Swedish grannies are connecting to the net at 40 gigabits per second life; 100 megabit per seconds are becoming common place in Japan and Korea; and even French are dreaming of an ultra-fast fiber future. And yet, in the US we are all stuck in the slow lane, settling for speeds between 768 kbps to 8 megabits per second. I have often wondered what it would be like to have a 100 megabits per second, and what I would do with that much bandwidth.

So last month when Verizon (VZ) folks got in touch and talked about their 100 megabits per second experiments (over FiOS fiber) I was intrigued. (Of course that doesn’t mean that your FiOS connection is going to be getting an upgrade anytime soon.)

They said I could do an e-interview with Richard S. Guziewicz, one of the two Verizon employees testing this testing this experimental set-up. I just couldn’t resist asking him about the 100 Mbps-life, and if that much speed had really changed his online life. (His connection is 100 Mbps down and 10 Mbps up.) I took out some relevant bits from the email interview (sanitized by Verizon PR) for this post.

Since for the most part the Internet and most services that use the Internet don’t run that fast, it would be tough to say it’s a life-changing experience right now. The up-front answer is it works well. I use my 100 Mbps FiOS connection for typical web access (e-mail, news, etc), some online video, as well as for work (VPN access).

The applications of today are clearly optimized for our 3-to-6 megabits per second connections. From Facebook to MySpace to YouTube – they all work well on what passes for broadband in the US and Europe. Guziewicz pointed out that despite higher speeds, the usage behavior hadn’t really changed.

Nothing that new yet. I’ve found that all the things I did on my PC with 15Mbps service, I can do with 100Mbps. If I visited web sites that were optimized to allow true 100 Mbps downloads, then I might be able to say it makes a difference.

Video, rather online video would have been one obvious application where the excess bandwidth should help right away, though from Guziewicz’s comments it doesn’t seem so. (Of course no one would talk-out loud about torrentastic life on the record .)

I visit streaming sites such as YouTube, Metacafe, and CNN but they don’t require super high speeds. Some video download sites might benefit but generally they don’t support very high speeds either. For instance, I have a 100 Mbps pipe to my home, but if I try to download a file from a certain HD video site, I find I may get only 3 Mbps of download speed, which I believe is a limitation of the site and its servers.

Guziewicz’s comments dovetail with my post from last week about Internet Infrastructure. It wasn’t an “Internet is broken” dooms day post. Instead it was an attempt to point out that we need to prepare for a network that can support more immersive and interactive applications to bloom. My biggest lament was that there weren’t many next generation infrastructure companies getting off the ground.

Anyway, what would you do with 100 megabits/second connection if you had one!

Babelgum (the “other” peer-to-peer Internet TV startup), will host an online film festival to “reward the very best in international independent short filmmaking.” They even got Spike Lee to be an “honorary” judge (read: he’ll only watch a handful of of flicks). It’s great that Babelgum is creating a program to recognize the short film format, but there are some problems with this festival. Continue reading to find out.

I recently had the opportunity to sit down with Greg Gibson, one of the founders of BetaHouse, a CoWorking group here in Boston. The premise of BetaHouse is pretty simple: For $400 a month, you get a desk, WiFi, access to a fully stocked (beer, caffeinated beverages and fatty snacks) refrigerator, a barbecue every Friday, music, and — most importantly — a group of other geeks with which to network, socialize and bounce around ideas.

The idea is to provide a creative environment in which techies and entrepreneurs can develop their ideas and bring them to market — and of course, get funding.

One idea that Gibson himself has developed in the BetaHouse office is PrayAbout, a social networking site based around support and prayer. Once you join the site, you can put in prayer requests that other people will answer, effectively creating a support group community to help you deal with your challenges.

The site appears to perform a useful social function and attracts people from around the world. One thing that Greg noted was that a number of people who have received support (such as a suicidal man in South Africa) have in turn become more involved with the site, providing support to others.

PrayAbout is quite different from other social networking sites in that it’s not ad-supported — all revenue is derived through subscriptions. It currently has some 14,000 subscribers, and that number is growing.

As for BetaHouse, time will tell how well this works. One issue I see is turnover. Once an idea is funded, the developers behind it will likely move to new offices in order to accommodate an expanding team, continually leaving BetaHouse with empty desks that need to be filled.

Mathew Ingram provides a succinct take on what the deal means but the bottom line is many newspapers could start to see far less traffic from Google News. This is because Google will highlight stories provided by the news wires, which could see Google News users visit AP’s Web site, for example, rather than newspapers that publish (and pay for) AP’s stories.

