By Richard Koman for SiliconValleyWatcher

Having fun: USAToday says that Web 2.0 is giving Valley entrepreneurs a chance to start companies that are more about people than business. And they're loving it. Andy Halliday started OurStory, a sort of storytelling/scrapbooking site for families.

"I wanted to distill seminal life moments amid a proliferation of media, such as e-mail and digital cameras," says Halliday, 52, who had a long-running career in specialty retailing. "This is something that has heart to it."

And Bill Nguyen, former CEO of Seven Networks, has started LaLa, a CD sharing site. "The other start-ups had a level of (business) logic to them," he said. "This one has a fun, cool vibe," he says. "And I'd like to watch my kid grow up."

With the modest amount of money it takes to get a stand-up going, people are forgoing the hassle of investors.

Liberated from the constraints of investors and pursuing their personal pet projects, executives say they are having a ball. "My biggest regret is that I did not do this earlier," says Andrew Littlefield, a former BEA Systems executive who is founder and CEO of Doppelganger, a virtual lounge for teens.

TiVo lost $6.45 million, or 7 cents per share, compared with a loss of $892,000, or 1 cent per share, a year ago. Those numbers still look good to Wall Street, which expected the DVR maker to lose 14 cents per share. A big part of the loss must be attributed to legal costs, as TiVo pursued and won a patent infringement case against EchoStar. The plan now? Growth, CEO Tom Rogers said:

`We believe the best way to grow our company is to increase our distribution,'' Rogers said. ``Right now we're in a subscriber-building phase and the marketing expenditure that that brings with it.''

Ex-Brocade execs Greg Reyes and Stephanie Jensen yesterday pled not guilty to charges that they illegally backdated stock options without proper accounting. (See SVW stock option coverage) The federal district judge set the trial for next summer and ordered prosecutors to turn over its evidence to the execs' defense team.

Economic bright spot: Silicon Valley is still upbeat about the economy compared to the rest of the Bay Area, the quarterly Bay Area Council survey finds. In Santa Clara, 38 percent of execs said they planned hiring increases, while 13 percent said they planned cutbacks. That hiring number's down from 42 percent last quarter.