alto

Palo Alto plane crash creates Wi-Fi thirst (podcast)

The crash of a small plane in East Palo Alto, Calif., brought down lines that supply power to much of Palo Alto, which is home to Facebook, Hewlett-Packard, and this reporter.

Knowing that Google provides free Wi-Fi to most of nearby Mountain View, I grabbed my laptop and headed for the Mountain View Starbucks nearest to Palo Alto, but it was standing room only thanks to other Palo Alto refugees in search of Wi-Fi and coffee. My next stop was LeBloulanger, a cafe and bakery near the center of town. The Google signal is weak, but the cafe offers its … Read more

Has Wikipedia editing gone the way of government?

Oh, Wikipedia. Have you really become just another political organization?

I only ask because some clever people with nothing better to do have dedicated their bright gray matter to poring through Wikipedia's pages and drawing conclusions. The members of the Augmented Cognition Research Group at the Palo Alto Research Center could probably solve health care over a nonfat latte and a blueberry scone. Instead, they have examined who makes edits on Wikipedia and whose edits are reversed.

It makes for the same kind of dispiriting reading that you might once have expected from a Politburo travel brochure. You see, … Read more

Road Trip kickoff: The garage where the HP legend began

(Editor's note: This post serves as a starting point for Daniel Terdiman's Road Trip 2009, which kicks off Sunday. See below for more details on his trip.)

PALO ALTO, Calif.--Sometimes, when things are huge, it's easy to forget that they come from the most humble of backgrounds.

Such is the case with Hewlett-Packard, one of the biggest technology companies in the world. It has a massive headquarters in this central Silicon Valley town, but like the stuff of legends, it got its start 71 years ago in a tiny garage in the middle of an otherwise … Read more

Audio slide show: Innovation, incubation at PARC

Update, Tuesday, 12:17 PST: This piece was originally intended as an audio slide show, but was published prematurely. We've reworked the images into a more traditional non-audio slide show embedded below.

Almost 40 years ago, Xerox opened the Palo Alto Research Center as a West Coast center of research and development. Since then, research at these labs has produced some of the technological innovations that have been widely adopted across today's modern computing systems, including laser printing and Ethernet.

Spun off as a subsidiary of Xerox in 2002, today PARC collaborates with clients, acting as an incubator … Read more

Facebook's latest geographic expansion: New offices

Facebook has simply gotten too big for downtown Palo Alto, Calif., where it has been headquartered since founder Mark Zuckerberg uprooted the company from dorm rooms at Harvard. With over 600 employees now on its payroll, Facebook will be moving to a bigger facility at the Stanford Research Park outside town--a former Hewlett-Packard building.

"This new space is the next step in our growth and positions us well to continue looking for a long term campus solution while also allowing employees to work together as much as possible," a statement from Facebook read. The company plans to complete … Read more

The 404 165: Where we don't discuss geopolitics

On today's show, it's all about guido fist pumps and geopolitics. Psyke! We actually talk about big foot news (down, but not out), more Spanish insensitivities, ugly ducklings, neuvo guido fashion, the Goslings vs. the Reynolds, and Wilson's disturbing explanation of evolutionary breast development.

After receiving an e-mail from one of our listeners requesting coverage of the dismal political climate in modern Georgia, we dig deep and produce: "I love the money pit." That's all we have to say about that. There are few things that we don't discuss on The 404, and … Read more