You won’t want to miss their video recap of the week’s business news from Silicon Valley. Really. You won’t. Probably

It’s a big order, fueled by big ideas. Between sessions I sat down with Matt Bannick, the Redwood City-based investment fund’s managing partner. He explained the Network’s innovative approach to promoting world-changing good.

Here’s Bannick’s Forbes piece on working with moguls who’ve signed the Giving Pledge.

The Omidyar Network’s biggest innovation is the practice of investing in both non-profit and for-profit efforts to do social good. The buzz words — social enterprise, impact investing, strategic investing — are beginning to sound familiar, but when eBay founder Pierre Omidyar launched his effort nine years ago, it was cutting-edge stuff.

“He felt constrained,” Bannick said of Omidyar’s view of the purely non-profit world. “He said, ‘I created all these jobs and a $60 billion company with eBay and that’s a for-profit having a social impact.”

The Network was in the news this week for funding Change.org, which in turn was a player in the Boy Scouts of America’s decision to finally allow openly-gay Scouts to participate in the organization.

There is a place, of course, for non-profits, but Bannick says for-profits have all sorts of advantages that non-profits don’t. He explained a bit in this video:

When for-profits deliver value, he says, customers are willing to pay more for your product or service.

“When you earn the financial return, you can scale much more rapidly. You can tap the capital markets to grow even faster,” Bannick says.

Non-profits, meantime, often have to live from grant to grant, rather than relying on profits to keep the operation going and growing.

The Network, which has granted and invested more than $600 million since its 2004 launch, has split the money about evenly between non-profit and for-profit enterprises.

“The capital we’ve distributed is based on an entrepreneur with a fabulous idea that has the potential to change the world,” Bannick says. “And that goes back to our roots in the valley.”

Bannick says the idea is to make a big, big impact in broad areas, such as free expression, property rights, entrepreneurship, financial services for the poor, government transparency and the like.

For instance, the Omidyar Network has supported the “I Paid a Bribe” initiative in India that resulted in the website ipaidabribe.org, which allows citizens to shine a light on shakedowns, which are far too common.

The breath and thoughtfulness of the Omidyar Network had me thinking of Pierre and Pam Omidyar as the Betty and Gordon Moore or the David and Lucile Packard or the Bill and Flora Hewlett of their generation.

Once eBay was up and running, Omidyar wasn’t content to only transform the world of buying and selling stuff. Soon after scoring his first billion or so, he turned his attention to philanthropy, figuring there had to be a better way.

And so while the Omidyars may have a ways to go before they are truly on the level of the valley’s philanthropy pioneers, they certainly seem to be headed in that direction — even if they are taking a different, more market based, route to get there.

So, how does she do it? Good news. Yep. That’s what Huffington said when she stopped by Silicon Valley to chat with old friend and eBay founder Pierre Omidyar in front of a few hundred close friends at the Omidyar Network’s annual executive forum.

“I think putting the spotlight on what is working is a huge obligation,” Huffington told the do-gooders from around the world assembled at the Fairmont Hotel in San Jose. “We need to do everything we can to experience these better angels in our nature.”

Talking to billionare Omidyar up on a stage, Huffington said emphasizing good news is exactly what she’s done at the 8-year-old Huffington Post. For instance, she said, she launched a section none-to-subtly called “Good News” to make a place for all that’s right with the world.

Phew. I was afraid she was going to say that she was emphasizing good news with the string of HuffPo headlines along the lines of this one:

‘Girls Gone Wild’ founder backtracks on saying jury is “retarded” and “should be shot”huff.to/1893jui

— Huffington Post (@HuffingtonPost) May 24, 2013

Anyway, Huffington said the Good News section was good news for HuffPo’s unique visitors, or UVs as those in the Web business say, explaining the section draws “five million UVs a month.”

But it’s not the clicks that are important, Huffington added. Moving the world in a positive direction is the whole reason behind recognizing what works.

“The reason around doing that,” she said, “is to help good things that are happening to scale.”

News organizations that live by “if it bleeds, it leads” have it all wrong, she said. For instance, HuffPo set up discussions at the national political conventions in 2012 to start a conversation about what to do about creating more jobs.

