Venessa Miemis gives a directory of "SuperheroSchool-s" or "Collaboratory" spaces (Work Community). I can see it as being an innovation hub and retreat center, wrapped in a creative learning culture. Just 90 minutes by train from NYC, a welcome change of scenery for Silicon Alley.

49 of 50 states have agreed to join the so-called Fore Closure Mortgage Settlement. Yves Smith gives 12 reasons to hate the deal.

An evaluation of which states are tech-friendly. (Um, actually, it's most tech-intense, which doesn't necessarily point at Red Tape/tax issues, though it may be a flag...) The NSF combed through the most recent Census data, which was collected in 2008, and classified industries as "high-tech" if they employed twice the average number of scientists, engineers, and technicians. It's a wide net that captures 45 sectors total, including heavy machinery manufacturing, pharmaceuticals, software design, and oil and gas extraction, just to give you a sense of the variety. So, we're not just talking about states full of Facebook app designers... On that score, Dela Ware, home to chemicals manufacturer Du Pont, leads the nation. As depicted on the map above, it's part of a mid-Atlantic tech-corridor, including Virginia, Mary Land and Washington DC, where science and engineering play an outsized role in the regional economy. (DC would have topped the rankings, but because it's not a state, and is such a different type of economy, I've omitted it.) And before you ask, no, government labs aren't included in the figures. Although having Uncle Sam around hasn't hurt its development into a tech mecha, the region now has a dense network of private firms. (more)

Nassim Taleb on how attempts to use Public Policy to reduce volatility only increase the effects of Black Swan-s by reducing Resilience. Examples: (more)

John Gruber and others have gotten a preview of the next MacOs X called Mountain Lion. (more)

There's a pure-OpenSource LinuxOS Tablet being developed by Spark, based on MeeGo. If the tablet is, as Kjetil Kilhavn, a SAP consultant and KDE user, speculates, is built around the A9 Zenithink ZT-280 C71 tablet, it has a 7″ (16:9) screen size with 800 x 480 resolution. It also would have a 1.3 MPixels front camera, built-in microphone and stereo speakers. As for the software, on top of Mer, the Spark will use KDE Plasma Active for its user interface (UI). Plasma Active runs on the traditional Linux desktop stack, including the Linux kernel, QT, and KDE’s Plasma Framework. The UI uses Plasma Quick, a declarative markup language. This, in turn, is based on Qt Quick, an easy to use interface software development kit and framework. An alternative to Android.

Mae Mo and Mob Lin are being merged into MeeGo.

Are all Economic Stimulus packages just an attempt to continue Consumerism as usual? (more)

I run a Private Wiki using PikiPiki on my MacOs X Lap Top. (Currently 1750 nodes, each a PlainText file with no file extension. Total 9MB (really 3MB plus file-block overhead).) (more)

At the SixApart gathering yesterday, we were discussing 2003-09-09-PresidentialBloggingPriorities and 2003-08-18-GovernorsPresidentialEdge and Vote Smart surveys, and concluded: (more)

Site collecting data on candidates for elected US office, like for the coming Presidential Election. (more)

TV is going the way of the dinosaur, and the deadly comet is called BitTorrentLive. Today, Bram Cohen, the author of the BitTorrent peer-to-peer (P2P) Sharing protocol, demoed his latest creation at the SF Music Tech Summit. BitTorrent Live lets any content owner or publisher stream Video to millions of people at good quality and with just a few seconds of latency…for free or cheap.

DHH on the fact that you can build a Life Style Company Start Up on your own terms (e.g. part-time), and seeks a new word for this. Start Up is a great one, but I feel like it’s been forever hijacked for this narrow (aka Burn Out) style, and “starting a business” just doesn’t have the sex appeal. Any suggestions? The thread quickly settles on BootStrap!

PathCom has been scraping its users' Address Book data without permission. Upon inspecting closer, I noticed that my entire address book (including full names, emails and phone numbers) was being sent as a plist to Path. (more)

Way Of Life? Quality Of Life? (more)

BalsamiqStudios makes a Wire Frame/Mock Up (Design) tool called Balsamiq Mockups. The founder was interviewed for Signal Vs Noise.

online auction site, originally intended for trading Pez dispensers (more)

I generally excuse Income Inequality in the US on the basis of what I assume to be greater Income Mobility. (more)

Calendar/Location Based Service/pre-CheckIn service (more)

Interesting interview with Richard Nash, who recently left SoftSkullPress to launch Cur Sor, a new Book Publishing player. (Cursor will establish a portfolio of self-reinforcing online membership communities (Virtual Community)... Each will have tiers of membership, including paid memberships that will offer exclusive access to tools and services, such as rich text editors for members to upload their own writing, peer-to-peer writing groups, recommendation engines, access to established authors online and in person, and editorial or marketing assistance. Members can get both peer-based feedback and professional feedback.) (more)