draper

In last Sunday's Mad Men episode, "Lady Lazarus," the advertising agency's creative director, Don Draper, asked, "When did music become so important?" Draper's clueless about what's going on outside his Madison Avenue office window. The episode was set in the summer of 1966 when the culture revolved around music; in 2012 the Web is where the action is.

What went wrong with music? Some blame the record companies, believing they mismanaged themselves into a crisis, then again, maybe it was inevitable that our tech culture would move away from music. In the … Read more

One of my favorite products on the Schoolhouse Electric & Supply site is a replica of IBM's standard-issue wall clock from the '60s, sure to make it onto Don Draper's holiday wish list this year.

This run is technically the first, as Schoolhouse Electric hit up IBM to make these iconic clocks available to all of us who didn't work in IBM offices, warehouses, and schools during the mid-20th century.

They're all assembled by hand in the company's factory in Portland, Ore., and each clock is bound by a spun-steel case with the original graphic hands and domed glass lens.

As is usually the case with historical relics, getting your hands on one of these will empty your wallet--the IBM standard-issue wall clock retails for $235 in the Schoolhouse Electric marketplace.

(Via A Continuous Lean)… Read more

Twitvid, a popular video-sharing service on Twitter, is announcing today $6.5 million in a second funding round led by Azure Partners and Draper Fisher Jurvetson. Plans for the new funds include expanding the team, growing usage opportunities, and scaling the infrastructure.

Since launching in 2009, Twitvid has seen its service grow to 12 million monthly unique users, and more than 30 million unique video views per month. The company says it's growing its user base more than 100 percent year over year. Celebrity and sports fans include LeBron James, Justin Bieber, Al Gore, Tyra Banks, 50cent, and the … Read more

This is beautiful.

In the way slow motion scenes of individual back hairs being plucked by a Rottweiler's teeth to a Johann Strauss waltz would be beautiful.

Created by a very interesting man called Eric Leist, this is the story of how Facebook Timeline was sold to corporate America. By the ultimate American mad man, Don Draper, aka Jon Hamm.

It's done with feeling. For it is, in fact, Draper's presentation from the TV show "Mad Men" of the Kodak Carousel to some allegedly sane men whose clothes are currently available at Banana Republic-- doctored … Read more

While NASA prepares its next Martian rover to launch in 2011, other minds on Earth are developing an alternative means to explore the Red Planet. Instead of roving, why not hop around Mars and cover a lot more ground?

Draper Laboratory is developing a concept vehicle that would land on the Martian surface and then propulsively leap to interesting spots, traveling miles with each hop.

In a recent release, Draper says that two hopper vehicles could cover a total of 25 miles on Mars in only a few hours or days. As of September 8, NASA's Spirit and Opportunity … Read more

Did you watch "Mad Men" on Sunday night? Wasn't it amazing when Don Draper...

When virtual world blogger and strategy consultant Wagner James Au tweeted on Sunday night "Oh I see 'Mad Men' spoilers in my Tweetstream! ," he could easily have been alluding to more than just trying to keep from finding out what the fictional character Draper had been up to. Indeed, his tweet touched on something that is growing more problematic every day: the conflict between many people's compulsive need to post to social media sites their thoughts about TV shows they'… Read more

This is the fifth in a series of profiles that look at how the tech industry is working with the federal government.

"We joke about the Internet routing around bad government," venture capitalist Steve Jurvetson said when I asked him about launching and running companies that have to make nice with Uncle Sam.

Jurvetson, a managing director at Draper Fisher Jurvetson, made his first big venture capital score by putting money into Hotmail. He also invested in Skype. Of these early investments, he said, "They fell outside the realm of regulatory friction."

But times have changed … Read more

SEATTLE, Wash.-- Despite the growing list of toppling multinational corporations, Timothy Draper, the founder and a managing director of VC firm Draper Fisher Jurvetson, told an audience full of Seattle entrepreneurs and investors that right now is the "best time ever" to start a new business.

To illustrate the point, Draper pointed to over two dozen companies that were founded in recessions and depressions including giants like General Electric, Chevron, and Coca-Cola. Also included were more tech-oriented companies like Skype (of which Draper was an investor), Microsoft, Hewlett-Packard, Kodak, and Adobe Systems.

In his keynote address to … Read more

Edgios, a little-known search start-up, may be about to come out of its self-imposed shell.

The company, which has offices in the United States and Serbia, has received extensive advance coverage--especially on Serbian developer discussion boards prior to its official launch.

Edgios has been alpha testing its software since the fall. However, Steve Jurvetson, a managing director at Draper Fisher Jurvetson, one of the company's major venture backers, today dropped a broad hint that the coming-out party may be near.

In a presentation he delivered on the history of technology innovation at the Global Technology Symposium on Thursday, Jurvetson … Read more