Posts tagged Silicon
Web app developer, SEO specialist, operations director and 40 more – Silicon Prairie News
May 18th
|
Web app developer, SEO specialist, operations director and 40 more
Silicon Prairie News The SPN job board is sponsored by Hudl. Have any CPA-certified friends that brag a little too much about their mad spreadsheet skills? Hudl has just the job for them. Check out hudl.com/jobs to find out more. |
View full post on SEO – Google News
Amazon's 'Betas': The Show That Could Be A 'Cheers' For Silicon Valley
Apr 28th
Over time, great cities tend to inspire their own iconic comedies: New York’s Seinfeld. Boston’s Cheers. It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia. Now Betas is the show that could put Silicon Valley on the comedy map – but only if you help.
Betas is one of the eight comedy pilots that Amazon has been featuring on its Instant Video page. If enough voters back Betas – or any of the other comedies – then Amazon will greenlight its development into a full-fledged original series, taking on shows like House of Cards and Lilyhammer on Netflix.
Betas = Heart, Surrealism And Desperation
To its credit, Betas integrates much of what made 1980s comedies great – heart, a touch of implausibility that borders on surrealism – and swirls it all together with the desperation and ambition of the Silicon Valley feeding frenzy. For many entrepreneurs, the right handshake is all that separates them from poverty and untold riches, a cruelty that can instantlyreduce months of work to ashes. Chasing that dream is frustrating. And funny.
Betas reminds us that Silicon Valley is has become high school writ large: geeks may be the new jocks, but the popular kids still have all the money, and dweebs are still dweebs. And owning all the toys is still the high score.
Betas begins in the sort of community workspace many techies could imagine working in, if they weren’t, you know, working: Employees chase each other around with Nerf guns, others grind Cheetos into their keyboards. “Nash,” the neurotic, socially-inhibited engineer played by Karan Soni, can’t take it. He freaks out and hides in one of the telephone booths the workspace has put against the wall, a quasi-ironic homage to older technology. Nash, despondent, tells his company’s founder, Trey (Joe Dinicol), that the latest build of their Highlight-like social discovery app, BRB, bricked the phone.
“Who cares? Investors are making investments from napkin sketches made by high school dropouts!” Trey responds.
“I don’t make napkin sketches!” Nash wails.
The plot of the pilot revolves around a meeting that Trey is convinced BRB needs with George Murchison (Ed Begley, Jr.) who plays electric flute with Moby and slices his own “Ferrari of trout” with an Asian shortsword. Part of the reason is one-upping the team behind “Valet Me,” a parking app whose sudden success makes the douchebag developers instant stars. Trey is convinced that the when Murchison hears BRB’s pitch, he’ll invest – and talks his way into Murchison’s home using “Larry Page” as an alias.
The other members of the BRB team include Hobbes (Jonathan C. Daly), a bearded, jaded developer whose idea of relaxing is watching Webcam porn at a local laundromat, and Mitchell (Charlie Saxton) a pudgy dweeb whose biggest goal is to talk to Mikki (Maya Erskine), the cool Asian chick who’s looking for just about anything to spark her empty life. “I would never say damp,” Mikki muses. “It makes my vaj seem like the Dagobah system.”
Betas Brings Silicon Valley To Life
Betas may be a scripted comedy, but it feels a hell of a lot more real than Randi Zuckerberg’s reality TV fiasco, Startups: Silicon Valley that debuted last year. Then, a cast of pretty wannabes partied their way from meetup to meeting to hangout to loft party, leaving everyone in Silicon Valley muttering, “What the hell is this?” Startups worst crime, however, wasn’t that it was vapid; it was just boring, and we’d seen all the tricks that reality series could throw at us before. It’s hard to fathom how anyone got beyond an episode or two.
(See also Startups Silicon Valley: The Painful Truth Behind A Caricature Of Excess.)
The Big Bang Theory may hold the crown of TV’s geekiest show. But BBT mocks geeky science culture – Star Trek, Iron Man, and ins and outs of academic life – without really touching on what makes a life in technology so great. Betas tosses you in the deep end; it assumes you know what “Series A” funding is, and who Mark Zuckerberg and Page are. Little touches – bumping phones to swap digits, for example – lend the series the “oh yeah, people really do do that” feeling. Silicon Valley will hit the big screen this summer, when The Internship looks inside life at Google – but do you really think a sanctioned look inside the Googleplex is going to end up all that funny?
(See also Geek Movies: The Top 10 Most Inspirational Films For Techies.)
Think Scrubs: Silicon Valley
Think of Betas as Scrubs Silicon Valley: the four members of BRB are starting at the bottom, hoping to climb to the top. In Scrubs, there’s a natural progression: the young residents must earn their way up the medical ladder to become full-fledged doctors. What makes Betas so compelling is that Silicon Valley isn’t like that. Instead, it’s a roller-coaster ride: This week it’s a funding deal, next week it’s a show-stopping bug. What happens if Trey and the team accidentally leak their user information? What if they’re hacked? Do they attract the attention of Anonymous? Does Microsoft make a pitch to buy them? Does IBM?
