The local gaming industry -- not casinos, but video games -- has been getting its fair share of attention. Amid all of the hullabaloo, South Side-based family operation SilverTree Media has been lying low -- readying its 3-D simulation software for the market.

The first of Carnegie Mellon University's Entertainment Technology Center's student gaming spinouts, SilverTree was founded in August 2004 by a family of adopted Pittsburghers.

Former financial executive-turned-Chief Executive Officer Nate Smith and his brothers, Ben and Tom, hail from Princeton, N.J.

Nate Smith's wife, Jennifer Smith, who is also SilverTree's director of business development, is from Montreal.

"We wanted to get our story together before we had anything to say," Mrs. Smith said.

A grant from the Pennsylvania Department of Community and Economic Development got the quartet started working with UPMC critical care physician Mike DeVita to use 3-D technology to train medical teams to respond to hospital emergencies.

A year later, SilverTree has landed U.S. customers and is in talks with possible global clients.

Launched in May 2006 and known as Rapid Response Sim, the software goes so far as to create a virtual hospital room to train medical emergency teams. UPMC continues to work with and test the product, but is not yet a paying customer.

The Smiths have other irons in the fire: Besides SilverTree Medical, the producer of Rapid Response Sim, the firm has two other divisions: Sound provider SilverTree Music and SilverTree Entertainment, which is quietly working on a project with the Disney Co. The Smiths however, won't comment on their relationship with Disney.

The quartet is willing, however, to discuss how they made their way to Pittsburgh, the city they encountered when Tom Smith spent his undergraduate years at CMU.

Both Tom Smith and Ben Smith were set to relocate to California after getting their master's degrees in 2004, with job offers in the video gaming industry, but instead took a month off to visit elder brother Nate Smith and wife Jennifer, then working in Australia.

There, the three brothers and one wife drew up a business plan and launched SilverTree Media later that year.

"There's a brain drain out to the West Coast right now. The talent's here; it's just a matter of convincing them to stay," Nate Smith said. All 10 of their employees are newbie Pittsburghers, Jennifer Smith said. "Eighty percent of us live on the South Side."

Gary Rosensteel, the founder and CEO of software firm DigiBrix who also is known for his work as a champion of entrepreneurial causes, has signed on for another day gig. Mr. Rosensteel accepted an offer to be the vice president of Client Services with Oakland-based SCA Technologies, starting Monday.

HELP -- Helping Entrepreneurs Learn From Peers, the startup support/networking group Mr. Rosensteel founded -- is still going strong and DigiBrix isn't dead, he said, just hibernating for a bit.

Former Aliquippa High School Quarterback Louis Ross thinks Pittsburgh is undervalued as a technology center. So much so that he's setting up the U.S. headquarters of his firm, Virtus Advanced Sensors, Downtown.

The company makes motion sensor chips for a variety of products, from consumer electronics such as the Sony Walkman to disk drives. Its sensor designed for mobile phone disk drives knows when the phone is being dropped and acts to protect it so the phone's can't-live-without features such as the address book aren't lost in the ether or the toilet.

The company is in talks with disk drive maker Seagate Technology, although Mr. Ross won't discuss what they are talking about.

The Robotics Institute, Software Engineering Institute and the growing cluster of medical device firms are what reeled him back.

He'll call Pittsburgh his "U.S. home," after Virtus' local shop is set up at the end of the year. It makes more sense for a company to grow in Pittsburgh than in Silicon Valley or New York, Mr. Ross said. "I'm always asked why. People in larger cities automatically undervalue larger cities," he added, despite their low cost of living and doing business. To boot, the company has a big announcement coming up Nov. 28 with a certain unnamed Taiwanese chip manufacturer.

Net nerds rejoice -- rock star podcasters Leo Laporte and Amber MacArthur will kickoff their Sunday net@nite podcast on everything-you-want-to-know-that's-cool-on the-Web-but-don't-have-time-to-deal-with.

Ms. MacArthur and Mr. LaPorte take care of it for you in one fascinating podcast that will be hosted locally by Pine-based TalkShoe starting Nov. 5 at 9 p.m. The Laporte/MacArthur duo noted on Mr. Laporte's blog that the move means that fans won't be just listening to their podcasts anymore -- but interacting -- with the ability to chat live during the show.

Oxygen Network's Chairman and CEO Geraldine Laybourne will be in town Monday to host a luncheon at Downtown restaurant Trilogy to honor some of the area's most influential women. There she'll talk about one of her personal passions: the importance of networking and mentoring among women.

Later than evening, Ms. Laybourne will discuss the results of the network's new survey "Girls Gone Wired," which according to Oxygen, reveals that the tech gender gap has significantly closed among men and women.

According to Oxygen, it turns out that not all bling is equal -- 77 percent of women would prefer a new plasma TV to a diamond solitaire necklace. Furthermore, the study shows that a full 79 percent of the female market is interested in and using technology -- and savvier than they give themselves credit for. It's further proof that women aren't the fumbling, bumbling, tech-challenged ninnies they often are portrayed as.