Technology Sector

The Fiber-Optic Umbilical: Pay-TV Companies Want You to Forget About All That Internet Media Nonsense

Hacking the Law: Fights Over Cyber-Security and a Silicon Valley Divide

We Are The Rolling Stones, and We Are Here For Your Every Last Dollar

How much will you pay to say you've seen the Rolling Stones? In 30 years, when Mick Jagger and Keith Richards are either dead and buried, or are liquid-preserved human heads running a cybernetic body, how badly will you want to tell your (grand-) kids that yes, you saw the real Rolling Stones live? ... More >>

Haute Links: When Blogs Become Ads

HP Shareholders Sue Company, Claim Execs Lied about New Technology's Value

Last month, Hewlett-Packard announced that it had gotten played by one of its acquisitions. Autonomy, a British software maker it purchased for $11.7 billion in August 2011, was not worth as much as HP thought. "[S]ome former members of Autonomy's management team used accounting improprieties, mis ... More >>

Investing in Buzz Is a Loser's Game

There will likely never again be anything quite like the dotcom boom-and-bust of the late '90s. But that doesn't mean that everybody learned their lesson about investing in companies with questionable business models -- or at least in those with outsized expectations for growth. It only means that t ... More >>

Google Goes to Washington

During the SOPA debate, many opponents of the anti-piracy bill often tried to portray Google and the rest of the tech industry as a champion for all that is good and true as opposed to what it really is: an increasingly powerful, self-interested industry like any other. This happened particularly in ... More >>

The Copyright Standoff: Technology Pits Bad Rules vs. No Rules

Apple Gets More Gay With Addition of Homosexual Emojis

Last year Apple found itself caught on the wrong side of the gay community when it allowed aspiring heterosexuals to access that controversial gay cure app on iTunes. But it appears the Silicon Valley tech giant is finally making peace with homosexuals, or at least those homosexuals with iPhones. As ... More >>

'Men Invented the Internet,' New York Times flatly declares

It was the thud heard 'round the world: The opening sentence of a story about sexism in Silicon Valley anchoring the front page of the New York Times' Sunday business section. "Men Invented the Internet," declared David Streitfeld, and it was impossible not to do a double-take, even if you didn't kn ... More >>

Ron Paul Counts Bay Area Tech Companies Among Top Donors

This week Republican presidential cult favorite Ron Paul will campaign through California, with stops at well-known party school Chico State, as well as UCLA, and Berkeley. While the venues reflect Paul's solid and passionate base among college kids, a closer look at Paul's donor list shows that the ... More >>

The Creators Project: Show Preview

Sorry, Twitter, if You're in the Media Business, You're a Media Company

​Given how Silicon Valley moguls flee from the term "media company," you'd almost think it was as bad as "child-porn merchant." But whether they like it or not, companies like Google, Facebook, and Twitter are media companies. They don't have precisely the same business models as News Corp., Disne ... More >>

List: What's the Best Voting System for San Francisco?

​Supervisors Sean Elsbernd and Mark Farrell have proposed measures ending Ranked Choice Voting in San Francisco, while David Campos and John Avalos have proposed allowing even more ranked choices on the ballot. What is the best voting system for San Francisco? Whoever raises the most awareness ... More >>

SOPA Might Be Bad Policy, but It's Not Censorship

​If you're reading this, chances are that you regularly consume media online. And if you regularly consume media online, you're almost certainly seeing and reading more today than you know what to do with about the federal Stop Online Piracy Act (SOPA) and Protect Intellectual Property Act (PIPA). ... More >>

Media Companies Outspend Tech Giants in Fight Over SOPA

Can content pirates be stopped?​The tech industry has been paying quite a bit of attention to the Stop Online Piracy Act (SOPA), a bill wending its way through the U.S. Congress that would allow media companies to pursue legal remedies against online search engines and social networks that link to ... More >>

Google, Facebook, Others Fight Legislation to Stop Online Content Piracy

​A veritable who's who of major tech firms in San Francisco and the Silicon Valley are fighting federal legislation aimed at putting a stop to theft of original content online.The Stop Online Piracy Act (SOPA) would allow content creators to seek court orders barring internet service providers, se ... More >>

Zynga Pressures Employees to Give Back Stock Ahead of IPO

Mark Pincus​Social-gaming company Zynga, along with a handful of other large tech businesses, was successful earlier this year in getting the city of San Francisco to forgo its share of tax revenue on the firm's stock options. Now it appears that wasn't enough: Zynga CEO Mark Pincus has reportedly ... More >>

What Exactly Is a Tech Company?

