Top Items:
Paul Graham:
Why to Start a Startup in a Bad Economy — The economic situation is apparently so grim that some experts fear we may be in for a stretch as bad as the mid seventies. — When Microsoft and Apple were founded. — As those examples suggest, a recession may not be such a bad time to start a startup.
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Don Dodge / Don Dodge on The Next Big Thing:
Start a company in a recession? Absolutely! — Now is a great time to start a company. Why? Because great people are available to join you, VCs are loaded with cash, and office space is available cheap. Everything is cheap and readily available in a recession.
Discussion:
Startup Chatter
Prince McLean / AppleInsider:
Jobs responds to outrage over MacBook's missing FireWire [u] — In one of his characteristically terse email replies, Apple chief executive Steve Jobs has reportedly told one Mac user that changes in video camera technology have reduced the need for FireWire on his company's 13-inch MacBooks.
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Brian Garrity / New York Post:
FRIENDS OF THE BAND — ZUCKERBERG PONDERS FACEBOOK MUSIC BIZ — Facebook boss Mark Zuckerberg is plotting a possible push into the digital-music business in the wake of MySpace's launch of MySpace Music last month. — The surging social-networking giant is talking to a number …
Discussion:
The Social Web, Reuters, paidContent.org, Pulse 2.0, All Facebook, p2pnet, Mashable!, The Register, CrunchGear, Valleywag, MediaBytes with Shelly Palmer and WebProNews
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Matt Marshall / VentureBeat:
MySpace on target to do $1B in sales this year, defies downturn — We're hearing from sources close to social networking company MySpace that it expects to hit $1 billion in revenue this year, or at worst be within a hair's breadth of that number. Meanwhile, MySpace executives …
Kasper Jade / AppleInsider:
Apple's Snow Leopard to sport Cocoa Finder and ImageBoot — Apple next-generation Snow Leopard operating system will introduce a massive re-write of the Mac OS X Finder and debut a new feature called ImageBoot, AppleInsider has learned. — Cocoa-based Finder
The Boy Genius / Boy Genius Report:
RIM announcing BlackBerry Storm-alike for U.S. at WES 2009, more devices — Look, we really don't want to do this to you, (well, we kind of do) but we've just got the word from one of our RIM ninjas that there will be a BlackBerry Storm-type device announced at WES 2009.
Discussion:
Crave, BlackBerryNews.com, Unwired View, Electronista, Gizmodo, IntoMobile, CrackBerry.com blogs, BB Geeks, Engadget, SlashGear, I4U News, Gadgetell, CrunchGear, InformationWeek and BlackBerry Cool
GamesIndustry.biz:
LittleBigPlanet release delayed worldwide — The release of Sony's highly anticipated PlayStation 3 title LittleBigPlanet has been delayed worldwide. — The title has been delayed due to references to the Qu'ran on the in-game soundtrack. — “During the review process prior to the release …
Discussion:
Kotaku, PlayStation.Blog, Joystiq, bit-tech.net, Destructoid, videogaming247, PS3 Fanboy and DailyGamesNews.com
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Dylan Stableford / Folio:
Mygazines Folds — Controversial magazine sharing site shuttered. — RELATED POST: R.I.P. Mygazines, 2008-2008 — Just weeks after settling a lawsuit with dozens of publishers, Mygazines, the controversial Web site that allowed users to share digital copies of hundreds of magazines, has closed.
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Tim Westergren / Pandora:
A Sad Day — This is a very sad day for Pandora, and for me personally. Today we reduced our staff from 140 to 120 employees. Like virtually every company, Pandora is not immune to the challenges presented by the current economic turmoil. We are trying to react quickly and responsibly to the new environment.
Discussion:
VentureBeat, GigaOM, Webware.com, paidContent.org, Valleywag, AppScout, TechCrunch and Tech Confidential
Michael Arrington / TechCrunch:
Google Asking Their Advertisers To Publicly Support Yahoo Search Deal — A reader, Darrin (from ReverseMortgageGuides), who says he spends about $100,000/month on Google adwords received a voicemail from a Cleary Gottlieb lawyer named Donald Burke. Burke says he's representing Google in the Yahoo advertising deal.
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BBC:
Man killed wife in Facebook row — A man has been jailed for life for stabbing his wife to death over a posting she made on the social networking site Facebook. — Wayne Forrester, 34, told police he was devastated that his wife Emma, also 34, had changed her online profile to “single” days after he had moved out.
MG Siegler / VentureBeat:
See who knew how to quit you on Twitter with Qwitter — We all lose followers on the micro-messaging service Twitter from time to time. It happens to the best of us. Sometimes it's because we go on 25 tweet (Twitter message) political rants in 5 minutes.
Erick Schonfeld / TechCrunch:
Keeping Count: The TechCrunch Layoff Tracker — After Silicon Valley woke up to the economic crisis last week and VCs rang the alarm bells, startups are starting to heed the call and tighten their belts for a long winter. As the slide above from Sequoia Capital illustrates …
InfoWorld:
Ballmer: Windows 7 is Vista, just ‘a lot better’ — Windows 7 will be like Windows Vista , but more so, Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer said Thursday as he defended the first two years of Vista and claimed its successor will be a major release. — “[Windows 7], it's Windows Vista, a lot better …
Stephen Shankland / CNET News:
Google hedges against foreign currency swings — In recent months, financial analysts have expressed concern that Google's financial results could be hurt by foreign-exchange rate changes. But Google said Thursday that it has taken measures to insulate itself from the potential problem.
Peter Kafka / Silicon Alley Insider:
Video Network Heavy Fires 14% Of Staff* — The snap consensus among tech and Web outfits who are sloughing off staff this fall: something in the 15%- to 30% range seems to be the way to go. Today's entry: Dude-centric publisher and ad network Heavy, which is laying off 12 people, which it says amounts to 14% of its staff.
Philipp Lenssen / Google Blogoscoped:
Footnotes in Google Docs — You can now add footnotes in Google Docs documents, as the Google help center explains. Just click anywhere in the document and pick Insert -> Footnote from the menu. The resulting document can display as shown in the screenshot, with a collapsable gray box next to the text …
Discussion:
Google Operating System
Brad Linder / Download Squad:
Mozilla releases Mobile Firefox Alpha - For Mac, Windows and Linux? — Mozilla has released the first Alpha version of Fennec, the mobile web browser which currently runs on the Nokia N810 internet tablet, and which will soon run on Windows Mobile. Fennec is just a code name.
Henry Blodget / Silicon Alley Insider:
Desperate Google Will Now Take Gambling Ads — Google's Q3 growth rate in the UK is a sign of things to come elsewhere: a measly 17%. Why was growth so slow? In part because of the economy and in part because of market saturation. Google utterly dominates search in the UK, as it will soon do in the US and everywhere else.
Kara Swisher / BoomTown:
The Verbatim Transcript of Ballmer on Yahoo Deal: Separating Fiction From Truth — While many would like to see Microsoft reignite its bid for Yahoo, and as much as even good reporters insinuated that its CEO Steve Ballmer (pictured here) said yesterday in an appearance that he was interested …
Discussion:
Valleywag
Clint Ecker / Infinite Loop:
New MacBook Pro's got game: compelling new gaming benchmarks — It has been a long-running joke amongst gamers that Mac users tend to wallow in a dearth of gaming options. While that perception may have been true in the past, the tides are definitely turning for the gaming Mac user.
