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Fate of Silicon Valley bleak, according to silicon CEOs

Chief executives from Intel and Cypress Semiconductor say Silicon Valley is in a bad state.

Literally. The basic problem is California, according to recent comments from Intel CEO Paul Otellini and Cypress CEO T.J. Rogers.

Speaking at the Intel Capital Global Summit on Wednesday, Otellini said Intel has not added a job in California in at least a decade, according to a report in The Wall Street Journal.

He characterized California's future as bleak for businesses. "We're so close to screwing it up, it's pathetic...I worry that we have to hit the abyss before … Read more

Can tech make a better pinot?

It is about an hour's drive from my house to Napa and Sonoma. And about four hours back.

That's the disclosures out of the way. So now might I concentrate and tell you about an enterprising and clearly refined tech CEO who is attempting to discover whether all the tech brains and chips at the world's disposal can perfect the art of wine making?

This is an emotive subject. The more time you spend with the wine community, the more you realize that these are wonderfully temperamental artists.

At one of my favorite Napa wineries, Honig, for … Read more

TrueTouch adds hover feature to touch screens

Can you still call a touch screen a touch screen if you don't have to physically touch the panel to register a command? Apparently, yes. Cypress' new hover-detection feature for capacitive touch screens lets you do exactly that. In other words, you don't actually need to touch the display to zoom in on a Web page or enlarge certain points of interest on a map. As your finger moves closer to the screen, the corresponding onscreen bubble (magnifying glass of sort) grows bigger.

This whole proximity sensor concept looks eerily similar to what Apple patented recently. Then again, … Read more

Olympic notebook: The glitchy Games

VANCOUVER, British Columbia--As the sun rises into a bright blue sky here, it's hard to imagine a more picturesque setting for the Olympics. But the sun is just one of many problems that have marred the start of these Winter Games.

Even before the Games began, the weather had caused problems for course builders at Cypress Mountain, sending them scrambling to use straw and other innovations to make up for a lack of snow. Since then, organizers have had to cancel thousands of general-admission tickets at Cypress, saying weekend rains had made the standing areas unsafe.

On the day … Read more

Olympic notebook: A fresh look at the medal table

VANCOUVER, British Columbia--Although most of the attention on Olympic national medal totals focuses on the top of the aggregate standings, one company is offering a different option.

Radnor, Pa.-based QlikTech has an application that breaks things down along other means, adjusting for things like population and gross domestic product, to offer another measure of performance. While the U.S. tops the aggregate medal chart, for example, Norway is most impressive, when adjusted for GDP or population.

The application, which is available on QlikTech's Web site, also offers a weighted medal count (giving four points for a gold, two … Read more

Olympics notebook: Interview with a Games junkie

VANCOUVER/WHISTLER, British Columbia--There are a lot of hassles to running one's own business, but for Norman Tu of Fremont, Calif., the benefit is that he never has to miss the Olympics.

Tu, who runs DCL, a warehouse logistics company, said he is now at his seventh Olympic games, having previously attended the 2002 Salt Lake City Winter Games as well as summer installments in Los Angeles, Barcelona, Atlanta, Sydney, and Beijing.

"L.A. is where I got hooked," said Tu, whose company helps companies like Symantec and Jawbone store inventory and handle online orders. Sydney was … Read more

Olympic snow still in short supply at Cypress

With the Winter Games in Vancouver only a few days away, a continued topic of conversation among Olympic watchers remains the snow, or lack thereof, at Cypress Mountain.

Although Whistler, home to most of the skiing events, has plenty of the white powder, organizers have been scrambling to get Cypress Mountain ready to host events such as moguls and snowboarding. The enemy has been an unusually warm winter, combined with rain that has further eroded the snow at lower elevations at the venue.

In addition to continuing to shuttle in snow via trucks and helicopters, event planners have now shortened … Read more

Cypress' T.J. Rodgers on solar, politics, and capitalism, part 2

q&a SAN JOSE--T.J. Rodgers is an unapologetic capitalist who happens to be the chief executive of San Jose, Calif.'s, Cypress Semiconductor. The two roles, as you'll soon see, are deeply intertwined.

Cypress' product catalog includes things like programmable logic devices, USB controllers, and SRAM chips--the basic building blocks of modern gadgets and computers.

Today in Silicon Valley, though, Rodgers is just as well-known for his role in buying and building up SunPower, which sells rooftop solar systems that provide power at prices competitive with utility rates. SunPower's market capitalization is more than $5 billion, … Read more

Cypress' T.J. Rodgers on solar, politics, and capitalism, part 1

q&a SAN JOSE, Calif.--T.J. Rodgers is an unapologetic capitalist who happens to be the chief executive of San Jose's Cypress Semiconductor. The two roles, as you'll soon see, are deeply intertwined.

Cypress's product catalog includes things like programmable logic devices, USB controllers, and SRAM chips--the basic building blocks of modern gadgets and computers.

Today in Silicon Valley, though, Rodgers is just as well known for his role in buying and building up SunPower, which sells rooftop solar systems that provide power at prices competitive with utility rates. SunPower's market capitalization is more … Read more