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Best in Blogs: Macworld Minus Jobs, CES After Gates, and Other January HandoffsToday

Top Stories for the week of January 5 - 9, 2009

The Consumer Electronics Show kicked off this week in Las Vegas without Bill Gates, and Macworld opened in San Francisco without Steve Jobs, but the universe didn't implode. The CES keynote "didn't seem to suffer much from the lack of Bill Gates," says End User. Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer warmed up with details about the Windows 7 beta, which is downloadable today, and which Ballmer desperately wants users to want, says Mobile Computing. Windows 7 is a desperate attempt to replace Vista, a critical and commercial failure," notes Richard Holway at UK Hot Views.

Gaza and Other "Unnecessary" WarsYesterday

Jimmy Carter is old enough to say what he thinks, and what he thinks is that the current Israeli-Gaza conflict is an "unnecessary war." LGF derides Carter's description of Hamas's "defensive tunnels," and Political Machine says "Jimmy got conned." The QandO Blog says that Carter is "much more subtle in his accusations than usual." Meanwhile, the war seems to be widening as missiles from Lebanon strike northern Israel (via AlertNet). Fire Dog Lake reminds us that "extremism has its own logic."

In the Senate,

Twitter Hacker RevealedJanuary 7

An 18-year-old hacker with a history of celebrity pranks has admitted to Monday's hijacking of multiple high-profile Twitter accounts, including President-Elect Barack Obama's, and the official feed for Fox News," reports Wired's Threat Level. After hacking into a Twitter staffer's account, he "posted a message to Digital Gangster, a forum for hackers and former hackers, offering access to any Twitter account by request. . . . Fox won the hacker popularity contest, beating out even Obama and Spears. According to Twitter, 33 high-profile accounts were compromised in all." TechCrunch has some funny examples of the hacked accounts. To possibly prevent something like this from happening in the future, according to Twitter co-founder Biz Stone, "the company is planning to introduce a private b

Bloggers Are Neighbors (and Heroes)January 7

From the placelessness of the Internet, bloggers and Twitterers embrace good old-fashioned neighborliness: Yesterday, David Armano at Logic+Emotion posted about Daniela and her family. He wrote, "Daniela is divorcing her spouse after years of abuse. In As of this moment, Daniela's family is staying at our house and we are trying to help her find a one bedroom apartment for her family to live in. With Evelyn, her youngest having Down's Syndrome and Daniela herself being a Romanian immigrant with very little family support she literally has no one to turn to. Except us (all of us)." David was looking to raise $5,000 for rent for Daniela--and he also Twittered the request. "In about two hours the original tweet had been Retweeted many times and the request spread on Twitter," writes Next Comm

NFL Playoff Buzz; College #1 Contest CloseJanuary 7

As the streaking Chargers head into their AFC semifinal game against the Steelers on Sunday, Chargers receiver Vincent Jackson has committed a pregame boo-boo, getting arrested on suspicion of drunk driving. "Excellent work, genius," says Shutdown Corner. "Maybe he was driving the Chargers bandwagon. You'd have to be drunk for that," quips Kissing Suzy Kolber. Yes, it's NFL postseason season, and fans are getting antsy. It's college football showdown week, too, with the Florida Gators and Oklahoma Sooners playing in the FedEx BCS National Championship Game Thursday. Simon on Sports calculates that "the Gators are suiting up a much more talented starting lineup than