Still making your way through your holiday shopping list? Here’s my list of Southern California high tech companies you might want to do your shopping with. Buy.com – Aliso Viejo – computers, electronics, cameras, books, cell phones, DVDs, music et al Cooking.com – Santa Monica – bakeware, kitchen items, appliances, cookbooks, etc. JustFlowers.com – Los [...]

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Southern California by Benjamin Kuo

Well, it’s a corporate blog, but Richard Rosenblatt — best known as being the CEO of Intermix and Chairman of MySpace before its sale to News Corp.–is now apparently blogging on Demand Media’s site. Not much there yet, except a promo on the firm’s new corporate web site, but there’s lots of folks who will [...]

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Blogs by Benjamin Kuo

With all the worries about jobs and employment out there, I’ve been surprised to hear from many recruiters who have lots of positions open and have been having a difficult time finding people. Among the latest posted to our jobs board: Rock-Star Lead Front-End Software Engineer/Web Developer, Move, Inc. Mid-Level Software Engineer 2, Move, Inc. [...]

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Jobs by Benjamin Kuo

Ouch. The Tribune Company, which owns the Los Angeles Times, among other newpapers and media, has just filed for bankruptcy.

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Uncategorized by Benjamin Kuo

What do you do when you’re an Idealab funded startup making controllable mirrors for solar thermal plants? Wish your boss Happy Birthday. Idealab-funded eSolar has this video making the rounds: (eSolar is also backed by Google and Oak Investment Partners, by more than $130M in funding in its latest round).

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Clean Energy by Benjamin Kuo

This is completely off topic, but I had a chuckle when I saw that a New York company is promoting its GPS tracking units for Baby Jesus tracking. Apparently churches have a problem with people stealing Santa, Baby Jesus, etc. over the holidays.

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Random by Benjamin Kuo

Jason Calacanis, the CEO of Santa Monica-based Mahalo (and oft-quoted Silicon Valley tech celebrity), has a fix for the economic downturn: work harder. Calacanis, in a post to his mailing list (and blog), says: If we’re going to have any chance of bringing America back to greatness, we’re all going to have to work 20% [...]

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Economy by Benjamin Kuo

Here’s an interesting tidbit, from a number of sources: despite the worries over the economy, apparently e-commerce retailers aren’t feeling it, with comScore reporting today that Cyber Monday sales set a record and were up 15% from last year. Orange County’s Buy.com also saw very positive results, telling us yesterday that Monday was the firm’s [...]

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Economy by Benjamin Kuo

There’s a good article — out of Las Vegas, of all places — about how at least one group providing angel funding has struggled to close deals in the wake of the financial crisis. The article describes what I’ve heard echoed here in Southern California, which is individual angel investors shy to write commit checks, [...]

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Angel Investing by Benjamin Kuo

Looking for an upside to all the doom and gloom out there? I’ve been hearing from commercial real estate brokers that there’s at least one upside to the downturn: negotiating for cheaper rent. Jacob Bobek and Scott Steuber at Cushman & Wakefield recently sent us this article giving entrepreneurs some tips on how to save [...]

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Advice by Benjamin Kuo