Tom Foremski
Latest from Tom Foremski
Techcrunch Attack On SF City Government – Should SF’s Tech Stars Avoid Local Taxes?
Mike Arrington at Techcrunch, has attacked San Francisco Supervisor John Avalos for insisting that tech superstar companies such as Twitter pay the city’s 1.5% payroll tax. Mr Arrington resorted to name calling in his post: San Francisco Doing Everything It Can To Drive Zynga And Twitter Away. The city isn’t thanking Twitter for bringing all ...
Bill Davidow on the Dangers of an Over-Connected Society
I recently interviewed Bill Davidow, the veteran Silicon Valley VC and co-founder of Mohr Davidow Ventures, about his recently published book: OVERCONNECTED: The Promise and Threat of the Internet. The premise is that our modern society faces new perils because our computer technologies and the communications technologies of the Internet accelerate flaws in our systems. ...
Plaxo Reboots: Moves Back to its Roots, Leaves Social Networking
Plaxo is announcing a major relaunch today that moves its focus back to management of user address books across all of their devices and is pulling out of social networking. The company announced new services such as Plaxo Personal Assistant, which automatically maintains user address books and tracks updates across the web. I recently met ...
MobyNow: Real-Time Tracking Of Tweets, Photos And More At SWSXi
I’m not at South By South West interactive this year but the Austin, Texas based event is hosting a lot of the digerati from around the world but especially from SF/Silicon Valley. Keeping track of everything happening, Tweeting and sharing is tough when you are on the go in Austin. MobyNow has put together a ...
VC’s Agree: “No Bubble” …But Is Twitter A Sign?
“Double, double toil and trouble; Fire burn, and caldron bubble,” chanted the witches of Shakespeare’s Macbeth, cooking up trouble. Similarly, are the VCs of Silicon Valley cooking up trouble by helping to fuel a new bubble? Valuations for venture backed companies are certainly higher than they’ve been in a long time but are we in ...
You Might Already be a Curator
Curation is a hot topic in regard to the Internet but curation is nothing new — most of us do it without even thinking about it. Take a look around your home and you will likely see many curations: – Your book shelf is probably a curated collection of your favorite books — you got ...
Learning How to Link Bait: Arianna and NYTimes Chief Bill Keller Slings Mud Over a Mundane Insight
A tempest in a teapot is probably a too generous way to describe the online spat between Arianna Huffington and Bill Keller, Editor-in-Chief of the New York Times. Mr Keller (above) accused Ms Huffington of using his original ideas in a radio interview. The attack was made in a column by Mr Keller in which ...
Silicon Valley Veteran VC Bill Davidow Says “No Bubble”
I just finished an interview with Bill Davidow on the subject of his new book “Overconnected: The Promise and Threat of the Internet.” I’ll post the interview later. I took the opportunity of asking Mr Davidow about the state of Silicon Valley and questions such as “are we in a bubble?” Mr Davidow is 75 ...
Out & About: Startup/Apps Mania in the Coffee Shops And Bars
These it’s difficult to go anywhere without hearing about startups and their apps. That’s natural in my job but when you start hearing “normal” people talking about apps all of a sudden then that’s an interesting trend to watch. For example, my 23 year old son Matt tells me he hears people talking about their ...
Is Curation Becoming A Proxy For ‘Social Media?’
Curation is a hot topic and it’s a topic that is being enthusiastically adopted by many in social media — so much so that curation and social media seem to be beginning to be used interchangeably. Take a look at this post on the BBC College of Journalism blog: Social media: what’s the difference between ...