Top Items:
Stacey Higginbotham / GigaOM:
Surprise! VC Funding Fell Off a Cliff in Q4 — As expected, the venture industry is seeing the fallout from the economic crisis, with fourth-quarter investments dropping to a total of $5.4 billion invested in 818 companies, according to a report from PricewaterhouseCoopers …
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Connie Loizos / PE Hub Blog:
Kleiner Perkins, Sequoia Slow It Down — Four firms that ranked among the top 10 most active U.S. venture firms in each of the first three quarters of 2008 didn't make the top 10 list in the fourth quarter of last year, according to new Thomson Reuters' data.
Brandon LeBlanc / The Windows Blog:
General availability for the Windows 7 Beta to end — First off: thank you for your interest in beta testing Windows 7! As we near January 24th, we wanted to update everyone again on the next steps for the Windows 7 Beta. The amount of feedback we have received has been amazing and continues to pour in.
Elisabeth Lewin / Podcasting News:
Zune Death Watch: Microsoft Zune Revenues Plummet — Microsoft has revealed in a Security and Exchange Commission filing that the company's Zune revenue in the 4th quarter of 2008 was less than half of what it was the previous year. — According to the filing, “Zune platform revenue decreased $100 million …
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Ross Miller / Engadget:
Microsoft reports $100M decline in Zune revenue — Microsoft's newly-announced layoffs and declining profits aren't the only bad news in Redmond — according to the company's quarterly statements, Zune platform revenue decreased $100 million, or 54 percent compared to the same quarter last year, due to falling device sales.
Discussion:
Digital Daily, Digits, Edible Apple, TechSpot, Byte of the Apple, MacDailyNews and Smalltalk Tidbits …
Noam Cohen / Bits:
Wikipedia May Restrict Public's Ability to Change Entries — Stung by criticism after vandals changed Wikipedia entries to erroneously report that Senators Edward Kennedy and Robert Byrd had died, Wikipedia appears ready to introduce a system that prevents new and anonymous users …
Discussion:
Drew B's take on tech PR
Nina Shen Rastogi / Slate:
Will President Obama have a personal computer? — Barack Obama completed his first full day as president on Wednesday. Pictures of the historic occasion showed Obama sitting at a gleaming Oval Office desk. Will all that empty space eventually be filled by a personal computer?
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Benjamin J. Romano / Microsoft Pri0:
Senator wants Microsoft to preserve American jobs over those of foreign guest workers — Update after the jump. — U.S. Sen. Chuck Grassley, R-Iowa, sent a letter to Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer Thursday expressing concern over how the company may go about its layoffs.
Jesus Diaz / Gizmodo:
The First Ever Apple Computer Running Windows — Yesterday we missed this in our look at the first review of Windows ever: Here's the first known photo of an Apple computer running Windows 1.0 software. Yes, Mr. Bootcamp, Windows on Apple in 1983. — It wasn't a Macintosh …
CircleID:
Network Solutions Under Large Scale DDoS Attack, Millions of Websites Potentially Unreachable — “DNS queries for web sites should be responding normally. Thank you all for your understanding. As always, we will continue to work to take measures to prevent these and other types …
Stephen Shankland / CNET News:
Al Gore headlining Google event: Google Ocean? — Layoffs and other expense controls show that Google isn't immune to mundane economic realities. But the company's cool factor is still intact, judging by the fact that it signed up former Vice President Al Gore to speak at a Google Earth event next month.
Ben Kuchera / Opposable Thumbs:
Exclusive: Microsoft to get Resident Evil 5 bundle, red 360s — “Do you really have to go?” my wife asked. It was late, and the night was still. I put on my press hat, grabbed my notebook and, after a moment's hesitation, my revolver. — “Yes. He always gives me good information, and the Mole-signal is lit.”
Loïc Le Meur / Loic Le Meur Blog:
The New Twhirl (preview release) for Team Seesmic-Twhirl — We are as excited as you are about Twhirl and are happy to announce a new version today which we will be circulating as a preview to get your help and feedback. We are gathering a “circle of friends” for Twhirl and Seesmic …
Chris Messina / FactoryCity:
Twitter can has OAuth? — Twitter API lead Alex Payne announced today that Twitter is now accepting applications to its OAuth private beta, making good on the promises he made on the Twitter API mailing list and had repeated on the January 8 Citizen Garden podcast (transcript by stilist).
ms datacenters:
Building a Better Mousetrap a.k.a. Optimizing for Maximum Efficiency in an Economic Downturn — By Arne Josefsberg and Mike Manos, January 23, 2009 — As you might have read in Microsoft's Q2 FY09 earnings release yesterday, the company has announced cost management initiatives due to the global economic downturn.
Discussion:
Data Center Knowledge
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Nancy Gohring / PC World:
Monster.com Reports Theft of User Data — Monster.com is advising its users to change their passwords after data including e-mail addresses, names and phone numbers were stolen from its database. — The break-in comes just as the swelling ranks of the unemployed are turning to sites like Monster.com to look for work.
Discussion:
SANS Internet Storm Center …, The Register, Liquidmatrix Security Digest and Infosecurity.US
Om Malik / GigaOM:
Skype Sees a Bright Future; Will It Be Spun Off? — When asked by Wall Street analysts if eBay was going to spin out Skype, CEO John Donahue answered with something that resembled a maybe. In a comment worthy of a former consultant, Donahue said, “I think we are now confident …
Sarah Perez / ReadWriteWeb:
Why We're Desperately Awaiting Feedsqueezer — When the RSS management company Feedburner was acquired by the internet goliath Google back in May of 2007, some people were excited, others were concerned. On the one side, there was hope that putting Google's weight behind the struggling service …
Discussion:
CenterNetworks
Adrian Covert / Gizmodo:
Palm Pre: The Definitive FAQ — Behind on the latest Palm Pre and WebOS news? Get all caught up on the latest details with our definitive data sheet and FAQ that we'll constantly update as news comes in. Last Updated: 1/22/09 — SPECIFICATIONS — • Linux-based Palm-built WebOS operating system and UI
Dan Primack / PE Hub Blog:
Radically Reinventing Venture Capital — Last month, I moderated a panel discussion about reinventing the venture capital model. I'll be doing the same next Friday in New York. In both cases, the underlying thesis was that the venture capital model is broken at worst, and dysfunctional at best.
Marco.org:
Twitter is not public infrastructure — In Twitter Limits Potential App Growth, the author argues against Twitter's new global limit (20,000 requests per hour) for previously whitelisted (and unlimited) API-consuming IPs: … Is Twitter's rate-limiting the only factor giving you pause …
Discussion:
louisgray.com
Pete Carey / Mercury News:
Silicon Valley region unemployment jumps to 7.8 percent; California rate up to 9.3 percent — The Silicon Valley region shed 6,100 jobs in December and the unemployment rate jumped to 7.8 percent — the highest in six years — with part of the damage taking place in the retail trade sector, state employment officials reported today.
Discussion:
Reuters
Steven J. Vaughan-Nichols / Computerworld:
Building a better spam-blocking CAPTCHA — New approaches may give the CAPTCHA antispam technology a second chance — Computerworld) How do you let people create user accounts or post comments on your Web site without letting spam bots in? Simple — make your users prove they're human.
