Top Items:
Om Malik / GigaOM:
Sequoia Rings the Alarm Bell: Silicon Valley Is in Trouble — Updated: Sequoia Capital, arguably the smartest venture capital investor in business, is sounding the alarm and asking its portfolio companies to buckle down for what could be the worst economic downturn of their relatively short lives.
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Michael Arrington / TechCrunch:
Angel Investor Ron Conway Emails His Portfolio Companies Over Financial Meltdown — Ron Conway, one of Silicon Valley's most prolific angel investors (and he was also an early investor in Google), wrote an email yesterday to the CEOs of his portfolio companies.
Sarah Lacy / Business Week:
What Will the Crisis Mean for Venture Capital? — The financial crisis is sure to hit Silicon Valley startups hard, but even the VCs that funded them may find themselves on shaky ground — In the lingo familiar to the kids toiling away at Web startups, the U.S. financial system is on the verge of an epic fail.
Duncan Riley / The Inquisitr:
EXCLUSIVE: Apple to launch $800 laptop — Some Apple retailers in the United States have been given price lists for a new Apple laptop line, and there's a big surprise: an $800 laptop. The information comes from a source we would categorize as reliable, would have access to such information, and who has been accurate in the past.
Discussion:
O'Grady's PowerPage, GottaBeMobile, MacRumors, 9 to 5 Mac, I4U News, VentureBeat, Profy, Insanely Great Mac, Cult of Mac, Gizmodo and Macintosh, Mac Apps …
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Joshua Topolsky / Engadget:
‘Brick’ MacBook Pro leaked in up-close spy shot? — Since we heard those “Brick” rumors the other day, the mill has been all but silent... until now. It's hard to tell exactly what we're looking at here, but damned if this doesn't look like some fancy new MacBook Pro carved out of a single piece of metal …
Arn / MacRumors:
More ‘Brick’ MacBook Case Images? — An Apple.Pro blog has posted three small images of what appear to be a new MacBook case. The casing resembles the MacBook Pro case image leaked earlier today, but clearly represents a smaller screened laptop. Absent are the speaker grills of the earlier image.
Brian X. Chen / Wired Science:
Google's Super Satellite Captures First Image — This bird's-eye view of Kutztown University in Pennsylvania was the first image ever seen by the GeoEye-1, the world's highest-resolution commercial satellite sponsored by Google, when it opened its camera door earlier this week.
Discussion:
Mashable!, The Register, VentureBeat, SlashGear, TECH.BLORGE.com, Gizmodo and ReadWriteWeb
Michael Arrington / TechCrunch:
Earthcomber Sues TechCrunch Out Of Spite, Pisses Me Off Personally — We've had serious legal threats five times in the past, from YouTube, Marvel, Rivals, Mediascrape and my personal favorite, Richard Figueroa. None of those threats went to court because all of them were absurd …
Michael Arrington / TechCrunch:
Yahoo Closes At $13.76. What A Train Wreck. — I guess the upside is that a stock can't fall below zero, so there's an end in sight to the ongoing destruction of jobs and shareholder wealth at Yahoo. The stock closed at $13.76 today, down another 5.6%. And this isn't just part …
Discussion:
tinyCrunch
Monica Chen / DigiTimes:
Asustek planing touch panel Eee PCs — Asustek Computer is planning to launch touch panel Eee PCs in the first quarter of 2009, which the company expects will help drive sales further, according to Samson Hu, general manager of Eee PC business at Asustek. — The company has not yet decided details …
Marshall Kirkpatrick / ReadWriteWeb:
Finally! Google to Offer RSS Feeds for Web Search Results — A rumor that's been floating around the web lately is that Google will offer RSS feeds for new results in basic web search. Today Search Engine Land confirmed that Google will “soon” offer this functionality. Why is this big news?
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Owen Thomas / Valleywag:
eBay founder factchecks John McCain — Pierre Omidyar, the one-and-only founder of eBay, didn't much appreciate John McCain's tip of the hat in last night's debate to Meg Whitman, eBay's former CEO. “Meg Whitman was CEO of a company which started with 12 people,” McCain said, which rather riled Omidyar.
