VentureBeat » Stanford University

Marvell’s Smile Plug will let teachers run their own classroom wireless networks

Dean Takahashi — Sun, 08 Jan 2012 16:00:27 +0000

Chip maker Marvell is announcing its Smile Plug development kit aimed at turning classrooms into much better computer learning environments.

To be unveiled this week at the Consumer Electronics Show today, the Smile Plug is part of Marvell’s larger “Classroom 3.0″ environment that is aimed at creating a connected, secure learning atmosphere that simplifies and speeds the deployment of technology to students around the world.

Marvell collaborated with Stanford University to create the Marvell Smile Plug (named after the Stanford Mobile Inquiry Based Learning Environment program), which uses Marvell’s Armada processor and creates a “micro cloud” wireless network within a classroom that is completely controlled by the teacher. The Smile Plug is essentially a small server designed for delivering classroom materials to students. It can be combined with the OLPC XO 3.0 tablets, a Marvell-powered education tablet created by One Laptop per Child.

Weili Dai, co-founder of Marvell, said that Smile Plug and OLPC XO 3.0 are both important additions to the world’s classrooms and show that Marvell is committed to improving education worldwide. She says they can help transform learning from a one-way process to a two-way interactive experience.

The Smile Plug uses the company’s Armada 300 series SoC processors and Marvell Avastar 88w8764 WiFi chips to create a small wireless network that can be used by as many as 60 students at a time. That network delivers safe and secure internet access.

Marvell created an easy-to-manage wireless access point for the Smile program, with tools that provide teachers control over the system. The Smile Plug computer features an open platform based on Arch Linux for ARM. SMILE Plug will be available in the spring.

Filed under: cloud, VentureBeat

The Apple collection: Secret Stanford warehouse houses company history

Jennifer Van Grove — Fri, 30 Dec 2011 23:56:53 +0000

Thirty-five years of Apple memorabilia make up a museum-like collection of company archives that are hidden away in an off-campus Stanford University warehouse.

Stanford’s Apple Collection takes up more than 600 feet of shelf space in a climate-controlled facility at a location kept secret from the public, said the Associated Press, which paid a visit to the archives.

Should you ever be let in — and one can only dream at this point — you would find a company video of co-founders Steve Wozniak and Steve Jobs talking about the Apple I computer, the iconic 1984 Super Bowl ad, a video interview of Wozniak recounting the story behind the company’s name, early financial reports, old letters and thousands of Douglas Menuez photographs from his time chronicling Jobs’ stretch at NeXT.

The story, according to the Associated Press report, is that Apple ditched its plans for a corporate museum in 1997, shortly after Jobs’ return as CEO, and instead donated an expansive collection of documents, books, photos, software, videos and early magazine and TV ads to Stanford for preservation.

The archives, part of Stanford’s larger Silicon Valley Archives collection, continue to be replenished by the ongoing donations of former Apple employees, past executives and company fans.

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Tech elite pay tribute to Steve Jobs at memorial service

Dean Takahashi — Mon, 17 Oct 2011 07:57:39 +0000

The technology industry’s top luminaries paid tribute to Steve Jobs at a memorial service at Stanford University on Sunday night.

The attendees bid farewell to Jobs, who died of pancreatic cancer on Oct. 5, in the same Memorial Church where David Packard, co-founder of Hewlett-Packard, was memorialized in 1996. It’s the kind of ceremony you imagine takes place when one king dies and another is crowned. Except in this case, it seems like there is no transition to a new king of technology.

Those in attendence included Google chief executive Larry Page, News Corp. CEO Rupert Murdoch, former Vice President Al Gore, angel investor Ron Conway, lawyer Larry Sonsini, Intuit chairman Bill Campbell, Adobe co-founders Chuck Geschke and John Warnock, Chicago Mayor Rahm Emanuel, actor Tim Allen and others.

