I arrived in Austin, Texas, today to go talk to IBM, again, about how it's helping make the planet smarter, this time focusing on how Web 2.0 technologies can help companies become more green. I am well prepared for Austin because I was just here in November (editor's note: It was October, Fritz), and I have a photogenic memory (editor's note: uh, photographic, and no).I am back in Austin at a strange time. Everywhere I turn there is a buzz about live music, people carrying guitars like people in most cities carry laptop bags (or people in Boston carry snow shovels; motto: I spent a winter in Boston one year). I went and bought a case (no guitar) just to fit in (editor's note: you will never fit in).

The last time we were here, InformationWeek editor John Foley and I shot a bunch of interviews with startup companies at Austin Ventures. Boy, did we have fun (editor's note: if I recall, YOU had fun; Foley did all the work).

We talked to several companies helping with various aspects of software deployment, including FiveRuns, which specializes in testing and monitoring Ruby On Rails applications, and Phurnace Software, which helps in the management and deployment of Java applications in the enterprise.

SailPoint Technologies helps with the tricky issue, likely to grow in these economic times, of managing security threats coming from internal sources. And Hyper9 makes software for managing your virtual machines in a VMWare environment; this one is particularly interesting because it has developed a search engine-like interface to finding the details on your virtual machines.

You can see the rest here.

A special thank you to thank Austin Ventures for hosting us -- and for infusing capital into the technology industry (it just got $900 million in new funding, much of it for startups in Austin).(Editor's note: Is this over yet?)