Me in Israel!

This is a video interview that JD Lasica shot with me on the beach in Tel Aviv last April, just before the book came out. The fact that I look human and sound coherent is a testament to blush, the beach, JD's skills as a videographer and interviewer and the very concentrated pina colada I was drinking. At this moment my bronchitis was turning into pneumonia and I would collapse just a few hours later and be told I was too sick to even fly home! Even still watching it made me want to go back to Israel!

Poor Valley Girl!

In a busy day for tech news-- with CNET getting bought, Carl Ichan is causing more troubles for Yahoo, and OF COURSE my book coming out officially-- I hope someone will check out my latest Valley Girl column on BusinessWeek about Israel's startup scene. As you know, if you read this blog, I spent a week in Israel in April and was a frustrating and enlightening experience. Sounds contradictory? Than it was an Israeli experience.

This was an incredibly hard column to write, because Israel is such a complex and contradictory place. At the heart of the column are a few questions for the tiny but very entrepreneurial country, which I think is at a bit of a crossroads: Will Israel always be Silicon Valley's farm team or emerge as a tech hub independent of the Valley? Should it aspire to that? Can Israeli entrepreneurs make great Web entrepreneurs?

Take a look! Give my column some love!

Henry to Yahoo: Just Show Us One Shareholder Who Agrees!

I'm swamped at Yahoo today. But wanted to post this video of Henry and Aaron's morning Tech Ticker analysis on the deal. I think it's one of the better pieces I've seen today. It seems Kara is hearing similar surprising grumbling from Yahoo execs to what I reported on Saturday. Side note: Just *look* at how excited Mr. Blodget is. He loves this stuff!

More from me later.

Valley-Ho!

If there's one theme that I've thought about, talked about and written about the most over my career covering tech and finance it's the debate of whether you need to relocate to Silicon Valley to be successful. In my case, there's no doubt I've had a better career just by covering business in the Valley, so it's hard for me to believe anyone who wants to profit from the startup ecosystem wouldn't be more successful here. Over the years, I've read a lot of weak treatises that say Valley isn't all that great, ultimately coming off either bitter or just naive, but here is a pretty nice piece arguing against Valley relocation. Although, I'm still not convinced.

MIA Friday

Apologies, dear readers. I have been MIA this morning. Pilates at 8 a.m. and then had to rush Mr. Vinnie to the vet for some issues you don't want to know about....believe me. He's going to be fine and actually got a gold star for losing another half a pound. The big fella -- who is essentially Tony Soprano in cat form-- is now under 20 lbs for the first time, since, um, he was a kitten, I think.

I also swung by the bank to deposit a very, very important check from Penguin. Important because it solidifies the fact that my book is indeed getting published in 15 days and important because it represents the down-payment on our new Victorian in the mission!! Yay!

So, as I get my late start to blogging, mosey over to TechCrunch and read this. Whether you care about technology because you are a rabid early adopter or a rabid stock investor, this is an important issue for you. I've only recently started to understand just how hard it is to move companies to the US-- even from non-threatening places like the UK. (I mean what are they going to do? Charmingly mock us to death?) Between this and the H1-B Visa issue there's just way too much of a disconnect between the Silicon Valley ecosystem that WANTS smart people with good ideas and the smart people with good ideas that support the Silicon Valley ecosystem.

Made worse by the fact that 50% of the congress doesn't even have a passport.

Am I right?

Twitter: Not Mainstream, but Seeping Out of the Echo Chamber for Sure

One major flaw in Kara's informal survey: Equating this wedding she was at with "outside the Silicon Valley echo chamber." I've been stunned how quickly people outside the Valley have started following me on Twitter. My in-laws asked my husband if it was an invasion of our privacy to "follow us" and while I was out of town my parents-- who use absolutely zero social networking or social media sites and are doing good if they read anything I write -- sent an email to my husband that read, "What is a Twitter? Is it just like a one-line blog?" I was floored. And, let's not forget international. Every time I travel outside the U.S. I'm stunned by Twitter's ubiquity. After all, mobile apps are much stronger outside the U.S. In my own informal polls, people in Europe and the Middle East rank Twitter among the most global companies in the Valley, well above Facebook even.

In short, Twitter isn't mainstream, but it's getting outside the echo chamber fast. The problem is it's not necessarily in predictable ways. It's in random spurts.

Virtual Worlds....Really?

We have a few pieces posting on Tech Ticker today and Monday that parse through a lot of the first quarter venture capital data. I've never interviewed that many people in studio at once and not sure how good of a job I did :(  (Video on the jump and more on TT)

Anyway- among the biggest surprises to me was how hot virtual worlds were in the first quarter. (and how hard it is to say "virtual worlds") Wha???

Israeli Women: as Woman-y as the Rest of Us

Men are always befuddled by women, right? Well, last week, I felt their pain. I spent a good deal of my time in Israel meeting with female entrepreneurs and bloggers to get a sense of how gender roles were different from Silicon Valley, where frankly, I’m often the only woman in the room.

Interview with Orli

orli interviews me about my book. i can't believe i miss israel as much as i do given how sick i was! i want to go back!

Back Home...Finally!

I got home safely late Friday afternoon after some 20 hours of travel time. I was only gone a little over two weeks, but it felt like months. There was so much crammed into my trip to London, Cannes and Israel that I tried to capture as much as possible here, but really, I'm still processing a lot of it. As much as I was ready to be home, I also immediately wanted to go back everywhere.

So don't expect I'm done blogging about it all. I've also got a BusinessWeek column on London and one on Israel to come, plus a lot of the video I shot on the trip for Yahoo. But right now, I just need a break and some bedrest!