Nerval’s Lobster writes “Former Microsoft CEO Bill Gates displayed a bit of emotion when talking to CBS’s 60 Minutes about Steve Jobs. The interview didn’t focus entirely on the relationship between the two men, with most of its running time devoted instead to Gates’s charitable efforts. But when the conversation shifted to their last meeting before Jobs’s death from cancer in 2011, Gates—normally so cerebral—seemed a bit sad. ‘When he was sick I got to go down and spend time with him,’ Gates said, describing their meeting as ‘forward looking.’ Jobs spent a portion of their time together showing off designs for his yacht, which he would never see completed—something that Gates defended when the interviewer seemed a little bit incredulous. ‘Thinking about your potential mortality isn’t very constructive,’ he said. Gates also praised Steve Jobs’s marketing and design skills: ‘He understood, he had an intuitive sense for marketing that was amazing.’ In contrast to his subtle—and not so subtle—digs at the iPad over the years, Gates conceded that Apple had ‘put the pieces together in a way that succeeded’ with regard to tablets. Gates’s magnanimity toward his former rival and Apple is a reflection, perhaps, of his current position in life: it’s been nearly five years since his last full-time day at Microsoft, and all of his efforts seem focused on his philanthropic endeavors. He simply has no reason to rip a rival limb from limb in the same way he did as Microsoft CEO.”
Read more of this story at Slashdot.
Recruit.net just rebuilt its site and underlying engine, in the hopes of attracting new users. The job search site is an aggregator pulling listings from job databases and individual job listings on corporate sites. This is how it hopes to differentiate from larger competitors like Monster and JobStreet, which display listings that companies have specifically taken out on the job sites themselves. Recruit.net’s founder, Maneck Mohan, said the revamp was done in order to make the backend search quicker, and so that the site can keep users coming to it. He said Recruit.net attracts about 500 new sign-ups and spits out results for about a million job searches done per day. It has a database of a million registered users right now. With the revamp, the site is also launching a feature called Social Connections, which allows users to “discreetly” find contacts and friends of friends, up to second-degree connections, that work at specific companies. With the feature enabled, job searches will show relevant social connections underneath job ads, and you can message contacts about those jobs in order to find out more. It doesn’t compete with social networks like LinkedIn (which also relies on recruitment as a revenue pillar). Recruit.net uses both LinkedIn and Facebook APIs to “supplement” its social layer, and any contact with users found is done on their sites, said Mohan. LinkedIn has over 200 million members as of end-2012, and reported that over half of its revenue of $ 304 million in the fourth quarter last year came from the company’s Talent Solutions business. This includes the company’s recruitment business, as it tries to become the go-to place for job seekers. The new revamp showing popular companies with job openings Recruit.net was created in 2006 as a side project for Mohan, who was working as a recruiter at Morgan Stanley before setting up a recruitment consultancy business catering to IT professionals. He hired two developers four-and-a-half years ago for Recruit.net, and decided to tend to the project full-time about ten months ago. Mohan and his current team of eight are based in Hong Kong. The site relies on sponsored listings for revenue, with pay-per-clicks at US$ 0.40 (S$ 0.50), and US$ 0.81 (S$ 1) for people to register and submit resumes to paying sites.
In the first interview since her husband’s death, Laurene Powell Jobs dedicated her sizable platform to advancing immigration reform, while remaining notably tight-lipped about the private life of the late Steve Jobs. We’ve included highlights (with context) from her interview with Rock Center host Brian Williams. On Steve Jobs: “Pretty Cool” Legacy BRIAN WILLIAMS: It’s another way of saying we’re left with a world of really cool stuff. I always wanted to know what it was like to be a Kennedy and drive to Kennedy Airport; and what it’s like to be you at a light and watch 10 people cross, and the only thing they have in common are white ear buds. What’s that like? LAURENE POWELL JOBS: It’s pretty cool. BRIAN WILLIAMS: (LAUGHS) It’s pretty cool. I mean, that changed our world. LAURENE POWELL JOBS: Yeah. To do what you wanna do, to leave a mark– in a way that you think is important and lasting, that’s a life well lived. On Immigration Reform Powell Jobs has been a vocal advocate of immigration reform, partnering with director Davis Guggenheim (Waiting For Superman, An Inconvenient Truth) on a documentary highlighting the struggles of talented, patriotic American youth who have been denied entrance into the military and college because they are undocumented immigrants. To add public pressure for Congress to pass a bill that provides a pathway to citizenship for children of immigrants who came to America illegally, the film (trailer below) is accompanied by a grassroots campaign and website. BRIAN WILLIAMS: Climb into the minds of our viewers watching you guys on Friday night. So help us process this. How are we supposed to feel about their parents, who did do something bad? This is ill-gotten gains, because the first entry into this country was wrong. How are we supposed to feel about the bureaucracy we would now have to have just to hand Social Security numbers to our Marine, our civil engineer? LAURENE JOBS POWELL: Yes. It’s understandable that people are conflicted about this. And, yes, the parents broke the law. And so I think that’s why Congress is trying to find a way to make amends. So have them pay a penalty, have them pay back taxes. Have them wait for two decades in order to have the chance to have citizenship. I mean, there are penalties that can be brought out. But then you have someone
Electronic Arts is laying off staffers at its Montreal office in another round of job cuts. The news comes less than two weeks after CEO John Riccitiello resigned, citing the company’s financial underperformance.
Editor’s note: Danae Ringelmann is a co-founder of Indiegogo. Prior to that, she was a securities analyst at Cowen & Co. where she covered entertainment companies, including Pixar, Lionsgate, Disney and Electronic Arts. 
Damn it, Internet. I had things I needed to do this afternoon.
Menlo Ventures’ Shervin Pishevar and Goldman Sachs managing director Scott Stanford have left their day jobs to build a new venture called Sherpa. The creation of the firm, which was first reported by AllThingsD, is designed around a new model for building and creating companies through a mix and match of strategic corporate partnerships and working with well-known entrepreneurs.
Here’s the cloud to Nokia’s 
Today, there seem to be more business accelerators than there are startups to fill their classes and cohorts. It seems that not a week goes by without the launch of another accelerator or seed starter fund. In fact, 
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