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 with my mom. I later learned that about half of America’s airports operate at less than 10% capacity, and those are mainly the municipal airports, such as Palo Alto Airport in Silicon Valley.

SurfAir grew quickly and is already launching its beta this month. It’s starting with six destinations. 500 people were selected to participate. It’s a subscription model, just like Netflix. For less than $1000 per month, members can fly multiple trips between California destinations on a private Pilatus 8-seater aircraft. Passengers drive right up to the aircraft, where a valet parks their car and takes their luggage. They’re all pre-screened, so all they have to do is board the aircraft, and they’re at their destination within an hour with a car waiting for them as they exit the plane.

via Pando Daily

 

 

The airline will have (planned) service to – Palo Alto, Monterey, Santa Barbara, & Los Angeles – and it looks to be big hit:

 

When we originally interviewed SurfAir CEO Wade Eyerly last March, he indicated the company was seeking about $2 million. But over the past couple of days we’ve gotten unsolicited calls from investors, who wish to remain anonymous at this point, who have told us that there was so much demand that the company has raised nearly $14 million.

via – SurfAir’s 1st Round of Funding “Oversubscribed”

By The Way – girl surf film, girl music – awesome!

“By The Way” is a fifteen minute short surf film by Haley Gordon.

Featuring Sara Taylor, Ornella Pellizzari, Silvana Lima, Margaux Arramon-Tucoo, Jenna Balester, Kim Kirch, Jen Smith, Courtney Conlogue, Danica Elbertse, Kaleigh Gilchrist, Rebecca Woods, Sofia Mulanovich, Malia Manuel, Leila Hurst.

Chapters:

  • Marooned
  • Carrot To A Knife Fight
  • Silvana Lima Is Taking Over The Video
  • This Is Margaux
  • Empty Lowers
  • Credits

Music:

  • Adventure Galley / Marooned
  • Cults / Abducted
  • Arcade Fire / Sprawl II (Mountains Beyond Mountains)
  • Legends / Heart
  • Lana Del Rey / Blue Jeans (PatrickReza Dubstep Remix)
  • Hudson / Against The Grain

The digital black consumer – leads demographics in mobile data use

Black Americans are consistently the second-highest US consumers of mobile data services by ethnic demographic. And, they are highly active on the Internet and on their mobile devices, watching video, networking with their social connections, and making purchases, according to [pdf] Nielsen’s latest Cross-Platform Report.

Nielsen examined the media habits of the digital black consumer in the US

In some key online activities, black Americans track far higher than the average.

via Marketing Charts

 

Percent who used the following (and their rank among demographics):

  • Text Messaging – 79% (1st)
  • Mobile Internet – 58% (1st)
  • Email – 48% – (2nd)
  • Picture Downloads – 30% (2nd)
  • Mobile Video – 20% (3rd)
  • Music Downloads – 18% (2nd)

 

See the full chart:
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Rick Steves episode diary – filming in Venice – an enchanting behind-the-scenes

We’re nearly finished filming two new TV shows on Venice. Thinking back over a very productive day, I realize how much I love this work. Our scripts are about 3,400 words per half-hour show. They are split between “on-cameras,” with me talking directly to the camera, and “B-roll,” where we “cover the script” with footage that illustrates what we’re describing. While it’s been called “shooting the nouns,” we think of B-roll as more than that.

***

We started early, on St. Mark’s Square. While it’s littered with kitschy souvenir carts and jammed with tour groups most of the day, at 7:30, there is no tourism. The square is clean, with just a few well-dressed businesspeople walking to work, the random jogger, and very focused photographers like us marveling at how the history pops with the architecture and without the modern tourism. The Gothic is so lacy, and the Renaissance so capable. We got a few “walk-bys” to establish me in what looks like a pure, computer-generated Venetian cityscape.

 

Venice’s St. Mark’s Square before the crowds hit.

 

At 8:30, we met our local guide, Michael, who has been instrumental in setting things up in advance for us. He is brilliantly navigating the Byzantine bureaucracy of the city and helping us open all the right doors — some of them literally pillaged from Byzantium.

We climbed the Torre dell’Orologio, or Clock Tower. This was built 500 years ago, providing the city with…

keep readingJust Another Workday — in Venice

Switzerland – Silicon Alps – joins the start-up ecosystem

Ah, Switzerland. The land of chocolate, cow-bells, skiing and prices that make you want to cry. A place that has built a global brand on providing a safe, risk-free haven for other people’s money and not being disruptive or belligerent. Clean, orderly and wonderfully peaceful — yes, the clichés are true.

Not then, you might think, a country especially suited to launching a startup — but you’d be wrong. Long a hub for high-tech and medical sciences, Switzerland now boasts an ecosystem of Internet entrepreneurs that’s blossoming as fast as the proverbial Edelweiss in spring.

