Bar/None recording artists The Slip (as well as their many side projects) frequently travel nationally and internationally. Therefore Marc Friedman, the band’s multi-instrumentalist with whom I shared an airplane row for the flight out of SXSW, was the perfect musician-on-the-go to investigate for possible “gadget addictions”. An admitted “late bloomer” to the world of mobile devices, Marc seems to have his habit under control, with the exception of a fondness for playing the Blackberry version of Katamari Damacy. Check out our conversation in the video below. → Read More
To save all 15 of you the effort of writing a response to MG’s “Saying ‘SXSW Is Over’ Is Over” post right now, the “Has SXSW Interactive jumped the shark” discussion has hit Godwin’s Law. That’s right someone has made a Hitler’s Downfall video where the Fuhrer shares his views on how much the conference has sold out as its scaled, thereby symbolically decreeing the “SXSW is Over” meme officially, yes, over. → Read More
So what comes after the future? I asked Bruce Sterling at SXSW.
But, for Bruce, the future is really the past. “I like narratives,” he told me, while explaining why the most “effective” futurists are good historians. So perhaps, using this logic, what comes after the future is history.
And Bruce is certainly an effective futurist as well as a good historian. Which is why when I asked him about today’s Internet obsession with “the social,” he riffed with dark euphoria about the history of socialism as well as what it’s like to be a 15-year-old kid with no knowledge of the past.
Video ahead. → Read More
I am currently in Austin at SXSW 2011, but mentally absent: I was at Tokyo airport on Friday to fly off to Texas, on my way to the gate, when the earthquake hit Japan (where I am based). As everybody knows by now, the quake marked the biggest disaster in Japan’s history after WWII, leaving thousands of people dead, wounded or homeless. After 6 years of living in Japan and being there when it happened, I, too, am devastated.
The Japan delegation for SXSW Interactive consists of about 10 people, and in the light of what was and still is happening in their home country, everybody toughed it out, took part in their panels and did a great job. (I know because I got a ticket at a later date and luckily was able to moderate two panels related to Japanese tech and speak at another one. I was too late to attend the first Japan panel.) → Read More
Appropriately, Bruce Sterling closed SXSW this year. It’s appropriate because after Bruce, there really isn’t much to say. He’s just about the smartest and funniest historical science fictional writer in the business. And the edgiest too – even though he’s built a professorial façade to disguise the punk in him.
So it was a huge honor to catch the darkly euphoric Bruce in Austin where he talked to me about his upcoming new book Gothic High Tech and Favella Chic, on why “hactivism” isn’t democracy and why he finds Sarah Palin “super interesting.”
Video ahead. → Read More
SXSW Interactive is no longer about the panels or keynotes, having become a five day experiment in the ability of technology to withstand the load of over 20,000 influencers congregated in the same location, trying to network using various digital tools. It’s some sort of sped up playground for app and device Darwinism, where the rest of the world functioning as a control group.
SimplyMeasured has analyzed the #SXSW tweet streams and come up with some preliminary results to the booze-fueled undertaking. According to SimplyMeasured’s data, GroupMe dominated people’s #SXSW Twitter streams in the group messaging class with 65% of the mentions, iOS devices won the platform battles with 74% of the tweets (split into 60% for the iPhone and 14% for the iPad respectively) and Foursquare won the location based check-in war at 65%. → Read More
Group messaging was absolutely not as useful as we thought it would be this year at SXSW. Whether you were using Beluga, GroupMe, Kik, Yobongo or Fast Society or others, everyone had high hopes for a breakout group messaging app, simply because we spoiled tech brats are already bored with the ones we already have.
I know it’s old school, but towards the tail end of the conference simple SMS won out (for me at least), because SXSW isn’t about hanging out with the same groups of people all the time, but rather about having variety of exclusive options. In practice group messaging is kind of weak on the exclusivity thing, because you’re almost always roped into groups with at least one person you don’t like. → Read More
The search engine wars have been heightened since January, when TechCrunch contributor Vivek Wadhwa wrote about why we need a better system of search, because his college students could no longer find the information they were looking for due to spammy results.
Since then, both JC Penney and DecorMyEyes have been called out for questionable search-related business practices, as have content farms like Demand Media and content aggregators like the Huffington Post. Google has accused Bing of scraping its results, and both Google and newcomer Blekko have taken very public steps to block sites that attempt to game the system. → Read More
Now that the interactive portion of the SXSW conference in Austin, Texas is over, the key question is already rolling in: who won?
What this really means, of course, is: what service was the breakout hit of the conference? After all, in past years, the conference has helped launch both Twitter and Foursquare into widespread usage. So the question really is: who was this year’s Twitter? Or what was this year’s Foursquare?
The answer this year is a bit different, a little disappointing, and perhaps not all that surprising. → Read More
SXSW Keynoter Felicia Day is a post-modern day success story. After feeling frustrated with mainstream media’s lack of enthusiasm for stories about gamers, she took her idea for as series based around a MMORPG video game to YouTube. After being fan-supported for season one, the half hour web series The Guild was eventually sponsored by Microsoft and Sprint and released on Xbox. In its fourth season, the series has 100 million viewers currently. → Read More
Late last week, we first wrote about SoundTracking, a new iPhone application from Schematic Labs that allows you to easily share not only the music you’re listening to, but the music you’re listening to in the context that you’re listening to it in. Yesterday at the SXSW conference in Austin, Texas, I got a chance to sit down with co-founder Steve Jang for his thoughts on the app and the space.