Not only was it a heck of a conversation, but after hearing it Goldman Sachs, which could use a little good news of its own after playing a major role in crashing the U.S. economy, approached The Huffington Post with a sponsorship deal.

“That was a seven figure deal,” she said.

Are you listening mainstream media outlets?

Huffington and Omidyar, who funds the Omidyar Network, a powerhouse firm that invests in non-profits and for-profit organizations creating a social good, had what’s often called a wide-ranging talk before the crowd of executives running social-good outfits.

For instance, Huffington also had some advice for all of us, which amounted to: Chill out. She said organizations should incorporate training in mindfulness and stress-relief into their operations.

Stress-free people make better decisions, Huffington said, which is better for the bottom line.

“This is not new-agey, California, woo-woo stuff,” she said.

She has buckled down on herself, she said, after a recent fall brought on by exhaustion. She still struggles with keeping her work life and home life in balance but she is doing much better.

“It’s enabled me to make better decisions,” she said, “to be wiser about people.”

And at HuffPo HQ there are sleep pods, ala Google, Omidyar pointed out.

True, Huffington said, though at first employees were hesitant to stretch out in the middle of the work day.

“Now they are full,” she said. “The other day I was walking by and I saw two people walking out of one. Whatever it takes to recharge. Just don’t tell HR.”

Your secret is safe with us, Arianna.

(File photo by the Associated Press)

But is tech on its way to helping do just that — and are we ready for it? Consider the news reported by Quartz this week that NASA has awarded a six-month, $125,000 grant to Austin-based Systems & Materials Research Corp. for the development of a prototype of a food synthesizer. The SMRC mechanical engineer with the proposal for a 3D food printer, Anjan Contractor, told Quartz: “If you can program your needs into a 3D printer, it can print exactly the nutrients that person requires.” Also: “We eventually have to change our perception of what we see as food.”

In other news about 3D printing and what it can do, a custom-designed splint made on a 3D printer — with help from computer-aided design and high-resolution imaging — is being credited with saving a baby’s life. A New England Journal of Medicine article published Thursday details how a polycaprolactone tube helped expand the bronchus of a then-3-month-old boy with a weak airway. Once, Kaiba Gionfriddo was on a ventilator every day. Now he is 20 months old, and his mom told the Detroit News, “he scoots across the floor and gets into everything.”

Photo of Kaiba Gionfriddo with his family dog, Bandit, outside their Ohio home this week. (Mark Stahl/Associated Press)

First in the lineup is Paul Santinelli of North Bridge Venture Partners, who founded enterprise systems management startup NOCpulse and sold it to Red Hat in 2002. He joined North Bridge three years later.

Q: HOW’D YOU GET INTO THIS RACKET?

A: I was lured to the darkside. As an entrepreneur, there was always some mystique to the venture business, how it operates, how the players became players. But once you get to this side, you start to ask yourself, “What did I do? Is Darth Vader really my father?”

All joking aside, I was fortunate to meet Dave Strohm and Rich D’Amore early in my career in technology, and I had some great mentoring to get me here.

Q: WHAT DO YOU LIKE ABOUT VENTURE CAPITAL?

A: Working with founders and building from the ground up is what I live to do. There is something to be said for the energy found inside the walls of a startup, coupled with the risks that you take every day to execute a plan.  It’s fun to work with sharp people and build companies that might change the world.

Q: WHAT KINDS OF PITCHES ARE YOU LOOKING FOR RIGHT NOW?

A: I’ve always been focused on infrastructure — networking, systems, storage, etc. It’s not the sexiest part of the industry,  and it usually gains very little attention compared to consumer Internet companies. But without scale and performant infrastructure for Web applications and online gaming, we might still be playing nothing more than Space Invaders on an Atari.

Q: WHAT’S THE BIGGEST MISTAKE ENTREPRENEURS MAKE?

A: Having been an entrepreneur in the first bubble, I can speak from experience: Not determining if there is a real business to be built or if the market wants what you are building.  As a founder, I was always enamored with what we were building, how efficient we were in building it and why it was “exactly” what the doctor ordered. Had I listened to our first VP of Sales and his feedback from the field and realized, “Hey, the market doesn’t want X, they want Y and are willing to pay for it,” I might have been able to move faster to a more acceptable solution. Without users, there’s no use for the best technology built.

