Link roundup

1. Nick Denton's latest memo on the state of blogging.

2. NSFW, but really striking iPhone docking station.

3. Detailed analysis of how the Houston Texans' running game works.

4. Has anyone watched Nick's House of Anubis? Seems like every episode to date is free at iTunes. (At first glance it looks like maybe something my boys might like? Or more for tweens?)

Link roundup

1. Gawker's Nick Denton entered into a new bet regarding Gawker's traffic.

2. Old school video game title screens.

3. Destructoid on Spider-Man: Edge of Time:"a typical, mediocre, pointless licensed experience."

4. Really cool photos of Mongolia.

Link roundup

1. Several answers to the question, What’s the Most Important Lesson You Learned from a Teacher?

2. How Ireland's rugby team developed new tackling styles to take advantage of loopholes in the rules. Via.

3. "$39,000 Olsen Twins Backpack Sells Out."

4. And since those last two links are from Gawker media sites, "Nick Denton Loses Bet That The Gawker Redesign Wouldn't Hurt Traffic."

Link roundup

1. Big gallery of Bruce Timm's comic work (NSFW).

2. For my fellow Blogger users: new Blogger app for IOS.

3. "Sidney Gottlieb proved to the world that there are few things more dangerous than a chemist with a metaphysical streak - especially if he collects a few thwarted ambitions. Born in 1918, he was deemed physically unfit for duty in the Second World War. Instead of going to war, he went to the University of Wisconsin, and graduated with a degree in chemistry. His degree didn't help him into the army, but it did interest the CIA."

4. From a summary of Gawker Media's first company-wide meeting:

Gawker Media's tech build-up includes what is said to be a very intense commenter system. (What was your top takeaway from the evening? I asked one writer. "Soon writers will be obsolete," the writer told me. "Reddit?" said another. To be fair, that's a common refrain over the years at Gawker, but it is an ideal outcome for a tech company. Gawker Media loves talent, but they also know there's always more talent.

(How many Gawker Media writers have you continued to follow after they left the company?)

Link roundup

1. A Gizmodo writer went on two dates with a guy she met on OK Cupid and then wrote a post about how he was a loser for being a world class Magic The Gathering player and not mentioning it in his profile (or maybe she had a different motivation for going on the dates). He participated in an interesting q&a at Reddit. Also funny: Top Signs You’re on a Date With a Gizmodo Writer, including "refers to post-dinner plans as 'occurring after the jump'."



2. Hotel elevator with separate buttons for staff and guests.



3. How to report scraper sites to Google. Via.



4. Lime green couch wallpaper. Via.

Link roundup

1. Peter Feld on the Republican candidates:

Perry, on the other hand, is a highly skilled politician who creamed a once-popular Republican Senator in a recent primary, never lost an election, and has governed a major state for 12 years. His views are optimized for both the economic and evangelical wings of the Republican Party while his chief opponent, Mitt Romney, is wooden, weird, and has a record and political profile utterly incompatible with the Tea Party that dominates Republican primaries.

2. I knew it didn't make sense, Gawker says its traffic is the same (in visitors) or better (page views) than a year ago.



3. Hurricane Irene tracking map from the NY Times.



4. The new version of Risk, with stickers that alter future plays, is available for preorder at the BBTS.

Link roundup

1. From an article on declining websites: Gawker's "traffic has dropped 75 percent this year." (Is this true?)



2. First sentence in a depressing article at Grantland: "Ric Flair has been physically attacked by at least three of his four wives."



3. New preorders at the BBTS: the very cool (and expensive) Batman by Hot Toys, Ms. Marvel Tonner doll, Thanos on throne.

Link roundup

1. "In 2005, the United Nations Environment Program (UNEP) predicted that there would be 50 million refugees in 2010 due to climate change." Apparently, when a reporter tried to follow up on that prediction, "UNEP tried to erase the evidence of its initial claim."

2. CBS News: "A major ticket fixing scandal is rocking the NYPD, and as many as 400 cops could face bribery and larceny charges for making tickets disappear in exchange for gifts." Via.

3. Gawker media's traffic has either totally nosedived, or not.

Nick Denton on the Gawker redesign

Nick Denton on the Gawker redesign: "Obviously, the reduction in traffic from Google — as from most design changes — has been significant."

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. 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. 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. 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. 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.