Today’s digital cameras are good and all, but there are way too many manual controls to create the perfect picture. How cool would it be to have a light version of Photoshop built into a digital camera. Researchers at Stanford are working on that type of project. So far a prototype has been developed, but the “Frankencamera” still has a long way to go.

This past Friday, a highly revered Silicon Valley investor Rajeev Motwani had passed away at the age of 47 in his Atherton, California home.  The cause of death is currently unknown and he was found at the bottom of his backyard swimming pool.

Motwani is best known for being the advisor of Sergey Brin and Larry Page as they were founding Google.  Motwani was an algorithms expert and mathematical theory professor while Brin and Page were students at Stanford University.  Motwani helped Page and Brin discover the possibility of analyzing the web as an interconnected graph.

“When my interest turned to data mining, Rajeev helped to coordinate a regular meeting group on the subject. Even though I was just one of hundreds of graduate students in the department, he always made the time and effort to help. Later, when Larry and I began to work together on the research that would lead to Google, Rajeev was there to support us and guide us through challenges, both technical and organizational,” wrote Sergey Brin on his blog.

Prof. Motwani had written and contributed to several books and received the Gödel Prize.  Motwani had even invested in several companies such as Tapulous and TokBox.

He was born in Jammu, India and grew up in New Delhi.  After that he received a Bachelor’s degree from the Indian Institute of Technology Kanpur.  In 1988, he received a Ph.D. at the University of California-Berkeley and live around Silicon Valley since then.  It is a tragic loss, but his contributions to the digital age will live on.

[via NYT]

A team at Stanford University has been able to create an artificial knee that costs less than $20 to manufacture.  The project was originated from the Biomedical Device Design and Evaluation class at Stanford.  The project is called the JaipurKnee.  Joel Sadler and his classmates were presented with the task of creating a low-cost knee joint for amputees living in developing countries.

Other low-cost knee joint metallic limbs used single-axis joints which ended up roating like a door hinge, but they were too unstable.  The JaipurKnee has self-lubricating joints with greater flexibility than the alternatives.  Sadler hopes to distribute 100,000 joints to amputees in the next three years and we applaud him for his philanthropic efforts.

[via Medgadget/Stanford PR]

Stanford University, the Ivy Plus tech-focused school based in Palo Alto is especially known for producing some of the Silicon Valley’s most elite.  Stanford was one of the first schools I’ve heard of that is teaching students how to learn social media and build iPhone applications.  But now Stanford is offering something for less tech-savvy people, parents.  Stanford wants to teach parents how to use Facebook through an introductory course.

The Facebook for Parents course starts this month and is already full.  Stanford students will be providing parents with one-on-one tutoring of everything Facebook-related from updating statuses to uploading pictures.  “Responsible parenting means being aware of what your children are doing,” stated Linda Phillips, a teacher for the course.  Phillips is teaching the course with her brother and psychologist at Stanford BJ Fogg.

About 9% of Facebook’s total users are adults older than 35.  This demographic is also the fastest growing demographic according to The Mercury News.  The class is free and open to all parents.  Some of the subjects include “The ABC’s of Facebook,” “Ten Steps To Protect Loved Ones,” and “Friending, Posting, Updating: Life Skills for the Future.”

Background of Andreas von Bechtolsheim
Andreas (Andy) von Bechtolsheim was born in 1955 in the country of Germany.  When he was 21, he graduated Carnegie Mellon Univ. with a Master’s in Electrical Engineering.  Then he moved on to get a PhD from Stanford between 1977-1982. 

While Bechtolsheim was at Stanford, he had discovered a way to build a powerful computer based on a network connected to a Unix operating system.  Bechtolsheim created the workstation because he was bored of waiting for the computer time on the campus university system.  Vinod Khosla approached Bechtolsheim regarding his invention and they decided to start a company together, Sun Microsystems, Inc. (NASDAQ:JAVA).  Sun was actually an acronym for Stanford University Network.

Bechtolsheim dropped out of the PhD program to go full-time on Sun and pulled in his friend Scott McNealy to become a co-founder.  The four original founders of Sun were Andy von Bechtolsheim, Vinod Khosla, Bill Joy, and Scott McNealy.

Today Sun Microsystems is a $3.38 billion company.  Sun’s brands include Java, MySQL, and Sun StorageTek.  Sun bought out MySQL for $1 billion earlier 2008.

Investments/Other Startups/Back to Sun
Bechtolsheim stepped down from Sun in 1995 and then started Granite Systems.  Granite was bought out by Cisco Systems, Inc. (NASDAQ:CSCO) for $220 million in 1996.  After that Bechtolsheim became VP and GM of Cisco Gigabit Systems Business Unit.

Bechtolsheim stepped down in 2003 from Cisco to become the head of Kealia.  Sun bought out Kealia in 2004 and brought Bechtolsheim back to Sun.  Bechtolsheim became the Chief Architect and SVP at Sun.  

Bechtolsheim and David Cheriton, who both were at Granite, were two of Google’s first investors.  They wrote a $100,000 check to “Google Inc.” before the search engine company even incorporated itself.  Larry and Sergery did not even have a company checking account at the time.

The New Start-Up
Bechtolsheim stepped down from Sun again recently to work on a new startup.  This startup plans to take-on network giant and Bechtolsheim’s former employer, Cisco.  Bechtolsheim’s new company is called Arista Networks and they have built a fast network switch that costs 1/10th of the prices of Cisco’s products.

Some of Arista’s customers already include several government labs, Internet startup companies, and other data intensive companies like Google.  Today the company is also announcing that they have hired Jayshree Ullal as their CEO.  Ullal was an executive at Cisco that lead their corporate switch business.

Cheriton will also be joining Arista as the company’s chief scientist.  

Arista, based in Menlo Park, Calif. has kept their team at a small number.  This is because Bechtolsheim believes if you hire a bunch of key executives at once, they’ll just twiddle their thumbs while collecting large sums of money.  Even though the company has already been shipping units, they did not have an official CEO until today.

Don’t Forget Where You Came From
Although this is the second time Bechtolsheim is leaving Sun, he stated that he will a part-time advisor with the company.   ”It’s my baby,” Mr. Bechtolsheim said. “I will always be associated with Sun.”

BitTorrent is now being used by Stanford University for distributing course materials.  The courses that are being distributed revolve around Computer Engineering.  Stanford distributes videos, syllabi, exams, homework, etc. on the BitTorrent protocol.  Stanford also places lectures on YouTube, iTunes, and Vyew.

The course lectures that are being distributed include:
- Programming Methodology
- Programming Abstractions
- Programming Paradigms
- Introduction to Robotics
- Natural Language Processing
- Machine Learning
- The Fourier Transform and its Applications
- Introduction to Linear Dynamical Systems
- Convex Optimization I and
- Convex Optimization II

So far about 200,000 people have visited the Stanford Engineering Everywhere.  People have come from Brazil, Canada, China, Italy, and the U.K.  All of the course materials are published and distributed under the Creative Commons license.  Stanford uses Vuze’s DHT tracker and that means those who use BitTorrent clients without DHT support will not be able to download the materials.

Stanford punishes those that are caught using the BitTorrent protocol for copyright infringement.  The cost is $100 fine for the first time, $500 for the second time, and $1,000 for the third time.