Google may claim nothing much will change but this agreement is another punch below the belt for newspaper industry, which has not been waging a fight to remain viable as the Web becomes the way more people consume news. If you thought newspapers (and Tribune Co. owner Sam Zell) were having issues with Google News and how it was “aggregating” their content before, you can now expect some major fireworks to happen.

Do not be surprised, for example, if newspapers start to demand to have their content pulled from Google News. A big obstacle, however, is Google News accounts for a huge chunk of traffic for many newspapers so leaving it would be a major decision.

Still, maybe it’s time for some of the major newspapers (e.g The Guardian, New York Times, L.A. Times) to create their own online news portal to compete with Google News. Or perhaps it’s time for the newspaper industry to get behind Topix, whose investors include Gannett Co, The McClatchy Co. and Tribune Co.

The bottom line is there is a major war brewing between Google News and the newspaper industry. Unless Google starts strikes more deals soon, things could get ugly.

More: If the Google News agreement was bad enough the Newspaper Association of America said ad revenue in second-quarter fell 8.6% to $11.3-billion from the same period last year. This is the fourth straight quarterly decline in ad revenue.

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From GigaOM

• Earthlink troubles spell end of MuniFi as third pipe. Read more »
• Online Video: Mad Money & battle for the 10th spot.Read more »
• Lowering barriers to entry: Open Source & the Enterprise. Read more »
• The Helio Shake Up, one in seven jobs cut. Read more »
• Cuban’s Theory & the Internet Infrastructure Questions. Read more »
• VMWare’s rising tide won’t lift all boats. Read more »

From Web Worker Daily

• GTD For Bloggers: the art of stress free blogging. Read more »
• 7 ways to text message for productivity. Read more »

From NewTeeVee

• Will Your Future iPod Store 30,000 Movies? Read more »
• Joost Gets an API, Becomes Widget Platform. Read more »
• Alive in Baghdad: Can Citizen Journalism Done Right Pay the Bills? Read more »

From Earth2Tech & FoundRead

• Labor Day Travel and Green Guilt. Read more »
• An A to Z of the BioFuel Economy. Read more »
• Why I went to South America to incubate my startup. Read more »

Step right up, Aaron Greenberg. So let’s hear your claim, young man. So you started a service called houseSYSTEM at Harvard four months before the precocious Mark Zuckerberg started The Facebook. Other than liking your idea and starting his own social networking thing, Mr. Greenberg, what else did Zuckerberg do to support your claim? They did teach you about competition at Harvard, and how it’s okay to start rival business down the street focused on the same market.

Not to belittle Greenberg’s claim but it does demonstrate how difficult it can be to invent something.

Who really invented the airplane? Was it Clement Ader, Samuel Langley, Albert Santos-Dumont, or the Wright brothers? Who invented the telephone? Alexander Graham Bell, Philip Reis or Antonio Meucci? Truth be told, Bell Co. successfully battled 13 lawsuits over whether it invented the telephone, including five that went to the Supreme Court.

In all, the Bell Company fought out thirteen lawsuits that were of national interest, and five that were carried to the Supreme Court in Washington. It fought out five hundred and eighty-seven other lawsuits of various natures; and with the exception of two trivial contract suits, IT NEVER LOST A CASE.”

Often, invention is simply taking a nugget of a good idea, making it better through changes and improvements, and finding a market for it. A classic example is what Bill Gates did with BASIC software.

My hunch is that Greenberg’s claim has more to do with envy than IP, and that any legal efforts will fail. The people behind UConnect, which also made a claim to have invented Facebook, may stand a better chance given Zuckerberg did some programming for them while at Harvard.

(Note: I do give Greenberg credit for something getting the NYT to write up his tale of entrepreneurial woe but that may say more about the fascination with all things Facebook than anything else.)

Of course, we all know really invented Facebook: Pete Cashmore.

Technorati Tags: Facebook

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Update: Dana Jasper of Sonic.Net left a comment saying that this is their own initiative and the equipment is coming from Meraki.

We’re doing this independently, using equipment from Meraki. Meraki and Google have an ad partnership, and any revenues that flow from that will be split with our customers.

Dana says that if the program works well in SF, then it would be expanded to other Bay Area regions where the ISP currently offers the service. (Original post below the fold.)

