Above: I spent Saturday on San Gregario beach in Half Moon Bay, just a few minutes from the hustle and bustle of busy Silicon Valley, pics from mobile phone.

While only 30 minutes from companies like Siebel, Oracle, NetSuite, and Visa in San Mateo, Half Moon bay is a world apart. A short 12 mile jaunt westbound on 92 will take you over the reservoir, which coincidently is in the shape of the fault line (an aerial view indicates it is the fault line) and over the San Mateo hills. You’ll immediately notice a temperature drop and increase in the humid, salt, air as you drive through the eucelpyous groves. In the fall, you’ll see the magic of the pumpkin festival, kids on pony rides, and the various smoked salmon shops and mini-wineries.

Half Moon Bay is home to many silicon valley executives, corporate offsites, and rolling beaches. You’ll find the Scobles, Tracy Chapman, Singer/Songwriterand Phil Schiller - Apple Marketing SVP. Head south and you’ll find a handful of public –and private—beaches. In college I took a geology class, and learned all about the very unique sand/rock stratifications and the collision between water and rock to make some of the most dramatic –and beautiful– landscapes. Other notable areas is the famous Mavericks surf, where world class surf competitions take place.

There’s a reason why Silicon Valley is one of the most expensive places in the world to live, aside from the thriving technology industry, the quality of life makes it a desirable place not only to work but also to relax.

Related: See my pics from Hawaii, also using my onboard cell phone camera, Nokia N95

Above, SF Chronicle perches pleasantly at Fifth and Mission in SOMA district (Google Map)

One of the real pleasures I’ve had as an analyst (thanks to Tracy in our PR department) is the opportunity to meet many of the journalists and reporters in the tech industry. Yesterday, I had the privilege to meet the tech reporters Verne Kopytoff and Ellen Lee who contributes tothe Tech Chronicles blog of the SF Chronicle that are covering technology and social computing.

This landmark building, near the Metreon, SF Shopping center and Moscone was an impressive building to see. Below, you’ll see the stained glass windows paying homage to the Gutenberg printing press, the letters on the ceiling in the main foyer, and the ever present TV stations.

Today, I’m off to UC Berkeley to speak to the Journalism School on the impacts of social networking on news, I’ll be sharing that the SF Chronicle’s comments often get up to 80 comments per article, a unique way how the audience starts to participate.

(Above: The Flat Iron Building [map], in New York’s Silicon Alley)

I usually reserve this tag for the interesting places I see in Silicon Valley, but am traipsing around New York for a few days.

I’m camping at the office of Bricabox, as a guest of CEO Nate Westheimer in a small thin incubator building with quite a few startups. We’re across the street from Madison Square Park, where there’s several social media, interactive firms in the area. Before lunch I had a briefing from James Gross of Federated Media, learning about a recent social network marketing campaign I’ll share with you later.

Now I’m told that the original Silicon Alley was actually in Soho, but there’s quite a few folks popping up in this general area, VCs included. I twittered I was having lunch at Shake Shack in the park, and a total of 7 of us joined up, great discussions yet in the cold (by my Californian standards). I met Ryan Anderson from Fuel Industries (he’s a Forrester client) and Matt Zarzecki from CafeMom a social network for mothers.

Silicon Valley is very insular, we don’t know much of what happens outside of 408 650 415 and it’s really fascinating to see different communities of the tech industry.

Here’s a list of NY Tech events, Allen Stern has a list of events this week, and Bricabox (I unique content system) has this list of NY Tech Organizations.

Notable landmark right in front of Pizza My Heart, a few blocks from Facebook, and a brisk walk to Jeff Clavier’s office and Social Text lies the great green silicon valley egg. The Digital DNA project is sponsored by Palo Alto’s Civic Art Gallery. This sculpture, which really is a great symbol of the birthplace of Silicon Valley (The famed HP Garage is just a few blocks away) reminds us of our humble start.

When you get closer to this egg (which is now often surrounded by skaters and Stanford students) you’ll see that the egg is composed of computer boards, chips, and the occasional graffiti.

If you’re visiting the bustling Palo Alto area, here’s a great walking tour, you’ll learn about the many landmarks and rich history.

Also, I heard if you’re a budding entrepreneur, if you walk around the egg 10 times, it’ll bring you good luck. Ok not really, I just made that up, but let’s see if it works, try it and let me know.

The web industry is part of an ecosystem, and one of the major families are the press, who get high level news out to the masses.

Last week, I had a meeting over at the San Jose Mercury, (map) one of Silicon Valley’s most well known technology newspapers. Every day they focus in on what’s happening in our industry, and do a great job of covering events, gathering viewpoints, and offering editorial insight from their columns in their opinions section. Check out the Good Morning Silicon valley blog for daily news.

