silicon valley

Even before Facebook Inc. goes public, Silicon Valley is experiencing a surge in jobs and per-capita income, in contrast to the weak economic situation dogging the rest of the nation.

While the lobbyists favoring SOPA/PIPA have decided that the talking point on the White House's statement opposing SOPA/PIPA as written really means that the bills, as they are, are great, it appears that no one sent Rupert Murdoch the talking points.

A brief, little report from Politico notes that various Democrats are ramping up their efforts to raise money from Silicon Valley for the 2012 election.

What struck me as interesting was the first two names on the list:

As the election season is ramping up, so too are pols’ trips to Silicon Valley.

That includes Vice President Joe Biden, who’s heading to San Francisco on Jan. 18 for a lunch reception.

Tickets cost $2,500 per person, with $7,500 for lunch and a photo for two.

We've talked a lot in the past about how the tech industry frequently ignores what's happening in Washington DC, and takes the attitude that it doesn't want to be involved in policy debates, because folks are busy focusing on actually building companies.

However, as we repeatedly learn, just because we want to ignore DC, it doesn't mean that DC ignores us. And that's a problem.

It allows others to use the government as a weapon against innovations they don't like.

Okay, so every week we have someone do a "favorites of the week" post, but I've never had the chance to do one myself.

So... I picked the shortest week of the year to do it myself. I'm not going to point to any of my own posts (that's cheating!), but I will say that I put a lot of time and effort into my comprehensive post on why SOPA and PROTECT IP are bad bills, so if you haven't read them... feel free to check it out.

Hopefully, the days are long gone when a U.S. Senator could get away with saying the internet "is a series of tubes." Ron Wyden, the Democratic U.S.

Senator from Oregon, tried to put that image behind him as he became the first politician to talk on stage at the Web 2.

Apple is almost certainly working on a digital television based on its iOS operating system, according to multiple sources in Silicon Valley.

  Piper Jaffray analyst Gene Munster, a longtime Apple analyst, predicts that Apple will produce a television in  late 2012 or early 2013.

L.A. isn't just a mecca for film and video game studios. In the past three years, the Los Angeles tech scene has evolved from a small cadre of social media-happy party animals to a legitimate and sustainable tech community to rival Silicon Valley.