The Official Google Reader Blog announces a handful of changes to Google Reader today, most notably in the form of a visual refresh designed to bring a more streamlined look and feel to Google's popular newsreader. That means less visual clutter, more space, and a softer, less saturated skin. Beyond that, the new Reader update adds collapsible navigation to each section of the sidebar, improved options for sharing items with friends, and the option to hide unread counts for any section of readerlike your friends' shared items. As a final (and probably least exciting) addition, Google has created more feed bundles for subscribing to a topic en masse (e.g., music blogs, Nascar, etc.). Keep reading for more detailed screenshots of the new features.

Collapsible Navigation

Hide Unread Counts

New Feed Bundles

We're not seeing the update on our accounts yet, so if you're in the same boat you're likely to see it on yours within the next few days. Still not happy with the simplified Google Reader? Try recently mentioned Helvetireader for another minimalist Reader skin.

Why would anybody invest with Jim Simons? Everybody knows where his love and attention and money is concentrated: in the $8 billion Medallion Fund, which charges 5-and-44 but which in any case is closed to outside investment and basically just runs the money of current and former Renaissance employees. It's up more than 58% this year.

On the other hand, if you're not a current or former Renaissance employee, your choices are limited to the Renaissance Institutional Equities Fund (down 14.8% this year) and the Renaissance Institutional Futures Fund (down 15.6%): it seems that relatively little of the Medallion stardust has settled on the newer franchises.

The problem of course is one of incentives. When you consider how much personal money he has in Medallion, it's easy to see how Simons would have every incentive to concentrate on Medallion to the detriment of RIEF and RIFF. People invest in them all the same, much as they buy mass-produced Shun knives when they can't get a Bob Kramer original. But they can't be very happy with the results right now.

If you are looking for an alternative to wall mounting your flat panel TV, the asymmetric design of the Hollywood and Dolce Vita stands from Cattelan Italia are one stylish (but expensive) option.

The Hollywood unit can accommodate flat-panel LCD or Plasma televisions up to 42" wide while the Dolce Vita handles smaller sets up to 32". Both are vertically adjustable, so you can achieve the height that is most suitable for viewing. In addition to the glass shelving, the Hollywood also features a stainless steel CD storage unit mounted behind the television.

I'll admit that I like the clean contemporary look, but spending $1468 and $1573 respectively for the Dolce Vita and Hollywood is a lot of money to drop on a TV stand. There are, of course, cheaper options for achieving a clean look without wall mountinglike the Synchro Furniture Mate for $599. [Cattelan Italia via Trendir]

HP is mulling the idea of offering their latest netbooks, the Mini 1000 bundled with various mobile data plans in the hope of sparking more interests and eventually sales to their netbooks. According to are report by the Wall Street Journal, HP is sort of overwhelmed by the growing popularity of the netbooks that they are looking into the possibility of selling off their Mini Note netbooks together with various data plans. This fits well with the idea of internet mobility in the true sense of the word.

The plan is hot on the heels of the just announced new models of the HP netbook - the HP Mini 1000, HP Mini 1000 Vivienne Tam Edition and the Mini 700.

If you're not in the loop, some countries in Europe and Asia are fond of doing this kind of marketing strategy to gain market leverage for their netbook. And with the rising cost of prices, it is but natural for consumers to look into great buys and deals before they proceed with the transaction.

So, HP's plans of bundling up their HP Mini Note netbook with mobile carriers' data plans seem to be a logical strategy.

Via WSJ

A post from the Asus Eee PC blog.

HP Plans to Offer its Netbook via US Mobile Data Plan Bundle

For all of the millions of blogs on the web, only an incredibly small fraction generate enough revenue to serve as full time jobs. Most people are happy enough with just sharing their thoughts with the public, even if they only see a few hundred hits a months with the very occasional comment. But what if there was a way for even these small-timers to generate enough money to put food on the table?

Larry Genkin, the founder and editor of Blogger and Podcaster Magazine, is looking to help the long tail of bloggers turn their hobby into a lucrative job. He has started the Blogger and Podcaster Media Network, a consortium of bloggers and related companies looking to help bloggers of all sizes effectively monetize their sites without having to worry about having a relatively small audience. The site is currently open for signups, but won't go live until early next year.

At launch the BPMN is a rollup of companies including Genkin's magazine, Fuel My Blog (A bloggers' social network based in the UK), Podcast Pickle (a podcasters' social network), and SocialRank, a company similar to Sphere that monitors blogs for related and popular content.

Each of these companies will help promote the new network, and will also offer technology to help bloggers build out their site (for example, they'll be able to use SocialRank's technology). The BPMN will also try to partner with large media companies to help give blogs more exposure. To help each blog get started, the company has partnered with PR NewsWire, which will offer each blogger a promotion package Genkin says is worth $2000.

The BPMN will also have a dedicated sales team for advertising. Genkin says that large ad networks like Federated Media cater to large blogs, leaving most of the long tail bloggers to fend for themselves. Because BPMN will be representing a large number of blogs at once, Genkin says it will be able to secure more favorable deals. The network will have a rev-share agreement with bloggers, giving 70% of ad revenues to members.

