These guys are all over the place. Tony Lacenere and Charlie Schliebs, the principals at venture capital firm iNetworks LLC, not only are working to raise a $100 million fund but also are trying to gather up $10 million to plop into the hands of Carnegie Mellon University's Dean of the College of Engineering, Pradeep Khosla. Khosla will then identify the best pre-seed and seed stage deals to funnel the money into. Perhaps next week I'll have more on the other folks around town who said to be mulling over building seed funds. Everybody says the region desperately needs the money -- the fun is seeing who actually steps up to the plate to deliver it.

		Got Buzz? Corilyn Shropshire can be reached at cshropshire@post-gazette.com or 412-263-1413.

The Post-Gazette reported quite a bit last year about the upstart medical device firm EANeedle led by the trio of wunderkinds from Carnegie Mellon University. Chief Executive Officer Josh Gerlick remains at the helm of the firm, now called EADevices Inc., alongside Mark O'Leary, the team's technical brain and chief technology officer. But I'm wondering what's become of the firm and their specialized biopsy needle since co-founder Yogesh Oka departed to attend Stanford Business School last fall. They are flying low, I hear, with reason.

Count Valerie Pajak Glyptis as one of the co-founders of StageMark Inc., the redux of now-defunct ImmunoSite, which was led by start-up veteran Ray Vennare. Pajak Glyptis is a Carnegie Mellon Tepper School grad who worked at ImmunoSite before it closed its doors last year. She is working with Bernard Cambou, Birchmere Venture's former biotech guy and StageMark's chief executive. StageMark is developing technology for managing the diagnoses of lupus and later, other auto-immune diseases.

We should do this every week -- "Things we don't need, but will probably eventually buy ...." This week's winner: the newly launched iZon -- sporty sunglasses with an MP3 player embedded that make you look like a robot. They run from $199 for 128 megabits per second of memory to $299 for 512Mbps. Face it, 30 years ago, if someone had told you we'd be toting around portable music players, you probably would have rolled your eyes and laughed. Now you can't live without your iPod -- or if you're a late adopter, your portable CD player.

Some serious backpeddling ... When Laurel Networks was sold to Israel-based ECI Telecom last week, comments made by ECI executives during the conference call led reporters and analysts to believe that Laurel's relationship with Marconi might be over sooner than later. A day later, the company clarified and re-affirmed its relationship with Marconi. In a statement issued to the news wires, Doron Inbar, ECI's president and CEO, said: "We are pleased with the agreement between Laurel and Marconi. This partnership is an extremely important part of our channel strategy and we wish to continue this fruitful relationship." Added Laurel's spokeswoman Carol Wolicki: "Marconi represents a huge amount of money for us."

Which famous and currently "retired" local entrepreneur is thinking about getting back into the game? Don't they call it the Michael Jordan syndrome? E-mail me with your guesses and other thoughts.