Gawker: valleywag, webtv

Why Steve Perlman is into "Women of Action"

Owen Thomas — Wed, 30 Apr 2008 13:40:00 EDT

Buried in Dean Takahashi's seemingly endless interview with WebTV founder Steve Perlman for VentureBeat is this glistening nugget: Among the startups his Rearden incubator has launched is a website called Women of Action TV. Perlman has an elaborate explanation for why he started it:

[It's a] community service site with videos of athletic women like Jackie Joyner-Kersee or Florence Griffith Joyner. But it is also a technology site. It was one of the very first sites with high-definition video being distributed on the Internet. As people used that site, we saw how well it ran on different machines. We looked at the algorithms. WOA TV was a complete test bed for us and a cool site for something that wasn't covered enough, like women in sports.

Pay attention, folks: This is what makes Steve Perlman a true entrepreneur.

Most heterosexual men would just troll YouTube for clips of sporty women. Perlman? He started an entire company around the concept of female bodies in motion, and developed an elaborate creation myth for it. If he can persuade the likes of Takahashi that his collection of videos of women running in spandex is a massive technological step forward as well as a politically correct celebration of female athleticism, he can sell anything to anyone.

WebTV founder enters bad movie business

Nicholas Carlson — Thu, 15 Nov 2007 12:45:32 EST

Forgetting the whole making-out-with-her-brother thing, WebTV founder and Silicon Valley entrepreneur Steve Perlman made Angelina Jolie. And actors John Malkovich and Anthony Hopkins. Or at least, his company is responsible for some of the creepy digital effects in their latest movie,Beowulf, according to Bits. What's it mean to you? Well, now you know who to blame for the latest embarrassment of the film's director, Robert Zemeckis, the disgraced genius behind Back to the Future.

Why isn't the Googlephone guy rich?

Owen Thomas — Thu, 08 Nov 2007 10:50:06 EST

There's one thing in last Sunday's New York Times profile of Andy Rubin, the man responsible for Google's nonexistent Googlephone, that did not compute. Why isn't Rubin loaded? After all, he cofounded WebTV, which Microsoft bought in 1997 for $400 million. He should have raked in more than enough from that success to fund Android, the mobile-phone startup Google bought in 2005. Instead, Rubin had to hit up his friend and WebTV cofounder Steve Perlman for a $100,000 loan. Where did the money go? One insider sneers, "Too many ex-wives cleaned him out." Anyone know if that's all there is to the story? (Photo by Jim Wilson/The New York Times)