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Wednesday, May 13, 2009

Exclusive: Tellme Founder and GM McCue Departs, as Microsoft Reorganizes Its Speech Recognition Unit

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After running one of the more successful Silicon Valley acquisitions by Microsoft for several years, Tellme Networks founder and GM Mike McCue will be leaving the company at the end of June.

As part of the transition, Zig Serafin, who has been running a lot of the speech technology efforts for the software giant in Redmond, Wash., is taking over the voice services subsidiary and all the other related units and making them into a single team with about 400 employees in total.

McCue and Serafin are now meeting with Tellme staff at its Mountain View HQ about the changeover.

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Wednesday, April 1, 2009

Meet Peter Currie, Facebook’s New Money Man (For Now)

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Back in the heyday, Peter Currie was the money man to see in Silicon Valley.

As CFO of Netscape Communications, he led the famed browser start-up into history, as the first great Internet rocket ship, when it went public on Aug. 9, 1995.

Rising to insane levels, the stock was ground zero of the Internet gold rush, despite the fact that it had no profits to speak of. But it did have a 23-year-old co-founder and tech wunderkind in Marc Andreessen and a growth trajectory that was astounding.

If you think it sounds somewhat similar to Facebook today–where Currie will now help out as temporary financial adviser after the social-networking site parted ways with its CFO, Gideon Yu, yesterday–you are correct.

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Thursday, February 5, 2009

Mike Homer Laid to Rest Today

Many BoomTown readers have asked for more information and also about services for well-known Silicon Valley exec Mike Homer, who died earlier this week after a severe and unusual illness.

His funeral is today at 10:30 a.m. at Saint Raymond Catholic Church in Menlo Park.

A “Friends of Mike Homer” Facebook group page has also been created, with lots of great memories posted on its wall.

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Sunday, February 1, 2009

Farewell to Mike Homer

We all liked Mike. In fact, we all loved the pugnacious, energetic and restlessly entrepreneurial Silicon Valley exec.

Sadly for those who knew him, Mike Homer died today at his home surrounded by family and friends, after a long battle with a severe illness. He was 50.

Homer is survived by his wife and three young children: James, Jack and Lucy.

His funeral is at Saint Raymond’s Catholic Church in Menlo Park on Thursday.

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Monday, June 16, 2008

YouTube and Mike Homer

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Today, Mike Homer, as well as many others suffering from incurable degenerative brain disease and dementias, will get a new video-sharing channel on YouTube, along with a Web site and an interactive widget.

Unfortunately, Homer continues to suffer from Creutzfeldt-Jakob Disease (CJD), for which he is under treatment at the University of California at San Francisco.

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Friday, June 22, 2007

Whole Video From the Fight for Mike Event

The full video from the Fight for Mike event, held a week ago in Palo Alto, Calif., for Mike Homer, is now up on YouTube and is embedded below.
Friends and colleagues of the well-known tech veteran came together to learn about his severe illness–he was recently diagnosed with Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease.

The hour-long event included speeches by [...]

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Monday, June 18, 2007

More CJD Info

Since my post Friday about the fight to find a cure for Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease, which has struck Silicon Valley veteran Mike Homer, many groups have written in, offering support.
They include: the CJD Alliance and the CJD Support Network in the United Kingdom; CJD Voice; and CJD Aware!. There are many other such groups, all using [...]

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Friday, June 15, 2007

The Fight for Mike

Last night, in an extraordinary gathering in Silicon Valley, friends and colleagues of Mike Homer came together to learn about his severe illness–the longtime tech veteran was recently diagnosed with Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease.

In an event organized by Homer and his wife, Kristina, as well as close friends and well-known industry players Bill Campbell and Ron Conway, [...]

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About Kara

Kara Swisher started covering digital issues for The Wall Street Journal's San Francisco bureau in 1997 and also wrote the BoomTown column about the sector. With Walt Mossberg, she co-produces and co-hosts D: All Things Digital, a major high-tech and media conference. Read more »

Ethics Statement

Here is a statement of my ethics and coverage policies. It is more than most of you want to know, but, in the age of suspicion of the media, I am laying it all out.

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