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 — Updated: 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.
Marshall Kirkpatrick / ReadWriteWeb:
Why Twitter's New Security Solution Could Pave the Way to a Future Web of Mashups — Microblogging service Twitter's habit of playing fast and loose with user passwords may be coming to an end, if a technical trial started today can be successfully implemented by its development team.
Discussion:
Twitterrati
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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).
Discussion:
CenterNetworks
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.
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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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 …
Devin Coldewey / CrunchGear:
YouTube officially enables HQ in embedded videos — YouTube has officially enabled High Quality in embedded videos. The new embedded player sports a little HQ button in the expanded menu, which is strangely absent from YouTube's on-site player. Hacking the code is no longer necessary …
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
Digital Music News:
ASCAP Targets “Copy Left / Free Culture” Enemy... Performance rights organization (PRO) ASCAP is now pondering ways to defuse the influence of non-traditional copyright thinkers, according to correspondence shared Thursday with Digital Music News. According to an invitation mailed …
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.”
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 …
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
Randi Zuckerberg / Facebook Blog:
Just the Beginning — The inauguration of U.S. President Barack Obama was a historic and monumental occasion. As people gathered in Washington, D.C. to watch the inaugural festivities, the energy on Facebook was palpable, too. Millions of people logged into Facebook to share the experience with their friends and family.
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 …
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:
Hardware 2.0, Digits, Edible Apple, Crave, TechSpot, Byte of the Apple, Digital Daily, MacDailyNews, Smalltalk Tidbits …, Electronista and Podcasting News
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 …
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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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.