Beyond advertising, The BPMN is also employing an affiliate scheme to help bloggers generate revenue. Genkin says that for every blogger a member brings into the network, they'll earn around $500-1000 a year. It sounds like this is the primary way the BPMN expects to help small time bloggers earn full-time salaries (just recruit 50 bloggers and you're set!), but recruiting bloggers is more difficult than it sounds, which is where I think the BPMN might fall short. To further entice bloggers, The BPMN is offering a (presumably small) equity stake in the company to early adopters on the network who sign up by the end of the year. And the last selling point: bloggers will have healthcare coverage, though the details for this have yet to be worked out.

The Blogger and Podcast Media Network is going to have a long struggle ahead. Even if advertisers are enticed by the ability to make large ad buys across the network that are more favorable than AdSense, most individual bloggers still won't be seeing much income from their ads. And the affiliate scheme sounds too good to be true - I doubt many people will be able to recruit enough bloggers to earn a sizable income. If Genkin can pull off some partnerships with large media corporations (his magazine already scored a deal with USA Today), these bloggers may be able to increase their traffic and generate some revenue, but I have a hard time picturing small time bloggers earning full time wages.

Crunch Network: CrunchBase the free database of technology companies, people, and investors

D-Day has arrived at Time Inc. The Time Warner-owned publisher is set to announce the elimination of 600 jobs -- around 6 percent of its workforce -- and a major reorientation in the way it does business, reports The New York Times.

Shuffling the deck is nothing new at Time Inc., of course; indeed, it seems to be management's answer for everything from sagging ad revenues to the common cold. But this reorganization sounds like a pretty big one, involving a "more centralized management structure" and plans to share resources between titles.

Writes Tim Arango, "Power within Time Inc., which through many mergers over the decades became the modern Time Warner, has long been diffuse, with individual publishers and editors essentially running their own shows. That distinct culture is coming to an end."

Sam Gustin writes: After a year of skirmishes with major broadband providers, Free Press, the D.C.-based advocacy group, has asked the Federal Communications Commission to institute new rules requiring greater transparency on the part of internet service providers.

Free Press wants the agency to ensure that broadband providers disclose their network management practices, as well as the minimum speeds offered on their networks. The group says the new rules are needed in the wake of two controversial cases in which broadband companies failed to disclose their practices to consumers.

The first case, in which cable giant Comcast was found by the F.C.C. to have blocked peer-to-peer internet traffic, generated widespread criticism of the company, and became a cause celebre for advocates of network neutrality, the principle that all internet traffic should be treated equally. The second case involved a company called NebuAd, which secretly partnered with several broadband providers to monitor users' traffic as part a new data-mining technique called behavioral targeting.

Free Press wants the F.C.C. to require broadband companies to be more forthcoming with their customers about such practices.

"The pervasive lack of transparency in the broadband industry has opened the door to rampant abuse," said Ben Scott, Free Press policy director. "After recent episodes of secret spying and secret blocking, consumers have good reason to question whether cable and phone companies will respect their privacy and their right to free speech."

"Moving forward," Scott said, "we propose that any service provider that wants to manipulate the connection between Internet users and Internet content has an obligation to disclose what it is doing. Without industry-wide transparency, Internet users are likely to blame service disruptions on their computers or themselves rather than where it belongs -- on their ISP."

These rules are a good idea. As GigaOm's Stacey Higginbotham writes, "When it comes to traffic shaping and network speeds, there's no such thing as too much information."

Customers should have the right to know how broadband companies manage their networks, and what data they are collecting about them. And if the broadband companies have nothing to hide, surely they won't object to greater transparency.

Andrea Chalupa writes: As I said last week, online video may be recession proof. Today, a bunch of online video execs (Mike Hudack the CEO and Co-Founder of Blip.tv, Andrew Heyward former President of CBS News and now Senior Advisor of Marketspace LLC/Monitor Group, to Victoria M. Brown co-founder of Big Think) sat around a table at Rockefeller Center for Beet.TV's Online Video Summit and discussed ways to make sure that's true. The full three-hour conversation can be heard here. But if you don't want to listen to the whole thing, here are a few of the highlights:

* Embed, and they will come. Fred McIntyre from AOL talked about embedding as a critical component to video discovery -- that the biggest problem in online video is simply finding it. Adam Berrey, senior VP at Brightcove, echoed this sentiment, adding that most people consume online video like it's a Choose Your Own Adventure book. Berrey advocates keeping audiences' eyeballs by providing context for a video; so, embed.

* The dog and the skateboard, or that's industry speak for user-generated-content. For all of the industry buzzwords and attempts at understanding monetization today, the funnier moments came down to what makes good content. As Mike Hudack of Blip.tv pointed out, videos showing "how-to's" build dedicated, but small, audiences willing to sit through TV-length episodes.

* And now, monetization. Despite a supposed clamoring of video inventory by advertisers, Next New Networks is taking a sponsorship approach to its thirteen online "TV networks" targeted at specific audiences. For ThreadBanger, a "network" for people who make their own clothes, signed just one sponsor, Janome Sewing Machines. Tim Shey, co-founder, claims his company makes a couple hundred thousand dollars a month with this approach.

Kevin Maney writes: Who knew a stinkin' cloud could get get so crowded. But here comes Microsoft stomping into cloud computing, instantly taking up space like a 300-pound guy in a middle seat.