Arn / MacRumors:
Apple Enabled GPU Hardware Decoding of h.264 on New MacBooks, Pros and Airs?  —  Tonight, forum user MGLXP noticed that playback of 1080p high definition trailers from Apple took far less CPU time on his new aluminum MacBook (28% CPU) as compared to his old MacBook Pro (100% CPU).

Henry Blodget / Silicon Alley Insider:
Twitter: We’ll Announce Our Secret Business Model Early Next Year  —  “It’s like the stupidest question in the world,” Fred Wilson said of the robotic query chirped at Twitter people in every interview (”But how are you going to make money?”)  —  Given the rate at which Twitter has […]

Steve Gillmor / TechCrunchIT:
FriendFeed to add Realtime APIs next week  —  Play in Popup |  Download  —  Twitter appears to have an unassailable lead in users and their resultant Follow clouds.  Though Track is dead and IM is postponed indefinitely, the service has added a political track page with a company-selected keyword cluster around […]

Michael Arrington / TechCrunch:
Some Of These Layoffs Aren’t Really Layoffs  —  I’ve spoken to a lot of CEOs this week who are going through layoffs or who are thinking of going through going through layoffs.  The list of those who’ve pulled the trigger gets longer every day, and the unparty seems to just be […]

Ellen Knickmeyer / Washington Post:
Al-Qaeda Web Forums Abruptly Taken Offline  —  Separately, Sunnis and Shiites Wage Online War  —  Four of the five main online forums that al-Qaeda’s media wing uses to distribute statements by Osama bin Laden and other extremists have been disabled since mid-September, monitors of the Web sites say.

AppleInsider:
Due next from Apple: refreshed 20- and 24-inch iMacs  —  Assuming last minute snags are avoided, the coming weeks should bring new iMacs, rounding out Apple’s 2008 hardware introductions as the company enters the holiday shopping season with one of its strongest product portfolios ever.

Chris Snyder / Epicenter:
Twitter to Get Down to Business in 2009, Investors Say  —  Major leadership changes Thursday at Twitter renewed questions about its business prospects — was the replacement of CEO Jack Dorsey by fellow co-founder Evan Williams a shuffling of deck chairs on the Titanic?

Michael Bettiol / Boy Genius Report:
And we have lift off: AT&T Bold launches on the 27th  —  This is for real, kids.  Information has been pouring in left, right, and center from AT&T and RIM ninjas and we can now say for sure that AT&T is planning to launch the Bold on October 27.  […]