Unstrung: Cisco Wooing WiMax Vendors?

" Cisco Systems Inc. (Nasdaq: CSCO - message board) is close to buying a WiMax base-station company in its first real dalliance with the wireless broadband technology, two industry sources tell Unstrung.
The networking giant could buy within a matter of weeks, according to one source. "It's in legals now," the source says."

"The networking giant could buy within a matter of weeks, according to one source. "It's in legals now," the source says."

"Both sources agree that Cisco has narrowed it down to a shortlist of potential targets. The names in the frame are said to be Alvarion Ltd. (Nasdaq: ALVR - message board), Aperto Networks Inc. , Navini Networks Inc. , and Redline Communications Inc.
Alvarion and Redline appear to be the favorites on list. Cisco has already had some involvement with Redline in deploying a WiMax network in Paraguay. (See Redline Wins in Paraguay.)"

Paris on Letterman

PerezHilton.com: "In case you missed it…

Paris Hilton was a guest on the Late Show with David Letterman on Friday night and he tore her three new assholes and an extra vagine.

The talk show host grilled her on her prison sentence as the socialite squirmed in her chair.

This is some of Dave’s funniest work!

CLICK HERE to check it out.

This is must-watch TV.

HIGHlarious!"

Redmond: Citrix and VMware: Oil and Water?

"One of the components in our chemistry experiment is a billion-dollar company known worldwide for software that connects any user from any network connection to any data center. Citrix Systems Inc.'s Presentation Server software utilizes an optimized transport protocol called ICA to connect clients to servers over WAN links of virtually any speed. The other component is a subsidiary of another billion-dollar company. This one's known for multiple years of triple-digit growth and a recent announcement of its first IPO. VMware Inc., EMC Corp.'s subsidiary, has been renowned for its Virtual Infrastructure product that's capable of squishing together tens of data center servers onto a single hardware chassis."

LA Times: Bill could open door for venture capital firms

"Here we go again.

That's the concern of some small-business owners who worry that a bill scheduled for a House vote today would open a door for billion-dollar companies to benefit from federal small-business programs.

The Small Business Investment Expansion Act, which has been fast-tracked for a House vote with little debate since it popped up about 10 days ago, would allow a small firm that is majority owned by a venture capital firm or other investment company to continue to qualify for federal small-business programs.

Proponents say it's needed to ensure that small biotech and high-tech firms get the backing they need to survive their long product development time frames and produce crucial drugs and devices.

"It's really a necessity," said Steve Mento, president and chief executive of San Diego-based Conatus Pharmaceuticals Inc., which has nine employees and four venture capital investors."

The Deal: Waterfront Media absorbs $25M

"Waterfront publishes several consumer health-related sites, most notably Everydayhealth.com. The company's network attracts 9 million unique visitors each month, according to a July 2007 report from Media Metrix/Comscore.

The other new investor in the round, Foundation Capital of Menlo Park, Calif., took a smaller stake and did not receive a board seat. Prior investors following on included Rho Ventures and Time Warner Ventures, both of New York, BEV Capital of Stamford, Conn., and NeoCarta Ventures of San Francisco.

The deal values Waterfront at a significant premium compared with its Series C round in March 2006, according to Wolin. During the interim, Waterfront also raised $8 million in venture debt from Hercules Technology Growth Capital of Palo Alto, Calif.

Wolin said Waterfront was seeking deep-pocketed investors to help pursue acquisitions in preparation for an eventual public offering. He mentioned Scale's involvement with cellphone game developer Glu Mobile Inc. of San Mateo, Calif., and business optimization software maker Omniture Inc. of Orem, Utah, both of which have gone public since summer 2006, as evidence of the firm's success in guiding companies through the IPO process."

Software Takes Aim at Altered Photos

"Tracing its roots to a founder's anger at a no-show home remodeling crew, the makers of Shoot & Proof software aim to erase any doubts that digital photos are faked or manipulated.

The software maker, CodaSystem France SA in Paris, unveiled the fruits of its founder's frustrations Tuesday at the DEMOfall 2007 technology show, a two-day rapid-fire procession of new gadgets and gizmos.

DEMO, now in its in its 17th year, has served as a launch pad for such industry standouts as TiVo Inc., Palm Inc.'s Pilot and the Danger HipTop handheld. Each of the 69 presenters gets six minutes to impress a crowd of journalists and venture capitalists as well as technology companies looking for startups to buy."

