Brian Berliner's Brain

In February, I wrote an article about participating in the search for Jim Gray . Wired Magazine has just released a most excellent article about Jim Gray and the search . It's great to see a professional follow-up to this story. I only wish it could have included some more answers (hey, if you're going to wish, you should wish big!). Be sure to also check out the Timeline for Tenacious Trip to Southeast Farallon Island on January 28, 2007 article. Good stuff. Tags: Jim Gray , SAR , Sailing , Brian Berliner , brianberliner

VMware went public today! Check out VMW on Google Finance . Back in October of last year, I wrote an article that noted how VMware, a subsidiary of EMC, was kicking butt as a software company, but the value that they were bringing to EMC shareholders was clearly not being represented in the EMC stock price. In February of this year, EMC and VMware announced that they would sell about 10% of the company in an IPO to happen this summer. Great minds think alike -- and ours too! I wrote about that here . VMware pre-sold over $368M of the proposed 10% to Intel Capital and Cisco (see these articles ). For the IPO today, VMware priced at $29.00 and opened at $50.00. Near the closing bell, I took this snapshot: Up 84.83% is what you call a successful IPO. No wonder. IDC estimates the virtualization market at $20B by 2011. VMware is currently at $1.2B. Do the math on that. There's definitely plenty of upside for companies in the virtualization space. (Disclosure: I am a founder and share

I recently celebrated a birthday. Some people don't like birthdays. They fear growing older. I don't have that reaction at all. About a birthday, I always say: "It beats the alternative!" And, I truly believe that. My fiancée bought me the best gift ever. Something that I will use many hours a day, every day of the week. A shiny, new Apple MacBook Pro . OK, so now I have to move everything off my old Apple PowerBook G4 and turn it into a dedicated software test machine. The easy way is to use the excellent Apple Migration Assistant tool. I didn't want to do that, however, because I wanted a fresh start. You see, as part of what I do, I install a lot of crap on my system. A fresh computer every couple years is always an opportunity to get a fresh start. So, that's what I did. I downloaded the latest versions of all the software that I use the most. And, I kept track, just for you. Here's the list: Quicksilver β51 Safari 3 Beta for Mac VMware Fusion

Earlier, Intel Capital announced that the will put in $218.5M to buy a 2.5% stake of the VMware IPO for a mere $23/share. When I wrote about it , I speculated that Intel Capital should expect to get a 3-4x return on that investment over the next 5 years. That's only an $800M+ gain for their investment. Not bad at all. This investment alone will put them in the "elite" category for venture investors. Well done! Cisco announced that they will join the party. It appears as though they like to make easy money, too. Cisco will put in $150M to buy about a 1.6% stake in VMware. Also brilliant. Anybody that gets in on the low end of the VMware IPO (currently $23-$25/share) will do very well. Congratulations to Intel Capital and Cisco for knowing how to invest wisely. I’ve written about the VMware IPO previously here and here . Tags: VMware , IPO , Cisco , Intel Capital , Brian Berliner , brianberliner

A good friend suggested that I try FullTiltPoker.net . She is no longer a good friend. Permit me to explain. She plays a lot of Poker. Real poker, against real people, at real tables, for real money. Texas Hold 'Em mostly. She's quite good. I play a bit of pretend poker. Fake poker, for fake money. I'm OK. But, I'm really not much of a gambler. Yeah, I'm an entrepreneur, and some people think of that profession as "gambling" but it's really not. There is luck involved , to be sure, but that's not quite the same as gambling. I do enjoy poker, however. Very entertaining. Anyway, my friend mentioned that she'll login to Full Tilt Poker to get a quick poker fix in the morning. I surveyed some of the available (FREE) online poker playing, but very few had support for the Apple Mac OS X system. However, Full Tilt Poker did! I had no excuse. I had to download the client and give it a try. Wow. The application is really well done. Gameplay is very goo