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No one at Caltech has to use Bose, they can build their own that are better.

Curiously enough, there used to be a Caltech project class based on pretty much exactly that, although it's unfortunately no longer offered:

http://www.its.caltech.edu/~musiclab/

As a bit of trivia, Caltech alum Bill Gross actually ended up founding GNP Audio based on an engineering project he did as a student. He later went on to co-found, like, a gajillion other companies.

I'd also have to agree that *most* of the proposals for personal manufacturing don't adequetely cater to the production of miniatures. There is hope however. 3D-Micromac ( http://www.3d-micromac.com/home.html ) is currently marketing a machine capable of producing feature sizes less than 100 nanometers! Of course that's beyond the scope of the overwhelming majority of at-home-manufactureres, but the ability to produce something, anything at that scale and in your home is at least possible if you've got the cash. I'm obviously less optimistic that the price of such a machine will become affordable for the average Joe based on the fact that Joe currently has no need for that capability. I would argue that it's at least reasonable, however, that your desire to produce detailed miniatures is on the horizon. I used to design for Johnson & Johnson where we constantly concepted parts for medical instruments utilizing "lost wax" prototyping techniques for extremely small parts. Utilizing InVision "wax printers" ( http://www.3dsystems.com/products/projet/library.asp - gallery ), we could produce amazing molds which were then used to cast functional parts for validation. The process is not at all dissimilar to the creation of detailed miniatures and figurines. Typically in your application, an artist will carve an original which is cast in urethane (or some other compliant material). From that cast, a mold is made to produce multiple copies. Even if the production is extremely limited, this is the standard method because no other technique is as feasible. Essentially your application is highly specialized but I have no doubt that one day your desire to produce miniatures will be posssible and affordable @ home given the current rate of technological advancement and market demand.

Aptera does look fun. And their venture-capital firm is the same as my current employer's, so it's also fun to cheer them on. (However, it's also the same firm originally behind New.net, so, umm.) Production in late 2008? We'll see!

At the height of the dotcom bubble, Bill Gross & Idealab! had the philosophy that no company should have more than 100 employees. If your business model got above 100 employees, there was a high likelihood that you were better off dividing and spinning off other business units. (Don't know if they still preach that or not, but that was the thinking "back in the day.")

I don't know that Google would be better served as two hundred smaller companies, but at the same time, it's hard to imagine managing 20,000 employees would be any easier.

The author's daughter, Marcia Goodstein is CEO of Idealab. One of the companies they've invested in is Energy Innovations, which is trying to develop a solar energy system.

The author's daughter, Marcia Goodstein is CEO of Idealab. One of the companies they've invested in is Energy Innovations, which is trying to develop a solar energy system.

Overture was yet another product of the IdeaLab hi-tech incubator. Based in Pasadena, they recruited heavily from Caltech. They're technology is not for crawling pages, but instead for auctioning off keywords plus the innovative pay-per-click agreements.

It is official; Netcraft confirms: Google is dying.

One more crippling bombshell hit the already beleaguered Google community when IDC confirmed that Google market share has dropped yet again, now down to less than a fraction of 1 percent of all web searches. Coming on the heels of a recent Netcraft survey which plainly states that Google has lost more market share, this news serves to reinforce what we've known all along. Google is collapsing in complete disarray, as fittingly exemplified by Yahoo's failure to renew its exclusive deal with Google.

You don't need to be a Kreskin to predict Google's future. The hand writing is on the wall: Google faces a bleak future. In fact there won't be any future at all for Google because Google is dying. Things are looking very bad for Google. As many of us are already aware, Google continues to lose market share. Red ink flows like a river of blood.

Google search is the most endangered of them all, having lost most of its core affiliates. The sudden and unpleasant departures of Yahoo and AOL only serve to underscore the point more clearly. There can no longer be any doubt: Google is dying.

Let's keep to the facts and look at the numbers.

Google.com founder Sergey Brin states that there are 7000 users of Google. How many users of Verity are there? Let's see. The number of Google versus Verity posts on USENET is roughly in ratio of 5 to 1. Therefore there are about 7000/5 = 1400 Verity users. AskJeeves posts on USENET are about half of the volume of Verity posts. Therefore there are about 700 users of Inktomi. A recent article put Teoma at about 80 percent of the search engine market. Therefore there are (7000+1400+700)*4 = 36400 Google users. This is consistent with the number of Google USENET posts.

