Top Items:
Jerry Yang / Yodel Anecdotal:
Tough times — As we announced in October, we've been aggressively managing our costs to bring them in line with the challenging economic conditions. Unfortunately, that means laying off employees — by far the toughest part of being a manager. Here's the email I sent to Yahoos today:
Discussion:
Tech Beat, VentureBeat, Technologizer, blogs.ft.com, Docu-Drama, TechCrunch, Forbes, internetnews.com, MediaNama, Screenwerk and L.A. Times Tech Blog
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Miguel Helft / Bits:
Yahoo Layoffs Today May Not Be Last — Yahoo began laying off 1,500 workers on Wednesday as part of a plan, announced in October, to slash expenses by $400 million a year. The cost cutting, however, may have to go deeper in the coming year. — “There could be additional staff reductions next year …
Owen Thomas / Valleywag:
Yahoo's secret layoff doublespeak revealed! — Yahoo isn't firing people en masse — it's “getting fit.” That noisome euphemism for today's layoffs of 1,500 people must have hissed forth from the brain of some overpaid management consultant. Likewise for pages upon pages of instructions …
Kara Swisher / BoomTown:
Another Sad Day for Yahoo: Layoffs Begin, While Employees Vent — While layoffs have become all too common across tech and this country, today's at Yahoo feel a little worse, coming after 18 unceasing months of painful changes and stumbles at the troubled Internet icon.
Rafe Needleman / Webware.com:
Watching layoffs in real time, on Twitter — If you want to watch a community event reveal itself in real time, there's really nothing like Twitter. As the Yahoo layoffs finally took hold this morning, newly former employees headed to Twitter to say farewell to the company; those staying reported what it was like for the rest.
Discussion:
CNET News
Greg Sandoval / CNET News:
TV has license to kill movies at iTunes, Netflix — Apple is an Internet retailer and Neflix is a Web video rental service, but Hollywood treats them as if they were potential competitors to TV broadcasters. — In the past two weeks, customers of iTunes and Netflix's streaming digital-movie service …
Discussion:
paidContent.org, Infinite Loop, VentureBeat, MediaMemo, iLounge, Public Knowledge, Webomatica, AppleInsider and NewTeeVee
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Leo Dirac / Gmail Blog:
Really new in Labs this time: SMS Text Messaging for chat — How often do you try to chat with somebody and they don't respond because they just walked away from their computer? Or maybe you're in the middle of chatting with them just as they need to leave.
Discussion:
CNET News, Epicenter, VentureBeat, TechCrunch, Google Watch, Mashable!, Lifehacker and Gear Diary
Jessica E. Vascellaro / Wall Street Journal:
Google Executive Departs for LinkedIn — Dipchand “Deep” Nishar, a longtime Google Inc. executive who helped start its mobile business and other key products, is leaving the company to become a senior executive at LinkedIn Corp. — Mr. Nishar, 40, in January will become vice president …
Steve Gillmor / TechCrunch:
Google To Take Chrome Out Of Beta — Google vice president Marissa Mayer announced Google Chrome is coming out of beta in an interview with Michael Arrington at Le Web 08. The Google's open source browser has a number of eager customers, including OEMs who can't offer the browser until it is in full release.
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Barry Schwartz / Search Engine Land:Google SearchWiki To Get Off Button, Might Get Used As Ranking Signal
Discussion:
TechCrunch
Paul McDougall / InformationWeek:
Apple Secretly Bricks Non-Intel PCs, Psystar Claims — Mac cloner says OS X 10.5 includes code designed to shut down unauthorized machines. — Apple's Mac OS X 10.5 “Leopard” operating system contains undocumented code designed to render inoperable personal computers that aren't running …
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HD Moore / BreakingPoint Labs Blog:
Patch Tuesdays and Drive-by Sundays — Microsoft released patches for 28 individual vulnerabilities today, covering everything from a stack overflow in Internet Explorer 5.0 to a command execution flaw in the desktop search component of Windows Vista and Server 2008.
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Flavio Lerda / Google Mobile Blog:
Street View on Nokia S60 and Windows Mobile? Check. — (cross posted with the Google LatLong Blog) — In case you hadn't noticed, the Google Street View team has been busy photographing France, Italy, Spain, and Australia. Given the international focus of recent Street View launches …
Discussion:
Unwired View, Wap Review, Engadget Mobile, jkOnTheRun, Local Mobile Search and SlashGear
Window Snyder / Mozilla Security Blog:
Leaving Mozilla — I will be leaving Mozilla at the end of the year. I am sad to be leaving, but I am excited to go work on something I have always been passionate about. I wish I could tell you about it now, but that will have to wait for a while. — You will still get Mozilla security information here.
Jenna Wortham / Bits:
Netflix Awards $50,000 for Progress in Contest — Netflix's challenge to the world's programmers to improve Cinematch, its system that spits out movie suggestions based on whether you worshiped “Iron Man” or hated the recent Indiana Jones sequel, is inching closer to its goal.
