Category: Local in California

Mountain View, the heart of Silicon Valley

After spending a good deal moving around between apartments, I decided to call Mountain View my home. Mountain View is a city in Santa Clara County, in the San Francisco Bay Area. It is named for its views of the Santa Cruz Mountains. The city shares its borders with the cities of Palo Alto, Los Altos, and Sunnyvale, as well as Moffett Federal Airfield and the San Francisco Bay. As of the 2000 census, the city had a total population of 70,708. For more information about Mountain View visit this Wikipedia article.

Downtown Mountain View, Castro Street - love the mountains

Downtown Mountain View is the place to be for food and hanging out at Red Rock. Great cafes, bars and restaurants are located on Castro Street. The picture above is of Castro Street. It’s always busy here even late into the night and you are surely going to spot a number of sport and luxury cars like Audi R8, Porsche 911 GT4 et al.

Downtown Mountain View, Castro Street
Microsoft bus shuttle service thru Mountain View

Mountain View is a cute little town home to many high technology companies.

Tech companies located in Mountain View

Here is a list of high tech companies you would have heard or know of that have their head office located in my new home town, Mountain View.

Coupons.com
The leader in digital coupons, including online printable, social, mobile and loyalty card promotions. The billion dollar company, Coupons, Inc. is the driving force in transforming the multi-billion dollar coupon industry and ushering it into the digital world. http://www.coupons.com/

GooglePlex
Headquarters of the multinational public cloud computing, Internet search, and advertising technologies corporation. The company was founded by Larry Page and Sergey Brin, often dubbed the “Google Guys”, while the two were attending Stanford University as Ph.D. candidates.
http://www.google.com/

Y-Combinator
Y Combinator is an American seed-stage startup funding firm, started in 2005 by Paul Graham, Robert Morris, Trevor Blackwell, and Jessica Livingston. Y Combinator provides seed money, advice, and connections at two 3-month programs per year. In exchange, they take an average of about 6% of the company’s equity.
http://www.ycombinator.com/
Also the group behind extremely popular hacker news site:
http://news.ycombinator.com/

Symantec Corporation
The largest maker of personal computer security software. Symantec’s consumer antivirus and data management utilities are marketed under Peter “Norton’s” name.
http://www.symantec.com/

eLance
Provides an Internet virtual marketplace for freelancers and freelance agencies to negotiate work contracts with businesses that hire independent professionals and agencies.
http://www.elance.com/

LinkedIn
Is a business-oriented social networking site mainly used for professional networking.
Very common amongst business and technology professionals.
http://www.linkedin.com/
I’m on LinkedIn – let’s connect: http://www.linkedin.com/in/semerda

Mozilla Corporation
Developer of Internet-related applications such as the famous Mozilla Firefox.
http://www.mozilla.com/

Mint.com
Mint.com is a free web-based personal financial management service allowing users to track bank, credit card, investment, and loan transactions and balances through a single user interface.
Personally this is the BEST financial product I have ever used online!
http://www.mint.com/

23andMe
Privately held personal genomics and biotechnology company founded by Anne Wojcicki and married to Google co-founder Sergey Brin.
http://www.23andme.com/

Google WiFi for Mountain View is provided free of charge to all Google customers in Mountain View as part of Google’s efforts to reach out to their hometown. It’s not the quickest but it works well with Google Voice and when surfing the web at one of the cafe’s in the area. Look out for a WiFi connection called “GoogleWiFi”. Kudos to Google!

Me (Ernest) at Googleplex

The full list of companies can be found here:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Category:Companies_based_in_Mountain_View,_California

Who would have thought that one day I’d be passing every morning VeriSign, Symantec, HP and eLance on my way to work. And around the corner from where all these companies are is the Lockheed-Martin air base so I get to see some cool planes fly around. Still waiting for that UFO experience!

Ernest

General observations: Australia to USA

Australia
– Our drinking age is 18 throughout the country.
– We drive on the left hand side of the road.
– Seatbelts are compulsory for everyone in a car.
– Handguns are illegal without a permit and it’s very difficult to get one.
– Our cars are generally smaller than most cars in the US though larger ones are available
– Australia is completely metricated – we use Celcius instead of Farenheit for temperature, litres instead of gallons, kilograms instead of pounds, metres instead of yards etc.
– Our seasons are the opposite to yours, Summer is Dec-Feb, Autumn is Mar – May, Winter Jun – Aug, Spring Sep – Nov so it’s hot at Christmas time and many people spend Christmas Day on the beach.
– Most of our population lives within 100km (miles?) of the coast and the population density in the inland is very low.
– We don’t celebrate Thanksgiving.
– We have X public holidays per year.
– Workers in Australia receive 4 weeks paid holiday (vacation) every year. It’s not uncommon to see Australians vacationing at a Maldives ocean villa.
– We have universal healthcare for citizens and PRs which is paid for out of our taxes.
– The cost of living in Australia is generally a bit higher than in the US. Cars x2, Gas/Petrol, Food, Accomodation.
– There is no need to tip in Australia. If you experience excellent service, a tip is appreciated but will never be demanded.
– Australia has a much smaller population than the USA.
Our population is just over 20 million where as the population of the USA is over 300 million.
– Voting age is 18, voting is compulsory in all elections.
– Our currency is multi colours (examples),
– We also spell some words differently to the US such as:
defence, jewellery, favourite, realise, colour, litre, metre and numerous other words.
– Best beaches in the world.
– Have you seen the traffic in Sydney ? It is like a 3rd world country when it comes to infrastructure. Roads have pot holes like in Moombasa. The tolls are the only way to screw the population who pay it and sit on the highway in traffic. None of the traffic lights are synchronized even on major roads. How long does it take on Queens Blvd to get to Manhattan from Flushing in NYC.

USA
– 21
– Right hand side
– More variety in things to do. SV is x-hrs from Yosemite, Tahoe, Wine country, mountains for hiking, beach for surfing. (pics from my holidays).
– Wide open roads

http://answers.yahoo.com/question/index?qid=20080617174720AANQHfb

http://www.australiaforum.com/information/general/cost-of-living-in-australia-compared-to-the-us.html

USA:
1) Excellent environment for business – great place for business owners
2) Affordable housing, grocery, cars, general expenses
3) Affordable cost for contractors (eg. plumbing like sewer service, ac services such as ac installation services, etc.)
4) Big corporations have very good health & dental cares and pension plans
5) Low travel cost. You can find hotels in Laguna Beach within your budget.

Australia
1) Some salaries are higher but tax is also much higher – if you are on min. wages, better stay in Australia, but if you are middle manager / director type, US salary is actually higher and lower tax
2) Universal healthcare – service is getting less each year, and waiting time is longer and longer but it is still available
3) Slow pace – Australia in generally is quite slow paced – but this does not mean less stressful – but the overall lifestyle is slower.
4) Monopoly business – if you can come up with a good idea, you can have a monopoly business in Australia easier and enjoy ripping off customers at your will…such can not be achieved in USA due to competition.