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Revision as of 14:42, 14 July 2006

The Inquirer (sometimes shortened to the Inq) is a British technology tabloid news website focusing on the computer and semiconductor industries.

History

The Inquirer was founded by Mike Magee after his departure from The Register, in 2001.

The Inquirer was later acquired by Magee's former employer, Dutch publishing giant VNU Business Media Europe on January 26, 2006.

Writing style

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The site hews to The Register's slogan, "Biting the hand that feeds IT", and is known for its early access to industry news based on insider sources. It often runs stories that are less than complimentary to tech companies. When served with "cease and desist" orders, the website often publishes them in full, with commentary. It has also recently started publishing information regarding cheap hardware available in the U.K., U.S.A., France, and other countries.

The Inquirer's articles are written with a subjective and opinionated tone; the site is quite colourful at times and often considered offensive. This is deliberate editorial policy, and mimics the style of reporting common in the British tabloid newspapers (for reference check out The Sun). This often leads to accusations of bias from both sides of a debate, particularly Intel versus AMD.

The comments from the editor (Ed.) often inserted in articles was inspired by Private Eye, including borrowing phrases like "Inspector Knacker from the Yard" there.

The Inquirer has been accused of manufacturing rumours or speculating aimlessly in order to inflate its number of visitors. Others rebuke these claims, saying it is a byproduct of getting information early, that company's plans change which invalidates earlier information. The Inquirer has been repeatedly cited as the source of allegedly erroneous information, such as an August 31, 2005 claim that that PlayStation 3's GPU is less powerful than the GeForce 7800. NVIDIA made an attempt to debunk the rumour. However, game developers backed claims of The Inquirer and the site recently posted information that showed obvious performance deficiencies The PS3 GPU is not fast enough yet and PS3 hardware slow and broken. The publication of this information brought open attacks on The Inquirer by the Sony PlayStation 3 fans, and at least one bog begun an open attack in the credibility of the site, defending an unfinished and underperforming product. However, the stories were backed by a publication of the screenshot from official Sony document, clearly stating at least one performance deficiency in the architecture of the console. With the publication of stories mentioned above, The Inquirer took a decisive stance to protect the sources, since it has proven that the publication of any PS3 criticism automatically terminates the contract of the known source, such as the case of Josh Robinson, which got sacked after posting his take on the unfinished and delayed console.

On July 13, 2006, popular tech website Ars Technica debunked claims of a "reverse hyperthreading" technology in AMD processors. The Inquirer's was one of dozen web-sites that posted a rumour, originally coming from a conversation with a drunk AMD representative. The Ars Technica author, Jon Hannibal Stokes wrote, "reverse hyperthreading is not something AMD "would like to have" or that they'd ever consider.". However, AMD holds several patents in corelation to the possible inclusion of the technology. The story was resolved after XbitLabs posted a timeline of whole Reverse HyperTransort affair.

Some of The Inquirer's writers regularly visit the Ace's Hardware website's message board. In particular, Charlie Demerjian, who uses the nickname Groo_ on the board.

Nicknames and terminology

Following the standards Mike Magee set at his previous publications, The Inquirer uses nicknames for many IT firms and persons:

• Chipzilla - Intel
• Chimpzilla or Cheapzilla - AMD
• Graphzilla or the Green Goblin - nVidia
• Captain Canuck - ATI
• Fruitzilla - Apple Computer
• the Vole - Microsoft
• the Pabster - Thomas Pabst of Tom's Hardware Guide
• the boy wonder - Anand Shimpi of AnandTech
• another Plaice - The Register
• FireFerret - Firefox
• Mozzarella - Mozilla
• Open Sauce - Open Source
• iAMD - Intel's 64-bit Pentium 4 CPUs, also known as Pentium 4 EM64T (Extended Memory 64-bit Technology).

Another Plaice is a pun on the term used in the House of Commons to refer to the House of Lords (another place) and vice-versa.

The Inquirer also uses some terms of their own, like "marchitecture", which stands for marketing architecture, or the process of designing products and naming technologies in a way which will benefit marketing and/or sales. It also refers to the Intel Itanium processor as the Itanic. Lastly, it commonly refers to the internet as the "interweb" in tongue-in-cheek fashion.

External links

• The Inquirer
• Article about The Inquirer at ExtremeTech
• "VNU buys into tabloid news - The Guardian"
• The London Sun - Tabloid Newspaper, and probable inspiration for The Inquirer

• News websites