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 …
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, CNET News, MacUser, Macsimum News, MacDailyNews and Edible Apple
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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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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 …
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, Contentinople, The Register, NewTeeVee, Blogspotting and Light Reading
Radhika / Newlaunches.com:
Microsoft makes you work from the moment you step on the bus! — If you thought BlackBerry was a curse because of accessibility then wait till you get a load of this. Executives of Microsoft just lost out on the most famous excuse for being late... “Stuck in the Traffic Jam” …
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 …
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:
Social Media, Bits, L.A. Times Tech Blog, Technologizer, The Social, The Technology Chronicles, Web Strategy and Webware.com
Kevin Fogarty / eWeek:
H-1B Visa Reform Takes Shape to Address Fraud, Procedural Nightmares — Table of Contents: — In the wake of a report claiming up to 20 percent of H-1B applicants may be fraudulent, the U.S. Bureau of Citizenship and Immigration Services will look more closely at H-1B visa applications.
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:
Profy, Webware.com, RotorBlog.com, louisgray.com, CostPerNews, ReadWriteWeb, TechCrunch 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.
Miguel Helft / New York Times:
Google at 10: Searching Its Own Soul — AS Google recently turned 10 years old, some analysts and investors began to say the company was suffering from early signs of maturity. Google's growth rate, while still brisk, has slowed significantly and is expected to slow more because of the economic slowdown.
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.
Discussion:
ReadWriteWeb, VentureBeat, Marketing Nirvana, Mashable!, chrisbrogan.com and Startup Meme
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.
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 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.
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 …
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
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.
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 …
