Michael Gracie 

Not everyone was feeling the pain of the downward spiral in the mortgage markets. Meanwhile… Calabasas-based Countrywide, the nation’s largest mortgage lender in terms of volume, faces a lawsuit claiming it failed to warn employees about the depth of its financial troubles, resulting in heavy stock losses in their 401k retirement accounts. Sounds familiar.

Some sanity.

Via The Big Picture: We have long railed against the absurdity of the CPI data. I haven’t “long railed” – more like I railed long ago.

A bit of a rant (and you’ll have to read between the lines to find any inferred solutions), but an interesting read nonetheless.

Proving you can’t win ‘em all. Jeffrey Citron did some revolutionary things for online trading, but the luck isn’t coming for upending landline phone service and the spin isn’t too hot either: First, Vonage loses their appeal in the Verizon patent case; the company’s weak response follows. Then they lose another patent case to Sprint. [...]

It’s eleven so Letterman doesn’t sue for trademark infringement. 11. A search engine says their products are more stimulating than coffee. 10. Everyone is talking about advertising. 9. A website that bashes other websites actually has some traffic. 8. Someone throws free money at engineers, while someone else makes engineering free. 7. Stories come out [...]

Is this concept going to vet the voting base? Imagine The Funded with a bunch of 12-year olds around (not that there is anything wrong with being 12 years old – I was once too). BTW: I think The Funded is a good idea, for both entrepreneurs and investors.

Some good points within on the difference between ads within networks and ads delivered via search.

Now if we can figure out where the user fits in. Who, What, Why After Facebook’s spring pronouncement that applications “get in but they don’t get out,” chatter about ubiquitous usernames and friends lists in a brown paper sack took on new meaning. Almost immediately, the talk on the web (including here) was OpenID this, [...]

The One Laptop Per Child Project is having a buy one, give one free sale. Just in time for the holidays, and I can’t think of a better way to get a computer into the hands of TWO children. They should tie the pairs together somehow, so a child of more fortunate means can interact [...]