Top Items:
Allen Stern / CenterNetworks:
Is Twitter F'ed? — The question of business model timing seems to come up weekly with regards to some startup. As Twitter usage has grown, have they f'ed themselves out of a real, sustainable business model? And has Pownce done something right by launching with a business model?
RELATED:
Dave Winer / Scripting News:
Twitter's business model — When I was in college, professors used to ask questions that are much harder than the question Allen Stern asks in this piece. — The NY Times crossword puzzle is harder. — Geez, installing a new hard disk in a MacBook is harder, and as I've found out that's pretty easy.
Jason Calacanis / The Jason Calacanis Weblog:
The three business models that make Twitter a billion-dollar business in 12-24 months. — Allen wrote a blog post today about Twitter focusing on a business model. Allen, my friend, you're thinking small. Get out of Brooklyn and spend more time in the Valley. Business models!?!?!
Philip Elmer-DeWitt / Apple 2.0:
Apple daytrading: How to cash in on the Macworld keynote effect — The buzz among Apple (AAPL) traders today is a thought experiment that Matt Haughey worked up at A Whole Lotta Nothing. He writes … Haughey worked the numbers and the result is the chart above, which he calls the Keynote Index Fund (click chart to view full size).
Duncan Riley / TechCrunch:
Now You Can Graph Your Twitter Usage — Twitter has the potential of breaking into the mainstream this year. A lot of what's going on around Twitter is not dissimilar to the earlier days of blogging; we're seeing evangelists, some basic mainstream adoptions, and even some tracking services.
Wilson Rothman / Gizmodo:
First Hands On: Microsoft Office for Mac 2008 — There's no better sign of Microsoft's increasing acceptance of the Mac population than the latest version of Office for Mac 2008, the first Office with native support for Intel-based Macs. Like its Mac-side predecessors …
Mike Masnick / Techdirt:
Washington Post Flubs Story On RIAA — RIAA Still Not Going After Personal Copies (Yet) — from the who-needs-to-read-the-details? dept — Back at the beginning of December, we helped debunk a story making the rounds claiming that the RIAA was going after a guy named Jeffrey Howell for ripping his own CDs to his computer.
Wagner James Au / GigaOM:
Amazon Gets Into MMO-Powered Crowdsourcing — Call it World of Worldcraft. Amazon's Questville, set for a late 2008 release, is a spinoff of the company's Askville, a user-driven crowdsourcing question-and-answer service on topics ranging from everything from cars to electronics to relationships to science.
Discussion:
Rough Type
Peter Cohen / Macworld:
ModBook tablet Mac finally ships — Axiotron has announced that it is delivering the ModBook, its tablet Macintosh, almost a year after first unveiling the product at Macworld Expo in San Francisco, in January, 2007. The ModBook is priced at $2,279 or $2,479 depending on configuration.
Ryan Paul / Ars Technica:
LANCOR sues non-profit charity OLPC for $20 million — Lagos Analysis Corporation (LANCOR) is going forward with its patent infringement lawsuit against the One Laptop Per Child (OLPC) project. LANCOR has obtained a temporary injunction against the distribution of the OLPC XO laptop …
Business Week:
The 2008 Venture Capital Outlook — VCs want to ride the momentum from NetSuite's Dec. 20 IPO into the New Year and cash out of companies they've held in their portfolios for years — Things are finally looking up for venture capital investors. The initial-public-offering market …
Tom Espiner / CNET News.com:
Wikia Search to offer first peek next week — Wikia Search, a community-driven search engine, will get its first public preview on Monday, according to co-founder Jimmy Wales. — In an e-mail sent to the Wikia Search mailing list on December 24, Wales wrote that he aims to make the initial version …
Erick Schonfeld / TechCrunch:
Cooking.com Takes Out A $7 Million Loan — Is it me, or are we seeing a lot more venture finance deals these days? Web 1.0 holdover Cooking.com is the latest to jump on this bandwagon. It just took out a $7 million loan from ORIX Venture Finance. The ten-year-old dotcom …
Brett / Social Media Tips:
7 SEO Techniques That Google Smashed in 2007 — The SEO playbook changes fast. Really fast. Best practices shift on a monthly basis, and time-honoured methods can become obsolete and dangerous - literally overnight. — Reciprocal links. In May of 2007, Realtors who relied heavily …