Despite the best efforts of Earthlink (ENLK), Google (GOOG) and Mayor Gavin Newsom, San Francisco MuniFi project is still stuck in neutral and going nowhere fast. For San Francisco residents, a new option has emerged: a tag team of Sonic.net, a Santa Rosa, CA-based independent ISP and that is using gear from Meraki Networks, a wireless hardware company based in Mountain View, Calif., and is trying to promote an ad-supported MuniFi model. (Its actually more like community wifi, and you can call it ComMuniFi.)

Sonic.net today notified its customers via email that they can get a Meraki wireless mesh router at a subsidized cost, which will allow them to connect it to their DSL line. The wireless router will share up to 500 kilobits per second of the bandwidth available on the DSL line.

Network users will see a Google ad bar at the top of the browser. In the future the ad revenues generated by this ad bar will be split between those who choose to opt and place a wireless router on their connection, and will be credited against their broadband bill.

It could be a rather small credit, so don’t get your hopes too high at this stage; this is still experimental and we are still working out many of the details.

This is a good model for Google to imitate in other regions as well. Google’s had to have known all along that their San Francisco grand plan was going to run ran into political trouble. The big question is why didn’t they roll out A similar service with Earthlink, a much larger ISP with many more broadband customers, would have been a better option for all concerned. I have become a fan of this community-based WiFi plan, which doesn’t need a lot of government dollars, and instead bets on citizen’s desire to share. Independent ISPs such as Sonic.Net are more likely to embrace this model.

Meraki backed by Google and Sequoia Capital, is one of the companies which has been championing a more community approach to free wifi. It recently announced plans to expand their experimental Meraki network to all across San Francisco.

Meraki has been selling its wireless 802.11b/g access point and mesh repeater, the Meraki Mini, for $49 and claims its products are already being used by 2,000 networks in 40 countries. The company also lists an outdoor ruggedized version of its Meraki Mini for $99. Meraki’s business is being built off hardware and software based on MIT’s Roofnet project. The Roofnet Project was previously funded by MIT’s Project Oxygen and NTT DoCoMo.

Related News: Our previous Meraki coverage.

Memo to private equity investors: Get your checkbooks ready, for VeriSign (VRSN) might have some businesses to put on the block.

VeriSign, the Mountain View, Calif.-based domain name registry manager, is in the middle of a major restructuring under the aegis of its new chief executive, William Roper Jr., who replaced Stratton Sclavos back in May. The company, like many others, also recently had to restate several years worth of results following a review of its historical stock option grants practices.

We’ve gotten hold of an internal email showing that Roper is planning to undo some of the expansion moves initiated by Sclavos and instead focus the company on profitability and growth. Sclavos’ regime had been all about growing revenues; to that end VeriSign diversified into many different areas — including mobile gaming, via their acquisition of Jamster.

On August 7, we submitted our 2008 Business Strategy to the Board of Directors for review, and it was approved. This strategy, the development of which began earlier this year as part of Project ONE, will among other things enable us to focus on our core strengths in DNS and SSL, as well as three select areas of growth opportunity: VeriSign Identity Protection (VIP), Messaging, and our Content Delivery Network (CDN). As I’ve said before, focus requires that we concentrate on doing a few things exceptionally well — and that’s exactly what we intend to do.

After talking to some well-placed sources, we have learned that the DNS and SSL businesses are cash cows that don’t need much of a sales team effort and continue to be highly profitable. They provide a stable foundation for VeriSign, which is why the company continues to keep them around.

In addition, VeriSign is experiencing rapid growth in its SMS-based services — it’s the SMS polling infrastructure provider, for some of the hit reality shows.

Roper Jr. has been telling Wall Street lately that he’s ready to get rid of VeriSign’s telecom operations, especially the businesses related to billing and payment. The company’s also exiting the managed security service business and its RFID-related operations. And it’s shedding businesses including Moreover Technologies and Weblogs.com, both of which it acquired in 2005. It is not clear who the buyers will be, but they are up for grabs our sources say.

Selling these business, according to Pacific Crest Securities analyst Rob Owens, could bring in some $1 billion in cash, which would allow the company to invest in the cash-intensive but fast growing CDN business.

Of course, it could also use some of that cash to improve its reputation of being a Web bully.

The new episode of The GigaOM Show is up. In addition to our hitlines, we talk with executives from web analytics companies, Quantcast and Hitwise, and try to understand the complexities of web analytics and why it is hard to get a handle on who is the top site. We discuss, how the new distributed web impacts the web measurement business.

Download the show in Quicktime format or Windows Media Format. For other options, visit the Revision 3 website. You can watch the show below the fold.

