Police Seize Gizmodo Editor's Computers

Gizmodo editor, Jason Chen, who blogged about the mysterious nextgen iPhone found in a bar has had his computers seized by a technology related police task force. The investigating officers as well as the San Mateo County’s chief deputy district attorney, Stephen Wagstaffe, have declined to comment on the matter. 

I would say it's looking less likely that this was an Apple publicity stunt... authorities acting on a court order apparently entered Chen's home and removed four computers and two servers. 

More at the NYTimes Bits Blog.

Gizmodo Asked To Return Nextgen iPhone Prototype To Apple

Whether they found the device as they claim, or they paid $5,000 for it as has been reported, Apple just want's their prototype next generation iPhone returned to them by Gizmodo. The popular tech blog had earlier posted photos and video of the device that some speculated was a knock off, but it would appear by Apple's reaction that it is the real deal. Gizmodo shared a letter received from Apple lawyers stating in part that "This letter constitutes a formal request that you return the device to Apple," to which Jason Chen of Gizmodo writes "Now that we definitely know it's not some knockoff, and it really is Apple's, I'm happy to see it returned to its rightful owner,"

Perhaps a third scenario exists where this is a new tactic by Apple to generate hype about the new product!

Read more: http://www.cbc.ca/technology/story/2010/04/20/tech-iphone-4-gizmodo.html?ref=rss#ixzz0ljNiNsqf

Gizmodo Serves Up Scareware

Hackers posing as advertisers for large corporations have been targeting high volume sites buying ad space and infecting their links with scareware. The latest to be fooled into taking the ads is the popular tech blog gizmodo. In a statement on the site, gizmodo says:

"I'm really sorry but we had some malware running on our site in ad boxes for a little while last week on Suzuki ads. They somehow fooled our ad sales team through an elaborate scam.

"It's taken care of now, and only a few people should have been affected, but this isn't something we take lightly as writers, editors and tech geeks,"

The malicious sites associated with the ads try to convince users that their computer is infected with viruses and trojans, and offer them a download remedy which is actually harmful code that can be used by perpetrators to acquire information on the infected PC such as credit card details.

A similar scam got past the folks at the New York Times last month.

Source: BBC News

Gizmodo Punks CES - Reaction Mixed

In this post, Gizmodo comes clean on pranking CES and provide a video as proof. Apparently armed with a TV-B-Gone remote control device, they ran amok turning screens off through out the show. The really interesting thing is the reaction they received in the comments to their post. I'm along with the group who laughed a bit but think they crossed the line in messing with the Motorola presentation. I'm constantly telling my children that a joke is only funny the first time or two, and gets really annoying after that. Interfering with someones presentation is, in my mind, taking things too far! We used to have a saying when I worked in the mining industry... "don't mess with any one's paycheck or their lunch" and in this case some body's paycheck could very well be on the line. To quote SNEAKY from the comments "Have fun getting press passes to another trade show."

Gizmodo warns of Apple firmware update for iPhone

Maybe I'm reading more into this post than is intended... but it sounds like the folks at Gizmodo may have some inside info with regards to an iPhone firmware update and the probability that it will undo your unlock! It will be interesting to see what transpires. p.s. it's worth following the link just to see the Darth Vader pic.