushed By Traffic)
As a recap, Rojas helped found Nick Denton's Gizmodo, but then left to form Engadget, where he worked with Ryan Block. The fierce competition for scoops between the two sites is legendary. But now Peter and Ryan have launched their new baby, GDGT.
Don't bother clicking on the link right now: The site went down shortly after its launch. The site's Twitter feed is fine though, and currently reads, "So the amount of traffic we're getting is roughly 3-5x our 'even-that-will-never-happen' estimates... doing the best we can!"
Brad Stone at the Times says GDGT, "differs from Engadget or Gizmodo by aspiring to be a gadget-oriented social network. Users of the site can create profiles and specify which consumer electronics devices they have, had or want to buy."
Block says the point of GDGT is to outlive the "lust phase," of users drooling over the latest toys, and instead building a community for users to ogle the gear they already have getting the most out of it until they decide to replace it.
The site is opting out of the review wars that the two founders helped create; they plan to link to the other sites for breaking gadget news and headlines, and instead let their users write most of the news and reviews that runs on their own site. The site will earn money from ads and affiliate programs with online gadget stores. Blackberry parent RIM will be the site's exclusive advertiser for the first month. Apparently RIM's ads look a lot like GDGT content, but are clearly marked as advertising.
Block modestly tells the Times: "This could possibly be the last great gadget site."
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See Also:
- Engadget Dudes Ryan Block And Peter Rojas' New Gadget Startup: Gdgt.com
- Gizmodo Gets Steve Jobs Macworld Story Right, CNBC Gets It Wrong
- Gawker's Secret Weapon
Software Engineer Makes His Own Electric Car
Software Engineer Makes His Own Electric Car
He calls it the Raptor. And he spent 2,000 of his spare hours building it from a 1965 Shelby Cobra body kit.
NBC(via Jalopnik): The car runs on a 3-phase AC induction motor and is currently powered by 290 nickel metal hydride batteries (Atkinson says the next version will use a lithium ion battery). It can reach speeds up to 100 MPH and can travel from zero to 60 mph in about eight seconds. The time it takes to charge the car is typically three hours, which will allow it to travel up to 80 miles depending on the driving environment.
Atkinson estimates the car cost about $85,000, but for some reason thinks it could be made for cheap as an alternative to the Prius.
Our unsolicited advice to Mr. Atkinson: forget the mass market. Go high end. Think Lamborghini, Porsche. You'll make a profit, and you'll be less susceptible to the rise and fall of gas prices. Rich people don't need to worry about getting hurt at the pump.
Atkinson's tracked the progress of the car at Electric Marin Wheels. Here's a selection of photos that chart his progress as the car went from kit to hot rod.
Start Slideshow →
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See Also:
- Fisker Explains Why You Want A Karma Over A Roadster Or Model S (VIDEO)
- Tesla CEO Musk: Gas Should Be $10 A Gallon
- The Complete Guide To Electric Cars (SLIDESHOW)
Overstock follows Amazon, Drops Affiliates in Four States
Overstock follows Amazon, Drops Affiliates in Four States
Residents of California, North Carolina, Hawaii and Rhode Island will no longer be receiving referrer payments for Overstock.com products sold through their websites. The whole issue revolves around sales tax.
The states want Overstock to collect sales tax when an affiliate sells an Overstock item, as if the affiliate was actually a physical store selling its products. Overstock and Amazon beg to differ, since the affiliates are just that-- affiliates, not links in their supply and distribution chain.
Overstock appears to be pre-empting California's e-commerce sales tax legislation, since it hasn't been passed but is likely soon to be reconsidered by a state legislature desperate for revenue. As we noted yesterday, the upside for Amazon, and presumably Overstock, is that while the affiliate program was previously costing them marketing dollars, both companies can now keep revenue generated from affiliates, without actually having to pay omissions!
That's because despite the canceled commissions, the affiliates themselves are unlikely to immediately pull down their Overstock and Amazon links.
The move by both companies is viewed as throwing down a gauntlet to other state legislatures who get any funny ideas about passing new ecommerce sales taxes. All the battle seems to probably be just prelude. As one commenter said yesterday, "This is a constitutional matter and will ultimately be decided by the Supreme Court."
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See Also:
- Amazon Says "Aloha" To Hawaiian Affiliates
- Now's The Time For An Internet Sales Tax
- Get Ready For A Web Sales Tax (AMZN)
Video Interview with Founder of Vanilla, "A WordPress for Forums"
Video Interview with Founder of Vanilla, "A WordPress for Forums"
One reviewer said it best: "Forget how 'normal' forums are done - Vanilla strips it back to what's important: the conversations. Not the smileys, the bandwidth-hogging signatures, the mailbox, the forum categories. It pushes discussions to the forefront and uses subtle AJAX to make the experience of communicating with others fast and simple." Read and watch on for a discussion of the product itself as well as open-source monetization and forum culture versus the real-time web.
Sponsor
Vanilla was selected for this summer's TechStars program, and the public beta for Vanilla 2 was released this April 27.
O'Sullivan actually wrote a follow-up blog post regarding our brief chat about how the real-time web and its constant firehose of information are affecting forum discussions and culture. "There is an intrinsic value in being able to take part in a discussion on your own time," he wrote. "We can't all be online, let alone awake at the same time, so in these situations the real-time web doesn't work. Forums are always on, and they are expected to operate on a different schedule than real-time."
And while O'Sullivan continues to write that there isn't a competition between real-time and forum discussions, he does state that the quality of forum information can often be much higher than info procured from real-time sources, in his opinion.
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