Rajeev Motwani, Google founders’ professor and early investor, dies
Rajeev Motwani, the Stanford professor of computer science known best for advising Google founders Sergey Brin and Larry Page, passed away today unexpectedly. Widely praised for his investing acumen — having backed both Google and PayPal early on — he will be remembered for his genuine passion for teaching and technology.
Prior to his involvement with Google, Motwani founded the Mining Data at Stanford project (MIDAS), an umbrella organization for several groups looking into new and… Continue Reading
Aster Data raises $12M for cheap warehousing
Aster Data Systems, which stores data for social networking site MySpace (and others), has raised $12 million in a second round of venture funding.
The Redwood City, Calif. startup offers “frontline data warehousing,” which basically means storage of all of a company’s data for business analysis. Aster dubbed its system nCluster because the data is spread across clusters of cheap servers. The company says nCluster offers three key innovations compared to competitors like Teradata, Netazza and… Continue Reading
Tapulous wants to be leading application ecosystem for the iPhone
Tapulous, a new Silicon Valley startup, embodies the craze that’s going on right now around the iPhone.
Tucked inside a ground-floor office on Hamilton Ave. in Palo Alto, Calif., a stone’s throw from social network comany Facebook, the company’s eight employees are feverishly building applications solely to work on the iPhone.
Never mind that the Apple has sold a mere six million iPhones to date, compared to Nokia’s 400 million handsets. Tapulous’ chief executive Bart Decrem believes… Continue Reading
Close those browser tabs — Vysr offers platform for a ‘user-centric’ web
The days of keeping multiple browser tabs open as you jump between websites is over, says Vysr chief executive Guda Venkatesh. The Palo Alto, Calif. startup is launching RoamAbout — its platform for online services that can be used anywhere online — in public testing mode today.
We first wrote about Vysr back in 2006, when the company raised $875,000, but it remained secretive about its plans. Well, now we know what it’s been working on…. Continue Reading
CastTV raises $3.1M to launch better video search
Corrected: Motwani is merely an advisor
San Francisco’s CastTV, a site that says it can search video better than leading players like Yahoo and Google by turning up Javascript-hidden files and other information, has raised $3.1 million from well-known venture capitalists.
Video search is a huge potential market: Lucrative advertising can be displayed by the search results. Predictably, a gaggle of players are targeting this area. CastTV has yet to launch — it will do so next… Continue Reading