Look, crazy stuff happens in Silicon Valley every day. But there’s no reason why we can’t watch it on our TVs at night, too. Watch Betas. Vote for it. Let’s make this happen, people.
View full post on ReadWrite
Pass Options for SMX West; Sessions, Networking and More in Silicon Valley, March 11-13
Feb 19th
Search Engine Land’s – SMX West conference kicks off March 11 at the San Jose Convention Center in the heart of Silicon Valley. With over 50 educational sessions and keynotes, multiple networking activities and presentations from leading solutions providers, you’ll get the tactics and…
Please visit Search Engine Land for the full article.
View full post on Search Engine Land: News & Info About SEO, PPC, SEM, Search Engines & Search Marketing
Silicon Valley, Meet Innovation From Great Rift Valley
Feb 11th
Across Africa, an innovation culture is starting to emerge. In Kenya, PesaPal piggybacks on the popular M-PESA mobile payments service, enabling Kenyans to buy and sell on the Internet. Tanzania’s Techno Brain is selling software for managing businesses in 13 countries. And South Africa’s Cobi Interactive, a mobile communications software company, is developing popular applications for smart phones.
Yet for Africa to fulfill it’s potential and emerge among the world’s economic tigers, social and business leaders agree that much more innovation must happen there. The continent’s cities, universities, entrepreneurs and commercial R&D organizations can become engines of innovation producing new products and services that are tailored for the African experience. And, in order to make this transition, African institutions and businesses–plus multinational corporations –must work together to create innovation ecosystems that foster this kind of creativity.
At IBM’s Smarter Planet Leadership Forum today in Nairobi, Kenya, CEO Ginni Rometty said IBM hopes to work collaboratively with the people and institutions in Africa: “We want to be seen as a citizen of the countries, essential to the government, companies and people.” Rometty said IBM’s decision to locate an IBM Research laboratory on the continent–beginning with an office in Nairobi–sends the strong signal about the company’s commitment to Africa.
The message is clear: Rometty wants IBM to play an active role in building innovation ecosystems in Africa.
Taking Silicon Valley On The Road
California’s Silicon Valley is the prototype innovation ecosystem. It benefitted from the combination of good universities, entrepreneurial companies, government incentives and robust supplies of venture capital. Many of other places have tried to copy Silicon Valley’s formula—some quite successfully, among them Bangalore, India, and Singapore.
Kenya is among the countries in Africa that have the potential of creating a vibrant innovation ecosystem. Students and entrepreneurs dream of tapping science and technology to solve social and business problems. Universities aim to expand their research and teaching programs in science, math and technology. Business leaders are creating startup incubators to encourage entrepreneurship—places like iHub, FabLab Nairobi and NaiLab.
The government is playing a vital role, too, by making bold moves aimed at establishing Kenya as an information technology hub for East Africa. The government recently broke ground for Konzo Techno City, a new municipality being built from scratch south of Nairobi to bring research universities, corporations and government agencies together to support job creation, research collaboration and economic development. Another key move was the launch by the Kenya ICT Board of an incubation program for high-tech startups—including seed capital funding. “If we can build the skills and innovate, it will change the entire continent,” said Bitange Ndemo, permanent secretary of Kenya’s ministry of information and science.
Private Interests Play Key Role
But there’s an important role for foreign companies and academic institutions to play, as well—as partners with African institutions in making progress. IBM Research’s new research laboratory in Nairobi is the first basic scientific research lab to be established in Africa by a foreign multinational firm. We have allied with Catholic University of Eastern Africa to locate the lab on its Nairobi campus.The goal of the lab is to produce innovations within Africa and also bring in great ideas from IBM’s other 11 research labs around the world. “We want to create technology solutions optimized for Africa that can be exported to the rest of the developing world,” John Kelly, senior vice president and director of IBM Research said earlier this week.
While the first lab office is in Nairobi, IBM plans on expanding elsewhere around the continent and also performing collaborative research with a number of universities. Already, the company is engaging with the University of Nairobi and Strathmore University in collaborative programs where scientists from IBM will work with university faculty members on projects of mutual interest.
In another sign that Kenya is beginning to offer an attractive academic environment, Columbia University, one of the leading academic institutions in the United States, has set up Columbia Global Centre/Africa as a venue for research aimed at helping African nations reach their UN Millennium Development Goals.
We believe that foreign firms and institutions won’t succeed if they try to build islands of expertise. They must work with local universities on collaborative research and to improve the quality of degree programs. Sure, if this happens it will mean that IBM Research will have to compete vigorously to recruit and retain the most skilled and ambitious young people. But so be it. “This is a long term investment,” said Kelly. “We’re here to help build the skills and, hopefully, we’ll get our fair share of the most talented graduates.”
Article and video courtesy of A Smarter Planet. Lead image courtesy of Shutterstock.
