SOMA’s return, Google’s smokescreen and copying, iTunes flatlining?
Roundup of the latest tech action in Silicon Valley:
Young start-ups pouring into the South of Market (SOMA) area in San Francisco. Deja-vu? — The region’s real estate prices are lower, at least where large companies like Looksmart are able to sublet expensive buildings to new copycat video sites like Cuts. With the territory comes late-night sleepovers, punching bags and yoga. See story in WSJ. Deja-vu, the same thing happened during boom #1.
Yahoo’s assumptions on Facebook — Techcrunch… Continue Reading
Web 2.0 week: IM-email integration trend, Google GPS, Google Ventures, Reality Digital & more
Roundup of a busy week:
Instant messaging and email are merging, Yahoo kicks it off — Yahoo will be integrating IM through its email, Yahoo executive Brad Garlinghouse revealed during the Web 2.0 Summit in San Francisco. In retrospect, we’re wondering why this trend hasn’t happened earlier.
Email is limiting, providing no way to see whether the person on the other end is present or not (that person may not want to show you they are present,… Continue Reading
Google buys its start-up garage
The start-up garage is a thing of legend in Silicon Valley.
Now, Google has bought the Silicon Valley home where co-founders Larry Page and Sergey Brin rented a garage eight years ago to start their company, the AP reports.
The Mountain View-based company bought the 1,900-square-foot home in nearby Menlo Park from one of its own employees, Susan Wojcicki, who’d let the Google guys work there.
During Google’s five-month history there, the garage became like a second… Continue Reading
Roundup: Apple secrets, India hype, Cheney’s visit, VideoEgg, Zillow,
Here is a shotgun of the latest stuff in raging Silicon Valley, leading of course with video:
VideoEgg gets easier — VideoEgg, a site that lets you download software so you can post video on any site, has partnered to make the process easier at key sites. Users at Bebo, Dogster, Hi5, AOL, Current.TV and Tagged can post video content from mobile or other devices to those sites, and VideoEgg’s small browser plug-in that makes it easy… Continue Reading
Taking Washington seriously
Silicon Valley can be a smug, protected place, and along the leafy streets of studied Palo Alto, quite conducive for dreaming up lines like “do no evil.”
What happens when your platform outgrows this place? We learn that Google has retained the services of DCI Group, which specializes in “corporate-financed grass-roots organizing,” such as setting up front groups to “agitate for a client’s position, placing letters to the editor with key newspapers, and using phone banks… Continue Reading
3Jam launches group SMS, nice
Updated
3Jam has launched a new way to texting friends in groups, and we think it’s going to do well. Multi-person texting simply isn’t possible yet, and with 80 million people with texting in the U.S. and growing, 3Jam may be hitting a sweet spot.
And texting is the technology of the future. Among college students, there’s a 75 percent usage rate. (For the uninitiated, when we say texting, we’re refering to the short messages people send… Continue Reading
Silicon Valley leaders prove clout on global warming bill
Turns out, a group of Silicon Valley venture capitalists, including Kleiner Perkins’ John Doerr, and other business folks helped tipped the balance on the landmark global warming bill passed last week.
The bill, AB 32, mandates that California reduce global warming emissions by 25 percent — to 1990 levels — by the year 2020. Major carbon-emitting industries will be forced to report emissions to the state Air Resources Board.
California Assembly Member Pavley, co-author of AB 32,… Continue Reading