What Hainey was telling me, in essence, is that you're a fool now to think that Atlanta is any place at all to launch a tech company. He tried it, he succeeded for a time, but he had to give it up, because he was too far from the action. And the action isn't here.

Something about Atlanta and Munich?

Dana Blankenhorn: Georgia Tech Scandal

The ballot images can then be posted on the internet for the public to examine and conduct independent recounts.

Excellent. This is something I've wanted to see for years.

Unique Transparency Program Uncovers Problems with Voting Software | Threat Level from Wired.com

Greg Conti -- a West Point instructor in computer science and information war -- has taken a long, hard look at the amount of information Internet users explicitly and implicitly disclose to Google and the results, collected in his book Googling Security: How Much Does Google Know About You? are sobering.

Googling Security reviewed on BoingBoing

Crayon Physics Deluxe is a 2D physics puzzle game, in which you get to experience what it would be like if your drawings would be magically transformed into real physical objects. Solve puzzles with your artistic vision and creative use of physics.

Amazing, extraordinarily creative game that looks like so much fun.

Crayon Physics Deluxe

One thing I learned at phreaknic is that a couple of seriously cool hacker spaces have popped up in the SouthEast, including this one in Nashville:

The Hacker Consortium is being formed to give like minded persons the ability to meet, discuss, and work on projects in a comfortable working environment. We've all tried to work on projects and expand our skills from our home, and sometimes from the office, but there always seems to be distractions from family members, or office mates. The "Hacker Space" exists to give an enviroment where you can work, or play with persons that understand what you are trying to accomplish, and may even lend positive advice and help out where they can. Would you rather read a 500 page book, or have someone help you get to the meat of the issue and lend some experienced information to you?

This group in Huntsville has also done a number of really cool projects. I kind of think of these things like country clubs for geeks. If someone was organizing such a thing in Atlanta I would gladly pay into it. I suspect with Georgia Tech in the vicinity a club like this could be very successful here. It looks like someone is looking into it.

South East Hacker Spaces

It’s my believe that the economic downturn will be much worse than it is today, and that 50-80% of the venture-backed startups currently
operating will shut down or go on life-support (i.e. 3-4 folks working
on them) within the next 18 months.

Make a list of every Web 2.0 startup to raise an A or B round and
cross 80% of them off the list, because they will not make it to their
next round of funding or profitability.

(The) Startup Depression « The Jason Calacanis Weblog

October 2008 will be remembered as the time in which the credit crunch came to a head not only for the economy as a whole but for the tech community in particular.

Fucked Company 2.0

TechCrunch Layoff Tracker

A wave of job losses has started to spread across California’s Silicon Valley as the trademark optimism of the region’s technology start-ups has turned to pessimism amid the financial market rout.

The rapid reversal in mood has reawakened memories of the dotcom bust in 2001.

Cyan Banister, co-founder of Zivity, an adult entertainment website that last week cut eight of its 22 staff, said: “We needed to clamp down and weather whatever storm is about to hit.”

A companion story to the Seqouia video.

FT.com / In depth - Job losses spread in Silicon Valley

Last week, the blog search engine Technorati released its 2008 State of the Blogosphere report with the slightly menacing promise to "deliver even deeper insights into the blogging mind." Bloggers create 900,000 blog posts a day worldwide, and some of them are actually making money. Blogs with 100,000 or more unique visitors a month earn an average of $75,000 annually—though that figure is skewed by the small percentage of blogs that make more than $200,000 a year.

MemeStreams readership has hovered between a fifth and a half of that figure for years and we don't really make any money from our ads. Two to Five times squat is still squat. I figure you've got to have an order of magnitude more people in order to actually make money... This figure isn't just skewed by the amount of money those $200,000 plus blogs are making, its also skewed by the size of their readership. 100,000 to 100,000,000 is not a very useful range. Lies, damn lies, and statistics...

How do bloggers make money? - By Michael Agger - Slate Magazine

One new tool the CPD might consider is Google's new Google Moderator tool, which was unveiled to the world late last week. Katie Jacobs Stanton, a member of Google's elections and moderator teams, described it this way: "It's a free tool which enables communities to submit and vote on questions for debates, presentations and events. This way, the best and most representative questions rise to the top."

Google Launches Google Moderator For Presidential Debates | Threat Level from Wired.com