• As TechCrunch reports, Writely has been re-launched again now under the Google umbrella. This Ajax word processor will probably become soon part of a whole suite of applications as there are already Spreadsheet and Calendar and it is to be expected that Storage and also Presentation software will join the suite soon. "Writely is collaboration friendly, can import Word documents, save to PDF, OpenOffice, Rich Text Format and zip. The system autosaves your documents every 10 seconds and offers online storage." That Google takes this seriously could also be seen in a recent CNet Review where they came out on top.
• Netvibes, a French startup, accepted 15 million USD funding. The VCs who invested into this round were Index Ventures and Accel. Netvibes has been able to attract a few million users in just one year with its Ajax based personal home page. The funding is pretty high for a European startup but in light of the other - well-funded - competitors like Pageflake, the right move probably. Will be interesting to see if another European startup can make the race in this space also like e.g. Skype did in VoIP.
• China is to issue tough regulations for websites that distribute short movies. This is what Xinhua reports today and addresses MyTube while the Chinese "well-known" sites Sina, Sohu and Netease are authorized and can stay open as they are. I assume the Chinese have seen how e.g. Nasrallah has used his video underground production facility to keep in contact with the masses, producing a short video nearly every other day or so. A nightmare scenario still it seems for the Chinese government. Also take a look at this Chinese icon war production, I assume this one does not fall under censorship.
• Last weeks rumours of a soon-to-be-released iPhone from Apple turned out to be just that. Apple made an unusual - for Apple - public statement saying that they are NOT working on an iPod phone. Great, one thing less to follow in the ever growing bloggosphere. But iTunes movie store is to be expected to launch later this year at least.
• Mobile navigation system sales doubled Y-o-Y as Canalys reports nicely just a month before its navigation analyst event in Geneva. Good timing! While the majority of the GPS devices sold are still external ones, mobile phones equipped with a GPS are growing faster than the overall market, so will soon have a higher overall market share too.
• Northwest Airlines celebrated its very own style of how to fire people. In a letter to laid off people they recommend things like taking less time for showers or looking for usable stuff on the garbage pile. While they have apologized for it, I can only hope that everyone involved in this is to be fired as well so they have a chance to test these tips first hand in practice.
• An IEEE Spectrum article Why Metcalfe's Law is Wrong is getting people excited in the US (e.g. VC firm Polaris, where Bob Metcalfe is a partner). We will look into this too this weekend if the weather turns out to be as nasty as predicted, otherwise not. Have a nice one.

It is a bit later than afternoon - very late afternoon in fact. But while the blogosphere - at least from my selected list - seems to be falling into a "Sommerloch" (summer break) or maybe is having a Soccer World Cup hangover, there were still a few noteworthy things to be found today:

• Nortel and Huawei split, this is just 4 months after their joint venture started - rumors are out now that maybe Nortel might become an acquisition target itself.
• Brad Feld from Mobius Venture Capital talks on his blog about the things that can happen when employees decide to give up salary for an equity stake after they had already obtained funding. Nice insight that shows that VC investment and startup business is often like playing poker with highest stakes.
• "Good Morning Silicon Valley" is the place to go to read sarcastic things and rumors about high-tech celebrities. Of course they comment on Bill Gates's announcement that he is to step down from its day-to-day operations job in July 2007: This chief software architect has performed an illegal operation and will be shut down, or Damn shame Ballmer doesn’t have a foundation too, eh?
• Thanks to Guy Kawasaki's Top Ten Father's Day Gift List I was able to remind my wife and kids that there is - well - Father's Day this weekend. Thanks indeed, Guy! I will point out to them the Breitling Aerospace watch which is number 9 on the list because it is a Swiss high-quality product and I don't have to pay for it.
• Golem.de (in German) comments on the new release of Serendipity 1.0; one might think this is a brand new product now but that is untrue. Many releases have been out before and also we have been using this blogging software for our blog site and are pretty happy with it.
• Rumors of a Microsoft iPod/iTunes rival product/service could be read about in some gadget sites before, but now it is getting very concrete as Reuters reports.