Medium (blog, Jan. 27) -- "...When I say Silicon Valley is being beaten, and is at risk of losing more companies to small towns, here’s why. In the past week I’ve visited two of those towns, Champaign, Illinois and Blacksburg, Virginia. You might not know, but YouTube, Tesla, PayPal, Mozilla started in Champaign at University of Illinois there." Blogger Robert Scoble talks about 10 companies and innovators he visited who are doing amazing work. Also: Smile Politely (blog, Jan. 27), News-Gazette (Jan. 31).