From this side of the pond, it can sometimes seem as if the US technology scene revolves around Silicon Valley. Entrepreneurs from all over the US and the rest of the world flock to the fertile land south of San Francisco to start and run companies, attracted by the concentration of funding, talented engineers and, no doubt, the sunshine.

Of course, there are plenty of other clusters of technology activity throughout the nation of 300 million people, not least among them is New York which, since the days of the dotcom boom, has been dubbed Silicon Alley. New research last week revealed that the greater New York area has almost 620,000 technology workers - 2½ times as many as Silicon Valley.

Compared to the Valley, the Alley has more of a media focus than a software bias, and this is reflected in Silicon Alley Insider (SAI). Launched in July, SAI styles itself as "a new business site, produced by and for the New York digital business community".

In reality, it's a semiprofessional blog that has contributions from media heavyweights such as Peter Kafka and Dan Frommer from Forbes and Andrew Goldberg from Columbia University's school of journalism.

Interestingly, one of the founders is Henry Blodget, senior internet analyst for Merrill Lynch, who was charged with civil securities fraud by the US Securities and Exchange Commission following his role in the dotcom bubble, although he never formally admitted guilt.

Not surprisingly, then, SAI veers more towards analysis of relevant internet and technology stories rather than trying to break new stories. This week it featured analysis of the downturn in internet advertising, the iPhone price cut and Google's hiring frenzy.

Fred Wilson, the New York venture capitalist, who is himself a high-profile blogger, this week described it as a "paper of record" for New York's tech community.

SAI is certainly working hard to be part of the community - one innovative feature is its "Community Twitter", which allows you see the microblog posts of leading lights from New York's tech world.