paul allen

Bill Gates and Paul Allen together again

Thirty-two years ago, Microsoft co-founders Bill Gates and Paul Allen took a picture together, surrounded by the computers of the time. It was 1981 and Ronald Reagan had just become president of the U.S. In June of that year, Microsoft incorporated in Washington state, and in August IBM introduced its first PC with Microsoft's fledgling operating system, MS-DOS. At the beginning of 1981, Microsoft had 129 employees. By 2012, Microsoft had more than 97,000 employees and MS-DOS still lives on.

The picture of the older Gates and Allen was taken in Seattle at the Living Computer Museum, … Read more

Paul Allen's VC firm to open new office in Silicon Valley

Microsoft co-founder Paul Allen's venture-capital firm is opening an office in Silicon Valley.

Vulcan Capital, which has invested in a wide array of companies, including DreamWorks Animation and Redfin, has decided to open an office in Palo Alto, Calif., the company has confirmed to Reuters. The office, which will open at some point in the next few weeks, will focus on technology, Internet, and software companies. It will chiefly invest in middle- and late-stage startups, as well as pre-IPO deals.

"We are going to expand our footprint in broad tech investments, we'd like to get more resources, … Read more

You can now use Paul Allen's personal movie-sorting app

Must be nice to be a billionaire like Paul Allen and have your own movie-sorting app. Well, now the Microsoft co-founder's technology is available for the rest of us too, in the form of the Fayve app.

Fayve started out as a way for Allen to manage his own collection of videos, according to GeekWire. His staff, tasked with developing technologies and tools for managing Allen's stuff, created the product for his use and then found it to have a broader appeal. They altered it to make it ready for public use, the report said.

"Paul has … Read more

Bill Gates' and Paul Allen's friendship repaired?

When Microsoft co-founder Paul Allen published his book "Idea Man" last year, he surprised many people by tearing into his longtime friend and business partner Bill Gates.

In a new epilogue published for the paperback version of this book, which comes out this week, Allen writes that after a yearlong rift, the two men have repaired their friendship, according to GeekWire.

"Not everyone loved everything I wrote," Allen writes. "Some of my Microsoft friends were piqued that I'd cast the company's recent history in 'not the most favorable light,' as one of them … Read more

Paul Allen likes Windows 8 -- well, except for a few things

Paul Allen, one of Microsoft's founders, is weighing in on Windows 8. What he's found is he likes it -- mostly -- but some features are pretty "puzzling."

Microsoft will be releasing its latest iteration of its operating system later this month. Unlike prior versions of Windows, the newest release is the first to have two modes and to integrate touch capabilities. One mode, formerly referred to as the Metro interface but now called "Windows 8 style," is geared at tablets, while the other is more traditional looking and is targeted at conventional PCs. … Read more

Wikidata to provide structured data for all Wikipedia versions

With more than 280 different language editions of Wikipedia often sharing data elements like people's birth dates and definitions, there has never been a single central data repository from which each version could pull such information. Until now.

Today, the German chapter of the Wikimedia Foundation pulled back the wraps on Wikidata, a project that is aiming to be a single common source of structured data that can be used across all versions of Wikipedia. By December, that should allow editors of each individual language version of a Wikipedia article to pull data from that repository rather than adding … Read more

Man charged with trying to steal Paul Allen's identity

It can't be that easy to call up a bank and pretend to be someone famous. Or can it?

Perhaps it can, if allegations leveled against 28-year-old Brandon Price are proven to be true. For he stands accused of persuading a Citibank customer service representative that he had, indeed, co-founded Microsoft and was now changing his address from Seattle to Pennsylvania.

The way the Associated Press identifies the story, Price allegedly managed to have a debit card sent to a Pittsburgh address. His intention was allegedly to pay loans that were past due, as well as other expenses.

Indeed, … Read more

Google+ surpasses 62 million users

Google+ has captured more than 62 million users, at least according to one "unofficial" count.

Chiming in with his own Google+ post yesterday, Ancestry.com co-founder and Google+ unofficial statistician Paul Allen reported the latest numbers as of December 27.

Running queries on different surnames to gauge the number of total users, Allen and his team found a surge in daily signups over the past several weeks. Around 625,000 new users have been hopping aboard the social network each day, which means almost a quarter of all Google+ users joined in December alone.

Assuming that rate continues, … Read more

Paul Allen's Stratolaunch: Grand plan for next-gen space travel

Billionaire Paul Allen today announced his grand ambition for the next generation of manned space travel: the largest aircraft ever built, which would be capable of orbital missions with quick turnarounds, greater safety, and better cost-effectiveness than anything previously launched.

At a press conference this morning in Seattle, Allen--a co-founder of Microsoft--along with Burt Rutan unveiled their new company, Stratolaunch Systems. Allen and Rutan previously collaborated on the creation of SpaceShipOne, which won the Ansari X Prize for being the first privately funded spacecraft to leave the Earth's atmosphere.

Now, Allen and Rutan are at it again, and at … Read more

Google+ users up 30 percent since going public?

After opening its doors to the public last Tuesday, Google+ may now have more than as 43 million users.

So says Ancestry.com co-founder and Google+ unofficial statistician Paul Allen, who's been keeping a running tally of how big the social network is growing.

Compiling his regular series of stats based on surnames used around the world, Allen said last Thursday that Google+ witnessed a 30 percent jump in users in the … Read more