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Top U.S. Tech Cities
srizah writes "Wired.com claims to have used a 'scientific methodology' to rate the top 10 tech towns in the US. They use some very reliable indexes, like 'Craigslist postings per capita' or 'Number of attendees at local meetings of dorkbot'. The usual suspects (Seattle, San Francisco) show up on the list, but some might surprise you. From the article: 'Raleigh-Duram - The jocks here may get worked up about college hoops, but the tech set is passionate about Linux distros and Mac-PC holy wars. North Carolina's Triangle is ground zero for Red Hat, SAS Institute, and an IBM center. Bonus: The area hosts two World Beer Festivals a year.'"
No way.
About the only advantage Irvine has is lots of bike trails.
While it's clearly true that Austin is surrounded by Texas, that's not actually a downside. Texas has some of the most beautiful landscapes I've ever seen, and the close proximity of many interesting geographical features (Hamilton Pool, Enchanted Rock) is a definite plus for Austin.
Having grown up there, I'd say the actual downside is that Austin is surrounded by Texans.
perl -e 'foreach(values %SIG){$_="IGNORE";}while(){}'
Hewlett Packard is based in Silicon Valley. They may have an office in Portland, but the company's history is in California.
You're missing the point of why usage of Craigslist (or any site like it) is a useful index of a community's tech savviness. A necessary requirement (although obviously not a sufficient one) for Craigslist's usefulness is for a lot of web users to be in town. Low Craigslist usage says nothing abut a community, but high Craigslist usage strongly indicates that this requirement at least (among others) has been met. High Ebay usage would also indicate that, but not quite as much- since an Ebay interaction only requires one local user, and Craigslist interactions require two. Ebay is still useful to tech-savvy people who live in "non-tech-savvy" places, in a way that Craigslist is not. Craigslist's usefulness is severely impacted by where you live.
My own tech savviness has been relatively constant, and Craigslist would have been useless to me in most of the places I've lived. I would have never found the birdcage; I'd probably be stuck with a bird in a bag regardless of my basic web skills. Craigslist is useful in Silicon Valley because everyone knows that everyone else is using it, like the way Orkut is most useful to Brazilians after reaching critical mass in Brazil.
No matter how tech savvy a place is, Craigslist (or any site like it) is only going to be useful if everyone in town regularly turns to it, like a dating site. Ebay only works because it's used by large numbers of people all over the world in preference to all the auction sites you've never heard of. Craigslist sets up local connections, so other users have to be in town, but the same idea applies. The problem is getting a critical mass of local users, not navigating the actual site. Anyone with a computer and a working brainstem can do that. But you have to have a computer which already says something.
That's true, but the majority of the company's engineering talent is in Utah. And the company was founded there.
Say what you will, but Provo is in fact a leader in municipal fiber-to-home. I, for one, enjoy surfing slashdot at 10 Mbps. And not all of us are Mormon. I know I'm sure as hell not.