A thousand people — 1 out of 8 attendees at the SXSW Interactive conference — have packed the room for programmer Jason Fried's talk. "He's like our Barack," a friend tells me. Instead of hope of change in politics, Fried, a cofounder of 37signals, offers hope of change in ... Web-based software? And for this, he's treated "like a demigod," as Seth Godin says in a recent Wired profile of Fried and his partner, David Heinemeier Hansson, right. (Photo by Jessica Wynne/Wired)

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