Monday is Veterans Day. It’s a day of rest for some, a day of work for others, and a day of reflection for many. We recently had the pleasure to discuss this meaningful day with Dustan Batton, a veteran and a member of the CALinnovates team. I hope you enjoy learning more about Dustan and saluting him for all he has done for America.
Regulations can be suffocating. Used in the wrong way they might accidentally “Napster” a nascent industry.
Thankfully, the California Public Utilities Commission realized the value of the mobile-based sharing economy by voting to legitimize the rideshare industry statewide.
The U.S. Senate on May 6 passed the third version of Senate Bill 743, otherwise known as the Marketplace Fairness Act, which requires consumers to pay sales tax on all Internet purchases. How does this affect the growing crowdfunding industry? Initially, it affects reward-based crowdfunding because the moment anyone takes money in exchange for an item, the transaction becomes subject to sales tax.
One of the hotter topics at the last Silicon Beach Fest (SBF) in Santa Monica was the exodus of homegrown tech talent. Some refer to it as “brain drain.” Others call it “talent flight,” while academics coined the phrase “mind migration.”
According to Google Maps, it would take the average person 915 hours — or a little over 38 days — to walk from Washington D.C. to San Francisco. That’s without sleep, presumably, or even bathroom breaks. Just miles upon miles of constant, seemingly endless trudging. On the bright side, you’d be able to enjoy at least one ferry ride along the way.
With an FTC investigation in the rearview mirror, it’s no surprise that Google’s Larry Page took a few potshots at government regulators and their inability to keep up with the dynamism of the tech sector during the company’s recent I/O event.
To quote the great philosopher, Ferris Bueller, “Life moves pretty fast. If you don’t stop and look around once in a while, you could miss it.”
As fast as life moves, technology moves even faster. It only took Facebook eight years to land a billion users. Twitter hit the five hundred million mark in just six years. Apple’s App Store launched in 2008 and is already closing in on 50 billion downloads.
TechZulu is proud to bring you Gov 2.0 LA happening this weekend! Best part of it is if you can’t make it out or are out of town have no fear TechZulu is going to bring you all the action LIVE.
Gov 2.0 LA started as a way to bring people who are not usually together in the same room to be able to openly discuss both Government 2.0 and the technology around it as well as form long standing interpersonal relationships.
My interest was piqued last year during a phone call with Nick Allen, a member of my CALinnovates Advisory Board. Nick told me that he was in the process of winding down his fund at Spring Ventures, which would allow him to focus his energy on a new business he founded with Sunil Paul. The new venture, called SideCar, launched in San Francisco last June.
The popular ‘hacktivist’ organization, Anonymous, has stated in their most recent video that the US Government is now a target to what may very well be their biggest threat of coercion, a WikiLeaks-style exposure to the US government’s sensitive secrets. This is in response to the tragic death of Aaron Swartz, the 28 year-old programmer and founder of Demand Progress who was facing 35 years in prison for allegedly downloading over 4 million illegal documents from JSTOR.