Jang talks about the rise of the “mobile-first” experience, noting that phones are good enough now to match the websites that have been built for years now. And in many ways, the experience is better because mobile is so personal. Jang talks about his inspiration for SoundTracking when he was traveling around Europe and wanting to share the music he was listening to on the go, but in a way beyond text. → Read More
Earlier this week interviewed Duncan Jones and Jake Gyllenhaal at SXSW, at the press junket for their movie The Source Code. While the film doesn’t have a huge tech angle other than the title, I thought it might be good video content for TCTV—the intersection of Hollywood and Silicon Valley is fascinating, and the movie industry is one of the last to get disrupted. It’s always interesting to see if the players are aware of the monumental shifts going on in media.
In any case I thought that the way The Source Code and Summit Entertainment were trying to target the tech press, and through us, our more social media savvy readers was an intriguing marketing strategy—and an angle! I wrote my “Jake Gyllenhaal Movie ‘The Source Code’ Markets Itself To Techies“ post about that instead of the twists of the thriller’s plot or Gyllenhaal’s abs.
Apparently, the post was not fawning enough for Summit, and they let it be known to the Aol person at Moviefone who hooked us up with them in the first place. This morning I received this email from that Moviefone/Aol Television representative: → Read More
If you care about the well-being of the Internet, you care about net neutrality. You just might not realize it yet.
This morning, Senator Al Franken took to the stage at SXSW Interactive to talk about the issue in front of a crowd of tech-savvy entrepreneurs and creatives, where he urged them to reach out to their representatives in Congress and let them know just how important net neutrality is to keeping the web healthy. Franken has previously described it as the most important free speech issue of our time, and he’s worried that the equality we’ve come to expect on the web may soon be undermined by major corporations.
Just before he gave his speech, we had the chance to sit down with Senator Franken to discuss the current status of the ongoing debate around net neutrality, and why it’s important that the public becomes involved in the campaign. We also touched on Franken’s recent letter to Facebook over the social network’s plans to grant third parties access to user phone numbers and addresses. And yes, we even got to know a little bit about his morning workout routine — which sounds rigorous. Tune in to the video above to learn more. → Read More
One of the most eagerly awaited movies debuting at SXSW this year is the Swedish production Press, Pause, Play. It’s an examination of both the benefits and the downside of the democratizing power of the Internet, featuring interviews with Seth Godin, Scott Belsky, Sean Parker, Moby and (blush) myself.
Press, Pause, Play got its world premiere on Friday night in Austin and yesterday I had the opportunity to sit down in the AOL studio with its two Swedish co-directors, David Dworsky and Victor Köhler. Both guys seemed liked they hadn’t had any sleep for about six months; both, I suspect, had been enjoying the delights of SXSW rather too much.
Video ahead. → Read More
In the location space, there’s something that has long been the missing link: a unified places database. The problem, of course, is that all the major players, Foursquare, Facebook, Google, Gowalla, Loopt, etc, have their own databases. But today Foursquare is taking the first steps towards unification — well, if the others play along.
Foursquare is launching an initiative that they’re calling the “Venues Project” or “venue harmonization coordination”. Their aim is to create the “social places database,” as co-founder Dennis Crowley calls it. “Some folks have taken a stab at this, but we think we can do it the right way,” he says. → Read More
There are few things better than free beer. Mix that with melted cheese and toasted bread, and you have a combination that satisfies even the deepest of human desires. And they’re available just outside the main convention center at SXSW, both free of charge.
The food is being provided by GroupMe, the group messaging app that, along with competitors like Beluga and Fast Society, has received plenty of buzz in the buildup to SXSW. We swung by their food stand for an interview with cofounders Jared Hecht and Steve Martocci (and to grab some food for ourselves). Tune in to learn how things have gone for GroupMe so far in Austin, why they chose to give away grilled cheese sandwiches, and adventures in Phish concert parking lots.
Oh, and sorry for calling it “South by”. I hate when people do that. → Read More
It’s that time again: time to revel in Web 2.0! We’re teaming up with TUAW and Peel for our first annual SXSW Interactive reader meet-up in Austin. Meet the TC crew. Enjoy some TC chew (quantities limited). All this – and more – will be made available to you. → Read More
Today’s SXSW keynote speaker is Seth Priebatsch, founder and CEO of location-based gaming startup SCVNGR.
SCVNGR has had a big week — on Thursday the site launched a spinoff service called LevelUp that combines some of the retention mechanics seen in location-based games with the steep deals offered by sites like Groupon.
Priebatsch, who maintained an apparently super-human energy level throughout his talk, discussed how many of the gaming mechanics seen in the virtual world will be applied in the physical world to create a so-called “Game Layer”. “It’s brand new and has not been built,” Priebatsch says. “The last decade was the decade of social — it took connections between friends, family, and coworkers and put them online. It’s called Facebook. The social layer traffics in connections.” Conversely, Priebatsch says that the Game layer traffics in influence — “It will influence where we go, what we do, and how we do it.” → Read More
Between movies being funded on Kickstarter, a critically acclaimed movie about Facebook, and Twitter basically serving as a backchannel for the Oscars, Hollywood increasingly has to reconcile itself with the Internet’s influence on storytelling as well its power as a distribution mechanism.
Directed by Duncan Jones, The Source Code is a movie about a soldier who finds himself as part of a strange military project. The source code is literally a computer program which allows him to take over another man’s identity during the last few minutes of his life, in order to um, not blow up a train. → Read More
