The post Big-Dig Boston is actually a pretty and lovely town – I walked around in what could best be described as weepy October rain, looking at some of the older buildings and near empty streets. Unlike New York or London or New Delhi, Boston doesn’t pulsate with energy; instead you can feel the weight of its history.

There were a lot of fantastic people I met on this trip, reminding me why I got into this business in the first place: people. Of course, it was also a great refresher in the economic reality of our times. When you walk around the Boston financial district and find two people sitting in a massive Starbucks and no one waiting to pick up their coffee, you know there is an economic slowdown happening. Out here in the SF Bay Area we are living in a cocoon and don’t really have a grasp on the magnitude of the problem.

It was a refreshing trip, reminding me that we need to build a presence in Boston and bring better stories from that part of the world. Meanwhile, if you want to keep in touch with what is going on in the Boston area, I would recommend reading Jeff Bennett, who is the founder of NameMedia. He was one of the five panelists on the panel put together by Charles River Ventures. Thank you guys for inviting me to your event and being great hosts, and hopefully I will see you soon.

Looking back, the short enjoyable visit brought home the message – flying cross-country on a Red Eye is not an option for me. It was a good reminder why the doctors have me on a strict travel diet and I need to conserve my and our planet’s energy.

Of course, you can’t blame me from getting out of Beantown as quickly as I wanted to – after all the marauding Red Sox keep reminding me of the feckless 2008 Yankees. They are crushing the LA Angels, a team that has tormented the Yankees forever.

Now if the Tampa Bay Rays win (and they should), it would be a great American League championship game. An ideal end to the 2008 Baseball season – Manny versus Red Sox in the World Series with Joe Torre’s Dodgers emerging victors. Even FOX can’t write a better script that that.

Anyway the trip left little time for me to catch up with my web reading. Regardless, here is an absolute gem from David Galbraith, one of my absolutely favorite people/thinkers. On the current economic meltdown, he argues that sending CEOs of errant banks to the jail makes absolute sense and keeps the shareholders of the newly nationalized banking system happy.

In addition, when you effectively nationalize banking, the shareholders are the country’s voters and they need to be kept happy. Creating a mechanism to put people like Wachovia’s Robert Steel in jail makes both good business sense and keeps the shareholders in a country happy.

Of course, David is a Scotsman and hence he was born with the gene for irony. Too bad he doesn’t write more often – he is missing his true calling.

Photo courtesy of Danielle Walquist via Flickr

When I first squinted at this morning’s news that casual game company Big Fish had landed $83 million in funding (from Balderton Capital, General Catalyst Partners and Salmon River Capital), I could have sworn there was a decimal point missing somewhere. Big Fish reported $50.8 million in revenue in 2007, a figure that’s grown 100 percent a year over the last three years. That’s great, but when you look at the larger competitive space, the economics, and the broader Internet trends, the numbers are hard for me to understand.

I agree with Benchmark’s Mitch Lasky, who just told me that, “We are on the verge of a casual games backlash,” since ,”the space is so ridiculously over-funded.” Because while casual games are enormously popular, attracting up to 400 million players, the revenue streams are comparatively modest.

What’s more, casual game budgets are also small, in the low six figures. This translates into a vast library of games already on the market, and while the $83 million is aimed at expanding Big Fish’s global footprint (they launched a Japanese portal last week), we’re already near a point at which the world is inundated with casual games. Looking at the bigger picture, there’s a number of Web 2.0, build-your-own-casual game platforms out now (such as Playcrafter) or in development. When we reach a point where anyone can make and upload a halfway decent casual game from their basement, will we really need 57,000-square-foot headquarters along the Seattle waterfront anymore?

Image credit: Bigfishgames.com.

I spent most of the day digging up more information on Twitter and its new round of funding that I reported last night. The update is that Twitter reached an agreement with investors today to raise $15 million in funding at around $80 million pre-money valuation. A new investor is leading the round with existing investor Union Square Ventures also participating. With this round, the company will have raised a little over $20 million in VC backing thus far.

Official news of the deal is eventually going to percolate out, and hopefully I will be able to nail down the specifics on who is the lead investor. Valleywag and Silicon Alley Insider had mentioned Spark Capital as a potential investor. Meanwhile, I am told that Charles River Ventures, after fighting a bit, is now out of the race. The news of new funding comes at a time when Twitter is dealing with a whole slew of scaling and infrastructure issues. Today, the folks there almost threw their proverbial hands up in despair.

Update: Twitter the great facilitator of e-narcissism also can’t keep secrets. As Michael Arrington points out, two tweets from two parties add fuel to the rumors of Spark being the mystery investor in the San Francisco company.