Here’s some of the interesting items we’re following: Connie Loizos over at PEHub blogged about a conversation with former Austinite Mike Maples. In it he talks about the window for investing in social media companies, and what types of deals his new $33M fund is looking at now. Lori Hawkins at The Statesman had a writeup on Austin startup company 7 Billion People Inc. which is trying to solve the problem of high abandonment rates [...]

Spiceworks, the ad supported, Austin-based IT management company, has announced a pretty cool feature for their 400,000 IT managers -crowdsourcing.  The new features, called SpiceLists, enable users to collaboratively develop, share, and rank IT best practices, products and services, and reports – making it even easier for them to manage their networks. The SpiceLists address one of the biggest problems facing IT pros in small businesses today – how to quickly and easily connect with [...]