Silicon Valley's lead over Europe is narrowing MUNICH: A technology and media conference held here this week provided ample evidence that Silicon Valley's dominance of Internet-style technology innovation is waning. ... Several organizers noted that Silicon Valley's original success as an innovation center was in large part the result of business and social networks developed over several decades in a community of venture capitalists and technologists.

Now, they said, with the Internet supplementing and replacing traditional face-to-face social networks, Silicon Valley may be losing its competitive advantage. International Herald Tribune

Beyond the Multiplex You can start out a weekend at Sundance, as I did, irritated by all the minor inconveniences of this place and end it, as I also did, sitting in a roomful of strangers weeping at an impromptu late-night speech delivered live by Dick Gephardt. In between came a lot of other things: a grisly horror movie about a girl blessed with a unique ability to repel sexual advances, a lyrical documentary about men who love horses (in a manner illegal in most jurisdictions), a faux-documentary about the growing population of zombies (aka the "non-living community") in Los Angeles. My favorite film of the festival so far, beyond a doubt, is a documentary about a dead '80s rock musician that I almost didn't show up for.

No question about it, Sundance can be a pain. Sometimes, as you're trudging through the icy muck from one distant venue to another, or waiting in the bone-numbing wind, while your extremities turn exquisite shades of crimson and ivory, for a shuttle bus that will putter along so incrementally you'd be better off just trudging through the icy muck, thoughts occur to you. Thoughts like: Whose idea was it to wedge a major film festival into a ski resort at the peak of snow season, when it's freezing cold, insanely expensive and plagued with blond people recklessly driving SUVs and recklessly wearing headbands? Salon

New Orleans of Future May Stay Half Its Old Size NEW ORLEANS, Jan. 20 — The empty streets, deserted avenues and abandoned houses prompt a gnawing question, nearly 17 months after Hurricane Katrina: Is this what New Orleans has come to — a city half its old size? ....
Hurricane Katrina may have brutally recalibrated the city’s demographics, setting New Orleans firmly on the path its underlying characteristics had already been leading it down: a city losing people at the rate of perhaps 1.5 percent a year before Hurricane Katrina, with a stagnant economy, more than a quarter of the population living in poverty, and a staggeringly high rate of unemployment, in which as many as one in five were jobless or not seeking work. NY Times