Where there's silence, there's usually something cooking, and true to form, Chief Executive Officer Inder Guglani and his growing team at Guru.com have been quietly carving out a cozy cyber spot as the hive for 671,000 free-lance professionals -- skilled in tasks ranging from ice sculpting to portrait photography to chemical engineering.

The one-on-one interaction provided by face-to-face job interviews often is unavailable to a tiny Canadian business with an even tinier budget in need of someone to redesign its Web site.

The video resumes posted on Oakland-based Guru.com allow prospective employers to see a would-be independent contractor in action -- say, carving a block of ice. Video resumes and blogs also can include testimonials or podcasts from satisfied customers.

Every free-lancer's profile will become like her own personal Web site, Mr. Guglani said. "Being able to see the freelancer in motion is a much more effective sales pitch," said Guru.com's community relations manager Jia Ji.

Being the Facebook of the free-lance world (MySpace.com is so over) doesn't mean that Guru.com's chief rival elance.com isn't nipping at its heels.

Mr. Guglani isn't worried.

After all, the former emoonlighter.com morphed into Guru.com after Mr. Guglani swallowed the venture-funded Silicon Valley competitor in 2003. And, he says, it's not the flashy features that will set Guru.com apart from the rest, "It's the fundamentals."

Unlike elance.com, Guru.com has opted for slow growth over fast cash from venture capitalists. "We are self-funded," Mr. Guglani said, minus a venture investment of $400,000 in 2000 .

The Shadyside Inn has been a family-owned operation for 25 years, "a home away from home" of sorts that played host to Jody Foster, Paul Newman and countless others.

Last week, it became the home of Free Wireless Shadyside, the free Wi-Fi network available to anyone along the Walnut Street retail corridor. Inn co-owner Jonathan Plesset built and manages the week-old network in memory of his late father, Richard, known as "Jeff," who passed away in 1999.

"For years I've been trying to find a way to honor him," said Mr. Plesset. He really believed in "giving back to Shadyside."

As any self-labeled "nerd" would, Mr. Plesset decided to put his interest in technology to good use, with the dual purpose of tacking on an incentive for shopping and dining on Walnut Street and celebrating his late father.

Mr. Plesset returned to Pittsburgh from the Boston area eight years ago with dreams of investing in futuristic tech -- even describing the wonders of Wi-Fi to his late father and Uncle Michael, who were business partners.

With Wi-Fi now as common as the Panera bakeries that offer the free Internet service, Mr. Plesset said he was able to bring wireless access to Walnut Street with roughly $10,000, the blessing of his neighbors and a stack of little white "nodes" that look like a deck of cards. The "nodes" can make a Wi-Fi "hot-spot" out of a street or neighborhood when strategically placed.

The beauty of a "mesh network," which Mr. Plesset called a "fancier way of doing wireless, but cheaper," is its low cost and simple manageability.

"I can walk around and check it out. If some area is not very good, I can just throw another [roughly $50] node in," he said.

"With the cost being so low you can band together with your neighbors and have this up and running in a day," Mr. Plesset added.

Wi-Fi Pittsburgh offers two hours of free service in and around Downtown. Launched by the by the Pittsburgh Downtown Partnership, it uses a different, more costly, technology.

Freeloaders and bandwidth hogs with aims to exploit or abuse the network best beware. Using the free Wi-Fi service to partake in unlawful file sharing is prohibited, Mr. Plesset said.

He'll be watching too. Mr. Pleasset monitors the network's use from a computer at his office at the Inn.

While all wireless networks have some degree of risk, on a mesh Wi-Fi network, he said, computers can't talk to each other, diminishing the possibility that an intruder can hack into your laptop. Still, he added, "If they want to get you, they will."

Nearly 500 users have logged-on since the network went live the day before the famed Apple iPhone's premier drew crowds to Walnut Street.

Cellumen, Dr. H. Lansing Taylor's Southside-based cellular biology firm, has raised a load of money from a Philadelphia venture capital firm. But he won't say how much or from whom until Tuesday. Cellumen has raised money from "a large Philadelphia venture capital firm that is not Quaker BioVentures," Dr. Taylor said.