Oakland Focus News | Oakland News Online Blog

What's interesting to learn about Bay Area venture capital firms, and on the heels of Thursday's TechCrunch Summer Party hosted by August Capital , is that not every one focuses on the United States. In the case of Tano Capital, the San Mateo, California investment firm founded by Charles E. Johnson, the former President of Franklin Templeton investments, who's its managing director , has its investment interests primarily in India and China. The firm, established in 2007, started with a few small investments, but then ramped up its activity considerably in 2009. It started with an investment in AltoBeam Technology, a China-based designer of digital TV chipsets. Then Tano placed $2.2 million in TongXue.com , a Chinese-based social network, that's become one of the 50,000 largest websites in the World (and with a really cool animated activity map). In 2010, Tano Capital's activity increased, to the point that it has now as many deals in play as it did in al...

According to Bob Egelko and Henry K. Lee of the San Francisco Chronicle , the man who terrorized Oakland (causing Adams Point residents to take to online chat rooms about the helicopter and shooting noise) was a parolee named Byron Williams who hated left-wing politicians and had on a bullet-proof vest.  In other words, a Tea Party sympathizer. That he was on the Oakland stretch of 1-580 may have been no accident, considering Oakland's a hot bed of left-wing political activity. Byron Williams also reads like a Tea Party sympathizer, and not exactly the warm and fuzzy kind. More like the kind that wants to harm you if you disagree with him. Rush Limbaugh's a Tea Party hero Is this what we're coming too? A Northern California man who's mother says was upset by "the way Congress was railroading through all these left-wing agenda items." Another Tea Party-type nut? Doesn't that sound something like Joe Stack , the man who flew his plane into the ...

In many ways, Dr. Terrance Candell is a lot like fellow Oaklander Urban Farmer Novella Carpenter , the author of Farm City . Both are energetic, intelligent, engaging, passionate, caring, and committed to Oakland. Both also have facilities they started from scratch: Novella her urban farm and for Dr. Candell, Candell's College Preparatory Academy . The main difference, other than he being black and male, and she being white and female, is that Dr. Candell's running for Mayor of Oakland. Dr. Terrance Candell PhD This blogger visited Dr. Candell at Candell's College Preparatory Academy in East Oakland, right across the street from Eastmont Mall and at 2544 73rd Street. What was great about the talk, as evidenced by the video, was to what high degree Dr. Candell cares about his students and already is the Mayor of East Oakland. In our talk, he hugs his students and even got all over one who dared to jaywalk across 73rd street. He wants to transfer that level of ...

Urban farming is fast catching on as an alternative to shopping in overpriced food stores and worrying about how to feed a family on a challenged budget in a bad economy. Oakland, California has become the San Francisco East Bay Area's center of the urban farming movement. All of this was evident at the City Slickers June fundraiser held at St. Paul's Church near Lake Merritt. Why wait this long to blog about the event? Because everything about the Oakland urban farming effort, from City Slickers and the people involved in it, to the work of Oaklander Novella Carpenter, City Slickers Founder Willow Rosenthal and her friend Laura Pivas and, it's board members including Kelli Saturno, Barbara Lafeete - Olawale and Interim Executive Director Barbara Finnin . And others not in the West Oakland food organization, but an influence on the movement, like UC Berkeley Professor and Activist Michael Pollan (who Rosenthal and Carpenter describe as a "hero" ...

YouTube , Metacafe , Blip.tv and Viddler A group of wandering musicians playing The Beatles Norwegian Wood on a San Francisco BART train bound for Oakland last week, Thursday. The musicians, who appeared to be a family consisting of a man and three boys, one an older teenager of about 16, and the other two between the ages of 12 and 14, went from car to car singing The Beatles Norwegian Wood , and really not badly, all things considered - for whatever money the BART riders would give. I gave two bucks. It's sad that taking on such activities as singing The Beatles Norwegian Wood on a Bay Area Rapid Transit Train at rush hour is what some have to do to make money. While BART has a "no-panhadling" policy, groups like this one should be given some leeway as they provide entertainment after a long day and a little levity in a San Francisco Bay Area than can take itself a little too seriously.

NewMediaAge thought it was pulling a fast one by offering a study that reads "Almost two-thirds of people are happy to pay for quality journalism but not online, according to a YouGov survey," for a fee behind a paywall, when the same study results are actually available online without charge . Thus, NewMediaAge proved why paywalls don't work, even as it was using one: all you have to do is search around to get the same content for free. And where you can get the study results summary is the very YouGov site that produced the study , here: media paywalls don't work .  That reports: A vast majority (83 percent) replied that they would refuse to pay, with only two percent of respondents willing to shell out for online content in the current format. Only four percent would pay for online even when the content in question was not available anywhere else. NewMediaAge must think the online consumer is stupid. The study claims : The Daily Mail is read onli...

On Thursday night July 15th, a change in flight plans enabled this blogger to attend the Oakland Mayoral Forum on Public Safety. Here are some thoughts from the distance of Georgia before the forum videos go up. First, former California State Senator Don Perata's making a huge mistake by not showing up to the debates. As I've explained to Perata, and the other Oakland mayoral candidates when I've talked to them, its very important to have as much internet exposure as possible that's self-generated. Instead, Perata's allowing others - once again - to write his script for him. Come November, it's going to cost him dearly. As a joke, someone - perhaps longtime Oaklander Pam Drake, since she took that photo - placed a chair next to the candidates panel with the words "Don Perata" on it. While they also should have had one for Oakland Mayor Ron Dellums, because Dellums is just that he's making his own media just by working at being Mayor, ev...