Top Items:
Jose Antonio Vargas / Washington Post:
The YouTube Presidency — The White House has gone YouTube. — Today, President-elect Obama will record the weekly Democratic address not just on radio but also on video — a first. The address, typically four minutes long, will be turned into a YouTube video and posted on Obama's transition site …
Discussion:
Wall Street Journal, Threat Level, L.A. Times Tech Blog, TechCrunch, VentureBeat, Valleywag, Homotron.net, Download Squad, Zatz Not Funny!, mathewingram.com/work, Profy, Associated Press, Chris O'Brien, PC World, Guardian, B.L. Ochman's weblog, Mashable!, Gizmodo, SitePoint, The Utube Blog, Change.gov, CNET News, The Register, Gawker and digg.com
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Marshall Kirkpatrick / ReadWriteWeb:
Obama to Address the Nation Each Week on YouTube — President elect Obama will bring the President's weekly “fireside chat” into the 21st century by offering it not just on the radio, but in video on YouTube as well. It's as if the new populist President really cares whether the next generation has a connection to what he's doing.
Parija B. Kavilanz / CNNMoney.com:
Wal-Mart's Black Friday deals: High tech — Ad showing retailer's planned discounts focuses on consumer electronics like a Samsung 50-inch plasma HDTV, Magnavox Blu-ray player and Xbox 360. — NEW YORK (CNNMoney.com) — Wal-Mart is highlighting flat screen TVs, Blu-ray players …
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Michael Masnick / Techdirt:
Wal-Mart Now Going After Search Engines For Linking To Sites With Black Friday Ads — from the gotta-keep-the-lawyers-busy dept — It would appear that Wal-Mart's lawyers need to come up with excuses to keep billing Wal-Mart every year around this time. Despite the fact that Wal-Mart employees admit …
Business Wire:
Study Finds Google Docs Struggles to Gain Foothold in Productivity Suite Market Dominated by Microsoft — BERKELEY, Calif.—(BUSINESS WIRE)—From May to November 2008, ClickStream Technologies' standing panel of adult U.S. internet users showed that use of free productivity applications …
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Frederic Lardinois / ReadWriteWeb:Compete: Google Docs & Spreadsheets Keeps Growing, But User Engagment is Flat
Kara Swisher / BoomTown:
Yahoo Layoffs Set for December 10 (And, No, Jerry Yang Is Not Leaving Too) — While they're not as significant as the potential 6,000 layoffs at Sun Microsystems (JAVA) announced earlier today, several sources at Yahoo said that the previously announced layoffs at the Internet giant are set to take effect on December 10.
Discussion:
Alley Insider
Todd Bishop / TechFlash:
New court documents reveal internal Microsoft fighting over Vista, Intel — A new court filing reveals disputes at Microsoft's highest levels leading up to Windows Vista's release — including CEO Steve Ballmer describing former Windows chief Jim Allchin as “apoplectic” …
Discussion:
Beyond Binary, Computerworld, Microsoft Watch, Computerworld Blogs, The Register, Electronista, Valleywag, TechFlash, GMSV and Microsoft Pri0
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Mercury News:
Santa Clara police responding to report of triple homicide shooting — Police are investigating a triple-homicide shooting inside an office building in Santa Clara late this afternoon. — Officers are looking for a man identified as Jing Wu, 47, of Mountain View in connection with the shooting …
Henry Blodget / Alley Insider:
How Google Can Fix Company And Stock — The bloom has fallen off the Google (GOOG) rose. It is likely to stay off, in our opinion, until Google demonstrates a compelling revenue ramp in a new product that can eventually pick up where the search business is leaving off.
Philip Elmer-DeWitt / Apple 2.0:
IBM must put up $3 million in Papermaster case — IBM only had to pay a $350 filing fee to sue Mark Papermaster, the 25-year IBM (IBM) veteran hired by Steve Jobs last month to run Apple's (AAPL) iPod and iPhone division. — It's going to cost them a lot more to pursue the case.
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Harry McCracken / Technologizer:
How Long Does Google Baby the iPhone? — The blogosphere is abuzz over John Markoff's piece for the New York Times on a new version of Google's iPhone app that lets you use your voice to search. (It even uses the phone's accelerometer to let it notice that you've lifted the phone to your ear, and therefore switch to voice mode.)
Jordan Golson / Industry Standard:
Nick Denton: Pay-for-page-views was too successful — When asked what he would have done differently with Valleywag after it was announced that the site was closing, Gawker Media head-honcho Denton said he “probably wouldn't have paid out those big bonuses to [writers] at the start of the year!”
New York Times:
Israeli Candidate Borrows a (Web) Page From Obama — JERUSALEM — Click on the Russian-language version of the campaign Web site of Benjamin Netanyahu, the conservative Likud leader running for prime minister of Israel, and up pops a picture of the candidate with Barack Obama.
Betsy Schiffman / Epicenter:
Tech Job Losses in 2008 Could Be Highest Since 2003: Report — Last quarter saw the highest number of tech layoffs in nearly five years, according to a report from Challenger Gray & Christmas, an executive outplacement firm that tracks job losses in electronics, telecom and computer industries.
Discussion:
The Microsoft Blog, Tech Trader Daily, Gizmodo, Between the Lines, Business Technology and Wall Street Journal
Brooke Crothers / CNET News:
AMD: Netbooks? No thanks — In case you missed it, Advanced Micro Devices is passing on Netbooks. At least as Intel and its partners have defined the category. — In fact, a lot of the media outlets missed this point completely, insisting that AMD is going to go head-to-head with Intel …
Jessica Dolcourt / CNET News:
Weather Channel's iPhone app hails videocasts — Weather apps have been a fixture on the iPhone and iPod touch since Day 1, but it wasn't until this week that it gained a full-featured contribution from The Weather Channel. — San Francisco's forecast today. — (Credit: CNET)
Dan Lyons / Real Dan Lyons Web Site:
Sun to cut 6,000 — See the press release here. It's classic Sun doublespeak. See, it's not that they're totally screwed or being run into the ground or dying because of a decade of bad decisions — nope, they're “aligning their business with the global economic climate” and …
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Eric Eldon / VentureBeat:
Microsoft and Facebook: In an open relationship with your data — Which third parties can access sensitive data that users post on Facebook, such as email addresses? It depends on the partner, according to Facebook. So here's the latest tidbit about how this policy is being implemented.
Dean Takahashi / VentureBeat:
Citrix buys venture-backed Vapps for $26.6 million — Citrix said today it bought audio-conferencing services firm Vapps for $26.6 million in cash. If Vapps continues to perform well, it will get an additional $4.4 million from Citrix. Counting options, the value of the deal is $34 million at most.
