The Digerati Life provides for us a look at the top financial news and business stories that shaped 2008 and had a hand in affecting our personal finances.

The bloodletting in the c-suite started in 2007. It still hasn't stopped. Another year goes by and more chief executives get the ax — probably more than in any previous year. People shook their heads when Charles Prince III at Citigroup and Stanley O'Neal at Merrill Lynch got the boot in 2007. Now it look like they were lucky. They got out just in time.

2008 came in two parts. Part I, which ran through Bear Stearns, carried the vestiges of prior years, when we thought we could get away with everything, never anticipating that in actuality, everything would get away from us. Some of the books on this list reflect that optimistic, braced mentality, when words like “social networking” still gave us more jitters than “401K.”

Now that Congress has failed to bail out Wall Street, the country (and world, to a lesser extent) has begun bracing itself for nuclear winter. The technology sector is no exception, even if the Silicon Valley tends to fancy itself as immune to broader economic turmoil.

It’s hard to say how many people are filing bankruptcy these days. Suffice to say that it’s become relatively common. As a freelancer involved with the media, I’ve been biting my nails about whether some publications will be in business long enough to pay up. If you’re in a similar situation, take note of these five steps to protect yourself:

The final months of 2008 have witnessed massive layoffs, an imploding financial system and an unprecedented housing crisis in the United States. In November, consumer spending dropped 3.8 percent – one of the largest one-month declines in recent history. Financial giants including Lehman Brothers have gone under, while others such as AIG (American International Group) Inc. have received billions in bailouts from the federal government in a desperate attempt to keep the U.S. economy afloat. Even CEOs of major corporations are hurting, conceding to $1 yearly salaries.

Brand monitoring has become an essential task for any individual or corporation. Years ago, when people talked about our brands, it was behind our backs and we almost never found out about it. Today, most of these dialogues are right in front of our own eyes and the number of locations where our brands may be cited is astronomical!

Some blogs truly define today’s business voice. These blogs represent a healthy mixture of independent and mainstream voices, prominent academics and small business owners with equally strong opinions. We compiled a completely biased sampling of our 50 favorite blogs, sorted by category.

It's a small mistake compared with the ones that led to the unraveling of our financial system, but it said a lot about the man in charge of Countrywide. Back in May, Chairman Angelo Mozilo replied to an e-mail from a distressed homeowner, calling his plea for help "disgusting" because it appeared that he'd been "coached" by the internet. Countrywide later said that Mozilo "regretted any misunderstanding caused by his inadvertent response to an e-mail."

Enterprise adoption of cloud computing, SaaS, and social media (whatever you want to call it) is accelerating. This is a healthy market, in which vendors are doing well in a tough economy. As we near the end of a year that will go down in history with the words "meltdown," "panic," "crisis," and "depression" attached, it is time to celebrate the winners in this market, enterprise-focused web products that are already doing well and poised for even greater success in 2009.