Jerry Yang: Thanks for your bid on Yahoo, we are by the best techies in the world. In fact, Yahoo almost never crashes and has an uptime of 99.99999999999999999899999876 %

Gates: Hmmm... while that might be great for you, there seems to be a clash in fundamental philosophies governing Microsoft and Yahoo. It could be cultural differences at play. We will not be in a position to look further on this merger.

The effect of a new fee structure and disallowing negative feedback for buyers by the sellers has raised a furore amongst eBay power sellers. The hyped boycott by sellers begins on Monday and lasts throughout the week.

The increased fees will be passed on to buyers. The sellers are more worried about the absence of power to leave feedback on a buyer and claim that there could be an increase in the number of scamsters.

Additionally, only feedback from the past year will be available for viewing. We should welcome this change as it puts the new guys and the power sellers on a more equal platform. You can't rely on past performance for future sales (similar to an appraisal system - you can't rest on laurels from last year. You have to keep peforming). I am sure power sellers will crib, but it does help create a free and fair marketplace. What should worry us is the statement below.

It is our intention to reward great sellers. Sellers that describe items accurately, ship on time, and ship at a fair price will enjoy preferential pricing and discounts on eBay. We think this will significantly improve the buyer experience overall - John Donahoe

The better sellers are already rewarded with better feedback and hence greater trust within the system. More buyers should flock to them as a result of past performance. Why dangle another carrot in the form of further discounts. The marketplace is no longer free and fair. It favours the big guys or the guys who have been around longer.

Well lets play the wait and watch game. Lets take things a step at a time or in this case a week at a time.

Was it your boss, your client or was it your date from last night? Be careful on what you do online and who you interact with. If you don't want your mom to eventually find out, that her child ain't such a saint after all, please use an alias!! Better still is to be good, but thats not so cool is it :)

Blooter is one of the websites I came across today and I wanted to write about them immediately. Unfortunately Blogger is websensed at my workplace and I had to wait till now to get this on the blog.

Blooter helps young musicians gain access to a global audience, and hence open avenues for feedback from around the world. Its free for the first 5 uploads. A small charge is involved for unlimited uploads, and you can choose to sell your downloads at a price you decide. A pretty neat option for bands who manage to get recognized.

I wish this website had been around, when I was drumming for a struggling band called Karmik Riffs. Now the members have split and are in different parts of the world, but Blooter gives us a reason to come together . What say people?

While you are on the website, check out this band called Flow. Their own compositions are pretty neat!!

If you are lucky, you might find it in Time's list of the dozen most important cars of all time. Its a pretty logical list, starting off the first citizen in the car club, followed by cars that set the science and style of car design into motion. Then comes the culture clash between the American and Japanese models , before Britan butts in with the revolution paving way for the small car. And no prizes for guessing what car no. 12 is.

If you are unlucky, then you might find your car in another Time list of Worst Car, here.

And yes, they left out the Batmobile, Kitt, Chitty Chitty Bang Bang, Herbie and Lightning Mc Queen.

More launches from the house of Apple. The 16 GB iPhone was predicted but the 32 GB iPod Touch caught everyone by surprise.

The damage that these models will cause on your financial health is still circumspect. Varying reports place the price of the iPhone at between $329 & $499. Just buy me one and lets set all the debates to rest.

Apple is feverishly upgrading its lineup. It seems like a typical strategy adopted by the technical world. Throw in a couple of slightly better features and hope the consumer to upgrade. Then throw in a few more and get them to do it again.

The absence of 3G is noticed and painful. It is also indicative of what their next upgrade might be. I will choose to just wait till the next version. Alternately, if you want to donate one to the author of this post, I might just change my mind,

The impending US recession and the rising rupee have constantly taken their toll on IT services companies like TCS(Tata Consultancy Services), Infosys and Wipro. The initial moves were to halt salary increments and look at a 6 day work routine, so that they could charge clients more in the same period.

The time has come for layoffs and the latest news is that TCS has laid off 500 employees. This comes immediately after their appraisal and there are claims that the employees "voluntarily resigned" from the firm. Additionally, TCS has announced a 1.5 percent reduction in variable salaries.

Additionally IBM has shown new trainee recruits the door. Are we going to see a similar situation to the crisis in 2002-2003, where new recruits where given the pink slip even before they joined? Will the other IT majors follow suit?

These are difficult times for Indian IT majors. The stock market rise in the last year has not seen participation from these stocks and they have actually lost 26% - 28% over the last year.

An official recession announcement by the US will sink these stocks to never before levels. The biggies have already begun looking at new markets, and further diversification of their revenue streams. There is no doubt that they will weather these storms. Will the investor community stay with them is the question?

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