Silicon Valley venture capitalists look for clean slate in China

"Silicon Valley venture capitalists have started to take a greater interest in clean technology investments in China.
"Ten years ago, I would have said no to doing deals in China," said John Rockwell of Draper Fisher Jurvetson. "There were too many political risks and too many business risks. But China is developing rapidly now."
Rockwell, a managing director of DFJ Element, the clean technology affiliate of the Menlo Park company, has made two investments in Chinese clean tech companies and is hoping to close another China deal soon.
The statistics show that environmental technology is indeed among of the fast-growing segments for venture capitalists that operate in China. Clean tech investments in China increased 147 percent from 2005 to 2006, from $170 million to $420 million, according to a recent report by the Cleantech Group, a research and investment institution with offices in San Francisco, Beijing, London, Toronto and Ann Arbor, Mich. "

NBA Steals Exec Who Knows How To Play Ball In China

"Like many Chinese, Timothy Chen, Microsoft's top man in China, is captivated by NBA basketball. Now he’s making it his livelihood.

Chen on Wednesday resigned from Microsoft (nasdaq: MSFT - news - people ) to become CEO of the U.S. basketball league's new subsidiary in China, NBA China, a year after the NBA first dispatched a head hunter to approach him. He leaves behind a career built around the tech industry and a four-year tenure as the most successful leader in Microsoft's 15-year history in China.

The 44-year-old Chen will oversee the NBA’s largest overseas market with an estimated 300 million basketball fans, one that has contributed as much as 20% of the traffic on its Web site, NBA.com. The NBA is seeking to sell a 5% stake in its new China subsidiary to Chinese investors with an eye toward an initial public offering, and another 5% stake to an as yet unnamed U.S. media company."

GreenRoad Technologies Launches Global Company Focused on Driver Safety for Fleets and Insurance Companies

"GreenRoad Technologies Inc. (www.greenroadtech.com), an innovative leader in driver safety technologies, today announced the launch of the company, expansion of its offices into Silicon Valley and the UK and a new global management team. GreenRoad is focused on improving driver safety for fleets and insurance companies with its Safety Center solution. Safety Center reduces driver crashes by an average of 54 percent, lowers accident costs by an average of 65 percent and lowers fuel consumption by an average of 7 percent—without invading driver privacy. By empowering drivers to manage their own safety, GreenRoad can change driver behavior behind the wheel.
With funding from Benchmark Capital and Balderton Capital (formerly Benchmark Europe) http://www.benchmark.com, GreenRoad recently established new headquarters in Silicon Valley and opened offices in the UK—in addition to its previously existing office in Israel, where the company was founded in 2002. GreenRoad has been operating under the name of DriveDiagnostics while in the testing phase, and has been testing its Safety Center solution for more than two years with pilot customers in the US, UK and Israel."

SeattleTimes: $30M Zillow infusion may go to home-improvement tab

"Here's my Zestimate: Zillow will use some of the $30 million it just raised to push into the home improvement and décor market.

The nearly 2-year-old online real-estate site was already the best funded Seattle Web startup in the cycle, with $57 million raised.

Today, it's announcing a third and probably final round of financing, this time led by Legg Mason Capital Management in Baltimore. Bill Miller, Legg Mason's chief investment officer, said in a news release: "We believe Zillow is well on its way toward becoming a market-leader in a huge, and untapped online category of online tools and information for homeowners."

The word "homeowners" is interesting.

Zillow's initial focus was homebuyers and sellers. It made its splash with Zestimates, a tool for estimating the value of property. Zillow has also been adding tools for home sellers, enabling people to post "make me move" prices and giving agents and brokers more tools to edit listings and advertise on the site.

Meanwhile, the real-estate market has chilled. "

Venture Capital Consolidation Reflects Benefits of Shakeout

"The number of active venture capital firms — those making at least one new investment within the course of a year — has plunged nearly 50% in a six-year period.

"The shakeout among venture capital firms is much more profound than people realize," a managing partner at OVP Venture Partners, Gerry Langeler, said.

Using data compiled by Pricewaterhouse Coopers, Mr. Langeler found that in 2000, there were 1,156 different venture firms that made at least one new deal. In 2006, there were only 597, a 48% drop.

