Lawrence Aragon

From the Irony Dep't: Wired magazine E-i-C Chris Anderson has been accused of lifting material from Wikpedia for his new book, “Free: The Future of a Radical Price.” Waldo Jaquith of the Virginia Quarterly Review blogs today that he found “almost a dozen passages that are reproduced nearly verbatim from uncredited sources,” including several from Wikipedia. Even though the content on Wikipedia is free, Jaquith notes that Anderson still would have been required to get a “creative commons attribution” license from the site and credit the Wikipedia contributors whose work he cited, which Jaquith says Anderson did not do. Anderson didn’t dispute Jaquith’s report, telling VQR in part: “All those are my screwups [sic] after we decided not to run notes as planned, due to my inability to find a good citation format for web sources…”

In his recent appearance on the “Charlie Rose Show” Google CEO Eric Schmidt made the claim that Bill Joy uses Google to find venture investments. I emailed Joy, a partner at Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers, to find out if the somewhat kooky claim is true, but he didn’t respond. Schmidt, who used to work with Joy at Sun Microsystems, says his friend “uses Google to search for all the new ideas. He reads the papers, so he figures out what the search query is. He reads the paper, and then he calls the [author] to say, ‘What’s new? What’s innovative?’”

In these lean times, everyone is looking for ways to save a buck. Well, do I have good news for you. Venture Capital Journal has compiled a list of a dozen money-saving ideas--from relocating some workers abroad to pooling portfolio companies to seek bulk discounts. I've made the story free for non-VCJ subscribers today. Check it out here.

Layoffs are coming fast and furious, with at least four major employers announcing cuts today. AOL (a unit of Time Warner), Boeing, SAP and Starbucks said they collectively plan reductions totaling 22,000 positions. The moves follow a NYT story on Monday that said Caterpillar, Home Depot, Nextel, Sprint and eight other companies that they would […]

UPDATE: Two of the three people murdered at VC-backed chip company Siport Inc. have been identified. One was CEO Sid Agrawal and the other was VP of Operations Brian Pugh. The stress of a job loss in a bad economy is apparently at the heart of a triple homicide in Silicon Valley today. Police say three people were shot to death at VC-backed chip company Siport Inc., and they are looking for a man who was reportedly fired from the company recently. Jing Wu, 47, is being sought for questioning in the triple homicide. The names of the victims have not been released. Siport, founded in 2004, makes digital radio semiconductors. It received $20.5 million in venture backing in June 2007 from Intel Capital, Lightspeed Venture Partners, Morgenthaler Ventures and New Venture Partners, according to Thomson Reuters (publisher of peHUB).

Livescribe — which makes a revolutionary pen with an onboard computer — raised a total of $7M for its third round and will go back out in the fall for a fourth round in the “$20 millionish range,” according to a source familiar with the latest deal. Blueprint Ventures led the round and was joined […]

Ram Velidi has left Sevin Rosen Funds, where he was a partner. He had been with the firm since 2001. We reached out to Velidi after Private Equity Insider reported that he plans to soon try to raise $50 million to $100 million for a venture fund called Peroba to invest in foods with health […]

In a week of otherwise somber news for the venture industry, Blueprint Ventures is thrilled to report today that portfolio company Platform Solutions Inc. (PSI) was bought by IBM. It’s great news on multiple fronts, not the least of which is that it puts an end to litigation between Big Blue and PSI, a maker […]

We were a little skeptical when we heard “personal reasons” cited for the departure of William “Boots” Del Biaggio III from Sand Hill Capital earlier this week. Now the Mercury News is reporting that the feds are probing Del Biaggio’s “business dealings.” Not exactly sure what that means. In addition to co-founding Sand Hill Capital, […]

Quaker BioVentures, which invests in life sciences companies in the Mid-Atlantic region, says it has closed on $420 million for its second fund. It beat its target by $120 million. The firm, based in the City of Brotherly Love, says it raised $280 million for its previous fund and invested in 24 companies. Its prior […]