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:
Last week I spent an evening at the Computer History Museum in Mountain View attending the IEEE’s celebration of the 40th anniversary of ARPANET. The event featured a panel with three prominent names:
On Monday, President Obama gave a major policy speech announcing his official innovation policy. Countless folks I’ve talked to across Silicon Valley have been urging him to lay out his agenda and address head-on his plans for one of the most important sectors of the American economy.
I’m still catching up on the details of the announcement. And it comes with a long white paper mapping out all the nitty gritty. You can press and the white paper here: Read the rest of this entry »
Earlier this month, I spent a morning at the offices of venture capital firm DCM in Palo Alto chatting with co-founder Dixon Doll and general partner Peter Moran. Though it was my first time meeting them in person, I had spoken with Doll previously in his role as chairman of the National Venture Capital Association.
In that capacity, Doll had overseen the creation of NVCA’s “4 Pillar Plan” to restore liquidity to the capital markets. Despite my initial skepticism, I found a lot to like in the plan. I particularly appreciated that the tone of the plan was not about blaming others (i.e., Sarbanes-Oxley), but explored the complex trends that had undermined the IPO markets and proposed a number of positive steps.
There was no agenda to this follow-up meeting, other to meet and get Doll’s and Moran’s thoughts on the state of the venture capital industry. Doll, in particular, has been active in the valley about three decades. And I came away with a lot of interesting thoughts from both men. Here are few topics that have stuck with me since our chat:
FCC Chairman Julius Genachowski visited the San Jose Mercury News on Monday to discuss a wide range of policy issues facing the Federal Communications Commission. In this 10-minute clip, he explains the three categories being explored as part of a national broadband policy his agency must deliver in February 2010.
As the headline suggests, Darlin laments that the digital age is robbing us of those wonderful moments of serendipity. I couldn’t disagree more strongly. In fact, I’ve found myself discovering more through serendipity than ever, in large part thanks to the rise of social media.
I am no longer an avid video game player. The whole Nintendo, Xbox, Playstation competition has completely passed me by. It was only just this past weekend, while visiting some relatives in Scotts Valley, that I tried the Wii for the first time (bowling, of course, see the end of this post for why that’s fitting). I have a feeling that some kind of gaming console will be in my near future because my 6-year-old spent the day playing the Wii with his cousin and he is now obsessed with getting a Wii. (”Daddy, is it too early to write to Santa Claus and ask him to bring me a Wii?”)
Here’s the little guy in action over the weekend, via Qik:
In the SFGate.com story, three reporters compiled their nine favorite “classic” arcade games. My own defininsion of “classic” stops a lot sooner than theirs (mine is mid-1980s; theirs goes early 90s). But still, these were the games I loved. Once video games started becoming far more complex, and striving for more realism, I stopped playing. I just wasn’t as interested. I felt in some way, these simpler games left far more to the imagination, and were more accessible. As games became more complex, I was going to have to invest a lot of quarters just to learn the basics before I could start having fun.
So the SFGate story hit me with plenty of nostalgia. And I agreed with a few of their choices: Tron (1982); Star Wars (1983); Battlezone (1980). But they left a few of my essential games off the list. I purposely avoided reading the comments on the SFGate story, because I wanted to go with the ones that stuck out in my mind from reading the original piece:
On Thursday, I appeared on the latest episode of NBC 11 new tech talk show, “Press Here.” Ex-merc colleague Jon Fortt was also on the media panel for the show which examined the persistent problems with digital copyright issues.
If you’re using that old-fashioned TV thing in your living room, you can catch it on NBC 11 on Sunday at 9:30 a.m. Read the rest of this entry »
LOCATION: Microsoft Conference Center, 1065 La Avenida Street, Building 1, Mountain View, CA 94403
Tickets are still available, and it’s worth getting them in advance as they are a bit more at the door.
In the meantime, if you’re coming, post any questions you might have for the panelists in the comment section here and I’ll try to squeeze some of them in during the conversation.
Sometimes, it’s the little things in life that make such a big difference. When I got back from vacation last week, I finally got around to installing the new BlackBerry OS 4.5 on my Curve. And I’ve got a l wonderful surprise.
I had requested the update because I wanted try a new application called Slacker. Basically, Slacker lets you create a personalized radio station online. They had recently come out with an app that allows you to stream that station through your BlackBerry. I’ve never really lusted after the iPhone, but I have been slightly envious of the great Pandora music streaming application. So I was eager to try Slacker for BlackBerry.
The installation went relatively smoothly, and took about an hour. When it was all ready and I re-booted, I discovered that the new OS had added a video camera capability to my BlackBerry. I had the camera for photos, of course, But now it could record video. I immediately installed the Qik application and have just started playing around with streaming videos from the phone. I’ll post some when I get something halfway decent. But so far, I’m finding it really cool, and wishing I’d had it while I was in Hawaii.
In the meantime, I’ve barely had time to play with Slacker, except to stream a few songs. So far, the streaming has been strong, and when I put headphones on, the sound quality is good.
It also struck me — again — how remarkable this device (and others like the iPhone) is. I’ve got a small computer with GPS, video, Internet, e-mail, and music streaming. Maybe it seems like we should take this for granted, but I don’t think so. It’s just bolstered my conviction that mobile is one of the two big areas of innovation going on in our lives right now (the other being green tech).
Now I’m wondering what other applications I should be checking out? Let me know your favorites and I’ll try them out.
This coming Thursday (Feb. 19), I’ll be 
Subscribe via RSS all feeds