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.