Q: WHAT’S THE NEXT BIG THING GOING TO BE?

A: Good question… I have to find that crystal ball to help me with this one.

I’ve been investing on two specific themes: One, data consumption and data access are growing exponentially year over year. That means processing, storing and retrieving that data in an efficient way is going to critical.

And two, software is going to drive more of what hardware was designed to accomplish. So what does that mean? Software is becoming the cerebral cortex of networking and systems. The days of purpose-built hardware — routers, switches, high-end servers and other things that require specialty silicon — will be put on hold until we reach a point where Intel processors can’t process instructions fast enough to do the job.

Based on what I’ve seen on the horizon, it’s a pretty safe bet that the new multi-core processors will do 95% of what we need them to do in the network or within systems. So, the battle will be for more intelligent, efficient software.

Q: NORTHBRIDGE RECENTLY MOVED FROM SAN MATEO, WHERE THERE ARE FEW VC FIRMS, TO PALO ALTO, WHICH IS INCREASINGLY INUNDATED. HOW COME?

A: Serendipity really drove the decision. There’s something to be said for walking through downtown Palo Alto and running into someone starting a project or wanting to connect on an idea. Since we moved into our new space on Hamilton Ave., our ability to connect with founders, peers and investing partners has increased tremendously.

We also designed our space is an open format, to allow us to work like a startup, and we share the space with founders and entrepreneurs.  It’s vibrant and invigorating.

Q: YOU’RE A MUSICIAN, AND IT SEEMS A LOT OF OTHER VCS ARE TOO. WHY IS THAT?

A: “Creative outlet” is probably the best answer. Some people like fast cars, elaborate vacations, sailing, painting … and I like my guitar and a microphone. If you ask friends, they’ll tell you that it’s purely because I miss Jerry Garcia and I’m trying to recreate my younger years experiencing the Grateful Dead.  Sure, that could be part of the answer.  

ButI find it interesting to create an experience that I’m sharing in, versus living an experience that’s someone else’s creation.

I guess that’s why I like early stage and seed investing, too: You get to be a participant in the creation of something.

Nobody’s saying anything, officially, as is typical with these kinds of things. But the Bloomberg news service is citing the usual “people familiar with the matter” as saying that Google is mulling a bid for Palo Alto-based Waze, which started in Israel and moved to Silicon Valley a few years back.

The report is intriguing because it raises the prospect of a high-dollar bidding war between two Internet giants, Facebook and Google.  There was also speculation earlier this year that Apple might be interested in Waze, although nothing materialized there and Bloomberg says Apple’s not currently in any talks.

It’s also of deep interest to the many loyal fans of Waze, which says it has more than 40 million users who like the idea of sharing information on traffic conditions to help each other get where they need to go.  The Merc’s Pete Carey tried the service back in 2011 and wrote that the Waze app makes driving in heavy traffic “almost fun.”

Google is currently the leader in online mapping services.  And it’s already adding real-time traffic information to the Google maps service for mobile devices, according to officials who spoke at the company’s big I/O software conference this month.  Facebook, meanwhile, wants to offer more mobile services so smartphone owners have no reason to go outside the Facebook ecosystem.

Over at Search Engine Land, analyst/blogger Greg Sterling writes that Google “needs Waze the least” of all the rumored buyers.  While Google might incorporate Waze features into Maps, he adds, “Waze the brand would probably disappear.” It’s not clear what would mean to the loyal Waze community.

While some observers suggest these rumors may be coming from people interested in driving up the price of a potential deal, the outcome remains to be seen.

— Marc Andreessen of Mosaic and Netscape fame, now venture capitalist and board member of Facebook, Hewlett-Packard and eBay — and recently, winner of a Queen Elizabeth Prize for Engineering, don’t you know. Andreessen is one of those quoted in “Change the World,” a lengthy New Yorker article (purchase required) about Silicon Valley and its mentality.

