TECH ROUNDUP: 'E La Carte' Launches, and Facebook Patents Privacy

Palo Alto is swimming in a virtual sea of technology companies. Here is a look at how some of them made it into the news this week.

• Palo Alto start-up, E La Carte, went public Friday, allowing restaurant-going tablet users to scroll through a pictorial menu, send their orders to a kitchen and pay their bills. That’s good news for busy folks, said business co-founder Rajat Suri, as it allows users to chop seven minutes off the duration of an average meal. People also tend to spend 10-12 percent more when ordering from a computer versus a human.

•Start-up Stripe is preparing for its Q4 launch and already has a waiting list of users. Founded by 20-something entrepreneurs, the company allows users to more easily make online transactions. It’s funded by Paypal co-founder, Peter Thiel, who grants young people $100,000 to start their own companies instead of going to college. This week, Patch Ludwig Pettersson.

• Thanks to a new patent, it may be difficult for new social networks to offer private profiles. Facebook just secured a patent for a "system and method for managing information flow between members of an online social network,” which it originally applied for in 2004. Facebook now may be able to require licensing fees for the new technology.

• HP TouchPad fans, you may be in luck. Hewlett-Packard is temporarily resuscitating the ill-fated iPad rival, a way of dealing with dropping profits. The price may not be as low as when the discontinuation was first announced, though, and some retailers carried low-end $399 models for $99.

• Local start-up 7 Degrees went through some big shifts this week, such as changing its name to Reachable and announcing Al Campa as its CEO. Campa was previously chief marketing officer and senior vice president at Taleo, and before that the founder and CEO of Jaspersoft.