There’s still a lot of concern over the print newspaper industry as layoffs continue to occur. In most cases, the online revolution has been a big impact, but we’re starting to see journalists use social media to find stories, and have supplementary blogs that provide greater depth than a printed column. A few journalists, like the opinionated Kara Swisher have figured out how not to just comment on the situation, but to actually lead a conversation –all using her blog.

I was really fascinated by the original linotype they had in the lobby, I was looking at all the contraptions it took to print, including looking at the keyboard that didn’t have a shift key, so there were characters for both lower and upper case. There were bands, pipes, gears, wires, outlets, sliders, and every possible mechanical device on this steampunk looking press, it really was impressive to see. Why this complicated machine? It actually printed out metal with characters on it, which would later be sent to the press.

A few weeks ago, I revisited The Museum of Technology in downtown San Jose, the ‘blue fruit in an orange box’ (see google street map) building sticks out amid the glass corporate buildings and grand hotels. A great landmark for a city centered in innovation. This museum boasts many interactive exhibits, a showcasing of past and previous technology, shows, and even an imax screen for those seeking an enveloping experience of sight and sound. Don’t take my word for it, find out what others say on Yelp reviews.

I had a fun time exploring the exhibit talking about the internet: reviewing some history, catching up on some trivia, and learning about netiquette and abbreviations you should know. (see below)

A bit of trivia for you, the museum is on the site (or close to it) where San Jose’s old Chinatown used to be, but is no more. Also of interest, I used to work at the Fairmont while in college helping with the audio visual work for large conferences. Playing with audio equipment, large projectors, and running around in the catwalks was a lot of fun (and great food for employees).

Yahoo! has a very prominent billboard on highway 80 in San Francisco, (streetview map) right before you cross over the bay bridge (close to the freeway collapse of the Loma Prieta earthquake). When I go to tech events in the city, I almost always see this sign, it’s been there for quite a few years. Reminiscent of a 60s interstate sign you’d see before getting to Las Vegas, the current special to “Resolve to LOL more” plays well to the geeks like myself.

Interestingly enough, billboard pricing is much like internet advertising, both measure traffic, yes one measures cars and the other server requests.

(Silicon Valley Sightings is an ongoing PhotoBlog that captures the intersection of Tech Culture in the San Francisco Silicon Valley Bay Area, check out the archives (which now showcase some tech areas in Asia). All photos by Jeremiah Owyang)

Amanda Greets me at Innocentre

The Atrium features products and designs

Communal Cafeteria

Grand Atrium

This is another special Silicon Valley Sightings Asia Edition, view the archives.

I had the absolute pleasure to take a tour of Hong Kong’s InnoCentre (on the Kowloon side) from Amanda Lau, head of Marketing of JiJiJa. This is just days after my tour of Cyberport on Hong Kong Island.

InnoCentre is a government sponsored incubator that promotes emerging companies by providing office space, business amenities like meeting rooms, copier rooms, and even funding –without taking any equity. There’s few VCs in Silicon Valley that can boast that type of model.

For startups, even the little things matter, from impressing clients in a real meeting room (rather than meeting at starbucks) or having a real work space, as you know there are few garages in China, so the garage startup is virtually non-existent.

“He said, “we promote applied R&D through funding schemes, infrastructure support, collaboration with Mainland and overseas research institutes. We also endeavor to grow an innovation culture in the community. Most recently, we launched five new R&D centers, in which the Government will invest over US$256.41 million (HK$2 billion). And we will roll out Science Park Phase 2 starting 2007.” -reports HK Economic Trade Office

There were several floors to this amazing building, which also housed product design companies (University of HK was just a few steps away) and had gallery areas to show off new products. For companies that met their three year goals in the program, they were elligable for funding, to launch their company further. As I understand it, a company has to apply to get this special kind of grant, and a few of the companies I met were happy to be there.

While there are some startup incubators around (I think Francine Hardaway would know) in the United States, I’ve never heard of a government sponsored one with so many benefits.

I met with Amanda, who showed me her product Jijija (Which means chatter in Chinese). They help ecommerce and social networks or even media websites become more efficient by providing behavioral based recommendations. This is a viable model as gestures (unspoken actions) can often be more powerful than what users say they will do. Don’t be fooled by their Chinese website, they plan to head globally, although I have the master list of others in their space.

I also checked out ReSpread an do it yourself email marketing tool that has interesting CRM features, for the email marketer, this is an interesting asset for the small and medium sized company.

