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Top Stories: Sept. 17, 2009Smart Grid Unveiled; Students and Teachers Protest; TechCrunchers Tell Sock Puppet TC50's Over; UCSC Comes to SCby Staff on Sep 17, 2009Climate Clock Will Soon Be Ticking San Jose's Diridon Station may soon be home to a new public art installation, the Climate Clock, measuring climate change and encouraging people to reduce their carbon footprint. The project, which is a collaborative effort involving between the city's Office of Cultural Affairs and Public Art Program, San Jose State University, and the Montalvo Art Center, has recently raised over $100,000 in contributions from the David and Lucile Packard Foundation and Bank of America. Previous grants totaling $150,000, were received from Jose State, the San Jose Public Art Program, and 1stAct Silicon Valley. To date, 44 applicants have submitted designs for the installation. The field has been lowered to three finalists, and the final design of the Climate Clock will be selected during the 2010-2011 academic year. Read More at the Business Journal. PG&E Unveils First Component of Smart Grid Innovation Saving electricity is about to get easier. Yesterday, PG&E unveiled a new energy monitoring display that will enable homes and businesses to track how much money they are spending on electricity per hour, day, or month. Armed with that handy graph, consumers will then be able to decide where and when to turn off major appliances that consume the most energy. The electric company plans to begin installing 10,000 of these new meters beginning next summer. Most will be installed in businesses, but some will also be included in homes. In total, PG&E plans to spend $1.7 billion to install 9.3 million smart meters throughout Northern California. Since 75,000 of these will be installed in businesses and homes throughout San Jose, the company has joined with the city, Cisco, and IBM with a request for $42.5 million in federal stimulus money to help fund the project locally. The money would also help PG&E manage a growing number of solar installations in private homes and businesses. Read More at KCBS. Read More at the Mercury News. Read More at Bloomberg News. Mother Leaves Toddler in Car to Go Shopping People pulling in to the Lawrence Station Road branch of the retail chain Costco were surprised to find an 18-month-old toddler strapped into a car seat and left alone in the car. The baby's mother had gone into the store to "pick up a few things," but in what she claimed was a short time, other shoppers had noticed the child and called the police, who arrived on the scene and opened the vehicle to ensure that the child was unharmed. Though the mother was allowed to take the child home, Sunnyvale police are now investigating whether there is grounds to charge her with child endangerment. Read More at the Mercury News. Protesters Arrested at UC Board of Regents Meeting It was originally planned as an open meeting, with 30 minutes for public comments and questions. But when that time ran out, the students and staff who came to express their grievances to the University of California's Board of Regents demanded that the meeting be extended. The students were angry at a proposed 30 percent hike in tuition; the employees were angry at the furloughs enforced on them. Everyone was angry at UC President Mark Yudoff, and they wanted the Regents to know it. "Lay off Yudoff!" they chanted, along with "Whose university? Our university!" Ten minutes later, the meeting was shut down by the police, and 14 protesters were taken away in handcuffs. When the meeting finally resumed, Yudoff explained that he was forced to consider these severe measures to handle the university's $753 million deficit, which he blamed on state budget cuts. "The state has stopped building freeways to higher education. They are now toll roads," he said. Read More at NBC Bay Area. TechCrunch 50 Conference May Have Been the Last Was this year's popular Tech Crunch conference the last? It is if you trust a sock puppet. In an interview "Shel," posted on YouTube, the puppet asked TechCrunch's Jason Calacanis whether the rumors that he and cofounder Michael Arrington "almost killed each other" were true. Calacanis declined to answer directly—these are not the kind of things you confide to a sock—but he did say "I can tell you that that this is the last TechCrunch 50.” The sock was startled by the revelation, but Calacanis went on, "We had three good ones, but this is it." Arrington may have been more surprised than even the sock. When asked about the surprise announcement, all he could say was that he had not spoken to Calacanis about it. TechCrunch 50 was founded by Arrington and Calacanis in 2007 as a venue to launch the best Web 2.0 startups before VCs, the media, and other companies. Read More at NBC Bay Area. County Buys Parkland Though state parks throughout most of California are on the verge of closure, Santa Clara County has just bought 966 acres from the Peninsula Open Space Trust. The property cost the county $16 million, taken from the Park's Charter Fund. Supporters of the purchase say that the Rancho San Vicente purchase will help to protect a number of endangered species, including the bay checkerspot butterfly, the California red-legged frog, and the tiger salamander. Read More at KLIV. Candidates Address Silicon Valley Crowd Four of the five candidates for governor were at Santa Clara University yesterday to meet with high-tech representatives, elected officials and others. Only Meg Whitman, who had a previous engagement in San Diego, was unable to attend the event. The candidates were divided into panels, which discussed key issues facing the state. Republican Steve Poizner was on a panel discussing housing and transportation, while Tom Campbell's panel discussed taxes and regulations. On the Democratic side, Jerry Brown's panel discussed energy and the environment, while Gavin Newsom's panel focused on education and the workforce. Despite their differences, the first three candidates raised the need to empower the private sector by limiting regulation and reducing taxes. Only Newsom, who turned most of his attention to education, failed to address the state's tax rate head-on. Read More at ABC 7. Read More at the Mercury News. UCSC Coming to Santa Clara UCSC's Extension in Silicon Valley is preparing to unveil a new facility in Santa Clara on Oct. 1. The continuing education program, which offers 400 courses in 40 separate disciplines, is increasingly popular, with a 31 percent increase in enrollment at the start of this semester, while its online learning program has grown by 77 percent. It is the region's "largest provider of advanced education for working professionals," with over one-quarter of a million alumni to date. The program's popularity today can be attributed at least in part to the recession, with thousands of newly unemployed workers looking to improve their job prospects or even change careers. Read More at UC Santa Cruz. Read More at the Business Journal. by Staff on Sep 17, 2009 |
 The "Organograph" is a climate-change clock/sculpture proposed for Diridon Station. |
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