The San Jose Mercury News said that dozens of dark-suited security men with ear pieces guarded the university’s Cantor Art Center and walled off the rear entrance to the church. Waves of onlookers were cleared out of the university’s main quad and pushed back to the main street leading into the school. Jobs’ service was held on what California Governor Jerry Brown has designated as Steve Jobs Day. Apple employees will have their own memorial on Oct. 19.

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Why do big companies get stuck?

Chris Morris — Fri, 26 Aug 2011 13:00:08 +0000

Everyone knows they need to engage with growth, but the resistance companies face in moving resources from areas that work into new areas is tremendous. This is why big companies are so slow to innovate, says Geoffrey Moore, author and venture partner at MDV. In this Entrepreneur Though Leader Lecture at Stanford University, he explains that while there are no shortage of great, groundbreaking ideas at big companies – including many that could threaten startups – the established culture at those companies prevents the ideas from maturing.

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Diffbot launches APIs for monitoring web pages

Heather Kelly — Thu, 25 Aug 2011 17:41:25 +0000

Internet search startup Diffbot launched its API today for visually scanning, parsing and extracting information from web pages. Diffbot detects what type of layout a page has, then searches it for common visual cues to monitor when any content changes on a page, or to extract specific information for developers to use.

The Palo Alto-based company was founded in 2008 by two former Stanford students, CEO Mike Tung and CTO Leith Abdulla, with seed funding from Stanford incubator StartX. Tung originally created Diffbot to monitor the websites for his various Stanford classes and tip him off to any new announcements, posted lectures or assignments via text message.

According to Diffbot’s creators, all web pages fall into one of 30 different page-type categories. By pegging what category a page falls in to, it can extrapolate the various types of information on that page. For example, front pages of news sites typically have the same elements: headlines, images, tags, advertisements and article summaries.

“Diffbot understands visually what all of these different elements of the page are and can be used by developers to connect that content to direct action,” Tung told VentureBeat.

Currently Diffbot has hundreds of developers using the beta API, and some intriguing products have already been created using the tools. AOL’s free Editions iPad magazine app uses Diffbot to analyze the front pages of news sites and pull out important new or breaking information. Hacker News Radio tapped Diffbot to pull content from hacker news sites and turn them into spoken reports. The city of São Paulo in Brazil uses Diffbot to track changes on the local government website and turns them into an automated Twitter feed.

Diffbot’s Follow API creates an RSS-style feed of fresh content. The On-Demand API currently looks at just two major page types, Frontpage and Article, but Diffbot plans on releasing more in the future, and that’s when things could get interesting.

“Once we have released the API for all 30 page types, we hope to enable a new type of mobile application — one where the user can take actions directly on web data, instead of reading a bunch of blue links,” said Tung to VentureBeat. “Something like SIRI, but for the entire web, and not just a set of handpicked APIs.”

Filed under: mobile, VentureBeat

3 ways to become more likeable

Chris Morris — Fri, 05 Aug 2011 13:00:04 +0000

No matter how good your product is, if you’re running a startup, you need to be likable. Entrepreneur and author Guy Kawasaki lays out three ways to become more enchanting to the people you meet – both investors and customers – in this Entrepreneur Thought Leader Lecture given at Stanford University.

In the end, he says, it comes down to having a genuine smile (as opposed to the fake one of flight attendants), knowing how to dress for your audience and having a perfect handshake – for which he shows a complex mathematical formula.

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Innovation can’t be taken for granted

Chris Morris — Fri, 29 Jul 2011 13:00:05 +0000

Innovation is a chief driver of the economy, but it doesn’t come easy. Jlabs CEO Judy Estrin, in this 2008 Entrepreneur Thought Leader Lecture at Stanford University, notes that real innovation often takes decades – and both society and the business world have become extremely short-sighted. As a result, they settle on incremental advances, rather than significant ones. In addition, as companies become more risk averse, support for real innovation has dwindled, which ultimately is hurting American companies.

