Bebo caught in Irish conflict — The video sharing site has become an unexpected platform for both Irish Catholics and Protestants to hurl insults and violent threats at each other. The BBC has the story.

Downturn puts drag on angels — The Center for Venture Research reports that angel investors put less money into each of their startups in 2008 than in years previous, noting a drop of 26 percent from 2007.

Encarta buckles under Wikipedia’s weight — Microsoft will pull its Encarta encyclopedia software from store shelves in June after it failed to compete with its more pliable rival.

Cloud computing coalition discloses members — Those that signed the so-called “cloud manifesto” supporting cloud computing principles, have officially been identified. This group includes Cisco Systems, IBM and Sun Microsystems, but lacks some bigger predicted names, reports the Wall Street Journal.

Entellium execs put behind bars — The two former top executives from customer relations software maker Entellium have been sentenced to three years in prison and heavy fines for fraudulently inflating revenue reports by more than 400 percent.

YouTube, the newest Mouseketeer — The web’s most popular video site has struck a content distribution deal with Walt Disney’s television branch. The New York Times has the details.

Patent auction gets classy — The RPX Corporation, a company devoted solely to buying and aggregating as any pantents as possible, cleaned up at last week’s patent auction hosted at the Ritz Carlton hotel in San Francisco.

Asian virtual goods companies score big — Three Japanese and Korean-made virtual worlds brought in $510 million in 2008 alone. Virtual Goods News has more.

Spam rebounds from cutbacks — Despite multiple efforts to curtail the amount of junk mail finding its way into people’s inboxes, spam still accounts for 94 percent of all email received.

China sets up Nasdaq copycat — China released a set of rules governing initial public offering procedures for its new stock market modeled after the American Nasdaq.

Intel teams with GroovyChannel to build multi-core databases — Fox Business has more.

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