Fourth day in Silicon Valley

Hi everyone,

Today is our fourth day in Silicon Valley and our first stop today was Netvibes. Chris Damsen of Netvibes talked to us about the company. In essences, Netvibes is a dashboard. For example, iGoogle would be something similar to their product. However, Netvibes allows their users to customize almost their entire user homepage. The user is able to see their Facebook, news, weather, email, twitter, etc. by simply going to one place. They are a pretty established company. Another interesting thing we found out about their widgets was that you could make your own. As long as you knew how to write the code you could write any widget you want. The company started in Paris and does almost all their development in Paris. In order to make money for the product they sell the service and the software to companies. I thought the company was interesting and will probably create an account.

After Netvibes we ate lunch at Taylor's Automatic Refresher. I had the hamburger and it was very good.

After dinner we went to kiva.org. Kiva is a non for profit company that allows people to loan as little as $25 to people that need the money. After a period of time people will receive their money back and they can either choose to keep the money or re-loan it to another loan on the site. I thought the company had a very relaxing atmosphere. The employees were passionate about what they did and they were not worried too much about what they were getting paid. I thought this company was very interesting. I enjoyed hearing about the way the money is used and all obstacles they have to overcome in order to simply loan money to those who need it. From the sounds of it they are a company that does a very good job at keeping track of where all the money goes.

Next, we went shopping at the Ferry Building. Around 6 pm we when to a restaurant called Scoma. I had a squash and crab soup for an appetizer, Swordfish for my main meal and tiramisu for dessert. It was incredible.

Swordfish

Tiramisu

Then we went back to the hotel and finished blogging.

That is all for today.

Bryan