Gawker Media Makes Our Trip To Oz So Much Better

Nick Denton has a reputation as a tabloid type. The blog world’s Ruper Murdoch. Properties like Gawker, Defamer, Valleywag, and Jezebel are the reason for this reputation.

But there’s a utlitarian side to the Gawker Media properties that gets less attention. And we’ve been taking full advantage of them during our trip to Australia.

Have you heard of Gridskipper? It’s Gawker’s "Urban Travel Guide". We became completely reliant on it while we were in Sydney.

Gridskipper does these great maps. Like the chocaholic’s guide to Sydney. Or the Sydney Rock History map. Don’t go to Sydney without an iPhone and Gridskipper!

And then today, when we got to our hotel in Melbourne, we were faced with a broadband connection we couldn’t share with our little airport express. The Gotham Gal’s laptop was connected to the single broadband connection and everyone else was stranded. What to do? Lifehacker to the rescue, of course. This Lifehacker blog post walked me through the three quick steps I needed to do to turn the Gotham Gal’s laptop into a wifi access point for our whole family. Very nice.

I am writing this blog post from that shared connection. Thanks Lifehacker and Gawker Media for being there for us on our trip to Australia!

#Blogging On The Road#VC & Technology

Comments (Archived):

  1. hadar

    You didn’t mention why you couldn’t share the connection with your airport express, so, this might be useless information. Given the specific link to LifeHacker, which shows how to share your wired network, I may be off base here. That said, I bet it will at least be useful to one of your readers. ;-)Here’s a device I just purchased from Amazon.com for $38 on the recommendation of a friend. Not only is it a tiny travel WiFi router, but it can bridge WiFi networks. So, if you’re in a hotel that only offers WiFi, you can have the router connect to that (can’t be WEP or WPA protected!) and then have all the machines in the room connect to the WiFi network that the linksys bridges to the hotel’s network. Very cool device.http://www.linksys.com/serv…If the above link fails: http://tinyurl.com/2sbvj2Enjoy the rest of the trip!

    1. fredwilson

      Thanks hadarOur hotel has a broadband ethernet connection but no wifi. And the broadband ethernet is linked to one machine, it cannot be shared by simply passing around the cable from computer to computerFred

      1. hadar

        Interesting. I ran into that once in Atlantic City, where the service somehow could distinguish between a real PC vs a router. The authentication wasn’t associated to the MAC address (which is the most typical thing), but rather somehow placed a cookie (or some other token) directly on the machine that authenticated through the router, and only that machine could access the connection. Anyway, your solution was quite effective. 🙂

  2. Walnut Creek Kango

    Ah, yes – the Gridskipper maps! How did we ever live without them?

  4. Blake Southwood

    So how do I actually raise VC. Turning dirt into gold seems easier.http://bigbeartechnology.bl…My friend Bryan Brey talks highly of this VC blog so above I have includedthe link to my blog and what my start-up Big Bear is doing.Blake Southwood

  5. T

    While I think most of Gawker’s “humor” and gossip sites are just mean-spirited and dumb, Lifehacker and Gridskipper more than redeem the family of blogs.

  6. anon

    so you developed an interest in gridskipper and had your minions at curbed purchase it and now it suckssmooth move

    1. fredwilson

      Not reallyWe don’t have anything to do with curbed’s management. We are justindividual investors.And Nick offered the property to Lock or he was going to shut it downI hope and expect that Lock and the Curbed team can get Gridskipper back towhere it wasBut even if they can’t, it’s better than being shut downfred

    2. fredwilson

      And why must you post anonymously?It’s hard to have a decent conversation with someone in a shroud