Roundup: AT&T cutting 12,000 jobs, record spending on Cyber Monday and more

AT&T cutting 12,000 jobs – That’s about four percent of the company’s workforce; it plans to pay about $600 million in severance over the next year.

Yahoo’s Search Assist gets image previews — The feature, which allows you to see the results for a suggested search before you actually click, is now available on the search results page and will be added to Yahoo.com eventually.

“Cyber Monday” e-commerce spending jumps 15 percent — With its heavy online discounts, the day is seen as a bellwether of how the holiday shopping season will go for web sites. This year’s $846 million take makes it the second highest online spending day on record.

Small businesses shedding the most jobs since 2001 — Small businesses lost 79,000 jobs in November, according to the ADP Small Business Report.

IBM launches a Microsoft-free desktop — IBM is offering a set of software applications that run on a backroom server and don’t require any products from software giant Microsoft.

The New York Times opens front (web) page to third-party content — The content in the new Times Extra section comes from Blogrunner, the news aggregator acquired by The Times in 2005.

Second Android phone now available for pre-sale – That’s the Agora Pro fom Australian manufacturer Kogan, shipping at the end of January.

Viacom lays off 850 – The media giant is also suspending salary increases until next year. Gawker has the company memo.

Zapatec introduces Zcounts to fight spam — Zcounts allow users to generate and manage multiple email aliases for any web site through Zapatec’s 6zap email program.

Electronic Arts buys Korean free-to-play game developer J2MSoft — Gaming giant EA says the purchase will help it expand in Asia.

Largest U.K. indie music distributor Pinnacle goes under — The company distributed records from musicians like The Strokes and Tom Waits to retailers like Amazon and HMV.

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