Silicon Valley to get its own airline – SurfAir

A new airline, SurfAir, has emerged to serve entrepreneurs, executives, and Venture Capitalists, who travel frequently throughout the state of California. …the US infrastructure has billions of dollars that is hardly used, so much infrastructure that Michael Flint said he could have us landing on a runway within 20 minutes, in case of an emergency …

An explanation for the multi-million dollar books on Amazon – algorithmic pricing

At first I thought it was a joke – a graduate student with too much time on their hands. But there were TWO new copies for sale, each offered for well over a million dollars. And the two sellers seemed not only legit, but fairly big time (over 8,000 and 125,000 ratings in the last year …

Etsy raises $40 million funding – giving craftrepreneurs an international marketplace

Etsy has closed $40 million of funding from a roster of investors who have been believers in Etsy for a long time. I couldn’t be happier to have such a committed set of partners who “get it” along for the next stage. What do we plan to do with the money we’ve raised? Two simple …

America exports the magic of (billion-dollar) movies

When it comes to exports, America brings movies to the world. So which ones are having the biggest impact? “The Avengers” is likely to stand with”Avatar,””Titanic”and iterations of “Harry Potter,” “Star Wars,” “Pirates of the Caribbean,” “Lord of the Rings,””Toy Story” and”Transformers,” as one of a new breed of globally dominant film franchises. via LA Times These are …

Google Ventures – venture capital funding through data

A fascinating article in Fast Company profiles Google Ventures, the company’s venture capital division. Like everything the search giant does they are aiming big with delusions of changing the entire VC industry with data as the vehicle. They start out with some interesting facts: Despite the mythology that has built up around venture capital, it …

Amazon strikes another blow on publishing industry – $20 million for audiobooks

Amazon continues to upset the publishing industry, this time going around publishers to offer authors $20 million for going audio. If an author is willing to let Audible, the Amazon-owned audiobook powerhouse, sell their book then Amazon will give them $1 per book: The Amazon-owned digital audiobooks site Audible.com is launching a new program, “Audible …

Netflix drops $1 million algorithm, goes all-in on streaming recommendations

  Netflix awarded a $1 million prize to a developer team in 2009 for an algorithm that increased the accuracy of the company’s recommendation engine by 10 percent. But today it doesn’t use the million-dollar code, and has no plans to implement it in the future, Netflix announced on its blog Friday. The post goes on to …

Why Facebook bought Instagram – from Om Malik and Robert Scoble

Both Om Malik and Robert Scoble make interesting points, Facebook paid double for what many considered Instagram to be worth and Facebook desperately needs help with mobile devices. From Om Malik: A few days ago Instagram was rumored to be valued at $500 million. A few months ago it was $300 million. Its last round …

One million robots in three years – Foxconn’s Robot Kingdom

The largest private employer in China, Foxconn with over 1 million employees, is finally facing stiff labor costs. This is great news for the U.S. manufacturing sector who may be able to lure some work back to the United States. It will be interesting to see how this affects the global market, but for now …

In 2012, broadband will be in 678 million homes

We are truly in the age of the internet, or rather the Dawn of the Internet Age, as the number of internet connected homes approaches a billion. The stats on broadband and wi-fi in homes: According to a new report from Strategy Analytics, 25 percent of all “households” worldwide now have Wi-Fi networks set up. In …