Tidbits of Thursday

Too many tidbits to comment on at length today, but take your pick:

VSP Capital saga — The six-member limited partner advisory council of VSP Capital has unanimously agreed to recommend that all VSP LPs discontinue the firm�s third fund, according to PE Week (thanks Larry), and another note here.

NYT story on “tourist VCs” — Dan Primack adds footnote to our earlier critique of the NYT story.

Water start-ups — Wired has an interesting article about a “mad genius” 79-year-old who has scored $75 million from venture firm Alpha Pacific to provide unlimited energy, accelerate crop growth, desalinize and purify drinking water, obtain health benefits and provide air conditioning — all by pumping up water from the depths of the ocean. Note: We’ll be writing more about Silicon Valley water start-ups in the Merc on Monday. (Via Slashdot, and Dan Bruno)

Spikesource — No link, but we’ve got word that the Kim Polese start-up we wrote about here (and here), which wants to integrate open-source software for bigger companies, has raised $12 million in its first round from Kleiner Perkins, Fidelity, Intel Capital and Omidyar Network. As you’ll recall, KP’s Ray Lane said the round was contingent on Spikesource’s finding a business model. It now must have one, and we’ve inquired to find out what it is.

Off-topic on Lessig — Not our core focus at SiliconBeat, but if you’re a fan of Stanford law professor Lawrence Lessig, Battelle points us to an interesting New York Magazine piece about Lessig, “a hero to many in the Web 2.0 world,” who is not only the lead lawyer in the case, but the driving character.

Jobs bio — More issues with iCon author, mentioned here. We already discussed some here.

Good Tech — Get’s $15 million more in VC, according to The Deal (sorry, no link).

China’s Silicon Valley — Not much new here, but this piece from MSNBC worth reading if you’re worried that China will overtake what we’ve got here in the Bay Area (via Gillmor).

UPDATE: We’ve inserted a link to the full PE Week story on VSP Capital saga.