This morning, Exxon (XOM) announced that it’s spending $41 billion to acquire XTO Energy (XTO), a major player in natural gas and unconventional shale.

Here’s a great example of a company sticking its money where its mouth is.

Despite the recession, Asia’s leading tech companies remain extremely bullish.

We are now well into law school exam period. And stressed out students keep taking to the Twitter.

Bought for $14 million in 2000, put on the market several weeks ago for $27.5 million, and sold promptly for $24 million, this Palm Beach mansion was a great investment for Malcolm Glazer.

Once again, Lightspeed is going on record to make some predictions for 2010, in the areas of Consumer Internet, Mobile, Cleantech and Enterprise.

The Greek economy is the thread hanging off of Europe’s sweater, and if it gets pulled, the entire Eurozone could unravel.

Facebook controversially forced profile pictures into public and pushed users to share candids with the whole world. So now we’re blessed with pics of the social network’s young CEO shirtless, romantic, and clutching a teddy bear.

The banks are repaying TARP. Great.

Bankers in the US are less popular than politicians these days.

Facebook is getting a movie, so why not AOL?

From the iPhone to the Garmin, advancements and gadgets introduced this decade changed the whole world.

As the summer was turning into a fall, there was a really brief period when it was super-cool to believe in the V-shaped recovery.

 

McSweeney’s, the independent, awesome, publisher from San Francisco printed a thick Sunday-style newspaper this week, calling it Panorama.

Silicon Valley’s entrepreneurs, engineers, and venture capitalists aren’t just risk-takers at their day jobs.

JP Morgan FX traders had a Christmas party at Connolly’s pub on 14 E 47th.

[credit provider=”Dylan Love”] As we obsess over the newest latest technology, some of which isn’t even available yet, it’s nice to take a nostalgic look at great gadgets of the past.From the worlds of media to communication to computing, here are 10 gadgets and technologies that absolutely shook things up […]

AOL only began trading as a company separate from Time Warner (TWX) this morning.

This decade is the decade of gadgets.

Analyst Dave Rosenberg presents a series of enlightening charts this morning that show that for the first time in 14 months, manufacturing inventories are up across the board.

As the decade draws to a close, nostalgic Adweek selected its nominations for the Best Commercials of the 2000’s.

AOL didn’t invite us to its big spin-off party at the New York Stock Exchange tonight, but we do have a copy of the invitation. We’ve pasted it below. It’s splashy!

AOL is becoming a landing strip for experienced print journalists who accepted buyouts, got laid off or wanted to move on to (marginally safer) digital ground.

Welcome to Naissance Capital, a socially-responsible Swiss hedge fund that invests in companies which have a high representation of women in the boardroom.

Complete Coverage: The Complete List, A-Z Who’s New? 2008 List 2007 ListFor many New York tech and media companies, 2009 was a year to forget: Declining advertising and subscription revenue, penny-pinching customers, and extra-careful investors made for an unpleasant business environment — at least the first half of the year.

News and speculation about what will happen to the endorsement deals of Tiger Woods is rampant. Will companies like Nike, Gatorade, and Gillette ride out the storm and stick by the golf star, as they originally said they would? Or will the barrage of bad press end in a severing […]

Last week we marveled at the animated recreation of the Tiger Woods car accident.

Last year around this time, several publications (including us) ran stories about the death of the American mall.

Prior to the financial crisis, “global imbalances” — primarily large American budget and trade deficits financed by foreigners — were considered a potential trigger for a coming global financial crisis.

Sony (SNE) has filed a patent application for an object that looks like the company’s forthcoming Wii-like motion wand, Kotaku reports.

Sure, we should all try to live more energy-efficiently.

From the webcast yesterday, the JooJoo (previously named Crunchpad) seemed flimsy and barely working. But now that we spent a good deal of hands on time with it, we can say that Fusion Garage executed an internet tablet quite well.

Sony and Microsoft are readying peripheral devices next year to add on to the PlayStation 3 and Xbox 360 to further extend their product lives.

Dubai’s economic meltdown was a warning sign of further sovereign default troubles for other governments.

These folks staring out the window might argue otherwise, but Goldman’s new neighbourhood in Battery Park is not much to look at.

After Friday’s surprising jobs report, there has been a glimmer of hope that the U.S. won’t be stuck with 10% unemployment for years.

Here’s good news from temp staffing firm Manpower, which just completed its latest employment and staffing survey.

In its recent presentation on the future of gold prices, miner Barrick Gold (ABX) bullishly noted the coming, permanent decline in annual gold production.

The real estate mogul who developed Park Avenue Court and Hotel Pennsylvania naturally lives in his own luxurious, mega-expensive mansion.

Sean “Diddy” Combs will be a special guest at the AOL Aol. New York Stock Exchange kickoff party on December 9, a source tells us.

If you’re going to close a venture deal or hire a rock star engineer in Silicon Valley, it’s probably going to happen over lunch.

On Friday, the BLS announced that unemployment in November had edged down to 10%, which was WAY better than analysts had been expecting. The report was, arguably, the first major green shoot on the unemployment front.

[preserve] [/preserve] [preserve] [/preserve] “Wall Street got drunk.”

On December 23, 2008, Yahoo (YHOO) created a “complicance guide for law enforcement,” detailing what kinds of user data the company keeps and for how long, and how government officials should go about requesting it.

It’s a relief to finally lay hands on the Nook. The dual-screen reader was just a prop at its unveiling so I’m happy to report it works (pretty) well. It can’t kill Kindle yet, but it’s an alternative worth considering.

Just last week, major gold miner Barrick Gold (ABX) announced that it had fully eliminated its hedge book, and so from here on out, its earnings would be fully exposed to the price of the metal.

To us what’s most impressive about hedge fund manager John Paulson is that after making an uber-bearish bet that made him billion, he successfully parried the changing winds and made profits on the way up. Other mega-bears stayed mega-bearish and have seen their reputations blown to smithereens.

Want a celebrity’s old home? Love tree houses? Have some spare millions?

Here’s a question that’s much harder to answer than it should be: What is AOL?

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40 years ago, New York Mayor John Lindsay dubbed New York “Fun City.”

From Entrepreneur: If you’re reading this, you’re probably already running your own small or mid-sized business. Maybe you’re doing OK, but your competitors are doing better and you’re wondering if you could be doing more to increase sales.

Getting a job at Google or a hot startup like Facebook can be a painful process.

AOL wants 2,500 employees — a third of its headcount — to volunteer for layoffs. Today is the first day AOL employees can tell management that yes, they’d like to take a buyout.

Global trade has collapsed like never before in recorded history.

Ready to kick arse and make a boatload of money in 2010?

Comcast’s deal faces a sceptical press and investing community, as it’s hard to spot the synergies between Comcast and NBC.

brass is publicly hinting that its 70 (!) blogs will soon be culled to a less absurd number. Worried your favourite will be killed? We’ve handicapped the survival chances of eight blogs for your convenience.

[preserve] [/preserve] Luxury is defined by an individual’s personal tastes and wealth.

Luxury home builder Toll Brothers just reported their fourth quarter results today.

As Goldman Sachs (GS) holds emergency meetings with shareholders over the subject of pay, the bank has released a document (.pdf), via FT Alphaville,  to the public explaining why, exactly, Goldman employees deserve to be richer than God.

Deutsche Bank is out with an outlook for 2010, which includes various themes and risks investors need to watch out for.

Sports Illustrated revealed screen grabs — and a video demonstration — of what the magazine would look like on a tablet computer.