X-Nico

13 unusual facts about Silicon Valley


A Great Wall

When a Silicon Valley Chinese American executive goes back to his homeland of China for the first time in 30 years, he and his family encounter many culture clashes between the lives that they lead in the United States and the lives of their relatives in China.

Carl Marcus Olson

The predominant use of silicon for these components and chips lead to the area around San Jose, CA to be nicknamed the "Silicon Valley".

Cc:Mail

Lotus Development acquired cc:Mail, Inc. (formerly PCC Systems), which was a Silicon Valley startup, in 1991 and used the cc:Mail technology to enhance Lotus Notes.

Crunchies

The Crunchies are an industry award given out since 2008 by several technology blogs to the Silicon Valley companies and venture capitalists they cover.

Half-Decent Proposal

Originally, at one point in the episode, there would be a sequence in which Homer travels to Silicon Valley in the wheel well of a jet.

IEEE 754 revision

More than 90 people attended at least one of the monthly meetings, which were held in Silicon Valley, and many more participated through the mailing list.

Pascal Photocoagulator

It was developed by OptiMedica, an ophthalmic medical device company located in Silicon Valley (Sunnyvale, CA).

Raising Cane's Chicken Fingers

In mid-1999, Silvey sold his stake to Graves to focus on completing an MBA at Wake Forest University and work in Silicon Valley.

Reallusion

Headquartered in Silicon Valley, with R&D centers in Taiwan, and offices and training centers in Germany and Japan.

Russ Lorenson

Never one to do things by halves, he moved to San Francisco to be close to the Silicon Valley scene, began working in start-ups and found himself flying high in all senses of the word.

Series A round

A Series A round is the name typically given to a company's first significant round of venture funding in the Silicon Valley model of startup company formation.

Silicone Valley

A misspelling of Silicon Valley, nickname for the Santa Clara Valley, also known as the South Bay area of San Francisco, the location of many American high tech companies

TeraChem

Now it is distributed by PetaChem, LLC located in the Silicon Valley.


Antoine Schmitt

After earning his engineer diploma from the Telecom Paris in 1984, he worked as programming engineer specialised in artificial intelligence and human-machine interactions, in Paris, especially for the company Act Informatique for five years (1985–1991), and in Silicon Valley as an R&D engineer for the NeXT company with Steve Jobs for three years (1991–1994).

Avanti Corporation

Avanti was a defendant in a long running legal battle with Cadence Design Systems, of which BusinessWeek said "The Avant! case is probably the most dramatic tale of white-collar crime in the history of Silicon Valley."

Bill Godbout

Bill Godbout was an early computer pioneer and entrepreneur known for manufacturing and selling computer equipment, parts and Electronic kits in Silicon Valley, before the time of the Apple II.

California's 27th State Assembly district

Located in the heart of Silicon Valley, the district includes Downtown San Jose and the city's eastern and southeastern neighborhoods.

Crystal Springs Uplands School

Will Harvey, Silicon Valley entrepreneur who achieved early fame as an Apple II game programmer at the age of 15 and created the game IMVU

Dysan

In 1983, Dysan was a Fortune 500 company, had over 1200 employees, and was ranked as among the top ten private sector employers within the Silicon Valley by the San Jose Mercury News, in terms of number of employees.

Funimation

The company was originally formed in Silicon Valley, California as Funimation Productions in 1994, but eventually relocated to Flower Mound, Texas, located near Fort Worth.

J. D. Lasica

He worked briefly as Director of Content and Production for iVendor in Sunnyvale, California, before the Silicon Valley startup folded in late 2000.

Jasomi Networks

Ultimately, the company sold to Ditech Communications (now itself acquired by Nuance Communications), a US public company based in Silicon Valley in mid-2005 in a deal valued at $24.55m.

Jeff Goodell

Earlier works include Sunnyvale (2000), a personal memoir about growing up in Silicon Valley and the breakdown of his family; The Cyberthief and the Samurai (1996), the story of computer hacker Kevin Mitnick; and Our Story: 77 Hours That Tested Our Friendship and Our Faith (2002), about the Pennsylvania Quecreek Mine Rescue of nine trapped coal miners in 2002, which was a New York Times Best Seller.

John G. Linvill

John Linvill was Chairman of the board of TSI, served on the boards of other Silicon Valley corporations, and led technical committees for the National Research Council, NASA, and the IEEE.

Knowledge TV

In 1998 the network was renamed Knowledge TV, and by that time was carrying several programs dealing with new media and Silicon Valley businesses, including New Media News from KRON-TV in San Francisco, and many computer education programs such as Stewart Cheifet's Computer Chronicles.

Kovio

is a privately held Silicon Valley technology company headquartered in San Jose, California that manufactured electronic devices based on a proprietary printed silicon electronics platform.

Luis Guillermo Plata Páez

In 1999, he moved to Silicon Valley where he Co-founded Simplexis.com, an e-procurement solutions provider for public sector institutions with an initial focus on educational institutions, with former Governor of Tennessee and U.S. Secretary of Education Lamar Alexander and three other Harvard Business School MBA graduates.

MetaDesign

Meta's San Francisco office grew a reputation for client relationships with Silicon Valley technology companies and developed innovative interactive teaching media including ViZability, IDEO's first web site, publishing systems for Ernst & Young and McGraw Hill and specialist event publicity for Fuse 98.

NVISH Solutions

During the same year, Gurmail Singh returned to India, after spending six years in Silicon Valley, to set up the Indian arm of NVISH Solutions in Panchkula, Haryana.

Paul Boutin

Before turning pro as a journalist, he spent 15 years as an engineer and manager at MIT, where he worked on Project Athena, and at several Internet-related startup companies in Silicon Valley.

Rebecca Dines

She has performed numerous times for Palo Alto-based Theatreworks, as well as Kansas City, Berkeley, San Jose, and South Coast Repertory theatres, Magic and B Street theatres, and the Laguna Playhouse, among others.

Redbox

Redbox began in 2004, using re-branded kiosks manufactured and operated by Silicon Valley-based DVDPlay, at 140 McDonald's restaurants in their Denver and other test markets.

Remote sensing

Several research groups in Silicon Valley including NASA Ames Research Center, GTE and ESL Inc. developed Fourier transform techniques leading to the first notable enhancement of imagery data.

Richard Raysman

Raysman's firm, known as Brown, Raysman & Millstein, ultimately grew to 250 lawyers with offices in New York, Los Angeles, Silicon Valley, Hartford and Toronto.

Telecom Corridor Genealogy Project

The regional business family tree that is most famous is the Silicon Valley Fairchild family tree.