Normally, one would think that deliberately crippling a web site and blocking users from content would be a good way to bring down traffic numbers.

In the case of Wikipedia, however, a forced outage has actually improved traffic numbers.

The crowd-sourced encyclopaedia took its English-language servers offline on Wednesday, as part of a protest against the US SOPA and PIPA legislations. Rather than access Wikipedia pages, users were taking to a special page explaining why the company was choosing to block its site for the 24-hour period.

It seems users more than noticed the protest. Traffic analysis from security firm ZScaler suggests that more people than usual are accessing the site.

According to ZScaler, total traffic numbers to the site are up, but with users spending less time on the site and accessing fewer articles, total bandwidth usage is down.

"More people are flocking to Wikipedia today, but just to see the protest page and some details on SOPA," ZScaler said.

"This behaviour could be described as 'online rubber necking'.

The blackout is part of a larger effort by web publishers to raise awareness of the controversial SOPA bills – a protest that appears to be working. After being condemned by President Obama, the bills have been pulled from vote and many of the original sponsors are beginning to pull out amid pressure from voters.

Carrier IQ has been taking a beating in the press in recent weeks, but now it seems that the controversy over the installation of the company's tracking software on mobile handsets is starting to have real consequences.

US carrier Sprint has confirmed that it has terminated its dealings with Carrier IQ, and will no longer pull data from customers' handsets via the Carrier IQ mobile client software.

"We have weighed customer concerns and we have disabled use of the tool so that diagnostic information and data is no longer being collected," the company said. "We are further evaluating our options regarding this diagnostic software as well as Sprint's diagnostics needs."

The snub is not surprising. Carrier IQ has been under intense scrutiny ever since a security researcher found that the company's software records keystrokes, text messages and web browsing activity, and well as general traffic and networking performance data.

Carrier IQ has since claimed that the collection of private data was down to a software bug which left handsets in debug mode, but the damage has been done and everyone from consumer rights groups to members of US Senate have called the company out.

Salesforce founder Marc Benioff is making headlines in Silicon Valley once again. This time, however, the news is not centred on SaaS, cloud computing or lingering feuds with Larry Ellison, but about making a sizeable donation to help San Francisco's homeless.

San Francisco Mayor Ed Lee announced that Benioff and his wife Lynne, along with the Salesforce Foundation, will help to establish a $3m 'Home for the Holidays' fund to provide housing and rent assistance for homeless families in the city.

"We talked about our plans for addressing this issue, and within 24 hours, the Benioffs agreed to pledge $1.5m in grants to jump-start the new initiative," Lee said in a statement.

"I thank Marc and Lynne for their leadership and their support of homeless families in need, especially now during the holiday season."

Lee added that the campaign will back an initiative to provide 30 to 40 families with housing, a considerable effort in a city where housing can be scarce and among the most expensive in the country.

Verizon Wireless is to expand its coverage with a $3.6bn wireless spectrum purchase from a group which includes Comcast, Time Warner and BrightHouse.

Verizon said that the deal allows the company to add headroom for its wireless broadband networks.

"Spectrum is the raw material on which wireless networks are built, and buying the AWS spectrum now solidifies our network leadership into the future, and will enable us to bring even better 4G LTE products and services to customers," said Verizon president and chief executive Don Mead.

"American businesses and consumers can have confidence that the best wireless network has the foundational resources to deliver on that promise."

Spectrum has become a hot topic among wireless carriers. The US government is looking to expand availability of spectrum space for wireless broadband networks by opening up the former television broadcast spectrum.

Verizon's acquisition also comes as AT&T is fighting for a deal which could change the face of US telecommunications. The company is having to fight off challenges to its proposed acquisition of T-Mobile USA  from the Department of Justice and the US Federal Communications Commission.

Are you tired of seeing that big fundraising banner ad at the top of every Wikipedia page? Then you have some good news coming your way.

The Wikimedia Foundation is approaching their goal, and when the ads finally do stop running you will have Sergey Brin to thank for it. The Google co-founder and his wife Anne Wojiciki have pledged $500,000 to help keep Wikipedia alive.

The donation is being made by the Brin-Wojiciki Foundation, a charitable organisation the couple founded. The grant will go to fund Wikipedia as well as other WikiMedia sites, the organisation said in a statement.