In what has to be the worst PR moves of all time, General Atlantic, a New York-based hedge fund, announced that it was backing a new buyout fund started by Jon Miller, former CEO of AOL and Ross Levinsohn, former President of Fox Interactive.

No details on the size of the fund were offered. TechCrunch says that some reporters might have been sniffing around the story and GA decided to rush the release in order to control the message.

Reporters from Wall Street Journal perhaps? The Journal says the new company is called Velocity Investment Group and will be looking to roll up at consumer Internet and media companies, including advertising networks. WSJ says that they already have signed up letter of intent with some companies.

How long before we see more of these roll-up vehicles show up and start buying up high-traffic properties, a strategy that was pioneered by IAC’s Barry “Get Me A Bargain” Diller?

Earth2Tech: Ways to reduce your green guilt as you travel this Labor Day Weekend.

NewTeeVee: The best of the video picks form Burning Man — for those that couldn’t make to the playa this year.

Found/Read: Seven hiring tips for startups.

Web Worker Daily: How to do away with the time wasters and be left with only lean, productive working hours.

A company called Jaxtr announced Tuesday that it's raised $10 million. The company, which hopes to emulate the success of eBay's Skype, actually attracted some of the same investors as Skype. Draper ...

There is a game of corporate chicken going on. Hours after NBC decided that it was going to pull its shows from the iTunes store at the end of this year, Apple (AAPL) trumped them and will not sell shows from the upcoming TV season on iTunes, the largest online music and video store.

Apple declined to pay more than double the wholesale price for each NBC TV episode, which would have resulted in the retail price to consumers increasing to $4.99 per episode from the current $1.99. Apple’s agreement with NBC ends in December. Since NBC would withdraw their shows in the middle of the television season, Apple has decided to not offer NBC TV shows for the upcoming television season beginning in September. NBC supplied iTunes with three of its 10 best selling TV shows last season, accounting for 30 percent of iTunes TV show sales.

Today, the municipal Wi-Fi market appears to be, at best, a major disappointment. Chicago, for example, just decided to retreat from offering Wi-Fi service after failing to strike a deal with EarthLink or AT&T. In San Francisco, the city’s dream of a free Wi-Fi network has evaporated after EarthLink backed away from a plan. And here in Toronto, Toronto Hydro’s One Zone service has struggled to attract subscribers due to spotty coverage and a small network footprint.

So what’s gone wrong? In theory, a municipal Wi-Fi network should thrive given people want to be connected at any/all times. If done properly, Wi-Fi can become an important element of a city’s competitive plan to attract business while providing local citizens with an essential new economy tool.

The problem may be unrealistic expectations. It was assumed that municipal Wi-Fi was going to be a lot like broadband service with the same kind of reliability and speed. For the most part, this hasn’t happened so people have been disappointed and, as a result, municipal Wi-Fi has failed to gain much marketing momentum.

Maybe the issue is price. If Wi-Fi was free or super-cheat perhaps people would be happier with it. Of course, revenue - or the lack thereof - is one of the reasons why EarthLink has lost its enthusiasm for Wi-Fi.

Another issue may be that Wi-Fi technology just isn’t good enough, which I’m sure will rub a bunch of equipment makers the wrong way. Look at this way; offering wireless service in a major city is a huge challenge. To provide proper and reliable coverage, you need to have an awful lot of base stations, and even then you’ll probably have issues with buildings and line of site.

This is why there’s growing interest in Wi-Max as a way to effectively offer municipal wireless service. It may be that Wi-Max is the right technology, and that Wi-Fi’s best use is within the home and places such as hotels and cafes to serve the needs of customers.

In any event, I’m going to be speaking with Toronto Hydro Telecom president Dave Dobbin soon so look for another post on the future of municipal Wi-Fi. I’m sure Dobbin will provide an effective counter-argument.

For more thoughts, check out Ars Technica, which suggest cities would do themselves a favour by starting small as opposed to trying to provide city-wide coverage out of the gate. In summing up municipal Wi-Fi’s troubles, IP Democracy’s Cynthia Brumfield puts a nice (and smart) spin on things: “So, Wi-Fi, while very cool at Starbucks and around airport gates, just doesn’t pass the laugh test for a major metropolitan communications system.”

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In particular, I’m talking about the thriving Facebook application landscape that a growing number of companies are enthusiastically jumping on. If a Web-based company doesn’t have a Facebook application already, they’ve got a team of developers pumped up with Red Bull and Skittles trying to create as soon as possible. According to Inside Facebook, there were 3,261 applications created in the first three months after Facebook opened up its API.

