Top Items:
Henry Blodget / Silicon Alley Insider:
The Cash Panic Sweeping The VC Industry — Why have VC firms and PE firms clamped down on investments so fast? Why are they shouting from the rooftops that portfolio companies had better start cutting costs immediately? — Well, for one thing, because they're not boneheads.
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Matt Marshall / VentureBeat:
Cash panic sweeping VC industry: The capital calls problem — Reports are growing that the financial crisis is hurting big investors that have traditionally sustained the venture capital industry. Large institutions, such as pension funds, financial institutions (including some of the banks …
Discussion:
PE Hub Blog
Eric Savitz / Tech Trader Daily:
Apple: Barclays Cuts FY Q1 iPhone Forecast; Sees Ultra-Portable Macbook, Possible Phone Price Cuts In 2009 — The latest cautionary comment from the Street on the prospects for Apple (AAPL) iPhone sales for the December quarter comes from Barclays Capital analyst Ben Reitzes …
Michael Arrington / TechCrunch:
The Internet As A Force In Politics: “Obama Would Not Have Won Without The Internet” — New York Magazine's John Heilemann is leading a panel at the Web 2.0 Summit in San Francisco this morning on “The Web and Politics.” Joining him is San Francisco Mayor Gavin Newsom, Arianna Huffington and Joe Trippi.
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Ed Burnette / Ed Burnette's Dev Connection:
Worst. Bug. Ever. — It turns out the bug in Android I wrote about yesterday was worse than we thought. When the phone booted it started up a command shell as root and sent every keystroke you ever typed on the keyboard from then on to that shell. Thus every word you typed …
Paul McDougall / InformationWeek:
Apple iPhone Chief Claims He Didn't Violate IBM Contract — Mark Papermaster says in court papers that the two tech vendors are not direct competitors. — Apple's newly appointed chief of iPod and iPhone engineering said his move to Cupertino does not violate a non-compete contract he signed …
Discussion:
AppleInsider, 9 to 5 Mac, Apple 2.0, Digital Daily, CNET News, MacUser, Macsimum News, MacDailyNews and Edible Apple
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Demetri Sevastopulo / Financial Times:
Chinese hack into White House network — Chinese hackers have penetrated the White House computer network on multiple occasions, and obtained e-mails between government officials, a senior US official told the Financial Times. — On each occasion, the cyber attackers accessed …
Discussion:
CNET News, The Register, eWeek, TECH.BLORGE.com, Neowin.net, ZDNet Government, InformationWeek and The Dark Visitor
Gary Burd / FriendFeed Blog:
Instant FriendFeed - Notifications and Posting over IM — The great thing about IM is that it's instant. You know right away when someone wants to reach you. To give users the option of having that same immediacy when it comes to FriendFeed, we're now offering FriendFeed over IM:
Discussion:
ReadWriteWeb, CostPerNews, Webware.com, RotorBlog.com, TechCrunch, louisgray.com and Startup Meme
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Owen Thomas / Valleywag:
Facebook CFO in two places at once — We've always been impressed by Facebook CFO Gideon Yu's ability to snooker investors around the world. The list of people he's taken for a ride include MIcrosoft CEO Steve Ballmer and Hong Kong telecom mogul Li Ka-Shing.
Nick / Rough Type:
Who killed the blogosphere? — Blogging seems to have entered its midlife crisis, with much existential gnashing-of-teeth about the state and fate of a literary form that once seemed new and fresh and now seems familiar and tired. And there's good reason for the teeth-gnashing.
Discussion:
Furrier.org, Joe Duck, broadstuff, Bloggers Blog, Mark Evans, The Register and confused of calcutta
Christina Wodtke / The LinkedIn Blog:
Announcing LinkedIn Events — LinkedIn Groups and LinkedIn Answers cater to two of the three most important activities professionals engage in to further their career and starting today, we're launching the third and most important piece of that puzzle - LinkedIn Events.
Dan Frommer / Silicon Alley Insider:
Google Subletting Office Space At NYC Googleplex (GOOG) — Want to address your rent check to Larry and Sergey — and move into one of NYC's best Internet-connected buildings? — Here's your chance: Google (GOOG) will be subleasing about 50,000 square feet of office space at its massive NYC headquarters at 76 Ninth Ave.