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Jason Kincaid / TechCrunch:
Microsoft Live Labs Tackles Web Clips With Thumbtack, Still Needs Polish — Microsoft's Live Labs has just released Thumbtack, a web clipping service that allows users to compile links, media, and text snippets into online storage bins for future reference.
Discussion:
PC World, Download Squad, Webware.com, Microsoft Live Labs, The Microsoft Blog, Mashable! and ReadWriteWeb
Google:
2008 Year-End Google Zeitgeist — As the year comes to a close, it's time to look at the big events, memorable moments and emerging trends that captivated us in 2008. As it happens, studying the aggregation of the billions of search queries that people type into the Google search box gives us …
Microsoft:
New President of Online Services Group Sees Chance to Make Impact at Microsoft — Q&A: Qi Lu discusses what attracted him to Microsoft and how he plans to boost the company's efforts in online search and advertising. — On Dec. 4, Microsoft announced Qi Lu had been hired as president of the Online Services Group.
Discussion:
The Microsoft Blog, TechFlash, Beyond Search, ChannelWeb, Microsoft Pri0, AppScout and Silicon Alley Insider
internetnews.com:
Google, Microsoft Back Off on Datacenter Plans — The two online giants rethink ambitious datacenter efforts, but for different reasons. — With the economy in the shape it's in, even Microsoft and Google are thinking twice before dropping $100 million on a new datacenter.
Discussion:
Microsoft Pri0
Tom Krazit / CNET News:
Apple stabilizes new Mac notebooks — Apple has released stabilizing updates for its new MacBook, shown here, as well as other systems introduced in October. — (Credit: Apple) — Apple has released several new firmware updates aimed at solving problems with its latest batch of notebooks.
Brian Lam / Gizmodo:
Rumor Smash: No Zune Phone at CES — Sorry dudes. Just it first hand from Brian Seitz, Group Manager of Zune: “No Zune phone at CES.” — Well, at least no Zune Phone as we're hearing it. A few days ago, some analysts stirred up the rumors of a Zune specific piece of hardware this week …
Discussion:
VentureBeat, All about Microsoft, Gadget Lab, mocoNews.net, Microsoft Subnet's blog and Fast Company
Stephen Fry:
Gee, One Bold Storm coming up.... So here I am. In a hotel room in New York. The writing desk and its view of xth Avenue are all but obscured by:- — 7 x Mini USB cables: 2 of them are the new Micro type that Blackberry has switched to for the Storm only, the rest are standard.
Discussion:
broadstuff
Brier Dudley / Brier Dudley's blog:
Sony's PlayStation Home boss says it's “leapfrogging” (Xbox Live) — Actually PlayStation Home Director Jack Buser wouldn't mention competitors by name — he never used the “M” word — when we talked about Thursday's public debut of Sony's new virtual world. — But you could tell what Buser was talking about:
Joe Wilcox / Microsoft Watch:
Make Your Corporate Blog Believable — In a blog post today, Forrester analyst Jeremiah Owyang offered up a “simple heuristic health check to gauge whether your corporate blog is going to be trusted by your readers.” — GOT A TIP OR RUMOR? — Jeremiah offers eight points …
Discussion:
Apple Watch, Google Watch, ReadWriteWeb, Web Strategy, The Noisy Channel, Fast Wonder Blog and Glass House
Matt / WordPress:
WordPress 2.7 “Coltrane” — The first thing you'll notice about 2.7 is its new interface. From the top down, we've listened to your feedback and thought deeply about the design and the result is a WordPress that's just plain faster. Nearly every task you do on your blog will take fewer clicks …
Dawn Kawamoto / CNET News:
Yahoo amends controversial severance program — As part of its settlement agreement stemming from a shareholder lawsuit, Yahoo announced Wednesday it revised its controversial severance policy that had the potential of making a buyout of the company more expensive to a prospective buyer.
Discussion:
Silicon Alley Insider
Darren Murph / Engadget Mobile:
T-Mobile produces official statement regarding international G1 data roaming — Okay G1 owners, so here's the end-all answer to your data roaming quandaries. For those not caught up, there has been quite the hubbub going around about the G1's inability to not suck down data whilst traveling aboard.
Arn / MacRumors:
Latest Firefox 3.1 Beta Adds Multi-Touch Support — On Monday, Mozilla released the latest beta version of Firefox 3.1. This “Beta 2” version of the popular web browser adds a number of new features across all supported platforms including: — Private Browsing Mode — Faster JavaScript engine
Nate Anderson / Ars Technica:
What the MPAA wants from Obama: 3 strikes, Canada crackdown — The Motion Picture Association of America (MPAA) has supplied its political wish list to the Obama transition team, and thanks to new transition team policies, that means the MPAA has shared its agenda with everyone on the Internet.