At the same time that VC firms have dropped in number, their returns have improved. The five-year trailing returns were just 2.7%, while the three-year trailing returns were 9.6%, while returns over the last 12 months were up 18.1%, according to data from the National Venture Capital Association. The historic norm for VC returns is around 20%, although after seeing historical highs in the 1990s, the industry hit a low following the technology sector bust in 2000."

VentureBeat: Ourlikes, a more efficient matchmaking site

"Dating sites like Match.com and eHarmony have been around for years, but competitors are still launching.
These startups generally claim the old dating site model is broken. What’s needed, they say, are more immediate connections to a variety of people you might actually like. They criticize personality tests required by older dating sites.
Yesterday, one, WooMe, launched. Like competitor Speeddate.com, it lets you do brief video chats with other users.
San Francisco-based Ourlikes, launching today, takes a more gentle approach than video for pairing people.
Its a mostly-free service that lets you select random images — movies, books, people from popular culture — then find other users interested in the same things.
The concept is a twist on Hot or Not. It’s about things you have in common with people, not a direct vote on their attractiveness — more gentle, and most likely more boring to some."

Meru Networks Named Fastest Growing Enterprise Wireless LAN Company Worldwide by Gartner

"Meru Networks, the leader in workplace mobility infrastructure for wireless Voice over Internet Protocol (VoIP), data and video, today announced it has been named by Gartner, Inc. as the fastest growing wireless local-area network (WLAN) vendor and the fourth largest WLAN vendor in the world based on total vendor revenue. In a September 2007 report titled “Market Share: Enterprise Wireless LAN Equipment, Worldwide, 2Q07” Meru is the only WLAN vendor to attain triple-digit growth from the first to the second quarter of 2007, with more than 100 percent growth in revenue. In comparison, growth of the overall WLAN market for the same period was reported as 11 percent.
Meru’s unique 4th generation Mobile Scale™ WLAN system delivers mobile connectivity with the full quality of service (QOS) the enterprise needs, regardless of density of users or mix of VoIP, data and video applications. Meru’s products represent the industry's most scalable and comprehensive wireless solution, delivering pervasive over-the-air coverage, capacity, performance and compatibility. IT organizations recognize that by deploying Meru’s WLAN system, they are not just choosing a wireless network infrastructure that meets their demands today, but one that is also purpose-built for future requirements. "

One Supplier Likes What It's Getting From Wal-Mart's RFID Push - InformationWeek

"Wal-Mart's three-year push to get suppliers to tag cases and pallets of products with RFID chips has been a long slog. Many food and consumer-goods companies, surviving on slim profit margins, say they can't justify investing in the technology with no guaranteed payback. One midsize company that has complied with Wal-Mart's RFID (radio frequency identification) mandate is seeing the returns. Pacific Coast Producers sells $400 million a year worth of packaged and canned fruit to Wal-Mart and other grocers that resell the food under various store brands, including Great Value at Wal-Mart. It complied with Wal-Mart's mandate in January 2006 and has since gone beyond it, says CTO and VP of IS Peter Wtulich. Pacific Coast is benefiting from Wal-Mart's in-store RFID effort. Data generated shows which stores aren't doing a good job keeping its products on shelves. Wal-Mart and Pacific Coast are using that data in conjunction with other information to figure out how to improve those stores' performance. The supplier has even created a cross-functional RFID team of IT, sales, its distribution center, and customer service employees, who work with Wal-Mart to discuss ways to improve inventory control and collaborate on ways to maximize sales during promotional events."

Eons.com slashes jobs, restructures - Boston Business Journal:

"Eons Inc., which runs a Web site geared toward baby boomers, has laid off one-third of its staff and is changing its business strategy, according to a report published Tuesday. Mass High Tech reports the Charlestown, Mass.-based startup, which was launched by Monster.com founder Jeff Taylor, recently laid off 24 employees or approximately 35 percent of the staff prior to the restructuring. "

