SiliconBeat

Sounds like Kris is off and running on his new job at Stanford:
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Like many air travelers, I followed in bewilderment last week the strange tale of the Northwest Airlines pilots who inadvertently overshot their destination of Minneapolis by 110 miles, or so. Were they drunk? Was it terrorists?

At last, this week the pilots explained the mystery: They were looking at their laptops and just got so wrapped up, they forget about that whole landing thing. No harm, no foul.

Now, let’s not judge them too harshly. Because let’s face it, we’ve all been there. If not in our planes, then at least while driving our cars.

Distraction by technology while traveling is becoming a plague on our busy, modern day lives. I’m not just referring to gabbing on your cellphone or texting while driving. That’s kids stuff. I’m talking about the large scale distractions that cause us all to do our share of bone headed moves.

In solidarity with the beleaguered crew of Flight 188, I wanted to share my woeful tales of techno distraction in the hope that we, as a society, can collectively learn some important lessons and make the world a safer place. Read the rest of this entry »

Two-hundred and ninety-seven long days after he lost his aviation-tech job at San Jose’s airport, Kris Rowberry is finally finding salvation.

When he starts his new job on Monday moving and tracking supplies throughout Stanford University’s medical school, hospitals and clinics, the 25-year-old San Jose resident will be
the first of the three Pink Slip 2.0 participants followed by the Mercury News the past year to have escaped the jaws of joblessness.

And all it took, besides those never-ending days, was two reams of resume paper, lots of cold-calling, numerous dead-ends, and way too many sleepless nights.

“”I don’t think it’s hit me yet,” Rowberry said Tuesday. “”After nine-and-a-half months of looking, I’m a little dazed. It’s like, is this really happening?” Read the rest of this entry »

Morgan Stanley analyst Mary Meeker, speaking at the Web 2.0 Summit, posted her slides online.

No jobs yet for our three pink-slippers, but here are a couple of updates, first one from Roopa: Read the rest of this entry »

In a column running this weekend about Google Wave, I mention that I read a lot of posts and watched a lot of videos to get started. I thought I’d post them here for others who are just diving in. And if you have other links to good “how-tos” or perspectives on why GW is great or not, post them in the comments below.

Here are my links: Read the rest of this entry »

On Friday, I’ll be attending a Digital Think In hosted by National Public Radio and Frog Design. The goal of the gathering is to brainstorm ideas about the future of NPR. I was honored to be asked to join. And my self aside, the line-up of participants is very exciting:

Craig Newmark, Founder of craigslist; Reid Hoffman, Chairman and co-Founder of LinkedIn; Roger McNamee, Managing Director and Co-Founder of Elevation Partners; Chris Beard, Chief Innovation Officer of Mozilla; Krishna Bharat, Principal Scientist and creator of Google News; and Sue Gardner, Executive Director of Wikimedia Foundation, among many others.

Tim Leberecht, frog design’s vice president of marketing and communications, sets the stage with this post today: Read the rest of this entry »

In a quiet, ignoble manner, the final chapter of the dot-com bubble came to a close this week. What, you didn’t hear the book closing? Join the club. I almost missed it myself.

On Tuesday, the central legal case that sought to assign blame for that era’s excess fizzled to an end. A handful of large banks put their second-most recent scandal behind them when they agreed to settle claims of rigging the IPO market for $586 million. They’re still trying to put last year’s little financial hiccup behind them.

That nine-figure sum only sounds like a lot of money because you probably work for a living. (That is, if you’re among the fortune 90 percent in Silicon Valley.) In fact, the legal firm that brought the class action suit against 309 start-ups and 55 underwriters at one point were asking for $12.5 billion.

The settlement provides a muddled, un-satisfying conclusion to an era. We wanted clarity. We wanted answers. We wanted someone to blame. Instead, we have fog. And the people we wanted to tar as the bad guys, turns out they were just scapegoats. Maybe. Or maybe not. Either way, take hear that the unfairly accused seem to have bounced back. Read the rest of this entry »

Back on June 20, 1999, a made-for-TV movie called “Pirates of Silicon Valley” first aired. The movie chronicled the rivalry between Apple’s Steve Jobs and Microsoft’s Bill Gates.

This happened exactly one month before I moved to Silicon Valley from North Carolina. As I recall, the movie got lukewarm reviews, and I never saw it. Or even really thought about it, for that matter.

But recently, it’s popped up on my radar in rather random fashion. One of the keywords I track on Twitter is “silicon valley.” And at least a couple times each day, someone makes a reference to the movie:

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I’ve been following the patent reform debate closely. This is one of those perennial issues that everyone wants to see fixed, but can never find a compromise. But today comes word that the White House has backed a compromise that promises to move legislation at least out of committee. From the Wall Street Journal:

“President Barack Obama’s administration supports major changes proposed in landmark patent legislation, likely accompanied by a roughly 15% fee hike, U.S. Patent and Trademark Office Director David Kappos said Tuesday.

“While a compromise, it clearly moves the ball forward,” Kappos said of the bill, which if approved would bring the first major changes to the patent process in 50 years. On Monday, Commerce Secretary Gary Locke wrote a letter to the Senate Judiciary Committee expressing support for the Senate legislation.

The bill, introduced by Sen. Patrick Leahy, D-Vt., pushes to harmonize the U.S. patent process with international standards and grants the patent office more authority to make rules and increase fees.

We’ll see if the center holds on this. Among the biggest changes: Read the rest of this entry »