In Hindsight: 'Clarity of vision' and other valley phenoms

Here's some news you may have missed last week.

Monday

The forecast is sunny and cloudy - depending on which forecast.

Applied Materials is among the growing number of Silicon Valley companies that sees a sunny future in solar power. In a Securities and Exchange Commission filing, the Santa Clara company said it has landed a $1.9 billion deal to make machinery to manufacture thin-film solar panels. Applied didn't reveal the customer, but said the SEC filing was required because of the size of the deal.

As for the economy, "cloudy" might be putting it nicely. Omaha, Neb., investment genius Warren Buffett, who has more money than any of us, told CNBC we're definitely in a recession - if not technically, at least by any "commonsense" definition.

Tuesday

A lot of people in Silicon Valley are betting that Palo Alto social networking phenom Facebook is the new Google (by which we mean, finally, another opportunity to cash in on a big Internet IPO). In a sign of Facebook's growing status as The Next Big Thing, Mark Zuckerberg, the company's 23-year-old sandal-clad chief executive, hired a new chief operating officer: 38-year-old Google sales executive Sheryl Sandberg. Zuckerberg and Sandberg, unsurprisingly, had very nice things to say about each other, according to a report by our writer.

"Mark has more clarity of vision than most people I have met in

my life, and more ability to see around corners and to challenge everything and build technology than many people I've encountered," Sandberg said.

"There are a lot of people who can run companies, and she can do that well," Zuckerberg said.

Wednesday

Silicon Valley's real estate market has been in a funk lately, thanks partly to the nation's pesky credit crunch. Real estate professionals, though, are hoping the government's economic stimulus package could revive the stalled housing market. The Federal Housing Administration raised its loan limit to $729,750 in Santa Clara County and other high-cost areas. That could provide another option for borrowers who otherwise would have turned to subprime mortgages (which, of course, pretty much aren't currently available). Later in the week, Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac raised their "conforming" loan limits to $729,750 in super-pricey areas such as the valley. That could provide another option for borrowers who otherwise would have turned to more-expensive "jumbo" loans.

Thursday

In Hindsight loves our iPhone, partly because it allows us to read the New York Times or MercuryNews.com (by which we mean, of course, watch Daffy Duck cartoons or listen to Alien Ant Farm) on the light rail. Apple, though, is now positioning the iPhone as a business productivity tool, with the release of a beta version of iPhone 2.0 software, which includes support for Microsoft Exchange, the e-mail system we (and many of you) use at work. Apple also released tools for software developers that will allow them to sell (or give away) applications for the iPhone.

Speaking of productivity, Palo Alto computing giant Hewlett-Packard announced a change of direction for its HP Labs research-and-development unit. HP Labs will reduce the number of projects it's working on, in hopes those projects will be put to commercial use more quickly.

Friday

We wish we could end on a good note, but the economic downturn keeps getting in the way. According to the U.S. Labor Department, employers cut 63,000 payroll jobs in February, the most in five years. Oil prices, meanwhile, jumped to a record $106 a barrel, and gas prices here in the San Jose area hit their own record, averaging $3.56 a gallon for regular unleaded, according to the AAA auto club. The blue-chip Dow Jones industrial average dropped below 12,000, closing at 11,893.69, down 3 percent for the week.

Maybe the coming week will be better. In the meantime, for a laugh, at least there are Daffy Duck cartoons.