Silicon Valley Morning Briefs

The markets are getting a shot of caffeine at the opening bell

  • Peet's Coffee (PEET) wanted to get into the single serving business in the worst way -- so it made a bid for Diedrich's Coffee, which makes K-cups that are used in instant coffee machines. Then Green Mountain Coffee Roasters came along and offered more money for Dietrich, $290 million, that left Peet's with no deal.  The Berkeley-based company will get about $8.5 million in breakup fees.
  • Shares in Nvidia (NVDA) and Advanced Micro Devices (AMD) jumped after Intel (INTC) said it would suspend work on its own graphics chips. 
  • Scaled Composites and Virgin Galactic showed off Spaceship Two in the Mojave Desert Monday night.  Cool pictures here.
  • One of the best marketing books ever written, Rules for Radicals, suggests you find your biggest problem and make it your best opportunity. 

And finally, in the case of Verizon, its biggest problem is that it doesn't have the elegant and beautiful iPhone.   So its latest ad, called "Pretty", takes on that very issue - implying the elegant and beautiful iPhone is "for princesses" and the less beautiful  Verizon Droid is "a racehorse taped to a Scud missile".  Lots of masculine imagery (missiles, bananas -- there's a pattern there) for Droid, lots of vapid beauty queen imagery for iPhone.

Scott McGrew puts on briefs for Silicon Valley daily -- one leg at a time.

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