​Fast Company has published what might be the best, clearest look at the how the contours of the tech landscape are shaping themselves, and how that landscape has come to be dominated by four companies. I was alerted to the article via a tweet by Chronicle tech reporter Casey Newton who characte ... More >>

Google Thumbs Nose at Antitrust Regulators

​You can't say Google doesn't have balls. Despite increasingly heavy antitrust scrutiny by the federal government, the Internet behemoth is charging ahead with a deal that brings all kinds of potential for cornering a market. It will pay $12.5 billion for Motorola Mobility, a leading maker of hand ... More >>

Massive Job Cuts Coming at Cisco

​Cisco Systems is planning to cut up to 10,000 jobs, Bloomberg News reported late Monday. That's obviously a huge number, but it seems even huger if you think of it this way: It represents more than half the number of jobs the entire U.S. economy created in June.​The numbers will be large en ... More >>

H1-B Visa Program Creates Caste System for Silicon Valley

Deflating the Social Media Hot Air Balloon

Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg: Not a revolutionary​Facebook, Twitter, Zynga, and their ilk -- standard bearers for the ill-defined phenomenon known as "social media" that is now supposed to be the future of the Web -- are having a tough time these days in the thinking person's press.Over the past f ... More >>

AOL to Buy TechCrunch; Reported Price Tag is $25 Million

Michael Arrington​AOL has announced that it is buying the San Francisco-based tech industry blog TechCrunch, an influential business news site that has built a strong following in Silicon Valley.Initial reports suggest the acquisition price -- which has not been publicly disclosed by either party ... More >>

Will PG&E's SmartMeters smoke out pot growers?

Is Steve Jobs Mortal? In 2007, SF Weekly Was the First to Ask

Now that Apple CEO Steve Jobs has announced he'll take an illness-related leave of absence, the global faithful are asking themselves: Wait a minute; which is it? Is he the all-knowing, all-being master of lightness and dark, as we've been led to believe? Or is he a mere flesh-and-blood mortal? As i ... More >>

Gibson Rocks Activision's Guitar Hero With Legal Suit

iPods Now More Explody

It's Time to Buy Stock in MRSA Detectors

Cell Phones Get D from Consumer Reports

The Top 50 Women in Business -- WSJ Honors Silicon Valley Fembots

So Does That Mean Weeklies Were Ahead Of Their Time? Shit, They've Always Been Free

Hitting the G-Spot: Google to Announce Mobile Phone Platform

CNET/H-P Suit: Good Personal Privacy v. Bad Personal Privacy VIolator

Tight Agenda

Maker of Boy Butter says Comcast won't air his racy sex-lube ad in San Francisco

Letters to the Editor

Week of 2-14-2007

Pay to Play

The son of a world—renowned chef says he wanted to reform the phone industry. The feds say he wanted to get rich quick.

Cops Who SPY

I Spy a Scandal

Silicon Valley stalwart Hewlett-Packard is reeling, under investigation for invading the privacy of journalists and its own board members. Do you see a way out for the computing giant?

Quattrone 2.0

A judge says Silicon Valley investment titan Frank Quattrone is free to go back to work. Would you trust him?

Is Anybody Watching?

In its struggle for cable eyeballs, Al Gore's S.F.-based Current TV is off to a rocky start

Dangerous Corner

A Dog-Eat-Dog World

A journalist frets about job security, then realizes things could be worse -- he could be a janitor at Yahoo!

Best Place to Sweat While Doing Business

Sportsclub/LA San Francisco

Call to Patriotism

If fighting terrorism requires a stimulated economy, no move could be more welcome than the dismantling of Pac Bell

Rikke's Angels

They're young, beautiful corporate headhunters for the high-tech industry. How have they survived the crash of 2001? Simple: By partying like it's 1999.

Spammer-Jamming Hammered

The Internet's version of the Hatfields and the McCoys just escalated

Riff Raff

Fish Story

Red Herring Editor Tony Perkins is a self-described maverick, a stylish fast-talker with a knack for making friends and influencing people in the high-tech world. Not bad traits for a Silicon Valley entrepreneur, but are they what it takes to publish a "m

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