Due to the troubles of Google News, abysmal sales and so on, Google is going out of business and will probably be taken over by idealab! who operate another troubled search engine. Now Inktomi is also dead, its corpse turned over to yet another charnel house.

All major surveys show that Google has steadily declined in market share. Google is very sick and its long term survival prospects are very dim. If Google is to survive at all it will be among search engine dilettante dabblers. Google continues to decay. Nothing short of a miracle could save it at this point in time. For all practical purposes, Google is dead.

Fact: Google is dying

I think you'll still find "umbrella companies" here and there, where multiple startups share resources such as office space, internet connectivity, server rooms, lawyers, secretaries, and system administrators. I've worked for a startup that was part of the Idealab incubator company, which has facilities in Pasadena and Boston.

Obviously, if a startup does not have a viable business plan, such economies will only slow their burn rate. For smart startups, however, I imagine it continues to be a good deal.

Why? Businesses come and go all the time. Most startups fail. It has always been this way. The only difference is that many more dumb startups got funding (and huge PR) in 1999-2000, and now more of them are toast now.

Here in SF everyone wants to dump on the dot-coms, because they brought too many of the "wrong" (smart, educated, young) people into a city that the locals think is exclusively theirs. Certainly many of the stupid startups were a waste of time, money, and office space. But you have to put up with a lot of failures to get the diamonds in the rough.

So while I think it's fun to make fun of the bad ideas, we shouldn't forget the good stuff. Think of the auto industry: 100s (maybe 1000s) of companies have failed between the invention of the auto and today, but autos got vastly more reliable by 1950 than they were in the 1920s - in no small part because of this innovation.

Tech is no different.

alias, Idealab. They've consulted with many companies that made it to this nefarious list. Also, Idealab has a tendency of making smarmy slogans/logos/names, so avoid them like a leper.

Judging by this copy of the FC logo and the Idealab! logo, the complaint was not that they were using a copy of the idealab logo as their own logo. Its not that they were saying that Idealab was a Fucked Company. Just that all the companies on the logo were.

Since they weren't actually using this as a criticism of Idealab, their case is changed completely from showing it in connection with the company, to their right to parody. Unfortunately for FC, they aren't on as firm ground here. US law seems to demand that parody is satirizing the material that was copied. They would probably be well within their rights if Idealab had screwed up all those companies, but since they haven't, and they seem to have been using it as their own logo, they can't claim the right to parody.

This is the URL for the parody FuckedCompany.Com did:

It's a parody, which is protected by US Constitution (and it's a right that has been defended successfully in the Supreme Court). For the parody to REALLY be funny, look at Idea Lab's site Pretty much a perfect parody, design wise! Best part - eToys is in the dead center of the pile, on both IdeaLabs and FuckedCompany's version!

The last sentence of the article states:

DotTV is backed by the Pasadena Internet business incubator Idealab, the firm behind online retailer eToys and the free Internet service provider NetZero.

Idealab "creates, launches and operates Internet businesses". Unfortunately, they have something to do with etoys which deserves a swift execution for its treatment of etoy.com

The dotTV Terms of Service contract specifically explains the company's nationality:

LIMITED DISTRIBUTION AND TERRITORIAL CONSIDERATIONS Unless otherwise specified, all materials and services in the Site are presented solely for the use in the United States, its territories, possessions and protectorates. This site is controlled and operated by dotTV from its offices within the State of California, U.S.A. dotTV makes no representation that materials in the Site are appropriate or available for use in other locations.

So DotTV is an American (U.S.) company.

My eyes musta moved up a row when looking at the list of idealab companies
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"I am not trying to prove that I am right... I am only trying to find out whether." -Bertolt Brecht

Though etoys has been spun off, it would be interesting to get a response from the people at their parent company, IdeaLab

Southern California may have a nasty reputation as far as highways go, but it's actually quite reasonable as long as you avoid some of the stupid commutes (anything involving the 405), and make an effort to commute a little bit off-peak (sleep in an extra hour, stay a little later, or if you're an early-riser, do the opposite).

And, unlike the Bay Area, you can actually find and afford an apartment in reasonable neighborhoods.

If you're an IT person, just hop on board at an idealab! company, and live in Pasadena. It's every bit as pretentious and annoying as the Bay Area.