The party’s over, and not just for America.

“A deep global recession is becoming more a matter of when, not if,” said Tim Bond, global strategist for Barclays Capital in London.

Ice-T called Soulja Boy’s music “garbage”, especially when compared to the best of hip hop from his era, Rakim & Co.. Soulja Boy, after about 10 minutes of stand-up, responds sincerely with a defense of his hustle. Better father/son disfunctionality than Jerry Springer, not as good as Bill Cosby on Tavis Smiley.

Strong praise from the blogosphere, Ebert & Roper, and just about everyone else for this instant classic. As a character, Wall-E is “better than R2D2″, according to tech blog Engadget, because “R2D2 was just a glorified extra”.

Once a model showcase of luxury home design, a Bridgehampton mansion is now being price-chopped from $27 million to $19.5 million. The credit mess is starting to affect the once unassailable high-end, as a foreclosure notice was recently filed against the home’s $4.4 million mortgage.

The Google Sandbox is a theory that Google filters for older, more established publishers. What it indicates is that the internet is quickly consolidating to a point that the newest websites should be advised to join legitimate mini-networks to get their attention.

alt="http://www.colewiebe.com/blog/wp-content/uploads/2007/10/sandbox.jpg" />The diss on Google News is that its algorithms don’t always get it right, or fast enough. In an often-cited example, Tim Russert’s death wasn’t noticed by Google until an hour after other major sources. But mathematically speaking, events like Tim Russert’s death is hard to assign a high-value to, until the moment it happened. We are afterall human, and we can not precisely know our own reactions, or the worlds until it happens.

After first being rejected, a re-design for revamping the historic Domino Sugar factory into waterfront condos has been approved. The original design added five stories of glass condos to the top of the 1884 building. Its since been reduced to four stories and now features the Dominos Sugar sign (currently on an adjacent building).

Led by Jeff Bezos of Amazon, Spark Capital and existing investors Union Square Ventures and Digital Garage, Twitter received an estimated $15M infusion today. The actual number is undisclosed but is instead based on a previous report from PaidContent’s Rafat Ali who claims a new total of $20M in VC (their first round yielded $5M) and a $100M valuation.

LONDON - A rare Monet painting of water lilies fetched $80.4M on Tuesday night at Christie’s. Experts were expecting Le Bassin aux Nymphéas to yield half that. The previous record for a Monet was $41.4M for “The Railroad Bridge at Argenteuil” at Sotheby’s in New York, only last month. The 3×6 feet Le Bassin aux Nymphéas was painted in 1919.

Pointless, perhaps, but whoever said being on the cutting edge was practical, or cheap? The $500 Altered Electric Skateboard is neither, but it does feature a self-powered longboard body that can go 8-12 miles on a single charge. That’s enough for tooling around the neighborhood, and with 0-19 mph in under just four seconds, you’ll burn those other guys still content with kick-push, kick-push.

The problem with solar and other green technology is that they’re expensive - the economies of scale and distribution have not quite reached a price point of mass consumption. Solar panels for example, while becoming more efficient at $1/watt, is still a pricey option for homeowners. Other costs include the panel itself and installation.