Top Items:
Brad J. Ward / SquaredPeg:
There's something going down on Facebook. Pay attention. — *First time to SquaredPeg? Subscribe via Email or RSS today or follow @bradjward on twitter for more frequent updates. *Media: Please email me, bradjward (at the) gmail. Any phone # you find for me will likely lead you to a voicemail I won't check until mid-January.
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Who da'Punk / Mini-Microsoft:
Rumors of Upcoming Microsoft Cut-Backs — Rumors. Microsoft layoff and cut-backs and Reduction In Force rumors. That's all I have for you. Rumors and second-hand speculation and the comments left by the fine, good-looking folks who participate in the conversation here.
Andrew S. Ross / San Francisco Chronicle:
Good times gone till 2010 — Mike Moritz didn't mean for the celebrated “R.I.P Good Times” slide show to become so public, and so famous. “We had zero interest in communicating with others than our business partners,” he said, referring to a downbeat presentation he and other partners …
Discussion:
A VC
Rory Cellan-Jones / dot.life blog:
Copyright - the empire strikes back — For years it has seemed that the music - and increasingly the film and television - industries have been on the back foot in their attempts to protect their intellectual property as the digital revolution has gathered pace. But now the empire is striking back.
Discussion:
TechCrunch
Jack Loftus / Gizmodo:
Dev-Team Shows Live iPhone 3G Unlock ‘Yellowsn0w’ Demo — This video is the first public demo of the iPhone 3G unlock, named “yellowsn0w”, courtesy of Dev-Team member MuscleNerd. With a wave of his hand, he goes from AT&T to T-Mobile, and makes a call. — The target release date for the official unlock is New Year's Eve.
Charles Arthur / Guardian:
Everything's coming up Blu-ray! Well, sort of — Excited news from the Blu-ray Disc Association: “British consumers bought 462,500 Blu-ray discs in November, an increase of 165% from October, according to GFK.” (Assuming the BRDA is any good at maths, that means people bought 175,000 of them in October.)
Discussion:
CNET News
David Carr / New York Times:
Newspaper Shuns Web, and Thrives — With 2008 drawing to a brutal close on the media beat — bankruptcies, daily newspapers that are no longer daily, magazines that are downsizing into brochures — a little ray of light appeared in my e-mail inbox. It was from a newspaper owner, of all people.
Web 2.0 Asia:
Korea's Twitter gets acquired by Naver — Me2day, Korea's leading microblog service, has been acquired by Naver. Here's the ZDNet news article on the acquisition (in Korean) and here's CEO Suman Park's personal posting (also in Korean). — Me2day is a good service with many cool features …
Verne Kopytoff / San Francisco Chronicle:
Advice for troubled times: Build war chest — (12-21) 14:34 PST — If there's any advice for an entrepreneur to follow, it's this, says Max Levchin, a startup whiz who's made a habit of thriving in bleak times: When you sense an economic slump is on the horizon, raise lots of money - even if you don't need it.
Ryan Hupfer / TechCrunch:
MySpace v. Facebook Advertising Showdown. Which Platform Is Better? — The guest post below is written by Ryan Hupfer at HubPages. A couple of weeks ago HubPages ads were blocked from MySpace's new self serve ad platform, MyAds, as being competitive to MySpace.
Henry Blodget / Silicon Alley Insider:
“Holy F**king S**t I Was Just In A Plane Crash!” — A Continental airlines 737 slid off the runway in Denver last night. The engine on the right side burst into flames. Passengers escaped out the left side on slides. 38 people were hurt. Fortunately no one was killed.
Discussion:
Scobleizer, Sydney Morning Herald, Venture Chronicles, Loic Le Meur Blog, Mashable!, The Blog Herald and RexBlog.com
Financial Times:
Christmas shut-down in Silicon Valley — Workers at some of Silicon Valley's biggest companies will find themselves spending an uncommonly long time with their families this Christmas as the technology industry responds to the downturn with office and factory closures and enforced holidays.
Discussion:
GigaOM