The Computer History Museum is a fascinating visit for anyone interested in the history of computing and Silicon Valley. But there’s more there than meets the eye. Literally. Hidden from public view is a huge back storeroom with hundreds of artifacts, including a prototype tablet computer called the Apple “Cadillac,” ...

We have quick profiles of two companies that launched at the TechCrunch40 conference last week. Metaplace lets users build their own virtual worlds and put them on their Websites. Founder Raph Koster takes us through a demo. And Musicshake is a Korea-based service that lets users create ...

So you didn’t make it to the TechCrunch 40 conference, where Mint.com won the honors as the top start-up? Fear not, the Mercury News sat down with Aaron Patzer, the founder of Mint, for a quick demo of how the online money management tool works.

Online speed dating? Indeed. And WooMe, a San Francisco start-up, is hoping it’s big business. The company launched at the TechCrunch40 conference this week, along with Orgoo, a service that lets users merge all their email and IM accounts into one dashboard. In this video, WooMe’s Stephen ...

The San Jose Mercury News spent a day at the TechCrunch40 conference talking to companies and getting demos of new products. This interview, with Flock CEO Shawn Hardin, is one of several videos we’re publishing from the conference. Tech-watchers will remember two years ago when Flock was being ...

It’s no secret in the valley that venture capitalist Roger McNamee is a rocker at heart. By day, he does deals from his Elevation Partners office on Sand Hill Road. But in his spare time, he writes songs and plays guitar for Moonalice (his “old” band was called ...

Last week, we talked with Nick DeMonner, Lisa Hansen and Mike Minardi about the cookbook they’ve written that is aimed at start-ups. This week, we learn about their San Jose start-up, called BzzyBee. It’s an online collaborative writing tool for classrooms that lets teachers see how much students have ...

Nick DeMonner, Lisa Hansen and Mike Minardi are trying to launch a start-up into a tough market with just modest funding. Which means they’re cutting costs at every turn. But they’ve found that a low-budget lifestyle doesn’t mean eating ramen every day. The San Jose trio have discovered how ...

A handheld cube that lets you browse your Flickr photos. A headset that uses brainwaves to control how fast a bicyclist pedals. And Megaphone, a game that lets users play against each in public spaces with their mobile phones. Those were some of the concepts on display at the ...

The tech media and blogs buzzed recently over the launch of ooma, a Palo Alto start-up that’s promising free long distance calls for life. CEO Andrew Frame explains how ooma works (you need to buy a $400 box, first). And he answers questions about the cost of the box ...

There’s no one right or wrong way to launch a start-up. But there are smart moves an entrepreneur can make - and mistakes to avoid - that can boost the odds of success. STIRR, the valley entrepreneur network, reinvented its monthly mixer this month to showcase something called Founder ...

Mercury News columnist Dean Takahashi takes us on a quick tour inside Google’s Mountain View headquarters.

Just a week after the debut of the iPhone, about 300 developers gathered at the Adobe offices in San Francisco this weekend for a three-day developers camp/hackathon. The goal was to hack together applications for the iPhone. Apple doesn’t allow developers to write applications for the phone itself, so ...

One of the more talked about valley start-ups in recent months is Spock. Founded in 2006 by Jay Bhatti and Jaideep Singh, Spock is a people search Web site that aims to be the most comprehensive source of information about just about anyone. Spock crawls the Web looking for ...

Botnets, phishing scams, password-stealing trojans — they’re all part of an increasingly professionalized world of online crime that’s costing Americans billions every year. Oliver Friedrichs, director of emerging technologies at Symantec Security Response, tells Mercury News software reporter Ryan Blitstein what the company is doing to protect its customers from ...

Nicole Wong, Google’s deputy general counsel in charge of compliance, is the point person for growing criticism of Google’s privacy practices. More than two dozen European privacy regulators have launched an inquiry into Google’s data protection practices. In the United States, the Federal Trade Commission is probing Google’s pending $3.1 ...

The valley venture capitalists thought they brought their A-game in this historic 1st Annual Labor vs. Capital Dodgeball Tournament. But the tournament ended up being hard-fought, as the laborers from Google, Ustream, jaxtr, BitTorrent and elsewhere showed up ready to do battle.

LinkedIn founder and angel investor Reid Hoffman talks with Mercury News venture capital reporter Connie Loizos about where he sees the social networking space headed, as well as his investment strategy these days.

Why is the CEO of blog search engine Technorati stepping aside? Is the San Francisco company really not for sale? And what are its plans for growing into a new media powerhouse? In this interview with the Mercury News, company CEO Dave Sifry answers those and other questions. Sifry ...

Who hasn’t wished that customer service could be better online? A San Francisco start-up called Satisfaction will launch in the next month or so with the aim of improving online customer service by tapping the collective knowledge of users. The Web application is akin to message boards and will ...

Continued innovation is key to the success of most companies, and Yahoo is no different. The Internet giant recently opened an “idea incubator” called “Brickhouse” in the trendy South Park area of San Francisco. Select Yahoo employees will take turns working out of the office - intended to evoke the ...