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Reid Hoffman’s entrepreneurial rules of thumb

Chris Morris — Fri, 22 Jul 2011 13:00:24 +0000

As the co-founder of popular business social network LinkedIn, Reid Hoffman knows a thing or two about successfully launching a startup. In this Entrepreneur Thought Leader Lecture given at Stanford University, he details the rules he has historically used when creating a venture: Look for disruptive change, aim high, build a network around your company, plan for good and bad luck and maintain flexible persistence. Most importantly, he says, remember these rules are just rules of thumb by which you navigate – they’re not carved in stone.

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What motivates serial entrepreneurs?

Chris Morris — Fri, 15 Jul 2011 13:00:19 +0000

Serial entrepreneurs are the stuff of legend in the entrepreneurial world. Whereas launching a single startup drains most people, serial entrepreneurs thrive on the chaos. Wences Casares and Meyer Malka, serial entrepreneurs themselves, discuss what it is that has kept them going through the years in this Entrepreneur Thought Leader Lecture given at Stanford University.

“I think to figure out the answer to that, I should go to a shrink and I’m afraid they’ll fix me,” says Casares.

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Education’s entrepreneurial opportunities

Chris Morris — Fri, 08 Jul 2011 13:00:24 +0000

There’s a ton of research and development in the pharmaceutical sector – but in the education system, which is just as large, there’s virtually none. 17 percent of pharma’s revenues are reinvested in R&D – but with education, the figure is just 0.1 percent. Aneesh Chopra, Chief Technology Officer of the United States, calls this a missed opportunity – and notes that Washington is trying to spur startups to focus on this – in this Entrepreneur Thought Leader Lecture given at Stanford University.

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Can you objectively compare ideas?

Chris Morris — Fri, 01 Jul 2011 13:00:30 +0000

Ideas are easy to come up with – even off the wall ones. But figuring out whether there’s any demand for them isn’t. Idealab founder and CEO Bill Gross shares his thinking on how to objectively test – and compare – ideas in this Entrepreneur Thought Leader Lecture given at Stanford University. Along the way, he tells the story of how testing for Carfinder.com was done – and the unusual way the company fulfilled initial orders.

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Right idea, wrong time: Twitter in the pre-Twitter days

Chris Morris — Fri, 24 Jun 2011 13:00:42 +0000

Twitter’s a ubiquitous service these days, but 11 years ago it was just the beginning of an idea rolling around in Jack Dorsey’s head. Dorsey, in this Entrepreneur Thought Leader Lecture given at Stanford University, tells of the days he first tested the idea – broadcasting his notes and thoughts to friends and family via an email list from his then-revolutionary Blackberry. Things didn’t go quite as smooth then as they did when he launched the service six years later.

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The essential qualities of passion

Chris Morris — Fri, 17 Jun 2011 13:00:13 +0000

Before he was CEO at OptiMedica, Mark Forchette was a sales representative for a consumer products firm. He knew nothing about sales at the time, but was a passionate user of their products – and won the company over with that enthusiasm, something he says is an essential quality for success in the startup world. Forchette relates the tale to students in this Entrepreneur Thought Leader Lecture, given at Stanford University.

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How proximity affects workplace relationships

Chris Morris — Fri, 10 Jun 2011 13:00:45 +0000

In an era where more and more workers are telecommuting for part of the week, if not entirely, the importance of physical proximity is often overlooked. In this Entrepreneur Thought Leader Lecture, given at Stanford University, Ori Brafman, author of “Click: The Magic of Instant Connections,” reveals how distance affects the building of relationships, both personal and professional. Besides data points from studies, he also hosts an interactive demonstration of the effects of proximity – and the benefits they can have.

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Want to grow innovation? Fix immigration

Chris Morris — Fri, 03 Jun 2011 13:00:19 +0000

As movements such the startup visa program continue to gain steam in Washington, the CTO of the United States is joining the call. Aneesh Chopra, in this Entrepreneur Thought Leader Lecture given at Stanford University, says the key to fixing the decreased flow of innovation in this country is to fix the nation’s broken immigration system. Chopra offers his personal perspective on the issue, noting that his father was an engineer who immigrated to America for work.

