The revenues of Jason Fried's scrappy Chicago startup are estimated at maybe $10 million annually. Twitter, meanwhile, is about to deposit ten times that in its already-stuffed bank account. Which helps explain why Fried's sniping has reached mocking extremes.

Fired Reddit cofounder and noted nontrepreneur Aaron Swartz says developers shouldn't roll out software with a Hollywood-style launch, as the rock-star coders at collaboration-software makers 37 Signals say. Swartz favors "the Gmail Launch," he writes on his blog, Raw Thought. The gist of his argument, below.

The Chicago-based Web application development shop 37signals is only working four days a week, and say they've become even more productive. Sadly, I don't think Owen would be receptive if I suggested in Campfire group chat that Valleywag adopt a similar schedule. [37signals]

To demonstrate its new Amazon S3-killer App Engine, Google built a sample application for the domain HuddleChat.com. The problem: "HuddleChat is just a feature-for-feature clone of 37signals's Campfire," writes Daring Fireball's John Gruber.

A thousand people — 1 out of 8 attendees at the SXSW Interactive conference — have packed the room for programmer Jason Fried's talk. "He's like our Barack," a friend tells me. Instead of hope of change in politics, Fried, a cofounder of 37signals, offers hope of change in ... Web-based software? And for this, he's treated "like a demigod," as Seth Godin says in a recent Wired profile of Fried and his partner, David Heinemeier Hansson, right. (Photo by Jessica Wynne/Wired)

In November of last year, one of Rackspace's data centers went offline for several hours. One of the companies affected was Chicago-based 37Signals, makers of fancy collaboration software used mostly by Valley companies (including this publication). This morning, 37Signals went offline again — we made a joke about Rackspace in our post, but it seems we were more prescient than we realized. 37Signals is blaming the outage on Rackspace.

When Website-hoster Rackspace went down last fall, 37signals, the maker of Web-based collaboration software called the calamity a "perfect storm" and said it "will be using this situation as both a wake-up call and a learning experience." Well, somebody hit the snooze button. 37signals' suite of software services are down , leaving many of the Valley's startups — Valleywag included — without crucial collaboration as the day begins. Anybody up for making it a four-day weekend? Update: Darn. 37signals is back up. Do I still have to work?

There are a lot of posts popping up from various Rackspace customers apologizing to their customers and readers for the Web host's downtime caused by an errant truck. Here is a selection:

37signals

Remember the power mishap in July that brought down 365 Main, the San Francisco datacenter? A similar incident took place today at the Dallas datacenter of Rackspace, a San Antonio, Texas-based firm which serves several local Web outfits. Unlike the July outage, which killed all the websites we waste time with — LiveJournal, Craigslist, and so on — this one took out some sites which really mattered. Laughing Squid, Scott Beale's popular Web-hosting company, went down, taking a long list of customers with it, and 37signals, the maker of Web-based software, went out — a serious matter, since 37signals actually charges for using its software. So what exactly happened at Rackspace?

Every new Web app gets compared to its predecessors. Pownce, the new messaging, sharing, and microblogging service from Digg founder Kevin Rose, is no good because it's just a poor man's Twitter, right? No, says startup expert Lane Becker, because Pownce isn't a messaging service — it's a productivity app, and it's competing with development boutique 37 Signals, the makers of Basecamp, Web-based software for group collaboration. To which 37 Signals says, "First of all, it's named after a cat treat." [Satisfaction: Pownce]

David Heinemeier Hansson (DHH) creator of (Ruby on) Rails, railed today on 37signals.com about Linkedin not wanting to let go.

"Get real," says 37Signals, but the famous Chicago design firm (designers of Meetup.com and creators of Basecamp and other web apps for businesses) is well-known for getting cocky on its corporate blog (a common faux pas of companies that think they're leading a movement). That's why an outside designer told me:

Takeaway: Several big tech bloggers recently launched job boards. Michael Arrington at TechCrunch has the best board, but his competitors rejected his partnership offers, fearing he'd take over the partnership.

So wait, if superstar developer Jason Fried is this month's cover story for a small business magazine titled "The Next Small Thing"...

So Philip Kaplan's no longer running AdBrite — I think we established that. Where are all the other geeks moving?

• Board-member-about-town Esther Dyson reminds you — personally — how much cooler her life is than yours. [EDyson on Flickr]

Forget Plazes, Dodgeball, and geotagging — it's impossible not to know where tech bloggers are. At this very moment:

Consumating founder Ben Brown IMed me with a little fun at the expense of web developer and 37signals founder Jason Fried. Note to Jason: We kid because we love. Please don't delete our Basecamp accounts.