Some applications such as Top Friends, Video, iLike and Graffiti already have millions of users. Meanwhile, an investment community has quickly formed around the
Facebook platform with Bay Partners launching a Facebook-only fund that will invest $25,000 to $250,000 in Facebook start-ups. Then, you’ve got entrepreneurs getting involved hoping to be the next Where I’ve Been, which was reported acquired by TripAdvisor for $3-million.

In thinking about it, the landscape looks like like the Yukon gold rush of 1897 with a small number of lucky miners (Mark Zuckerberg, Peter Thiel, Greylock Partners, Meritech and Accel Partners) scoring the biggest and best claim while thousands of miners scramble to get in while the going is good.

Much like the suppliers during the gold rush made out like bandits by supplying all these miners with equipment, there is a growing number of development firms and consultants emerging to help build and market anything you want…for a fee, of course. It’s all about supply and demand, and right now the demand to get involved is clearly stripping demand.

The big question is monetization, and how these applications can turn users into dollars. CNNMoney has a terrific story looking at the different ways to cash in so there’s little need to elaborate much other than it looks like the most successful entrepreneurs will be the ones who got in early and were able to build a large user base before things got crazy.

Some of these people may be able to make money by selling their large user bases to companies that want to sell to a captive audience. TripAdvisor’s deal for Where I’ve Been a Perfect example. Others may be able to make money by selling things to their users, while others will simply be happy with any marketing zing they get.

For the vast majority, however, Facebook will be a process with no or little rewards. As much as everyone hopes to develop something that resonate with Facebook users, the competitive landscape is way too crowded already. Sure, there will be an exception to the rule but if an entrepreneur thinks there’s a big score to be made by jumping into Facebook now, he and his money will soon be separated.

Technorati Tags: Facebook

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Getting the Blackberry, however, was a painful experience. Perhaps the first mistake was actually going to a Rogers store, which seemed like a good idea given you will get, in theory, good customer service. And the salesman was very helpful and diligent; going over our corporate plan, explaining the different service options, etc. All in all, it was top-notch customer service that you would expect when shelling out several hundred dollars.

Unfortunately, the process took about 45 minutes as the sales guy gathered a bunch of information, punched it into the computer, etc. All this while, we had to stand at the sales counter because there’s no chairs or tables in the store. Maybe not having tables and chairs lets the store maximize its expensive downtown real estate, or maybe it stops people from just hanging out (although why anyone would want to hang out at a Rogers store is beyond me!).

When everything was completed, I’m not sure whether I was happier about getting the Blackberry or finally being able to get back to the office so I could sit down. :)

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Before getting into Cuban’s thesis, there are a couple of things that should be pointed out. Cuban is an agent provocateur. It’s his modus operandi, and something he clearly revels in using his high-profile blog as a vehicle for controversy. That said, Cuban’s also a very smart guy who calls a spade a spade. With Broadcast.com and his current HD initiatives, Cuban has always been big on bandwidth so it’s not surprising he’s disappointed given broadband in the U.S. leaves much to be desired.

Maybe Cuban is right; maybe the Internet has become a utility simply because it has become part of everyday lives. Today, no one marvels at connecting to the Web whereas a decade ago it was a thrill to hear the static associated with getting online with a dial-up connection.

If there’s a hole in Cuban’s thesis, it’s that he’s sitting too close to the fire to realize the Internet is still a marvelous thing for a lot of people how are thrilled about being able to pay their bills online, apply for jobs, surf the Web, watch YouTube videos, etc. For Cuban, this is meat and potatoes kind of stuff but for many people, high-def isn’t even in the picture so they’re more than happy with 5Mbps service (at least for the time being.)

Personally, the Internet and what’s available never ceases to amaze. I spent a good hour last weekend using StumbleUpon, and discovered a whack of great Web sites that immediately went on my del.ici.us account. I also spent some time watching videos, including a bunch of Wordpress tutorials - something that was difficult to easily do a couple of years ago.

Cuban may be bored because he’s looking for the next big thing online but the Internet is still a pretty amazing place for the rest of us. Of course, he does make a good point that more bandwidth will change everything but that’s another story for another day.

More: Fred Wilson has some thoughts on Cuban’s thesis - poking holes at Cuban’s belief the Internet is no different than it was five years ago, and that bandwidth is a critical factor in innovation. Not surprisingly, Loren Feldman has his own unique take on the Cuban vs. Wilson thing.

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Putting aside why you’d ever want to use Twitter in the first place, maybe Twitter should be focusing some of its attention on creating a business model. Yes, it’s wonderful to have a large user base but if you can’t figure out a way to make money from them or advertisers looking to reach them, what does it matter?