I spent times with the founders of another company, who wished to remain stealth, they provided me with amazing insight about the Chinese web culture as it applies to the web, you’re seeing that output in other posts.

(See Google Map)

This is a special “Asian” edition of Silicon Valley Sightings, a photoblog series I’ve been doing for a few months.

Cyberport, a $3.89 billion futuristic high-tech campus is a mixed use facility that has housing, a shopping mall, and four major towers for tech companies. It’s located on the southern area of Hong Kong Island, right on the water, nestled between green dramatic jade hills. It’s home to companies such as Cisco Systems, CMGI, Hewlett-Packard, Hikari Tsushin, Hua Wei, IBM, Legend (now Lenovo), Microsoft, OutBlaze, Oracle Corporation, Silicon Graphics, Softbank, Sybase and Yahoo!.

“Cyberport is being developed on a 24-hectare site at Telegraph Bay on Hong Kong Island in Hong Kong. The project aims to build a community interconnected by state-of-the-art broadband network consisting of four office buildings, a five-star hotel, a retail entertainment complex and about 2,800 deluxe residential homes, leading to an interactive environment that will be home to a strategic cluster of about 100 companies and 10,000 professionals in the IT and creative industries” -WikiPedia

There are shared media resources (in case you need rendering power from dozens of blade servers) a motion capture facility if you’re going to build games, library and resource center, the official website has more details. There’s a mall for entertainment, there’s restaurants, and a state of the art movie theater that’s frequented on the weekends by the family crowd.

It’s not quite a utopia, as critics of Cyberport have debated the role of the development group, and the actual number of tennents and usage of the campus, success hasn’t yet been declared. “Meanwhile, Cyberport – Hong Kong’s “IT flagship” and Hong Kong Disneyland have been disappointing. The former has little in the way of innovation and exists essentially as another property development rent spinner, not a real IT hub.” reports Asia Sentinel.

Best of all, it’s a 15 minute boat ride to Lamma island, a resort like rural get away with restaurants, beaches and hiking, my friends at Outblaze took me there for lunch, see photos.

Below: Pictures from the Cyberport campus

A very visible landmark of Palo Alto from 280 is the large satellite dish, which locals refer to as “The Dish”, the official site The Stanford University Dish. There’s a hiking trail around it, that takes about one hour to do the loop (3.5 miles). It’s been written up by many locals as a great walk (see yelp), which I’ve been known to hike on weekend mornings.

“Stanford foothills, Junipero Serra Boulevard and Stanford Avenue (be careful where you park, there’s lots of restricted parking nearby)
Often called the Dish Walk (because of a satellite receiving dish crowning the mountain), this network of paths and trails around the Stanford foothills west of Junipero Serra Blvd. offers numerous hillside trail runs and hikes. With sweeping views of Skyline Ridge as well as Palo Alto all the way down to the bay, this park is a favorite among locals.” (Palo Alto guide)

The hills surrounding the dish were recently torched this past summer, PodTech video crew ran out and filmed it, it’s across the street from Headquarters.

Who’s seen walking the dish? Blogger Guru Shel Israel and Giovanni Rodriguez!

(Above: The architecture of the Oracle towers cleverly resemble a “Data Base Stack”)

I was in Redwood Shores this last week meeting Singapore’s US Country Director to discuss the web industry in Asia. On the way over, I stopped by their gorgeous headquarters in Redwood Shores to take a few pictures (Map) or check out the 3D streetview. It houses thousands of talented employees, and is known to cause traffic jams on the nearby freeway 101.

Yes, the architecture of the company looks like it’s signature product, the Oracle Database, the “stack” is what you will often see in web application or network architecture documents, they look like a series of ‘hockey pucks’ stacked on top of each other, see examples. This campus can be seen from the major artery freeway 101 from miles away, and was even the set for the movie by Robin Williams Bicentennial man.

I’ve always been impressed with their campus, it’s the former location of Marine World USA (history of Redwood Shores), and they still have a salt water pond, affectionately known as “Larry’s Lake” after the CEO and founder, Larry Ellison (his Japanese “Castle” down the freeway was on the market for $25 million, includes one a kind driveway). I’m told there are still manta rays in the lake, but I’ve never seen one, perhaps it’s only visible from high up in the towers. You can learn more about Larry’s colorful past, he’s quite the Silicon Valley cowboy.

Redwood Shores used to be the marsh and salt farm of the bay area, it was filled in decades ago, and is home to gorgeous homes on the water, and many beautiful corporate campuses. The average home price? Often over one million dollars, median family income is $200,000. Many of the homes have docks connected to their backyard where owners can have boats, and travel about –much like the canals of Venice.