WSJ Blog: For Bankers, Fairfield Pay Beats Manhattan Pay

"Manhattan has the most investment bankers, but Fairfield County, Conn., has the richest, according to a recent report from the federal Bureau of Labor Statistics.
According to the report, investment banking is the second highest paid industry in the U.S, behind only securities brokerage: weekly pay averaged $8,367 in the first quarter of 2006 (although the first quarter is inflated by annual bonuses).
A quarter of the country’s 173,430 investment banking employees work in Manhattan, earning average weekly pay of $16,849 in the first quarter of 2006. Less than 4% of the total live in Fairfield, but they earned an average of $23,846. For the full year through last March, the average annual investment banking salary in Fairfield topped $500,000.
The county with the largest concentration of investment banking employees is Hudson County, N.J. (home of Jersey City, across the Hudson River from Manhattan). They make up 3.9% of the county’s 235,121 jobs, and earned an average weekly wage of $4,297 in early 2006. – Greg Ip"

IHateLawSchool.com

"Launched in August of 2000 by two law students from Harvard Law School and the University of Texas School of Law, IHateLawSchool.com is the premiere resource for current and future law students.
In addition to a variety of Free Law School Outlines. IHateLawSchool.com also offers over 250+ Law School Outlines in its exclusive member's area. For only $25.00 per year, IHateLawSchool.com's members have unlimited access to the IHateLawSchool.com's exclusive outline bank containing over 250 legal outlines, including first year law courses such as contracts, property, civil procedure, criminal law, torts and upper level law school courses such as professional responsibility, business associations, evidence, wills and estates and federal income tax.
In addition to law outlines, IHateLawSchool.com also offers guidance to current and future law students with its Law School Study Aids page This page is a collection of hand- picked legal study aids for current law school students and for those law students who are taking the bar exam.
IHateLawSchool.com also provides a wealth of information for prospective law students, including information regarding the Law School Admissions Test (LSAT) and LSAT Study Aids, guides to applying for law school, links to every law school in the country, law school rankings and financial aid information.
Further, IHateLawSchool.com also provides help to those law students who are study for the bar exam, including a wealth of bar exam study aids, bar exam advice authored by IHateLawSchool.com and links to bar exam home pages."

VMware seeks to build on IPO buzz

"With a market value approaching $30 billion, VMware already is worth more than all but three publicly traded software makers — Microsoft Corp., Oracle Corp. and SAP AG.
In January 2004, VMware was valued at $602 million — the price EMC Corp. paid for it then. Hopkinton, Mass.-based EMC still holds an 87 percent stake in the company.
This week's conference, dubbed "VMworld," is another reminder of the company's rapid ascent. VMware's first customer conference in 2004 drew fewer than 1,500 people.
The central idea of WMware's visualization software is to turn a single computer into the equivalent of multiple machines, enabling companies to save money on the hardware and electricity needed to keep their data centers humming. Virtualization also is supposed to make it easier to recover information after computers crash."

Bweek: The Next Private Equity Bid

"D.E. Shaw, the giant quantitative hedge fund, has won permission to boost its stake in trading technology outfit Investment Technology Group (ITG).
In June, Shaw disclosed it owned 6.2% of the company and said it was pushing for changes at ITG to boost its stock price. On Sept. 4, the Federal Trade Commission approved Shaw's request to further increase its stake to 15%. The FTC action, under the Hart-Scott-Rodino Act, waives a waiting period and clears away antitrust concerns.
It's a step commonly taken by activist investors. "It provides them the freedom to increase their ownership of the company," says Damien Park, president of Hedge Fund Solutions. Last month, shares of Biogen (BIIB) hit a one-year high after activist investor Carl Icahn won FTC clearance to increase his stake in the company. "

Texas startup says it has batteries beat - Yahoo! News

"Millions of inventions pass quietly through the U.S. patent office each year. Patent No. 7,033,406 did, too, until energy insiders spotted six words in the filing that sounded like a death knell for the internal combustion engine. "

"An Austin-based startup called EEStor promised "technologies for replacement of electrochemical batteries," meaning a motorist could plug in a car for five minutes and drive 500 miles roundtrip between Dallas and Houston without gasoline.
By contrast, some plug-in hybrids on the horizon would require motorists to charge their cars in a wall outlet overnight and promise only 50 miles of gasoline-free commute. And the popular hybrids on the road today still depend heavily on fossil fuels.
"It's a paradigm shift," said Ian Clifford, chief executive of Toronto-based ZENN Motor Co., which has licensed EEStor's invention. "The Achilles' heel to the electric car industry has been energy storage. By all rights, this would make internal combustion engines unnecessary."
Clifford's company bought rights to EEStor's technology in August 2005 and expects EEStor to start shipping the battery replacement later this year for use in ZENN Motor's short-range, low-speed vehicles.
The technology also could help invigorate the renewable-energy sector by providing efficient, lightning-fast storage for solar power, or, on a small scale, a flash-charge for cell phones and laptops.
Skeptics, though, fear the claims..."

