ArtBistro Ranks their Top 25 Cities for Designers and Artists

ArtBistro.com: "Which cities offer the most overall value in 2009? While all of these communities have a healthy art and design community the emphasis on this list is the cost of living..."

Below is a quick summary. Read the full article here to get all the details:

1. Austin, TX
   
2. San Antonio, TX:
   
3. Salt Lake City, UT
   
4. Oklahoma City, OK
   
5. Raleigh-Cary Metropolitan Area, NC
   
6. Seattle, WA
   
7. Rochester, NY
   
8. Portland, OR
   
9. Denver, CO
   
10. Honolulu, HI
    
11. Nashville, TN
    
12. Virginia Beach, VA
    
13. Kansas City, MO
    
14. Pittsburgh, PA
    
15. Charlotte, NC
    
16. Boston, MA
    
17. Buffalo, NY
    
18. Columbus, OH
    
19. Indianapolis, IN
    
20. St. Louis, MO
    
21. Hartford, CT
    
22. Louisville, KY
    
23. Cincinnati, OH
    
24. Philadelphia, PA
    
25. San Diego, CA
    

Image credit: TheSeafarer via Flickr

Microsoft Reveals Silverlight as Adobe Flash Challenger

DailyTech: "In hopes to make a dent in the market dominance of Adobe's Flash, Microsoft unveiled at the 2007 National Association of Broadcasters conference a new cross-browser, cross-platform browser plug-in called Silverlight... Previously called Windows Presentation Foundation Everywhere (WPF/E), Silverlight works with on both Macintosh and Windows with a variety of browsers including Internet Explorer, Firefox and Safari."

Why Browser War 2.0 Will Heat Up in 2007

readwriteweb.com: "Our theory is that in 2006 a lot of the ground work for a major battle was laid out. Microsoft launched a significant upgrade to Internet Explorer for the first time in about 5 years (IE7), while the Firefox team spent time polishing up their open source browser. But it is the latest developments which make it clear that Firefox thinks it's showtime."

This is an interesting article, and I really got a kick out of the illustration. Between the business interests and the (still) inconsistent support for web standards in IE7, it should be another interesting year in the browser-sphere.