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Lean startups vs. fat startups

Chris Morris — Fri, 27 May 2011 13:00:49 +0000

While the traditional definition of lean startup is one that moves fast, venture capitalist and serial entrepreneur Mark Suster says a better definition is one that’s tied to size and funding levels. There’s nothing wrong with being lean as you look for a strong product and market fit, he says in this Entrepreneur Thought Leader Lecture given at Stanford University, but once you find one, it’s a smart idea to get fat with funding – fast.

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Answers are easy. Finding problems is hard.

Chris Morris — Fri, 20 May 2011 13:00:41 +0000

Most entrepreneurs think they know what problem they’re trying to solve when they decide to launch a company – but that certainty fades quickly as they begin digging into the situation. Instagram co-founder Kevin Systrom, in this Entrepreneur Thought Leader Lecture given at Stanford University, says it’s not the answers that are hard, but finding the right problem to solve. Systrom tells how he and co-founder Mike Krieger went about the process and lessons they learned along the way.

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Today's bad idea: Compensating solely on performance

Chris Morris — Fri, 13 May 2011 13:00:10 +0000

In most companies, the better you perform, the more you earn. But Geoffrey Moore, author and venture partner at MDV, says focusing exclusively on that metric can hurt a company in the long run. Instead, he tells students in this Entrepreneur Though Leader Lecture, given at Stanford University, those who develop new initiatives or ideas deserve a second look, since they’re creating the power that fuels a company’s long-term growth.

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The long, slow death of the IPO

Chris Morris — Fri, 29 Apr 2011 13:00:01 +0000

IPOs traditionally have been the pinnacle of success for companies, but Barry Silbert, founder and CEO of SecondMarket argues that’s no longer true. The IPO market, he tells students in this Entrepreneur Thought Leader Lecture at Stanford University, is dying a painful death. Silbert cites several reasons for this, ranging from Sarbanes-Oxley to the shift to online brokerages, which cut into the research budgets of brokers, who shifted their focus to large cap companies and began paying less attention to smaller ones.

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The pros and cons of dorm room startups

Chris Morris — Fri, 22 Apr 2011 13:00:25 +0000

Aaron Levie co-founded Box.net from his dorm room, but he quickly learned that there were some strong advantages and disadvantages to that. While the company’s overhead was minimal, providing customer service from an accounting class is hardly ideal – and investors are instinctively more wary of entrepreneurs who don’t commit. Levie discusses how he weighed the pros and cons in this Entrepreneur Thought Leader Lecture, given at Stanford University.

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The power of a great smile and good handshake

Chris Morris — Fri, 08 Apr 2011 13:00:53 +0000

Business relationships are a lot like personal relationships: You’ll get a lot more done if the other party likes you. There is, of course, no way to train to be likeable, but entrepreneur and author Guy Kawaski notes that a person’s ‘likability’ is a key ingredient in business deals, in this Entrepreneur Thought Leader Lecture given at Stanford University. Kawaskai talks about ways to be more enchanting – including his mathematical formula for the perfect handshake.

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Walking the fine line between goals and ROI

Chris Morris — Fri, 01 Apr 2011 13:00:40 +0000

It’s certainly possible to set your goals too high when launching a start-up, but serial entrepreneur Brent Constantz, founder of Calera and other firms, says there needs to be a balance between ambition and the urge to see immediate returns on your investment in this Entrepreneur Thought Leader Lecture given at Stanford University. Constantz shares a story from his days in the med-tech sector to illustrate this point.

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Twitter co-founder Dorsey: Instrument everything

Chris Morris — Fri, 25 Mar 2011 13:00:54 +0000

After Jack Dorsey co-founded Twitter, the company flew blind for its first two years. No one at the company knew how users were using the system, he tells students in this Entrepreneur Thought Leader Lecture at Stanford University. Instead, the company relied entirely on intuition. So when he founded Square, the first thing he built was an admin dashboard, which has given that company a much better insight into its customers. But too many companies haven’t followed this path.