Clearly, Twitter’s investors, which include Fred Wilson’s Union Square Ventures and Marc Andreessen, were thinking big picture when they put some venture capital (reportedly $5-million) into the company last month. Maybe I’m missing something that but I thought the idea of creating a business was to generate sales and profits. Then again, maybe this is a build it (a service) and they (revenue) will come situation but so far, I’m firmly in the show-me camp.

For a chorus of “I’m so happy Twitter is now more user-friendly views”, check out Techmeme. At least, blognation mentions the unclear business model.

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Here’s one on how to embed YouTube videos in a blog post:

Here’s one on making your blog more search engine-friendly:

And here’s one on the best Wordpress plug-ins:

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But as the past few weeks, I’ve started to diversify my feeds into other areas - some related to specifics interests, and some just because they’re really interesting. Here’s a mini-list of some recent finds:

1. Kevin Kelly’s Cool Tools, which covers a variety of cools things such as books, gadgets, software, videos, maps, hardware or Web sites.

2. Wisebread, which is devoted to “personal finance and frugal living”.

3. Commute by Bike, a new favourite since I’ve started to bike to work again every day.

4. Four Reasons Why, a recently launched blog devoted to providing four reasons for a variety of things (e.g. Why James Bond Will Never Die; Why You Shouldn’t Drink Bottled Water)

5. Spacing Wire, an excellent city blog about Toronto.

6. PlanetEye, which launched last week. Note: I work for PlanetEye so it’s a must-read. :)

Meanwhile, I’ve also been pruning back the number of feeds in my reader. While Scoble can go through 622 feeds a day, I can realistically check out 20 to 30. (Speaking of Google Reader, just wondering why hasn’t the official Google Reader Blog been updated since June 22?)

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2. Mary Meeker. Even after being embarrassed during the dot-com boom as more of a promoter than an equity analyst, she’s still alive, well and bumbling along. In the meantime, Henry Blodget, who was forced to leave the analyst business, has proven he’s a pretty smart cookie.

3. The high cost of Apple accessories. Yesterday, I spent $25 on a mini-DVI to VGA connector that was probably made for $1. And while there were tons of oh-I-need-that products in the Apple store, it’s hard not to get a bad case of sticker shock when you see how much they cost. Speaking of Apple, it’s good to see someone cracked the iPhone/AT&T relationship.

4. Twitter. Can anyone explain to me why it’s useful other than as a tool to broadcast your thoughts or activities that only a small group of people (e.g. your family. close friends) would be interested in? Loren Feldman thinks Twitter will “be huge”.

5. Why it’s so difficult to find someone on Facebook. Sure, it has an advanced search tool but if you have a friend with a regular kind of name, good luck.

6. Why bloggers and blog readers love lists. Write a list (e.g. Five Things That Could Kill Facebook) and the world comes to your doorstep. Speaking of lists, check out Four Reasons Why - a entertaining and sometimes thought-provoking blog devoted to lists on a variety of topics.

7. Why RSS (Really Simple Syndication) is still RSS. If you want to push RSS into the mainstream, it need something catchier like Your Content Now or The Web’s Paperboy…or something like that. Maybe Dave Winer, who pioneered the creation of RSS, can step into the branding fray although I think he’d suggest RSS is just fine.

8. How Dell has fallen so far so fast while Hewlett-Packard has bounced back so strongly? Dell’s cache as a super-efficient computer maker has evaporated.

9. Why high-tech IPOs are all the rage again (e.g. VMWare, Classmates.com) amid a troubling credit crunch. Keith Benjamin, a venture capitalists, suggests the credit crunch will boost the high-tech IPO market because it will drive investors away from hedge funds and buy-out funds.

10. The fascination with people such as Justin.TV and Steve Mann who put cameras on themselves so other people can exactly what they are doing every second of the day. Today’s on-body camera episode features a guy driving to Los Angeles.

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FoundRead: A good company name can contribute more than you think. Three rules for naming your startup.

NewTeeVee: HealthiNation chronicles an SUV-driving, red meat-eating, cigarette-smoking blogger as he spends thirty days living the carbon-neutral, healthy life.

WebWorkerDaily: Whether you’re an online video newbie or an established publisher, these video capture and conversion utilities can be had for free — or, almost free.

Earth2Tech: Startup Ahwahnee Technology is using nano-scale material 10,000 times thinner than a human hair to make energy-efficient lighting.