8 posts and columns on brother

There’s a Storm Ahead for HP’s Printer Business

in News on February 21 at 6:21 am PT

A worldwide decline in printer sales means slower sales of ink cartridges, which could hit Hewlett-Packard right where it hurts.
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Sister on Steve Jobs’s Last Words: “OH WOW. OH WOW. OH WOW.”

in News on October 30, 2011 at 12:50 pm PT

Apple co-founder and Silicon Valley legend Steve Jobs lived a life that read like an epic novel, so it’s should be no surprise that his very last words on this temporal plane would be just as dramatic.
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Winklevii Vs. Zuck: Who'd You Rather?

in News on October 5, 2010 at 11:18 am PT

The Facebook movie might have performed slightly below box office expectations last weekend for Sony movie unit Columbia Pictures, but it certainly has invaded the mainstream zeitgeist. Still, BoomTown was quite surprised to see a mention of “The Social Network” on one of my favorite celebrity sites, TMZ.com.

When Ali Partovi Just Couldn't Get You Out of MySpace: The Video Proof (And Spoof)

in News on April 20, 2010 at 8:22 pm PT

In all the sturm und drang over the departure of well-known Web entrepreneurs and twin brothers Ali and Hadi Partovi, it’s hard to find much to laugh about. Except for this most excellent video Ali made last fall for a company contest that required new employees to show “how MySpace is YOUR space.” Ali wins hands down, as you will see from this fine effort, in which he tried to find the right song for the News Corp. social networking site.

As BoomTown Said: Partovi Brothers Finally Leave MySpace (Here Are the Internal Memos)

in News on April 20, 2010 at 5:22 pm PT

Well-known tech entrepreneurs and twin brothers Ali and Hadi Partovi are leaving MySpace, in a high-profile departure for the struggling social networking company. Internal memos were sent around to staff this afternoon about the departure, said sources, which you can see after the jump. The fate of the well-known tech wunderkinds has been one of the more interesting guessing games of late at MySpace. MySpace execs have been keenly interested in avoiding the appearance that the company is in the grip of a talent drain, especially related to such high-profile innovators.

The Beaver Brothers of Zazzle Talk About Customizing, Well, Everything!

in News on December 24, 2009 at 6:00 am PT

A few weeks ago, BoomTown motored down to Silicon Valley, to the Redwood City, Calif., HQ of Zazzle, the online site that lets users order a variety of custom products by using a special (and patented) printing technology. I went to talk to the Beaver brothers–Jeff and Bobby, who founded the company with their father, who is CEO, way back before the first Web 1.0 bubble burst in 1999–about recent changes, including finding more ways to slap custom designs on more products and recent international expansion.
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Sale of iLike to MySpace–$13.5 Million in Cash, $6 Million for Talent Retention–Delayed Over Tax Issues (Really!)…Plus, the List of Other Suitors!

in News on August 17, 2009 at 11:25 pm PT

The board of iLike planned a meeting earlier tonight to go over a buyout offer by MySpace, several sources close to the situation said. But it was suddenly canceled because of some thorny tax implications related to the talent-retention part of the deal to purchase the social music start-up. This does not mean the pending acquisition is in jeopardy, sources said, and it could be on track to be signed as early as today, barring any more complications. What’s also been unclear is the actual price the social networking giant is paying for iLike, which has been reported as about $20 million. In fact, only $13.5 million will be paid in cash, with $6 million slated for forward payments to retain key talent.

D-Day: In the Seventh Year, We Didn't Rest (Mostly Because of Meetings)

in News on May 26, 2009 at 12:07 am PT

We launch the seventh D: All Things Digital conference in Carlsbad, Calif., today, after a long weekend of preparations and way too many meetings, as you can see in the video below. (Including packing the mountain of swag bags for attendees, upon which one of my kids sits in this photo.) The conference kicks off with an evening interview tonight with Twitter co-founders Biz Stone and Evan Williams.
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