Oracle’s empire has spread past the towers, they now expand to other buildings across the street, and have recently expanded to Pleasanton, with the acquisition of PeopleSoft in June 2005. At one point in my career, I almost worked at Oracle, I was interviewing to the web director of some of their websites. I’ve got a lot of friends who live in the area, or worked at Oracle, it’s really a gorgeous area.

If you know any interesting trivia about Oracle or it’s campus, be sure to leave a comment.

(Silicon Valley Sightings is an ongoing PhotoBlog that captures the intersection of Tech Culture in the San Francisco Silicon Valley Bay Area, check out the archives. All photos by Jeremiah Owyang)

(Above: Social Text HQ is a prominanly located in Downtown Palo Alto, here seen hosting BarCamp Block)

Downtown Palo Alto (Google Map) is known for being the Mercedes Driving, Fendi wearing, poodle walking, yogurt eating upper class of old money in the Peninsula. This is changing.

Downtown Palo Alto has a bunch of young hip web startups that are appearing, most notable the ever present Facebook Headquarters. Situated on the same street as Stanford University, it attracts culture, strong minds, and lives the spirit of entrepreneuralism that college attracts. Many of these students stay, move right into startups, and then settle in the area.

While the culture is still not as open and hip as San Francisco, you’ll find great restaurants, wine bars, sidewalk cafes, and high end art stores. The best part of this area is the weather, for most of the months of the year, it’s moderate temperature and abundant sun makes live good. Sadly with great weather, access to upward paying jobs, and high quality of life comes the tax of expensive homes, you won’t find a home under $700,000, and that’s just a shack. Please note, East Palo Alto is a world apart from Downtown Palo Alto.

Notable tech folks in Palo Alto? Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg, Sergey and Larry (co-founders of Google) and Steve Jobs lives here, and here’s a picture of his house (see car). The birthplace of Silicon Valley is located here, learn about the HP Garage, just a few blocks down from University Ave, the main street.

Learn more about the greater city of Palo Alto (not just downtown) on the dedicated wikipedia page.

Notable web companies

Facebook
SocialText
SoftTech ventures
Ning
Sharpcast
Edgeio
Azareuz
JotSpot (now Google)
Flock
SearchSpark
Intalio
Institute for the Future
Mozez
Firstlook
Collarity
FriendFinder
Amazon’s A9

When Mr Brown, Singapore’s top blogger came to visit us, we took him to downtown Palo Alto for lunch. Robert toured Rocky, myself, Mr Brown and his video partner to visit one of Silicon Valley’s historic landmarks. 367 Addison, Palo Alto (See Google map, and street view)

In 1939, David Packard and William Hewlett launched Hewlett-Packard in a garage in Palo Alto, many consider this the start of the valley, and how the term “garage startup” was coined. HP purchased the house for 1.7 million in 2000.

I was surprised at how small the garage looked, I’m sure cars were a lot smaller, it probably wouldn’t fit many modern SUVs.

Learn more

The Register: HP garage becomes national landmark

Cnet: Legendary HP garage gets makeover

HP.com Rebuilding HP’s Garage

South Park in San Francisco is home to some of the most creative and innovative companies in this modern web movement. It derives it’s name for the small oval park in the center of the area (Google Map). If you take a look at an innovation map (such as this outdated mashup) you’ll find many companies that employs today’s thought and practice leaders.

Companies who have called South Park home:

Adaptive Path (birthplace of MeasureMap, sold to Google, they hosted a Flickr party, and book launch)
Frog Design
Ruby Red Labs
Citizen Agency (my visit)
Satisfaction (why they matter)
Six Apart
Twitter
Technorati (a quick tour)
Pownce
LaughingSquid (or at least their mailbox)
Blogger (sold to Google)
Odeo
Wired Magazine
VideoEgg
Podshow
Mule Design Studio
LookSmart
Loomia
Sputnik SF
Leverage Software
BuzzLogic
(missed any companies? Leave a comment)

This 2006 article from Dan Fost of SFGate is still talked about as a defining moment in the area’s resurgence. Also read the Wikipedia entry on SouthPark, ValleyWag’s coverage, and Scott captures a moment in time, and remembers when this was called “multimedia gulch” about a decade ago. This area is quite desirable, a quick search in MLS listings yields a 2/2 condo that’s 1321sqf is a mere million dollars!

This area carries a special place in my family’s time, my wife has fond memories of being going through this park as a kid, and you can learn of my family’s long legacy in San Francisco.

Not sure what happened to this AOL van, but it looks stalled.

