Andreessen gets into social networking

Web browser pioneer Marc Andreessen helped bring the Internet to the masses during the 1990s. Now the Netscape Communications co-founder is trying to help Web surfers build online communities outside the walls of social networking leaders MySpace.com and Facebook.com.

You are enjoying his handiwork right here... right now!

Florida Business Opportunity?

Do you think it would be profitable for us to get the Florida distribution rights for this?

Company information available at...

http://www.fasttrackamphibian.com/opportunities.htm

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Questioning the Value of an IT Degree

from The Chronicle: Wired Campus Blog

With interdisciplinary training all the rage in the IT industry, computer-science degrees just don't seem to carry the weight they once did. According to a new survey, three out of five British employers don't care whether applicants for high-tech jobs have IT-specific degrees.

The survey -- completed by E-Skills UK, a government agency -- also found that only two of every five IT workers in Britain possess tech-related degrees. Karen Price, chief executive of E-Skills UK, told CNET News that applicants without IT degrees are often perceived as better entrepreneurs and communicators than their tech-trained, tech-brained counterparts.

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Is China a Threat to the US Economy?

Here is what Congressional Staff is telling your Congressmen and Senators:

http://www.fas.org/sgp/crs/row/RL33604.pdf

What do YOU think?

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Board of Directors Policy

Wed, Feb. 28, 2007
Ex-HP director laments corporate board trend PERKINS SEES LESS BUSINESS EXPERTISE By Therese Poletti Mercury News Storied venture capitalist Tom Perkins, credited with blowing open the spying scandal at Hewlett-Packard, says corporate boards obsessed with legal and regulatory compliance cannot detect an Enron or WorldCom-type fraud if board members don't fully understand a company's business. In his first public remarks since the HP spying scandal erupted last September, Perkins on Tuesday told an audience at a venture capital event that in light of his recent experience on the HP board, he sees an alarming trend in corporate America of compliance-obsessed directors with no expertise in the firm's business setting the agenda on big company boards. Emerging director ``Perhaps they will eventually understand the actual business, perhaps not,'' he told more than 200 people gathered at the VentureOne conference in San Francisco. ``One of the great ironies, in my opinion, is that the best of compliance boards would be entirely unable to prevent another Enron.'' During his 35-minute talk, Perkins outlined two kinds of board members, placing himself in the category of an old-style venture capital-type who is extremely involved in the business. He called that type a ``guidance director.'' In contrast is the new emerging director, whom he called the ``compliance director.'' He described that person as someone increasingly focused on Sarbanes-Oxley requirements, who jumps from company board to company board, dispensing and heeding advice from consultants and lawyers. Perkins, 75, derided the latter, which he called a ``plug-to-plug compatible director'' who believes he or she is equally capable of serving on a bank board as on that of a technology behemoth such as HP. During the HP boardroom scandal, which erupted after Perkins quit over the way then-HP Chair Pattie Dunn conducted an investigation into boardroom leaks to the press, some reports described a conflict between Dunn and Perkins over her focus on corporate governance minutia. Perkins said he was worried at the time about how IBM and Dell were trouncing HP. ``It was a battle about governance and competing models of governance,'' Perkins said. He then recalled that when Carly Fiorina was chief executive, he came up with the idea of creating a technology committee on the HP board that would act like an audit committee over HP's spending on research and development. Fiorina agreed to form the committee, a group he believes threatened Dunn. ``We became very influential,'' Perkins said. ``Pattie Dunn detested this committee. She lobbied for its elimination. She won.'' He said he believes her search for a leaker on the HP board was her backhanded way of killing the technology committee. Too few `geeks' But today, he said, with too few ``geeks'' on its board, HP has evolved fully into a compliance board, ``possibly untroubled by worries about technology and marketing strategy.'' ``I think the guidance board will vanish and it will be replaced by compliance boards who just listen to lawyers and consultants,'' he said, referring to the general corporate trend. Perkins added that he did not believe Dunn should have been charged criminally in the case. Dunn, who ordered the investigation, and three others have been charged with four felony counts for using deception to obtain the personal phone records of board members, HP executives and nine reporters. Neither Dunn nor her publicist could be reached for comment Tuesday. ------ Contact Therese Poletti at tpoletti@mercurynews.com or (415) 477-2510.

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