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9:40 AM ET, October 9, 2008

Techmeme

 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.
RELATED:
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.
RELATED:
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.
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 …
Joshua Topolsky / Engadget:
More pics of Apple's supposed new laptops surface
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.
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 …
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
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 …
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?
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.
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 …
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.
Discussion: Pulse 2.0 and Contentinople
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 …
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.
Discussion: Business Wire and Epicenter
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 …
Discussion: SlashGear, Engadget and GottaBeMobile
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 …
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
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.
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.
Discussion: The Mac Observer and AppleInsider
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.
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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 More Items: 
Paul McDougall / InformationWeek:
Windows XP Gets Reprieve, Yet Again
Discussion: Gadgetell and Engadget
Scott Ferguson / eWeek:
AMD Says Manufacturing Deal Does Not Violate Intel Processor Patents
Discussion: Engadget and The Tech Report
Ben Edelman:
CPA Advertising Fraud: Forced Clicks and Invisible Windows
Discussion: InformationWeek and WebProNews
Xeni Jardin / Boing Boing:
BB exclusive: sneak peek at South Park's sweet, yet-unreleased iPhone app
Discussion: Gizmodo, iLounge and iPhone Savior
 Earlier Items: 
Robert Vamosi / CNET News:
How botnets use ‘bullet-proof’ domains
Laura Holson / Bits:
Crisis Will Hit Telecom Business, Analyst Says
Steve Lohr / Bits:
Cisco's Future Leads to India
Discussion: Silicon Alley Insider
Hamilton Nolan / Gawker:
The NYT Has Endless Space To Sell
Jeff Jarvis / BuzzMachine:
It is our fault  —  Paul Farhi of the Washington Post issues …
Discussion: dailywireless.org and Valleywag
David Conway / Google Mobile Blog:
Google on Android: Maps
 

 
From Mediagazer:

Lauren Forristal / TechCrunch:
Tubi launches Scenes, a mobile feature that lets viewers watch 60-to-90-second trailer-style clips from its library to help with content discovery

Daniel Thomas / Financial Times:
James Harding says the Tortoise-Observer deal could create a profitable media group and there isn't a guaranteed future for the Observer with the Guardian

Alex Sherman / CNBC:
Analyzing Comcast's spinoff of cable networks, purposefully structured with low debt: the move might be a signal to the industry that it's time to consolidate

 
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