VentureBeat: Who founded Facebook? Aaron Greenspan says he came up with the idea first

"Greenspan’s claims, backed up by emails, are the latest salvo in the controversy surrounding the true origins of the social networking company. His claims have surfaced before, but in a New York Times story just published, Greenspan goes to greater lengths at proving his case.
In 2003, Greenspan sent an email to Harvard students describing the newest feature of houseSYSTEM as “the Face Book,” an online service for finding other students. It was four months before Mr. Zuckerberg started his own site, originally “thefacebook.com.” In other emails, Greenspan also discussed key features that Zuckerberg would later implement in his own company. Greenspan even corresponded with Zuckerberg, and the two apparently talked about joining up, but Zuckerberg ultimately decided to go it alone, raising capital and creating his own vastly more successful company.
Most significantly, however, Greenspan doesn’t appear ready to sue Zuckerberg. He says he’s come to terms with Zuckerberg’s success. The real outcome of his assertions is likely to be a further weakening of the lawsuit filed by Tyler, left Cameron Winklevoss, two of the co-founders of ConnectU, who said Facebook was their idea and that Zuckerberg stole it from them, and are pursuing their claims in court."

Yahoo Buying Ad Network for $300 Million: Financial News - Yahoo! Finance

"Yahoo Inc. is buying online advertising network BlueLithium for $300 million in cash, building upon an expansion aimed at ending a financial malaise that has ravaged the Internet pioneer's stock price."

BusinessWeek: Google's Newest Role: Venture Capitalist

"Google (GOOG) has begun making VC-style investments to the tune of about $500,000 or less in promising startups, often buying those companies afterward, according to partners at Silicon Valley VC firms who spoke on condition of anonymity. In an effort to keep spotting promising deals, Google has been hiring a stable of finance pros. And it has invested more than $1 million in a Mumbai-based investment firm called Seedfund to gain access to technology such as automatic translation software that could help spur growth in India.
"Google has easy money," says Pravin Gandhi, a managing partner at Seedfund, which also has raised some of its $15 million from Motorola (MOT) and VC firm Mayfield Fund. So far, Seedfund has taken $500,000 to $750,000 stakes in four companies, including an online news site. On the horizon could be investments that help Google add specialized channels, such as information about autos, to its Web site or cultivate technology that can translate Web content from English into Indian languages, Gandhi says. "It's a somewhat less risky way to participate in the Indian growth story," he says. "

YouTube - CNBC Interview with George Hotz, iPhone Hacker

Salon.com: Meet Hulu, NBC and News Corp.'s answer to YouTube

"Five months ago NBC and Rupert Murdoch's News Corp. announced plans to build a new online video-sharing site meant to compete with Google's YouTube. Seemed like a bold move, old media firms' first big bid to unseat the upstart rival to their fortune. Save for one problem. The new firm wasn't really real. Not only did it have no site, no videos, no presence whatsoever, it didn't even have a name.

So today it finally gets a name -- it's Hulu, the company announced. Pronounced, I'm guessing, HOO-loo, not huh-luh. The service, though, won't debut for a long time to come.

Hulu is not obviously more dumb than a lot of other Web company names. Plus, many names sound stupid when you encounter them for the first time; Kodak rolls off the tongue today, but back in 1881, I'm guessing people considered it lunatic.

Jason Kilar, the CEO of Hulu, says on the company's new Web site that the firm chose the name because it "is short, easy to spell, easy to pronounce, and rhymes with itself." (Kilar: All words rhyme with themselves. I think you mean it has an internal rhyme.) He adds: "Hulu strikes us as an inherently fun name, one that captures the spirit of the service we're building. Our hope is that Hulu will embody our (admittedly ambitious) never-ending mission, which is to help you find and enjoy the world's premier content when, where and how you want it."

Interview with Sumir Chadha - Sr. Managing Director, Sequoia Capital India (more)