Roundup: YouTube, Intel’s breakthrough, sex toys and Bloggingheads.TV

Roundup of the latest in Silicon Valley:

YouTube is moving toward sharing revenue with video creators — See video at left of YouTube Chief Executive Chad Hurley’s statement at the Davos World Economic Forum. (Via Jeff Jarvis)

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Silicon Valley jobs are back — And household income is climbing too, for first time since the dot-com wreck. See story here. The NYT writes a similar, and points to one economic driver: green technology investments. Unfortunately, the story calls solar power start-up Miasole by its wrong name.

Intel claiming biggest chip advance in 40 years — Significant story in the Mercury News Saturday about chip breakthroughs at Intel and IBM. Intel, in particular, is showing promise, with its new family of chips, code-named Penryn, which will have 410 million transistors, compared to about 280 million in current chips. It does so using transistors built form so-called high-k metal gates. Gordon Moore, Intel’s co-founder, says it “marks the biggest change in transistor technology” since 1969.

JimmyJane, sex-toy start-up, raises $1.1M, wants more — The San Francisco company, which makes “a premium line of gold and platinum vibrators along with sensual candles, silk and suede blindfolds, body jewelry and fragrances,” last year raised a $1.1 million in a third round of capital from an investor group including a company controlled by a “top venture capitalist,” according to PEHub. Company aims to raise a total of $2.5 million. We report this because it is — well — provocative. But we’re suspicious of the timing of this little announcement — seems like bait for Valentine’s customers.

Finally, a consolidation of VC firms — The number of VC firms is finally dwindling, after years of false predictions this would happen. A total of 837 firms made at least one investment in 2006, compared with 887 in 2005, a six percent decline, according to VentureOne. The overall drop since 2000, when 1,216 firms invested, was 31 percent. As recently as 2003, however, there were still more VC firms than in 2000. Among the active firms in 2006, some of them did very little. A third made only one investment, and many of those were follow-on rounds to existing companies.

Bloggingheads.TV raises cash — The politics webcam-blog featuring Bob Wright and Mickey Kaus, has received an undisclosed amount of venture backing from C-Span founding chairman Bob Rosencrans, reports the HuffingtonPost.