Hugh Macleod / gapingvoid:
“TRIBES”: TEN QUESTIONS FOR SETH GODIN — 10 Questions For Seth Godin … 1. For the benefit of gapingvoid readers not yet familiar with your work [all 14 of them], let's get the main schpiel over and done with: From your perspective, what is “Tribes” about?
Agence France Presse:
Web traffic jam as people search for financial news — SAN FRANCISCO (AFP) - The financial crisis has people flocking to the Internet for the latest money news along with tips on how to salvage investments and save on the routine costs of living. — Visits to websites such as the business …
ReadWriteWeb:
Best Buy's “Enterprise Twitter” — IBM's got BlueTwit. Oracle's testing OraTweets. SAP's experiments include ESME, SAP Talk (laconi.ca), ShoutIt and apparently others. Yammer has an ad-hoc base at thousands of companies. But so far, no large corporation has rolled out microsharing company-wide.
Matt Cutts / Gadgets, Google, and SEO:
YouTube adds “Read Comment Aloud” feature from xkcd — A couple weeks ago, xkcd ran this funny comic: — Randall Monroe, the creator of xkcd, suggested that if YouTube commenters had to listen to their comments read back to them aloud, it might lead to better discussion on YouTube.
John Thomson / Marketnews:
Toshiba's Lightest Laptop Even Lighter — Toshiba adds four laptops to its ultraportable Portégé series and introduces the premium Tecra R10. — Toshiba of Canada Information Systems Group (Toshiba) has announced additions to its Portégé line up of laptops …
Jitendra Kavathekar / Yodel Anecdotal:
Introducing Yahoo! Web Analytics — Have you ever bailed on an online checkout because something in the user experience bugged you? Or were pleasantly surprised that the sponsored listings were more relevant than the regular results of your web search? This week, we are rolling …
Discussion:
Webware.com, Search Engine Journal, Search Engine Land, VisualRevenue, Mashable! and WebProNews
Jason Kincaid / TechCrunch:
Come And Get It: Naughty America Is Building An iTunes For Porn — Naughty America, a porn production company based out of Southern California, is building an Adobe Air-based storefront called Naughty America Direct that is basically an iTunes for porn. The app includes full-length DRM-free scenes …
Noah Shachtman / Danger Room:
Air Force Will Fight Online, Without Cyber Command — The Air Force is going ahead with plans to put together a force that will wage wars online. But it won't be a full-fledged Cyber Command. — In August, the Air Force put its controversial effort to put together a “Cyber Command” …
Discussion:
The Register
Engineering Windows 7:
User Account Control — We promised that this blog would provide a view of Engineering Windows 7 and that means that we would cover the full range of topics—from performance to user interface, technical and non-technical topics, and of course easy topics and controversial topics.
Ben Edelman:
CPA Advertising Fraud: Forced Clicks and Invisible Windows — At first glance, conversion-contingent advertising (cost-per-action / CPA, affiliate marketing) seems a robust way to prevent online advertising fraud. By paying partners only when a sale actually occurs, advertisers often expect to substantially eliminate fraud.
Lewis Page / The Register:
DARPA to begin mysterious ‘Project GANDALF’ — ‘And with you come evils worse than before’ — The renowned US military ultratech agency, DARPA*, is about to begin work on a mysterious new piece of surveillance and tracking kit known only as “Project Gandalf”.
Paul McDougall / InformationWeek:
Windows XP Gets Reprieve, Yet Again — With Vista struggling, Microsoft has extended the period in which it will make XP available for PC makers' downgrade programs. — Windows XP is proving harder to kill than a Halloween vampire. With businesses having all but shunned Windows Vista …
Robert Vamosi / CNET News:
How botnets use ‘bullet-proof’ domains — Botnets are proving to more resilient and harder to shut down. — That's largely due to an increased use of methods people use to obscure the domain by constantly mapping to different bots within the network, according to a recently released study (PDF).
