Brian X. Chen / Gadget Lab:
Rumor: New Mac Mini Coming to Macworld 2009  —  Apple will launch an upgrade to its low-end desktop, the Mac Mini, at January’s Macworld Expo in San Francisco, according to an Apple corporate employee who contacted Wired.com.  —  The source, who wished to remain anonymous (to keep his job) […]

Times of London:
Revealed: Amazon staff punished for being ill  —  Amazon, Britain’s most popular website for Christmas shopping, is making its staff work seven days a week and threatening them with the sack if they take time off sick.  —  The company charges among the lowest prices for products ranging …

Deborah Gage / San Francisco Chronicle:
Google off list of 20 most trusted companies  —  (12-14) 16:40 PST SAN FRANCISCO — Facebook, Apple, Yahoo, Verizon and FedEx for the first time have made an annual ranking of the top 20 most trusted companies in the United States.  —  Google, however, dropped off the list … […]

Mark Hendrickson / TechCrunch:
Yahoo Announces Next Steps in Open Strategy  —  Yahoo has invited the press to an event in San Francisco today where it will announce the next steps in its open strategy (details found here).  —  As GigaOm speculated over the weekend, we should be hearing details about the deployment of applications […]

Janna Anderson Lee Rainie / Pew Internet:
The Future of the Internet III  —  A survey of internet leaders, activists and analysts shows they expect major tech advances as the phone becomes a primary device for online access, voice-recognition improves, artificial and virtual reality become more embedded in everyday life, and the architecture of the […]

Richard Whitt / Google Public Policy Blog:
Net neutrality and the benefits of caching  —  One of the first posts I wrote for this blog last summer tried to define what we at Google mean when we talk about the concept of net neutrality.  —  Broadband providers — the on-ramps to the Internet — should […]

Apple:
About the Mac OS X 10.5.6 Update  —  The Mac OS X 10.5.6 Update is recommended for Mac OS X 10.5 Leopard versions 10.5, 10.5.1, 10.5.2, 10.5.3, 10.5.4, and 10.5.5.  It includes general operating system fixes that enhance the stability, compatibility and security of your Mac.  —  Installation recommendations

Wall Street Journal:
The Secrets of Marketing in a Web 2.0 World  —  Consumers are flocking to blogs, social-networking sites and virtual worlds.  And they are leaving a lot of marketers behind.  —  For marketers, Web 2.0 offers a remarkable new opportunity to engage consumers.  —  If only they knew how to do it.

Mussie Shore / The Official Google Blog:
@Twitter: Welcome to Google Friend Connect  —  We know many of you enjoy using Twitter to see what people are talking about and to let others know what you’ve been up to, whether it’s sharing a YouTube video or checking in on your friend’s tweets.  To help you […]

Lessig Blog:
The made-up dramas of the Wall Street Journal  —  I got off the plane from Boston to find my inbox filled with anger about an article in the Wall Street Journal.  To those who were angry, I hope you will direct any anger at the Wall Street Journal after you read what follows.