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Pierre Omidyar, founder of eBay, announced this morning that he's closing down his Twitter client Ginx early next year and instead focusing on an online local news project. We reviewed a "private pre-alpha" version of Ginx in February and called it a dud. Ginx had some nice ideas but wasn't terribly innovative and it's finest points have now been reproduced in Twitter's own Lists.

Little is known yet about Peer News, Omidyar's next project, but an editor is being sought for hire. The project will begin in Hawaii, where Omidyar lives, but is intended to rock the journalist world.

The Omidyar Network, eBay founder Pierre Omidyar's philanthropic and investment organization, announced today that it will give the Wikimedia Foundation, parent organization of Wikipedia, a $2 million grant over the next two years.

At current spending levels, Omidyar will be contributing just over 10% of WIkipedia's full expenses. The Foundation has been concerned about the global economic climate's impact on donations and is about to enter into a major new period of its history in which the free-form editing of Wikipedia will be slowed by a new approval process that has long been expected.