“I don’t know any other country on Earth that is so good at seed funding,” enthuses Johannes Reck, co-founder and CEO of GetYourGuide. His story is illuminating — after founding GetYourGuide in 2008, his team was approached by a local bank with a seed funding offer, an out of the blue reversal of roles that typifies what’s happening here.

“In literally every other country in the world I’ve been to, entrepreneurs struggle so hard to get their first seed funding,” he says. “In Switzerland you have a lot of institutions who provide money, literally for free, very early on.”

 

via TNW Europe

 

***

 

Read about start-ups scenes in L.A. and Berlin:

 

And, some beautiful photos of Switzerland:

Continue reading “Switzerland – Silicon Alps – joins the start-up ecosystem”

Season 2 of Sherlock from BBC – watch online free until June 19

The dynamic, if dysfunctional duo of Sherlock Holmes (Benedict Cumberbatch, War Horse) and Dr. John Watson (Martin Freeman, The Hobbit), battles the worst of 21st- century London, including a tech savvy arch-villain who wants to rule the world and a hound from the hinges of Hell.

Season 2 episodes:

  • A Scandal in Belgravia
  • The Hounds of Baskerville
  • The Reichenbach Fall

 

Watch Online Free

N.Y. Times interesting profile on Mark Zuckerberg’s wedding

 

The wedding of Mark Zuckerberg to Priscilla Chan last weekend here in the backyard of their $7 million home had all the staging of a carefully orchestrated celebrity event. A publicist for Facebook eagerly offered photos afterward of the beaming couple, who met at Harvard and have dated for much of the last nine years. Well-placed anonymous sources leaked to reporters the dinner menu, which included sushi and Mexican food, and the fact that Green Day’s Billie Joe Armstrong performed.

***

Ms. Pettibone said she realized Ms. Chan was wearing her design after the designer’s husband pointed it out in a photograph he saw of the new bride. “It’s not our top seller,” Ms. Pettibone said of the $4,700 dress, one of 40 in her bridal collection, in a phone interview. “But it’s respectable.”

All her dresses are made to order so, last week, Ms. Pettibone said she combed through her orders to see where the dress was sold. It was the Little White Dress boutique in Denver, and it was apparently bought by a third party.

the full profileFacebook’s Royal Wedding

 

**In the N.Y. Times article the photo above has 56K in Likes compared to the 1.5 million it has now.

European Union needs a President – says German Finance Minister

The European Union needs to become more integrated with a common finance policy and a central government, German finance minister Wolfgang Schaeuble said Wednesday (16 May).

“I would be for the further development of the European Commission into a government. I am for the election of a European president, he said at an event in Aachen, reports Reuters.

He said this is a longterm response to the current eurozone crisis, which many have said has been exacerbated by the fact that the EU lacked the tools – such as a central transfer system – to effectively deal with it.

“We certainly won’t manage it in this legislative period,” said Schauble referring to the creation of a finance ministry but noted that for a currency union, a part of finance policy needs to be harmonised.

That should be the “lesson” learned from the current crisis.

He said he wants to widen citizens participation in EU politics beyond voting for MEPs to voting for the president of the European Commission, noting that the recent French presidential elections, including a three-hour TV debate between the two candidates, attracted interest far beyond the country’s borders.

via EU Observer

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Warren Buffett buys 89 local newspapers – eschews larger publications

Warren Buffett made good Thursday on his promise to buy more newspapers, agreeing to buy 63 daily and weekly newspapers in the Southeast for $142 million from financially troubled Media General Inc. of Richmond, Va.

The newspapers, in Virginia, North Carolina, South Carolina, Alabama and Florida, would be combined with the Omaha World-Herald Co. into a new Berkshire Hathaway Inc. division called BH Media Group. They would be managed by World Media Enterprises, a new sister company of The World-Herald.

“In towns and cities where there is a strong sense of community, there is no more important institution than the local paper,” said Buffett, chairman and CEO of Berkshire, in a press release. “The many locales served by the newspapers we are acquiring fall firmly in this mold, and we are delighted they have found a permanent home with Berkshire Hathaway.”

And Buffett said Thursday he may buy more newspapers.

via Omaha World-Herald

 

And, a week later he followed through:

Warren Buffett’s Berkshire Hathaway, Inc has announced it is purchasing 26 local papers, all locals. In a letter to the publishers, Buffett said that the papers would need to focus as much as possible on local issues rather than try to compete on national ones. More interestingly, Buffett weighed in on the perennial issue of whether newspapers can give away their news online:

“We must rethink the industry’s initial response to the Internet. The original instinct of newspapers then was to offer free in digital form what they were charging for in print. This is an unsustainable model and certain of our papers are already making progress in moving to something that makes more sense. We want your best thinking as we work out the blend of digital and print that will attract both the audience and the revenue we need.”

via The Verge

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The official program from opening day of Golden Gate Bridge in 1937

The 1937 guide contains articles on the amazing architectural achievement as well as 130+ advertisements. Here are some of the more interesting ones:

 


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