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Weekend warriors discover the pivot

Chris Morris — Fri, 11 Mar 2011 14:00:23 +0000

Sometimes, you learn that your company needs to pivot not by looking at the books, but by listening to your customer. Bill Gross, founder of Idealab, tells in this Entrepreneur Thought Leader Lecture, given at Stanford University, how he learned this lesson.

Before Idealab, Gross started Knowledge Adventure, an educational software company. Employees once served as “weekend warriors” demonstrating products in retail outlets, where they learned the hard way that they weren’t targeting properly. With the pivot came success.

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Strategy means nothing without implementation

Chris Morris — Fri, 04 Mar 2011 14:00:01 +0000

Everyone loves to talk about strategy, but simply having a plan won’t get you anywhere. Mark Forchette, CEO of OptiMedica says strategy is only as good as the tactical execution behind it in this Entrepreneur Thought Leader Lecture given at Stanford University.

Forchette tells of his time with Alcon, where sustained focus on implementing strategy led to a notably larger market share for the company.

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Twitter co-founder tells how it all got started

Chris Morris — Fri, 18 Feb 2011 14:00:28 +0000

Twitter is an omnipresent part of the technology landscape today, but not long ago it was just another startup. Co-founder Jack Dorsey tells the story of how the microblogging site came into existence while he was working at Odeo, a consumer podcasting company in this Entrepreneur Thought Leader Lecture given at Stanford University.

It was there, when the company urged him to come up with new ideas, that the concept behind Twitter was born and the project started. Before long, it was spun out as a separate company and Odeo was sold.

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Be your startup’s only board member

Chris Morris — Fri, 04 Feb 2011 14:00:08 +0000

Life certainly seems easier for startups that have financial backing, but there’s a hidden downside: Board meetings. Serial entrepreneur Brent Constantz, founder of Calera and other firms, says the time management issues that come with having a board can debilitate a company in this Entrepreneur Thought Leader Lecture given at Stanford University. That time can be better spent fulfilling the company’s vision, he says.

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5 solid startup lessons

Chris Morris — Fri, 28 Jan 2011 14:00:19 +0000

When Aaron Levie launched Box.net from his college dorm room, he was exploring a lot of new territory. Now, as CEO of a company that has raised nearly $30 million in venture capital since 2005, he has filtered what he has learned into five lessons, which he shares in this entrepreneur thought leader lecture, given at Stanford University:

Do something that was not possible three years ago.
Do something you are extremely passionate about.
Don’t compromise.
If you feel comfortable, you’re probably not doing it right.
Don’t write your obituary too early.

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How should startups pay their attorney?

Chris Morris — Fri, 21 Jan 2011 14:00:04 +0000

Startups are often cash-strapped in their early days, but it’s usually during those times that they most desperately need legal counsel. So what’s the best way to compensate those professionals for their time?

Despite some perceptions, the industry norm is for attorneys to not take equity or a board seat as a form of compensation from startups, says attorney Martin Nichols in this Entrepreneur Thought Leader Lecture at Stanford University. In Silicon Valley, fee deferrals are far more normal.

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How to drive a successful social media campaign

Chris Morris — Fri, 14 Jan 2011 14:00:47 +0000

There are a lot of companies trying to get traction in the social arena these days – and most will fall short. Stanford GSB professor Jennifer Aaker, in this Entrepreneur Thought Leader Lecture, given at Stanford University, discusses some ways you can stand above the crowd, using the methods of Team Sameer — a successful social media campaign to find a bone marrow donor for a man with leukemia – as an example.

The steps:

Focus: Hand pick small audiences that will have a positive emotional reaction to the campaign you’re pushing.

Grab attention: The more you remove barriers for the audience to help you, the better your chances. Breaking those down, in fact, is possibly more important than encouraging action on their behalf.

Engagement: Humans aren’t set up to understand logic. They’re set up to understand stories. Want to hook an audience? Talk to it, not at it.

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