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.
Discussion:
PR 2.0, bub.blicio.us, Alec Saunders SquawkBox, Profy, HipMojo.com, i-boy and The Inquisitr
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:
MacRumors, O'Grady's PowerPage, GottaBeMobile, jkOnTheRun, 9 to 5 Mac, SlashGear, I4U News, VentureBeat, Profy, Cult of Mac, Insanely Great Mac, Gizmodo, AppleInsider and Macintosh, Mac Apps …
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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.
Discussion:
SlashGear, AppleInsider, CrunchGear, AppleCorner, I4U News, Boing Boing Gadgets and Gizmodo
Joshua Topolsky / Engadget:
More pics of Apple's supposed new laptops surface — Oh Apple — release some new laptops so this madness can end. The forums at MacRumors are abuzz over a Taiwanese site that's showing off pictures of what appears to be a very close cousin of that MacBook Pro-esque casing we saw earlier.
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, Quick Online Tips, WebProNews, SlashGear, VentureBeat, Gizmodo, TECH.BLORGE.com and ReadWriteWeb
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 …
Discussion:
Gizmodo, SlashGear, Electronista, jkOnTheRun, Boing Boing Gadgets, Electricpig.co.uk, I4U News and GottaBeMobile
Michael Krigsman / IT Project Failures:
London Stock Exchange website reports incorrect prices — The London Stock Exchange (LSE) website displayed incorrect prices for the important FTSE 100 index yesterday morning. The problems were less severe than previous London Stock Exchange failures, which actually interrupted trading.
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.
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 …
Discussion:
L.A. Times Tech Blog, The Blog Herald, Smalltalk Tidbits …, The Inquisitr, tinyCrunch and Valleywag
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?
Larry Dignan / Between the Lines:
IBM: Beats earnings target but... IBM said that it will beat Wall Street's earnings estimates for the third quarter, but there were enough nuggets disclosed to raise a few eyebrows. — First, the headlines. IBM (statement) said it would report earnings of $2.05 a share, a good 3 cents better than estimates.
Caroline McCarthy / The Social:
Digg's Kevin Rose: We've got to be more than a fanboy hub — LONDON—Digg founder Kevin Rose had a message for the audience at the Future of Web Apps conference on Thursday: It's time to grow up. — “We have to do better,” he said in his talk, called “The Future of News,” …
Discussion:
Silicon Alley Insider
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 …
John Leyden / The Register:
Cisco ships Mexican drug runner music on VPN CD — Bootleg bootup CD features Narco Corridos tune — A sysadmin looking to set up a VPN network was surprised to discover that a Cisco installation CD contained Mexican music instead of security software. Cisco has acknowledged the issue …
Discussion:
dave.fumberger.com
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
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 …
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 …
Prince McLean / AppleInsider:
Apple Launches iPhone Tech Talk World Tour — After dropping the NDA that served as an awkward communication barrier between iPhone developers, Apple has now launched a worldwide tour of presentations covering the iPhone application development tools and related technologies.
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.
Rich Laden / Gazette:
Hirees told Apple tech support center not coming here — Apple Inc. apparently was considering Colorado Springs for a technical support center to help customers with their iPhones and iPods, but workers already hired by a third-party company on Apple's behalf say they were abruptly told last week the project was canceled.
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.
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 …
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?
