Squaring the Triangle

Also-ran no more, San Antonio set to become hotspot of its own

Austin has its software and hardware. Dallas has telecom and banking. Houston has oil and gas. But what of poor ol' San Anton? Tourism, a la the Alamo, Riverwalk, Sea World.

All well and good, but compared to its Texas Triangle neighbors, SA seemed a bit lacking. But San Antonio is doing just fine, thank you.

A recent post to tech blog site metafilter.com ("Quis custodiet ipsos custodes?" 12/08/08) shows San Antonio catching up in a big way. Focused on neo military-industrial-complex conspiracies rather than economic development, from the blog post it's easy to see that San Antonio stands to benefit in the future:

• The National Security Agency is building a data center in San Antonio that’s the size of the Alamodome.
• Microsoft has opened an 11-acre data center a few miles away.
• It's no coincidence reports up in the old hotel, an appropriately cryptic-named blogger, citing a new book by NSA expert James Bamford: "The biggest U.S. spy agency wanted assurances that Microsoft would be in San Antonio before it moved ahead with the Texas Cryptology Center. Bamford notes that under current law, the NSA could legally tap into Microsoft’s data without a court order."
• The blog entry ends with this warning: "Whatever you do, don't take pictures of it [sic] the spy building unless you want to be taken in for questioning."
  

Also worth checking out are the cheeky comments related to an Alamodome metric system, Alamo rental cars, and other geeky morsels of mirth. .:.

Olympian Kickstart

Celebrity endorsement gives Austin venture big boost

The Wall Street Journal "How Phelps Became the Face of PureSport - WSJ.com" reports that 8-time gold medal winner Michael Phelps is a pitchman and equity stakeholder in Human Performance Labs LLC, an Austin-based startup with a protein energy drink. The company is led by Michael Humphrey, a former sales executive with Broadcast.com and CBS Corp.'s Simon & Schuster.

Because of Phelps, the company received $5 million from Terry Gilmore, an oil, gas and real estate investor, in January.

The Journal article describes what would be every startup's dream come true: "In Beijing, every time Mr. Phelps emerged from the pool at the Water Cube, a coach handed him a plastic bottle filled with PureSport's protein and carbohydrate-filled cocktail. 'About halfway through the meet, people started knocking on my door asking me what I was drinking and if they could have some,' Mr. Phelps said during a recent interview." .:.

Gaming Venture Pockets $10M

Latest round gives Austin firm ready cash

Game maker Challenge Online Games Inc. takes $10 million round of venture capital, reports VentureWire Alert. The company's main product is an online game called "Duels."

The current round follows close on the heels of a $4.5 million round in July 2008 from Sequoia Capital. The Austin-based company was founded in 2006 by Andrew Busey, who retains role as CEO. .:.