I’m a reporter for VentureBeat. I report on business and technology with a special focus on and web development and design. I spend a lot of time covering Google, Facebook, and Twitter — not just their consumer-facing web products, but their inner workings as large and rapidly growing tech companies.

If you email me a pitch about your company, please copy tips@venturebeat.com. I get a lot of email and don’t have time to reply to every message I receive.

Before coming to VentureBeat, I worked at Mashable. Before that, I was a daily reporter at ReadWriteWeb. And before that, I did print journalism at magazines and newspapers.

I wholeheartedly support VentureBeat’s ethics statement. I don’t own shares of any company in the tech sector or any company that I’d have occasion to write about. Aside from one small stuffed fox from Mozilla, I don’t generally accept gifts, including trips or other such experiences, from the companies I cover. I have done only a few gadget reviews in my career, and I do not keep the hardware that is sent to me for review.

When I’m not doing journalism about technology, I’m either riding my bike around Golden Gate Park or baking something.

stories by Jolie O'Dell

CRM startup Intercom snags a $6M first round of funding

"Web businesses have the potential to re-create the old pub experience, where businesses know every customer by name, their interests, and what makes them happiest in order to better serve them," said Intercom.

Tesla issues Model S recall due to unsafe back seat

The company is contacting affected customers individually and will transport the faulty vehicles, reinforce the striker brackets, and return the cars to their owners.

Cumulus launches a Linux distro for data-center bare metal

As part of its official launch, Cumulus Networks also revealed that it's raised $15 million in funding from Andreessen Horowitz, Battery Ventures, Peter Wagner, and four of the original VMware founders.

New Relic now lets you make plug-ins for any kind of data you’ve got

Want to plug database and caching stats into your New Relic dash? No problem, thanks to a new API and two SDKs (Ruby and Java) as well as a UI builder to keep your dashboard clean and your process fast.

ProxToMe raises $700K for mobile blasts to attendees at live shows

In addition to the funding, ProxToMe is today announcing new iOS and Android apps as well as a web-based dashboard for tracking fan interactions with a performer's messaging and with each other.

Udemy: Our top 10 instructors together made $5M

The startup said it's closing in on a million students and serves up more than 8,000 courses. But the real stunner is the money earned by the site's top instructors.

Linux creates scholarship for developer do-gooders and women

It's interesting to see the Linux Foundation focusing specifically on women and socially-conscious developers in particular. This focus mirrors some of the most interesting trends in development in the real world.

‘Big data’ startup SpaceCurve raises $10M

This startup is trying to organize and make useful just about every kind of data imaginable -- not only large volumes of data but also data that appears at high velocities.

Meet Binary, an iPad app for writing code

"Imagine I'm relaxing on the beach and get a notification saying the servers are down. I open up Binary, fix a couple lines of code, push the changes, and get back to playing with the dogs on the beach," says creator Darshan Shankar.

We’ll find out what Facebook is really up to on June 20

Some of the big ideas to come from the social network company lately include hashtags, Graph Search, and the long-awaited Facebook phone in the form of Facebook Home.

This tiny submarine could find life under Earth’s glaciers — or on Jupiter moon Europa

This submersible is barely the size of two soda cans, yet scientists think it might be useful for finding life on and around other planets, including Jupiter's Europa, an ice-covered moon.