Arlen Parsa / The Daily Background:
Exclusive: Belkin’s Development Rep is Hiring People to Write Fake Positive Amazon Reviews  —  (Update: Welcome to Slashdot, Digg, Engadget, Gizmodo readers!  The latest is, I’ve heard from Belkin’s public relations department and I am expecting a formal comment to come out from them relatively soon …

Dawn Kawamoto / CNET News:
IT venture investing posts worst Q4 in a decade  —  Venture capital investments in IT companies plunged 40 percent to $2.18 billion in the fourth quarter, their worst level in a decade, according to figures released late Friday by VentureSource.  —  The data further confirms concerns entrepreneurs …

Michael Arrington / TechCrunch:
Zumodrive Takes Cloud Storage And Syncing Up A Notch  —  Cloud storage and file synchronization is becoming increasingly important as users access the Internet and their data via a plethora of devices - desktop computers with large hard drives, laptops with smaller drives …

John Biggs / CrunchGear:
Belkin paying 65 cents for good reviews on NewEgg and Amazon?  —  I just contacted Belkin to confirm but this doesn’t look good.  A site called The Daily Background found evidence that Belkin Bizdev guy, Michael Bayard, is paying folks 65 cents to write good things about Belkin routers.  Why?

InfoWorld:
Firm seeks to bar Nokia, RIM, Palm from importing devices into U.S.  —  A patent-holding company from Texas is seeking to bar six companies — including BlackBerry maker Research in Motion, Palm, and Nokia — from importing handheld devices into the U.S. for allegedly violating its patents.

Rick Turoczy / ReadWriteWeb:
Obama in 3D: Photosynth to Crowdsource Synth of the 44th Presidential Inauguration  —  Next Tuesday, the eyes of the United States - and likely the world - will be on Washington, DC, as Barack Obama takes the oath of office to become the 44th President of the United States.

Brad Stone / New York Times:
Boxee, Used to View Web on TV, Generates Buzz  —  Piping Internet video into a television seems as if it should be simple — after all, a screen is a screen.  But consumer electronics and media companies have been moving toward that combination with painstaking caution …

Andrew Nusca / The Toybox:
Where to watch Obama’s presidential inauguration online  —  Washington is about to throw President-elect Barack Obama a $160 million party on Tuesday, January 20 at 11:30 ET, so the least you should do is show up!  —  But for those of us who don’t want to bear the incredibly low […]