[Wrapping up the week in three dots . . .] . . . The Conversation Group celebrates its one year anniversary. Congrats! . . . Reuters star reporter Eric Auchard is leaving San Francisco and will work from London. After many months of delays Eric finally got his papers thr ... Read more

IBM is considering financial support for key IT projects it is building with partners because of the financial crisis but it has ruled out equity investments in other tech companies. IBM has a large financial services group and it has the capital to help finance IT enterprise projects. I re ... Read more

I'm hearing VCs telling portfolio companies to cut their spending significantly, by at least 25 per cent, because of the financial crisis and its impact on the economy. The goal is to extend a startup's "runway" its time between financing events. Most of those cuts will come from payroll by eli ... Read more

"I've never been associated with a product that has had so much positive feedback," says Gregg Brockway , a serial entrepreneur and President of Tripit - an online service for organizing travel plans. Although the service is still in beta, it has quickly built a cult-like following especially ... Read more

Intel (an SVW sponsor) said that AMD's plans to spin-off its fabs could violate cross-licensing agreements between the two companies: Reuters reported: Intel says to defend patents against AMD Intel spokesman Chuck Mulloy said that AMD and Intel have a patent cross-licensing agreement ... Read more

I'm perceiving a bit of push back in the enterprise world towards cloud computing and software as a service (SAAS). This is a good sign because it shows that both have reached a certain level of maturity. Enthusiasm for, and pushback against the adoption of new technologies is a natural part of th ... Read more

I'm often asked "what are you working on?" My usual reply is whatever I find interesting. Well, this time I have a more specific answer. I'm working on a Virtualization Summit with BrightTALK that will be audio broadcast as a webinar on November 4 and will also feature some articles before the ev ... Read more

Advanced Micro Devices, Intel's main competitor in microprocessors, Tuesday said it plans to spin-off its chip plants into a jointly owned venture with Abu Dhabi. Reuters reports: AMD spins off plants into venture with Abu Dhabi The new venture, temporarily called Foundry Company, will ... Read more

Here is a short video clip of Steve Ballmer, CEO of Microsoft [MSFT], fighting back the tears as he asks employees to thank Bill Gates for the opportunity to work at Microsoft and for being responsible for its culture of "tenacity." http://www.hulu.com/watch/24726/cnet-news-ballmers- ... Read more

Hundreds of new startups are likely as a result of the economic crisis and a rise in unemployment among software engineers. The simple reason is that unemployed software engineers will have the time to band together to work on new projects. That's exactly where blogging software such as Six Apa ... Read more