Someday! (Photo: CornellNYC Tech)

Cornell Tech's coffers are a little fatter this morning. Yesterday, Qualcomm cofounder Irwin Mark Jacobs and his wife Joan announced they're donating $133 million to the project. And so the joint program designed by Cornell and the Technion (a project within the Roosevelt Island campus, it'll allow students to earn dual masters degrees) will now be known as the Joan and Irwin Jacobs Technion-Cornell Innovation Institute.

That's a useful data point if you're trying to get your name on a major NYC landmark.

According to the announcement, "The funds will help support curriculum initiatives, faculty and graduate students, and industry interactions in a two-year graduate program." 

“We are delighted to partner with Cornell and the Technion on this unique educational initiative,” the couple said in a statement. “We believe strongly in the mission of this international collaboration to drive innovation and to foster economic development.

This isn't the couple's first higher-ed donation, either. Both Cornell alums, they've established a scholarship program and an endowed professorship at their alma mater, and their names are slapped on both a Graduate School and a "Center for Communications and Information Technologies" at the Technion. Dr. Jacobs has also already been involved with Cornell Tech, as an advisor.

Wonder how much the Jacobs spent on their wedding.

Here is a GIF of this amazing moment.

Steve "Sweaty" Ballmer, CEO of Microsoft, was not slated to give the preshow keynote this year at CES. So fancy our surprise when he came running out, pointer fingers dancing wildly in the air, to join Qualcomm CEO Paul Jacobs on stage. Mr. Ballmer did his best goofy Steve Ballmer impression, waggling his tongue as he placed his outstretched and no doubt moist hand into Mr. Jacobs'.

It was the kind of pre-planned "surprise" that only Steve Ballmer could deliver. The crowd cheered encouragingly, perhaps hoping for a reprise of Mr. Ballmer's most famous video moment, DEVELOPERS.

This guy. (Photo: Screenrant)

Not only is Starbucks accepting payments via Square, the coffee conglomerate is now also selling the Square credit card reader for $10 at its retail locations. [New York Times]

Spotify has suspended its music download service in the U.K. Users can still stream music, but are sent to an unhelpful FAQ page when they attempt to purchase it. [Pocket-Lint]

Kim Dotcom says the U.S. "planted" evidence, encouraging him to keep copyrighted files on the Megaupload servers but then punishing him when he did so. [Ars Technica]

That indie Steve Jobs film, that will star Ashton Kutcher and be an inevitable flop that we will still watch anyway, is slated for release in April. Who wants to go with us? [Wall Street Journal]

The New York state comptroller is suing microchip company Qualcomm for data about its political expenditures with the hopes it can bring more transparency to corporate political spending. [New York Times]

(Photo: CornellNYC Tech)

Cornell NYC Tech, the Ivy League school's Technion assisted expansion onto Roosevelt Island, just got a huge PR boost from three big names. Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg, Qualcomm Founder Irwin Jacobs, and Google Executive Chairman Eric Schmidt have all been tapped to be advisors to the new tech campus.

Now they're like the super-important ultra-rich white guy Avengers of Cornell. 

This is, of course, not the first time that the Mayor and Mr. Schmidt have been involved with Cornell NYC Tech. Mayor Bloomberg has participated in pretty much every major announcement about the campus, including personally revealing the appointment of Cornell NYC's first dean at Tumblr HQ.. Although Mr. Schmidt hasn't publicly been associated with the campus, Google has gifted the campus 22,000 square feet of office space for the next five years.

In addition to being the founder of Qualcomm, Mr. Jacobs was an Assistant Professor and Associate Professor of Electrical Engineering at MIT from 1959 to 1966 and Professor of Computer Science and Engineering at University of California, San Diego from 1966 to 1972. Besides the fact that he's an incredible entrepreneur, it's clear that the guy knows some stuff about tech education.

In a press release sent to Betabeat, the three titans shared their thoughts on officially becoming a part of this new venture. Some shared more thoughts than others. A little terse there, Mr. Schmidt:

“New York City’s growing tech industry is about to be infused with new talent, thanks to the historic investments made by the City and Cornell for the new campus on Roosevelt Island,” said Mayor Bloomberg. “Ensuring that the new campus is connected in the right way to the thriving entrepreneurial sector is important to delivering on the promise of economic growth that is at the center of this project. I look forward to advising the university leadership on how we can achieve these goals.”

"Throughout my career as an educator and as founder of two companies based on innovation, I have experienced great satisfaction in developing unique products and growing large markets by exploiting rapid advances in applied science and engineering," said Irwin Jacobs.  "I am excited by this opportunity to work with Mayor Bloomberg and Eric Schmidt in guiding Cornell NYC Tech and the Technion-Cornell Innovation Institute through a rapid transition from startup to major player in applied science education and the formation of impactful new companies. Both Cornell, where I received an excellent undergraduate engineering education, and Technion, which has trained many of the engineers working at Qualcomm Israel in Haifa, have the energy and experience to surpass our great expectations."

“I am pleased to join the steering committee for Cornell NYC Tech as they build their presence in New York City,” said Google Executive Chairman Eric Schmidt. “This campus is an important step forward for the development of the city’s tech sector and its continued economic growth.”

The press release gives a hazy description of what the three will actually be doing for the new graduate program. It says that they "will provide advice to tech campus leadership on the educational, research, economic development and community engagement functions of the campus, helping to promote new national and international models connecting academia and industry."

We doubt that any of these three guys will be picking up some chalk to teach a class any time soon, but at least their presence gives promise that this campus will be pretty star-studded.

We really wanted to use the headline Enterp the Void, but it made no sense.

Enterproid isn't exactly a name that rolls off the tongue, which is why Betabeat recognized it immediately when we saw TechCrunch post that the New York-based company had raised $11 million in a Series A round from Google Ventures, Comcast, and Qualcomm. The startup uses a platform called Divide to let corporations offer their employees the ability to make distinct professional and personal profiles on the same Android device.

We recognized the name from an interview Betabeat did last week with Kirill Sheynkman, the VC running RTP, a $750 million fund backed by Leonid Boguslavsky, aka Russia's number two tech investor after Yuri Milner.

At the time, Mr. Sheynkman, who invests in IT, SaaS and cloud computing companies pointed to Enterproid as an outlier in the New York's mainly consumer-facing tech scene.

Mr. Sheynkman considers Roger Ehrenberg a friend, and says what Mr. Ehrenberg has done with IA Ventures is a good model. “You hear people in New York say, ‘Oh, you’ve got big data, you should talk to Roger.” He hopes that RTP will find a similar niche in Silicon Alley. “There are companies here I like. MongoDB brings a smile to my face. Bit.ly on the scientific side or Enterproid. But these are the exceptions you can count on your fingers.”

As a deep tech, enterprise company--see, we told you to stop ignoring those!--Enterproid has the benefit of scaling with large corporate clients who like the enhanced security, ability to manage devices from the cloud (like remotely locating and wiping corporate data), as well as built-in expense management tools.

But it's also capitalizing on a consumer trend. Enterproid's CEO Andrew Toy told TechCrunch that the Divide platform capitalizes on "the BYOD" or Bring Your Own Device [to work], movement, recently featured in the New York Times. Two smartphones in your suit pocket--not a good look.

Apple fans will have be patient. The app, which is currently in private beta, has plans expand into iOS and Windows Phone 7 platforms in the future.