View full post on ReadWrite
See Hacker Dojo’s hilarious answer to an SEO image problem – Silicon Valley Business Journal
Feb 7th
|
See Hacker Dojo's hilarious answer to an SEO image problem
Silicon Valley Business Journal Hacker Dojo's response to its logo showing up in stories about cybercrime was a full-on SEO assault, seeking to bury it on searches with funny images like the one above. Although multiple people shot the photos, the ones that have been used in stories … |
View full post on SEO – Google News
10 Reasons You Need to Attend SMX West – March 11-13 in Silicon Valley
Feb 6th
Internet marketing success means knowing what works, testing what’s new and measuring everything. Search Engine Land’s – SMX West is where professional internet marketers like you go for the latest tactics for increasing traffic, conversions and sales. Here are 10 reasons why you should…
Please visit Search Engine Land for the full article.
View full post on Search Engine Land: News & Info About SEO, PPC, SEM, Search Engines & Search Marketing
Mobile developer, UX designer, SEO superstar and 51 more – Silicon Prairie News
Feb 1st
|
Mobile developer, UX designer, SEO superstar and 51 more
Silicon Prairie News Link Building Strategist (i.e. PR for SEO), Red Nova Labs (Westwood, Kan.) – Red Nova Labs is a cloud and mobile software think-tank, with a horizontal interest in tech business development and startup partnerships/investments in Kansas City. (See … |
View full post on SEO – Google News
Mobile apps programmer, SEO superstar, UI Designer and 44 more – Silicon Prairie News
Jan 18th
|
Mobile apps programmer, SEO superstar, UI Designer and 44 more
Silicon Prairie News (See posting). SEO Superstar, Red Nova Labs (Westwood, Kan.) – Red Nova Labs is a cloud and mobile software think-tank, with a horizontal interest in tech business development and startup partnerships/investments in Kansas City. (See posting). Front … |
View full post on SEO – Google News
Can Ireland Offer Startups Something Silicon Valley Can’t?
Dec 24th
In the past few years just about every country with a high-speed network and a national budget has hatched a “startup ecosystem.” From http://readwrite.com/2012/04/17/move-your-startup-to-chile-con to the Silicon Taiga, these programs offer entrepreneurs funding, infrastructure and support in an effort to lure a critical mass of promising young companies and spawn the next Silicon Valley.
None has succeeded. The Dropboxes and Instagrams of the world still flock to the original Silicon Valley.
First Choice For Second-Tier Startups?
But if you’ve got a startup that is not quite as hot as a Dropbox or an Instagram, there could be a good reason to consider one of those other startup ecosystems. You won’t get Marc Andreessen’s number at the next rooftop party. But there’s something else you won’t get: ignored.
“Our startups get tons of hands-on support – much more than they’d get almost anywhere else in the world,” says Lorcan O’Sullivan, manager of Enterprise Ireland, one of the latest of the many campaigns by governments around the globe to attract startups to their shores and inject new life into their local economies.
Enterprise Ireland has a fund of €10 million to dole out. Startups that relocate to Ireland can get between €100,000 and €500,000 each. Those that are accepted must arrange private-sector funding in an amount equal to the Startup Ireland funding. Startup Ireland does not take a seat on the board but does take 10% equity. That’s more than top U.S. accelerators like Y Combinator take (normally around 6%) but O’Sullivan says Enterprise Ireland gives more in return, particularly to startups in sectors where Ireland is strong, such as medical devices, pharma and IT.
“Of course, a good startup can get funding anywhere. But we think we have extra things to offer.”
Ireland Can Help With Going Global
Enterprise Ireland has so far attracted entrepreneurs from the U.S., Russia, Belarus, England, Greece and South Africa. Many of them are outfits that want to internationalize but don’t know how to do it. “We have a network of 28 offices around the world that are at the disposal of our startups to make business connections and gain access to customers and partners,” O’Sullivan says.
Some of Enterprise Ireland’s startups joined the program because Ireland is the easiest place in the EU to launch a business. One startup in the medical device field that joined recently was attracted by the favorable regulatory environment.
“We hope to attract a wide range of startups, even those who have a reason to leave the U.S.,” O’Sullivan says. “These could be entrepreneurs who can’t get a visa in the U.S. but can get a visa in Ireland, because we have very attractive startup entrepreneur visas here.”
For all his country’s advantages – lower taxes and costs than Silicon Valley – O’Sullivan says he realizes that entrepreneurs with a good shot in the U.S. will not choose Ireland, especially given all the negative economic news about the country of late, including its recession and debt.
“People think, ‘Why would I go to Ireland? There is not money or jobs or anything happening there.’ But we want to say there is very vibrant startup scene here. Are we going to replicate Silicon Valley? No. But you can still be very successful without being Silicon Valley.”
Lead image courtesy of Shutterstock.
View full post on ReadWrite
SEO expert, systems engineer, media design intern and 60 more – Silicon Prairie News
Dec 7th
|
SEO expert, systems engineer, media design intern and 60 more
Silicon Prairie News Note: Opportunities on the Prairie has a new look. With posts regularly surpassing 50 listings, we changed the format, categorizing listings by type and shortening each listing by removing the abbreviated job description. Please let us know what you … |
View full post on SEO – Google News
