Technorati, a San Francisco-based startup site that tracks and indexes blogs, is the latest of the Silicon Valley companies laying off employees and cutting pay for their remaining staff.

President and chief executive, Richard Jalichandra said to “"weather the storm” of the current economic crisis, they will lay off six employees and two other positions within their company will not be replaced.

Their management team will take a 15-25% pay cut, and staff will have 10% of their salaries cut, as well.

Although this news is tough, Mr. Jalichandra remains hopeful about Technorati’s future. "In the long run, Technorati will emerge a stronger and more profitable place for us, and the bloggers we serve, to thrive personally, professionally and financially."

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Welcome to the Tech News Countdown, hosted by Alison Haislip. Every Friday, Alison brings you the top 5 tech stories of the week so be sure to watch the show. Otherwise, she'll be sad and you don't want that, do you?

This week Alison brings you the latest on NASA's new water recycling program, researchers shooting for the creation of a cybernetic brain, a woman who wants a webcam in her empty eye socket, Obama's plans for his high-tech Presidential limo, and a doctor who believes that we'll see a spike in births in 9 months due to Obama's victory. Sexy.

Here now, is the Tech News Countdown.

Tech News Countdown - November 21, 2008

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The British comedy group, Monty Python, has launched their own YouTube channel.

While the site features many Python clips, the biggest attention grabber is a video blaming users for "ripping" the show off.

"For three years you YouTubers have been ripping us off, taking tens of thousands of our videos and putting them on YouTube. Now the tables are turned. It's time for us to take matters into our own hands.

They add cheekily, "We know who you are, we know where you live and we could come after you in ways too horrible to tell. But being the extraordinarily nice chaps we are, we've figured a better way to get our own back: We've launched our own Monty Python channel on YouTube."

MP is going to cease "those crap quality videos" posted on YouTube and begin delivering "HQ videos" from the "vault."

While the videos will be free to watch, MP is asking that in lieu of "driveling, mindless comments," fans purchase their movies and TV shows, and "soften our pain and disgust at being ripped off all these years."

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As an answer to the illicit trading of new forms of fake discs that have begun in China, Sony Pictures will become the first Hollywood studio to distribute Blu-ray DVDs there.

For 205 yuan (US $30), Sony Pictures Home Entertainment will release 30 current and classics in this high-definition format, which Sony developed.

This also corresponds with the launch of Sony's BDP--S350 Blu-ray player.

It's said that Warner Bros. and Disney are to follow shortly.

After Yahoo's CEO Jerry Yang announced on Monday, November 16, 2008, that he was stepping down, Yahoo Inc. shares went up 11%.

This could mean that Microsoft Corp. could make another bid for the Internet company that's faced hollowed earnings and sinking stock prices.

Mr. Yang, who co-founded Yahoo in 1995, demured and resisted at a $47.5 billion takeover offer from Microsoft back in May 2008.  Perhaps it's this emotional attachment that also inspired him to decide to step down as CEO so that the company can improve its stocks and revenue.

He won't, however, vacate his current position until a replacement is found.  Yahoo is interviewing candidates internally, as well as outside in a search that's being handled by Roy Bostock, chairman of Yahoo and an executive recruitment firm.

Steve Demeter's new puzzle game Trism for the iPod and iPhone has been so popular that it's earned him $250K in profits the first two months.

Mr. Demeter, age 29, lives in the San Francisco Bay area. A former bank ATM software designer, he created Trism in his spare time and sold it to Apple last spring. The game has been available for download since July with the App Store.

As it usually takes a team of professional developers, not to mention millions of dollars, to create the ubiquitous fancy video game, industry observers have said that the advent of the iPhone and the App Store has made software development feasible to the average hobbyist.

Scott Steinberg, publisher of DigitalTrends.com and author of Get Rich Playing Games says, "The overhead and barriers to entry are so low that virtually anyone can afford to take a crack, if not several, at hitting a home run."

Anyone who owns and uses a BlackBerry can attest to the fact that he/she is a habitual user of the device. President Elect Barack Obama is no exception.

Bad news for him. As a tech-savvy politician who hopes to be the first Commander-in-Chief to have his laptop sitting on top the historical Oval Office desk at his disposal, he may very well have to leave the BlackBerry back in Chicago.

The Presidential Records Act requires all official correspondence to be public domain. This means that the incumbent President has "to dispose of records that no longer have administrative, historical, informational, or evidentiary value, once he has obtained the views of the Archivist of the United States on the proposed disposal."