Among other things, the article examines the tech industry’s bad rap: In a culture of entrepreneurship, some see executives and workers as self-absorbed, money-hungry and devoid of any sense of civic duty. San Franciscans, for example, have complained of gentrification and their city’s well-being in light of the presence of Twitter and other tech companies.

George Packer’s New Yorker article also mentions the economic inequality in Silicon Valley, land of billionaires and millionaires, pointing to a 22 percent rise in homelessness in the past couple of years. In a March article by the Merc’s Pat May about the Bay Area’s minimum-wage workers, he wrote that food-stamp participation here is at a 10-year high.

Does the tech industry care about any of that? The New Yorker article also points to tech’s growing involvement in politics, the most recent example being FWD.us, the political action committee led by Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg. It has gotten off to a rough start: Its tactics have been heavily criticized, but the article notes that it was born partly out of Zuckerberg’s concern over immigration reform after coming into contact with poor middle-school students in an entrepreneurship class he was teaching once a week. Besides the industry’s advocating for more H-1B visas, Zuckerberg has talked about a “huge moral component” surrounding immigration reform. VC Ron Conway, who also has his critics, has been involved in San Francisco and national politics as well. Among his causes is gun control.

The questioning of tech’s motives and effect on the overall good is sure to continue, but the industry has matured enough to know it is necessary to work with government. Ben Horowitz, the other half of VC firm Andreessen Horowitz, is also quoted in the New Yorker article, talking about the U.S. government’s security demands about the Netscape browser long ago: “Maybe they didn’t totally understand the implications of everything, but we didn’t understand their job, either.”

Photo of Marc Andreessen from Bloomberg News archives

Photo by Doug Duran/Bay Area News Group

If not, move your mouse immediately to view the clip at The Daily Show’s website.

You’ll be glad you did.

In fact, I can’t wait for the next “‘grilling” of Cook by the Senate. Though if I grilled my BBQ chicken at home like they “grilled” Cook, I would have been dead of salmonella poisoning years ago.

“Today, with cameras as pervasive as they are there’s no such thing really as professional photographers. … Certainly, there’s varying levels of skills.” Mayer reportedly said at a press conference Wednesday in New York, where she was talking about Yahoo’s purchase of blogging platform Tumblr, which was announced the day before. Mayer also addressed the revamp of Flickr, another property the company bought in 2005. Yahoo has been accused of “killing” Flickr, or at least ignoring it.

Besides a facelift that features bigger, higher-resolution photos, Yahoo is now offering Flickr users 1 terabyte of free space. This means the “Pro” option, which costs $25 a year, is being discontinued for new users. (Mashable has the details on the new pricing structure for Flickr customers.)

MarketWatch points to a blog post by James Colton, a former Sports Illustrated photo editor: “Using her logic, I guess we no longer have doctors either because of WebMD and the proliferation of medical information available online.”

In a couple of tweets Wednesday, Mayer apologized for her choice of words: “It was a misstatement on my part and out of context. Was about the terabyte on @Flickr & how many photos everyone takes.”

It’s just the latest brouhaha surrounding Mayer, who has been CEO of the Sunnyvale company for less than a year. She has helped spark a debate about “working” moms after a two-week maternity leave, and gotten flak for banning telecommuting. Some see the criticism of Mayer as excessive and say it’s because she’s a woman in power. (See Quoted: On Yahoo’s Baby Bump and Quoted: On Marissa Mayer As Yes, Yahoo’s Female CEO.)

But in announcing the $1.1 billion Tumblr purchase this week, Mayer herself knew there’d be the inevitable complaints about a smaller company being gobbled up by a bigger company: She vowed not to “screw it up.”

Take away the controversies, though, and Mayer’s record looks better. The Associated Press notes that her moves, including completing a deal to sell some of Yahoo’s stake back China-based e-commerce powerhouse Alibaba, have pleased Wall Street so far. The stock is up about 70 percent since she took the helm, although it is down about 2 percent to $26 as of this post. Brandon Bailey writes for SiliconBeat that Yahoo today announced another acquisition. It is buying PlayerScale, a mobile-game startup in Belmont.

Photo of Marissa Mayer from Associated Press