Gawker: valleywag, necker island

Netscape Billionaire to Wed Supermodel This Weekend

Owen Thomas — Fri, 20 Mar 2009 18:59:10 EDT

Giving geeks everywhere hope, Jim Clark, cofounder of Silicon Graphics and Netscape, is marrying swimsuit model Kristy Hinze this weekend on Richard Branson's Necker Island — also the site of Google founder Larry Page's nuptials.

Valleywag reported in January that the May-December couple — he's 64, she's 28 — had switched the location of their wedding from Hinze's paparazzi-friendly Sydney to the more remote Necker Island. Now PEHub, a venture-capital blog, confirms that the couple are wedding on Necker.

The notion that Necker will keep the ceremony private seems curiously outdated, though, in this age of oversharing. After all, when Larry Page, the Google founder, married Stanford Ph.D. and ex-model Lucy Southworth in late 2007, one of the wedding guests sent Valleywag a close-up pic of the couple's first kiss (left).

Better yet: Since YouTube cofounder Chad Hurley is Clark's son-in-law, we'd hope guests would be sporting videocameras, the better to leak clips with.

Another famous guest, according to the Daily Telegraph: Film mogul Harvey Weinstein. Hinze hosts the Australian version of Project Runway. She spent the past few days at Walt Disney World celebrating with her sister and other family members.

Sexagenarian's Big Fat Geek Wedding

Owen Thomas — Wed, 28 Jan 2009 14:34:32 EST

We hear Jim Clark, the billionaire Netscape founder, may marry his fiancée, Australian swimsuit model Kristy Hinze, in March on Richard Branson's Necker Island — the same place where Google's Larry Page said "I do."

Last month, the Clark, who turns 65 this year, and Hinze held a secret party in a posh Sydney suburb to celebrate the engagement. Australian newspapers reported that the couple would marry in Sydney in March.

But a source on the British Virgin Islands tells us that there are preparations underway for the wedding of a "Netscape big." Netscape cofounder Marc Andreessen is already married, as is former CEO Jim Barksdale, so the ceremony is almost certainly for Clark. Could the Sydney location be a ruse to throw off the tabloids?

Necker, Branson's private estate in the British Virgin Islands, is a good location to avoid paparazzi. A local said the currents make it hard for their boats to approach. But we suspect it won't matter. A guest at the wedding of Google's Page sent Valleywag a snap of him kissing his bride, Lucy Southworth. YouTube founder Chad Hurley, who married Clark's daughter Kathy, will surely be on the invite list. Maybe he'll post a clip! Oh, and if anyone has an invite to the Clark-Hinze bash, care to send us a scan?

Is Jimmy Wales headed to Richard Branson's Virgin island this weekend?

Owen Thomas — Thu, 06 Mar 2008 17:40:32 EST

Even Richard Branson has fallen under Jimmy Wales's spell. The oddly charismatic founder of the world's foremost compendium of ways to say "I ate my cat" is set to attend a global-warming summit on Necker Island, Branson's remote Caribbean getaway. The get-together is so exclusive, Wales told ex-girlfriend Rachel Marsden, that even Al Gore wasn't invited. In the aftermath of l'affaire Marsden and related disclosures about abuses of his position as a Wikipedia board member, it's not clear if Wales is still planning to go.

In mid-February, he'd Wales announced he wasn't leaving the U.S. for two months. (Necker is in the British Virgin Islands.) But a little white lite, so he can hobnob with the rich and powerful, ignoring his responsibilities as parent, startup founder, and spiritual leader of a social movement? That's the worldly Wales we've ungrudgingly come to admire. Go to Necker, Jimbo — carbon offsets be damned!