Erick Schonfeld / TechCrunch:
Amazon Web Services Goes Down, Takes Many Startup Sites With It  —  Amazon Web Services suffered a major outage this morning, affecting the thousands of Websites that rely on its storage (S3) and cloud computing (EC2) services.  Startups including Twitter, SmugMug, 37Signals, and AdaptiveBlue …

Adam / Xobni:
Jeff Bonforte Joins Xobni as CEO  —  Matt and I have hired a new CEO to help us build Xobni.  As those close to Xobni know, we were not actively looking for a CEO.  Nevertheless, when we met Jeff Bonforte several months ago we said We’ve got to get this guy on […]

Nicholas Carlson / Valleywag:
Screenshots of Yahoo Buzz, a Digg competitor  —  The pace of of product launches from Yahoo is breathless — and with a whiff of desperation.  On February 26, Yahoo plans to beta launch Yahoo Buzz as a competitor to Digg, and a tipster supplied Valleywag with screenshots.

I, Cringely . The Pulpit | PBS:
Plan B  —  Last week I presented my best guess why Microsoft would want to buy Yahoo.  What was it that made Yahoo worth $44.6 billion to Bill Gates?  Based on what I believe is a pretty profound understanding of the innards of each company, I said it […]

Avram Piltch / LAPTOP Magazine:
CloudBook Unboxing and Very First Impressions  —  Our CloudBook just arrived and we’ve taken it out of the box and snapped a few photos.  Editor-in-Chief Mark Spoonauer is working on a hands-on post right now, and already we’ve encountered two significant problems:

Todd Bishop / Seattle Post-Intelligencer:
Sales of PlayStation 3 top Xbox 360 in January  —  Despite shortages, Nintendo Wii still leads  —  Sony’s PlayStation 3 video-game console topped Microsoft’s Xbox 360 in U.S. unit sales for the first time in January, but the Redmond company said its sales were hurt by supply shortages.

Michael Arrington / TechCrunch:
An Outsider’s Flawed View Of Silicon Valley  —  Redfin CEO Glenn Kelman wrote a blog post a couple of days ago comparing Silicon Valley unfavorably to the Seattle tech scene.  —  I spend a lot of time in both places, and I think some of his observations are correct (people here […]

Om Malik / GigaOM:
Amazon S3 Storage Service Goes Down, Still Not Up  —  Amazon’s S3 cloud-based storage service went down earlier this morning, according to numerous tips we’ve received.  The service has impacted many companies, including folks like Twitter.  According to our tipsters, the service went down around 4:30 a.m. …

New York Post:
BOARD BUCKS YANG  —  YAHOO! DEAL CONCERN  —  While Yahoo! chief Jerry Yang desperately seeks an alternative to Microsoft’s $44.6 billion hostile takeover, an independent group of Yahoo!’s board members are taking the lead in shaping the company’s future.  —  The informal group is being led by Yahoo! …

Susan / Check Out Blog:
Wal-Mart Chooses a Hi Def Platform  —  Back in December I posted a Blog that said “HD or BD - Does Anyone Care.”  I only received one response, I was very disappointed. But following the news from Best Buy and Netflix, everyone’s asking “what about Wal-Mart?”  […]