This is the company we rarely hear about anymore, what are they up to lately? I’ve a few friends that used to work there or still do, some expressed to me it’s very corporate and innovation is difficult to get moving. What has AOL done to stay relevant in today’s 2.0 space? Google has done tremendous work and is one of the platforms for mashups and is deeply rooted in many areas, Yahoo has delicious, flickr, upcoming, pipes, mybloglog, the brickhouse. Ask.com is gunning a huge rebranding advertising campaign that confuses many, but what has AOL done since Jason Calacanis has left?

If you know of current AOL innovation (or even work there) please leave a comment. Heck, if it’s really interesting I’ll swing by and video it for the Web Strategy Show.

Update: Frank Gruber and Jen came over to PodTech to show me the new MyAOL, I take back what I said, AOL is innovating. While certainly not cutting edge, they are making strides in the right direction.

(Above: Drummers parading latin beats on Harrison Street)

If you can’t tell yet, I’m really facinated about cultures, in fact before I got into web, I was a Jazz performance major in college.

Part of what makes Silicon Valley so unique is the open-mindness and accepting of cultures here, this melting pot gives way to new ideas, new cultures, and new methods of discovery and innovation

San Francisco (and the Silicon Valley) boasts a wide variety of cultures that habitat the gorgeous bay area in frequent harmony.

The Carnival is a annual parade and celebration that happens all over the world and SF is no exception. We purchased $5 dollar front row seats and witnessed a different sound, culture, dance, and costume stream by, great for my ADD.

Media I created

-Video: Introduction: It’s pretty wild out here, my introduction (great salsa music)
-Video: Dancers on Parade
-Video: Drummers on parade
-Pictures: I have over 300 photos in this set of Carnival

(Silicon Valley Sightings is an ongoing PhotoBlog that captures the intersection of Tech Culture in the San Francisco Silicon Valley Bay Area, check out the archives. All photos by Jeremiah Owyang

(Above Photo: Guest and employees at LinkedIn dine while surrounded by Four Square balls at yesterday’s Lunch 2.0)

Eric asks in his post “4 Square is hot in Silicon Valley?” (oh, and PodTech had nothing to do with this event, you can learn more about Lunch 2.0 from the official website)

I’ve heard of a few people playing the game in the valley, and it seems a lot more healthier than standing at a foosball table. Jessica Guynn of the SFGate’s Tech Chronicles (SF newspaper) told me that the guys are Meebo are doing it too. Heck in their early 2007 year predictions Eric of Meebo suggests that “meebo will host an official four-square tournament“. They even use 4 square to settle disagreements over bugs and even as primary excercise!

Not sure what Four Square is? The rules are here, all you need is blocked off white lines, cement, a handful of players and a ball.

So who else out there is playing four square?

Below: LinkedIn gave out hundreds of four square balls to attendees at Lunch 2.0, could it really take off?

Most of the time my Silicon Valley Sightings posts are pictures solely by me, some of these photos are from other photographers

(Silicon Valley Sightings is an ongoing PhotoBlog that captures the intersection of Tech Culture in the San Francisco Silicon Valley Bay Area, check out the archives. All photos by Jeremiah Owyang)

I saw this in Menlo Park on Santa Cruz Avenue (google map), it’s just a few miles from Apple CEO Steve Jobs residence in Palo Alto. It’s certainly a reflection of the strong tech culture in the bay area. When I have coffee in Palo Alto or Menlo Park, it’s so common to see many parents of the tech community out with their baby strollers. How do I know they’re part to the tech community? Aside from being so close to Sand Hill (where a lot of startup funding is done) They bring their laptops, iPods, they talk tech in the coffee shops then speed away in their shiny luxury vehicles.

If you really like this baby gear, you can get your own! I showed this to colleague Maryam Scoble (who’s prego) and she showed me this video about iRaq.

On my way driving to work, I noticed a new company on El Camino near California street in Palo Alto, see Google Map. There are a ton of start ups in this area, and many of which are walking distance. Has PR become a commodity? Or just normalized?

The PRstore (a chain) offers a wide range of services and products, which may be useful for the cash strapped startup who often is thin on Marketing and heavy on engineering.

(Silicon Valley Sightings is an ongoing PhotoBlog that captures the intersection of Tech Culture in the San Francisco Silicon Valley Bay Area, check out the archives. All photos by Jeremiah Owyang)

Here’s how we know we’ve come of age…necessities involve portable storage, LED lights, pen and of course, small blade.

Model: Sam Levin handles a real Swiss Army Knife USB.

Jealous? Want your own? buy it online.

(Silicon Valley Sightings is an ongoing PhotoBlog that captures the intersection of Tech Culture in the San Francisco Silicon Valley Bay Area, check out the archives. All photos by Jeremiah Owyang)