SiliconBeat

I can be as cynical as anyone when I hear someone droning on about how technology can solve all the world’s problem. I often find that Silicon Valley can sometimes have an almost messianic faith that we’re just a few lines of code away from solving any social ill. Just believe in the power of free markets and progress through technology, and we’ll be fine.

Nonsense, of course. But still, there is potential to do good at the intersection of technology and philanthropy. And that was certainly in evidence at the Netsquared Conference held May 27 and May 28. Read the rest of this entry »

• Peter Thiel Makes Down Payment on Libertarian Ocean Colonies
  If you always dreamed of living deep under the waters of the San Francisco Bay, you may finally get your chance.
  (tags: technology politics economics government)
• The fbOpen Initiative: Facebook Confirms Plans to Open-Source Its Platform
  This is very exciting. I’ve been using Facebook less and less in recent months. I hope this is true. I think it might make Facebook much more relevant again.
  (tags: facebook socialnetworking)
• http://virtuallyblind.com/2008/05/27/suns-general-counsel-visits-second-life/
  Sun General Counsel goes inworld.
  (tags: secondlife sunmicrosystems inworld)
• Your tweets are not private communication: SteveOuting.com
  Good reminder: Twitter is public. Be careful what you tweet.
  (tags: twitter steveouting)

It looks like four years into the job, LSI’s chief executive, Abhijit Talwalkar still isn’t sure he wants it. How else to explain the company’s second extension of an originally two-year agreement with Talwalkar to pay him $5,000 a month for housing and tens of thousands a year to pay for his commute between Oregon and the Bay Area. Read the rest of this entry »

Facebook has been all over the news the past couple of weeks. While each little tidbit that has emerged has been intriguing, I’m not sure any of these developments are addressing what I see as fundamental flaw with the social networking site: It’s not that useful. Read the rest of this entry »

Affymetrix, the Santa Clara maker of products used in genetic analysis, said in a filing Tuesday that its head lawyer, General Counsel Barbara Caulfied (pictured), will be leaving the company to join the law firm of Dewey & LeBoef. What the filing did not reveal was that she will become co-chair of the firm’s intellectual property litigation group and is taking three other Affymetrix lawyers with her.  Ouch. Read the rest of this entry »

Stuart Moldaw, the founder of the Ross Dress For Less retail chain, died May 24 “following a brief illness,” according to a press release the company issued Tuesday. He was 81. In 1982, Moldaw founded the Ross chain, which began as a six-store chain headquartered in the Bay Area and now has 838 in 27 states. He served as chairman of its board until 1993 and remained as a director ever since. He was also a co-founder of U.S. Venture Partners, the Menlo Park venture capital firm, as well as a founding investor in Gymboree, the children’s clothing and accessory chain store that began life in the Bay Area in 1976 as a maker of parent-child play programs. Read the rest of this entry »

Investors didn’t seem pleased by the news that SuccessFactors of San Mateo announced it would sell up to 7.5 million more of its shares to the public in an underwritten offering barely six months after its initial public offering, and the first business day after its shareholders meeting Friday. Its shares fell 71 cents, or 6.6 percent, to $10.74. It was the stock’s biggest drop since January. Read the rest of this entry »

• Mashable! - The Social Networking Blog
  A nice rundown of six services that could use an upgrade. Soon
  (tags: mash Blog SocialNetworking Web2.0 mashup news google)
• The Amazing Money Machine
  One of my colleagues, Rachel Wilner, passed this link along. It’s a fascinating look at Obama’s fundraising and how his team harnessed the Internet to make it happen.
  (tags: politics obama fundraising internet technology 2008 finance)
• Emily Gould - Exposed - Blog-Post Confidential - Gawker - NYTimes.com
  Read the New York Times Magazine cover story that everyone loves to hate. The subject: former Gawker Media editor Emily Gould dissects her life online. Read the story, then read the 1,000+ comments.
  (tags: blog culture technology blogging writing privacy)

The board of directors at Marvell Technology Group felt it necessary to set down in writing a policy governing the use of its evidently new corporate aircraft. The policy, established May 21, retroactively approved the personal use of the jet back in February by the company’s chief executive, Sehat Sutardja, whose wife and Marvell’s director of business development, Weili Dai, went with him on the flight. Read the rest of this entry »

Before it headed out for the Memorial Day weekend, Genitope — the Fremont biopharmaceutical company that halted development of its experimental treatment for non-Hodgin’s lymphoma in March after the Food and Drug Administration said at least one more clinical trial was needed — sent a filing to the SEC saying that it was in the process of writing down the value of its “long-lived assets,” which evidently had some value prior to the FDA’s decision but not so much after. Read the rest of this entry »