Week in Review: Video Game Studio Considering New Orleans, Top 10 Southern Places For Digital Media, CenturyLink Buys Savvis For $2.5B

Here’s our roundup of the week’s top tech business news. First, the most popular stories Silicon Bayou News published in the last seven days:

Interview with Drop the Chalk CEO – Winner of Tulane’s 2011 Domain Company Prize – Drop the Chalk is a New Orleans based software startup that helps great teachers get even better. Their technology is transforming the way  K-12 students learn by providing teachers and administrators with innovative tools for the 21st century. They recently won the Domain Company Prize at the 2011 Tulane Business Plan Competition. Josh Raley caught up with Jennifer Medbery, the founder and CEO.  The full interview gives insight into their product, the company’s success, and their future plans.

Major Mobile Video Game Studio Considering New Orleans, Needs Your Help – Gameloft, one of the biggest video game developers in the world, is considering opening up a major studio in New Orleans.  Their decision hinges on the ability to find talented developers! They are looking to hires lots and lots of developers, programmers, and designers in New Orleans and created this website specifically for that purpose.

Startup Outlook 2011 Report: 83% of Startups Plan to Hire this Year – According to the Startup Outlook 2011, startup companies are seeing business conditions improve, actively hiring, and highly concerned about the regulatory environment.  The number one challenge cited across all respondents is access to capital.  This result echoes our own survey of Louisiana startups.

CenturyLink Buys IT Infrastructure Services Company Savvis For $2.5B – La.-based CenturyLink announced that it will acquire all outstanding shares of Savvis common stock in a cash and stock merger valued at $40 per share, or a total of approximately $2.5 billion.  CenturyLink is the third largest telecommunications company in the United States and the largest tech company in Louisiana, providing a range of broadband, voice and wireless services to consumers and businesses across the entire country.  Savvis provides cloud infrastructure and hosted IT solutions for enterprises.

Idea Village Hiring Full Time Technology Manager – The Idea Village, one of the organizations leading the entrepreneurial movement in New Orleans and also the group that throws NOEW (which you can read about here, here and here), is hiring a full-time Technology Manager.

New Orleans, Baton Rouge, and Lafayette Named to Top 10 Southern Places For Digital Media – Finally, Louisiana’s Digital Media Tax Incentives are starting to bear fruit.  The success and growth has landed three Louisiana cities on Southern Business and Development Magazine‘s Top 10 List:  New Orleans, Baton Rouge, and Lafayette all made the cut.

New Orleans Startup Digest – It’s a huge week for startup events in New Orleans with the kick-off of The Work Week – the conference series kicked off this weekend with Sync Up and continues today with the Second Line conference.  Launch Fest follows on Wednesday and Thursday at the New Orleans Museum of Art.  Wednesday programming is directed at aspiring startup founders and Thursday has programming for entrepreneurs and investors including the demo day pitches for the Launch Pad Ignition companies.

And here are two more posts we think are important, thought-provoking, or fun:

Weekly Startup Links: AVC, 37signals, and more – Every day I comb through my Google Reader reading sites like Hacker News and others, and star articles that are especially interesting about startups, entrepreneurship and miscellany. These are some of my favorites.

Globalstar Increases Portfolio With Investment in TrafficCast International – Globalstar, Inc., the mobile satellite voice and data company that moved to Covington from Silicon Valley, announced that it has completed an equity investment of unspecified value in TrafficCast International, Inc., a leading provider of travel time forecasting and traffic information based on advanced digital traffic data.  TrafficCast has previouisly raised a $3.5 Million Series A.