IT Buoy

Celebrity entrepreneurs are nothing new. But, in the 15-or-so years since the dot-com revolution, only a few famous faces have successfully ventured into the digital industry. And some of them might surprise you. Read the rest of this story

Celebrity entrepreneurs are nothing new. But, in the 15-or-so years since the dot-com revolution, only a few famous faces have successfully ventured into the digital industry. And some of them might surprise you. Read the rest of this story

There’s been a battle going on between the “broadcast” TV networks and the cable networks over something called “retransmission fees.” Cable networks have traditionally paid for “cable network programming” but not “over the air programming.” But that is changing and the broadcast TV networks are demanding these retransmission fees from the cable companies. Read the rest of this story

The last time I really was truly bullish on a start-up and its founder–BoomTown’s motto is wait-and-see rather than hype-it-up–was AdMob’s Omar Hamoui . That turned out pretty well, with the sale of the mobile advertising site to Google (GOOG) for $750 million last fall . My 2010 start-up that passes the slightly-less-raised-eyebrow test is Groupon , a group-based social buying service that nabbed another $30 million in funding in December . So earlier this week, I sat down with Groupon’s Midwesternly-nice Andrew Mason, 29, to talk about where the start-up is headed with its pile of dough and growing base of consumers who want to make a deal. The Chicago-based Groupon has actually raised a total of just under $36 million from angels, New Enterprise Associates and Accel Partners so far. Not that it needs it. The company–like AdMob–is profitable, despite having 200 employees and and a lightning growth path to expand its base of local sites.

Michael Chertoff, who ran the Department of Homeland Security from 2005 to 2009, says there’s a reason that computer security isn’t up to the threat posed by cyber criminals: Doing it right is too complicated for most people. A large part of the problem “is that the solution is inaccessible to the average consumer,” Mr. Chertoff said in an interview at the RSA conference in San Francisco. While it’s generally possible to secure a computer and protect one’s personal information. often those measures require technical expertise beyond the grasp of the typical computer owner, he said. Not only that, the problem itself is hard to understand: There isn’t much dialogue about cyber issues that shine a light on the nature of the threat, and attempts to describe it often get bogged down in tech jargon. The result is a natural inclination by most people to ignore cyber threats. The solution isn’t just to educate people, Mr.