Anthony Ha / VentureBeat:
Web 2.0 Summit: Al Gore on how the web can solve the climate crisis — Al Gore just finished his talk on the topic of “What Now?” at the Web 2.0 Summit in San Francisco — and yes, the content was as wide-ranging as the title implies. — Despite being an adviser and board member …
Discussion:
Bits, L.A. Times Tech Blog, Technologizer, The Technology Chronicles, The Social and Webware.com
Brandon Miniman / pocketnow.com:
Steve Ballmer Confirms Existence of Windows Mobile 6.5 — The possibility of there being a Windows Mobile 6.5 fell in the “rumor” column after Motorola CEO casually mentioned it in a conference call. Now have official word from Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer that this rumor is reality.
Discussion:
TechFlash, Gizmodo, Engadget, IntoMobile, SlashPhone, PalmAddicts, Electronista, Gadgetell, Phone Scoop, Telstra, MobileCrunch, Pocket PC Thoughts.com, PhoneNews.com and Startup Meme
Dan Farber / Webware.com:
Google and Microsoft executives trade jabs — SAN FRANCISCO—"We don't control the platform. It's magical when it belongs to all of us." Those were the words of Vic Gundotra, who spent 15 years at Microsoft and is now leading Google's application development efforts.
Brad Stone / Bits:
BitTorrent Sacks Half Its Staff — As an open-source technology protocol, the file-sharing system BitTorrent is going strong, representing about half the world's Internet traffic by some measures. But the San Francisco company, BitTorrent, is showing signs of serious trouble while it tries to commercialize the technology.
Discussion:
BitTorrent, paidContent.org, The Register, Contentinople, Blogspotting, NewTeeVee and Light Reading
Franklin Paul / Reuters:
Las Vegas offers surprise hotel bargains for CES — NEW YORK (Reuters) - Gadget geeks, used to booking hotel rooms way in advance for the annual Las Vegas Consumer Electronics Show, may be one-upped by lazier peers this January. — With just two months to go before the January 8-11 show …
Erick Schonfeld / MobileCrunch:
Study: iPhones Twice As Reliable As BlackBerries — The iPhone is twice as reliable as the Blackberry after one year of ownership, a new study by SquareTrade finds. SquareTrade, which sells extra warranties for cell phones and other devices, looked at the failure rates of 15,000 phones covered under its plans.
Brigid Gaffikin / GigaOM:
Amazon Web Services Not Just for Early Adopters — Amazon Web Services' platform is increasingly gaining popularity beyond Web 2.0 and video companies. Case in point is the Amazon Web Services Start-Up Challenge, whose seven finalists are a diverse group of companies, among them Knewton …
Jesse Stay / louisgray.com:
Twitter Planning to Open Up the Firehose “by Thanksgiving” — By Jesse Stay of Stay N' Alive (Twitter/FriendFeed) — In an assuring statement in the Twitter API Developers Group, Alex Payne, the API lead at Twitter, shared that they have plans to have their Fire-hose of Data available …
Discussion:
Webware.com
Tiffany Wu / Reuters:
AT&T to buy rural phone co Centennial for $944 mln — NEW YORK (Reuters) - AT&T Inc (T.N) plans to buy rural phone company Centennial Communications Corp (CYCL.O) for $944 million in cash to expand its wireless network in Puerto Rico and other regions of the United States.
Discussion:
TECH.BLORGE.com
Jeff Smykil / Infinite Loop:
Review: Control your HTPC with Air Mouse for iPhone — In my living room, I have an HTPC hooked up to my rear-projection television. At one point, it was a DVR box running Windows MCE, although it has since been relegated to Hulu and Netflix duty after I made the switchover to HD cable.
Discussion:
CNET News
Doug Aamoth / CrunchGear:
Honda's experimental walking assist device, now with extra crotch support and built-in seat — It's a choice that most people “who are capable of walking and maneuvering on their own, but who can benefit from additional leg and body support while performing tasks” face every morning.
Sam Diaz / Between the Lines:
Windows 7 to arrive by 2009 holiday season — Expect to see Windows 7 right around this time next year. — CNET reports that during a technical session at the Windows Hardware Engineering Conference in Los Angeles, Microsoft director Jim Howe gave a presentation that seemed to confirm …
Dan Farber / CNET News:
The future of the cloud — SAN FRANCISCO—The cloud was omnipresent at the Web 2.0 Summit as industry executives discussed the migration from the client to millions of virtualized servers as the information pipe. — “There is a lot of hype. We think about the cloud as the next evolution in computing …
Eric Savitz / Tech Trader Daily:
Yahoo: Focus Switches To Search Deal With Microsoft — Jerry Yang's list of options for stopping the bleeding at Yahoo (YHOO) has continued to dwindle. Pressured by the Feds, Google (GOOG) pulled out of the search outsourcing deal. Despite speculation, Microsoft (MSFT) …