"This grant is an important endorsement of the Wikimedia Foundation and its work, and I hope it will send a signal as we kick off our annual fundraising campaign this week," Wikimedia Foundation executive director Sue Gardner said.

"This is how Wikipedia works: people use it, they like it, and so they help pay for it, to keep it freely available for themselves and for everyone around the world."

The donation could also help save Wikipedia founder Jimmy Wales from incurring further embarassment. As web comic The Oatmeal points out, the foundation's banner ad uses the rather unfortunate placement of Wales' face directly above the page's subject line. Depending on the subject being viewed, this can be a bit bad for Jimmy.

Jokes aside, the money is going to a very worthy cause. Wikipedia has grown into an incredibly useful source for informal research, and as a non-profit project it relies entirely on donations from its user community. Sergey Brin might have gotten the fundraiser to its goal, but that doesn't mean you shouldn't donate a few pounds if you are able to.

One of the most eagerly anticipated financial events in Silicon Valley is the upcomming initial public offering (IPO) of social gaming firm Zynga.

The success of titles such as FarmVille has made Zynga one of the hottest companies in the business, and the IPO is being watched closely by those hoping for an economic boom in the technology sector.

However, reports suggest that there is some unrest among Zynga's executives over the way the stock is being distributed.

A report in The Wall Street Journal claimed that Zynga bosses have told employees to hand over some of their stock options or face termination. The report said that the company felt it gave some individuals overly generous options and is now looking to reclaim the shares ahead of the IPO.

Zynga then issued its own comment on the matter, accusing the paper of misrepresenting its "meritocracy" system.

"We believe that every employee deserves the same opportunity to lead," Zynga chief executive Mark Pinkus told employees. "It's not about where or when you enter Zynga, it's how far you can grow."

Pinkus more or less concluded that such events will become more common as the company nears the IPO, and seems to take the incident in his stride, which is sensible. If a few employees grumbling to the press about their stock options is enough to rattle a CEO, he'll have no chance when it comes to dealing with shareholders.

As we have seen, things can get much worse when there is a board of directors involved.

One of the most famous routes in the technology world is the flight from Boston to San Francisco. The trip has been made by many a young engineer and would-be entrepreneur, leaving the halls of MIT and Harvard for the venture capital firms and start-up incubaters of Silicon Valley.

But not everyone is sold on the California dream. Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg said recently that, if he had it to do all over again, he would have given Silicon Valley the cold shoulder and stayed back east.

Speaking at an event called Startup School, Zuckerberg criticised the culture in Silicon Valley as "short-sighted", and said that, if he were to go back and start a new company, he would do it in Boston.

The comment makes for an interesting debate, not just because it comes from one of the biggest names in the business world today. Zuckerberg acknowledged that he could not have built Facebook without moving to Silicon Valley, but said that the growth of hubs in Boston, New York and London has made starting a company without moving to Silicon Valley a far more viable proposition.

Zuckerberg also made an interesting point about the culture of Silicon Valley and its short-term demands. The region has seen two major crashes in the past decade, the dot-com bust and the fallout from the economic turmoil, meaning that investors who have been burned want the assurance of getting their money back as soon as possible.

Perhaps Zuckerberg is on to something. Firms in other regions could be more patient with their investments and let entrepreneurs operate with a slightly looser leash. London has its own economic challenges to navigate, but there is some merit to the idea that firms moving into Tech City will have more time to turn a profit than if they started up in Sunnyvale or San Francisco.

There was a time when Jonathan Schwartz was one of the most prominent CEOs in the IT industry. The pony-tailed executive was largely credited with helping to lead Sun Microsystems to prominence, but more recently he has been residing in Silicon Valley's 'Where are they now?' file.

After leaving Sun by way of a poem and taking flak from Larry Ellison, Schwartz has been flying under the radar for the most part.

Now, it seems he is back in the saddle. Enterprise collaboration and communications firm Moxie Software has announced that Schwartz will be joining its board of directors. The former Sun chief will help to guide the firm, which sells employee collaboration tools and shared workspace platforms.

"The social enterprise software market is in its infancy, and will undoubtedly grow as companies embrace collaborative interactions with all their constituencies," Schwartz said of his new company.

"Moxie Software is well positioned to lead the market as Spaces by Moxie combines the best of social networking technology with the security and scalability required by enterprises."