Valley Buzz: Woz on Jobs, the New Google Diet, Slumping PCs and How You're Likely Wasting Time at Work

Is there a silver lining in Steve Jobs’ leave of absence for Apple investors? His co-founder Steve Wozniak sees one. I just left the set of a new tech show produced by our local NBC affiliate, and as coincidence would have it, “Woz” and I were both guests. Wozniak said that when most creative types take a time out, they tend to have a flood of ideas. After all, it was after Jobs’ last leave from the company that we got the iMac, the iPod, the iPhone, and an entirely new Apple.

Wozniak was clear to say he hadn’t talked to Jobs recently, and expressed some frustration at the amount of ink and airtime that had gone into discussing Jobs’ health. He added that some of the alarm was overstated, given how large of a pipeline of products a company like Apple has and how long they take to get to market.

For more on Wozniak’s view of the situation and thoughts about where technology is going, catch the show “Press Here” online Sunday. Of course, for an extra dose of Woz, relive his Segway jousting match with our own Andy Kessler. 

New Google diet

New Google employees are said to gain a “Google 15” when they start work, thanks to the lush cafeteria that provides three-meals-a-day. But it seems the company itself got a little too fat during the good times. The company is laying off one hundred people, and shutting many of the properties it acquired over the last few years that never got traction. They include new uploads to Google Video, Google Catalog Search, Google Notebook, Dodgeball, Google Mashup Editor and Twitter-competitor Jaiku.

Danny Sullivan of Search Engine Watch notes that Jaiku is the only one that doesn’t have a similar Google-owned service users can migrate use instead. Facebook made a run at acquiring Twitter, but the two companies couldn’t come to terms. Might Google be the next to bid on the hot micro-blog site? It certainly would give Twitter chief executive Evan Williams a feeling of déjà vu. Google acquired his first company, Blogger, back in the last downturn, and those pre-Google IPO shares funded the beginning of Twitter’s life.

Slumping PCs

In an earlier segment today, Roger McNamee—in all his long-haired glory—told investors to avoid PC companies, and Gartner Research backs his bullishness up. The firm said in the fourth quarter of 2009, the PC industry had its worst shipment growth rate since 2002. Softness was felt in the U.S. but also in Europe, the Middle East and Africa. Even the Asia/Pacific region was hit, experiencing the worst shipment growth since Gartner has ever tracked. The one bright spot was Latin America, which met expectations but still slowed in growth compared to past quarters. Most analysts expect this is just the beginning of a slew of bad fourth-quarter news for tech and PCs.

New study on social networking

Lastly today, Pew Internet has a new study that proves that social networking isn’t a fad and isn’t just for the kids. The percentage of adult Internet users who use social networking companies like LinkedIn, MySpace, Facebook has increased from 8% in 2005 to 35% today.

In terms of percents, 65% of teens use social networks, but the raw number of adults is far higher. Both trends augur well for the social networking. The more than quadrupling of adults using the service shows the sites are rapidly expanding into the broader market. But the near-double percentage of teens proves that the trend will only become ubiquitous as today’s teens grow up.