If you spot someone we’ve missed be sure to jot something in the comments on this blog post.

Video by Paul Terry Walhus of Texas Coworking and AustinBlogger.

Here are some recaps and reviews of the TedXATX event by some of the attendees/viewers:

N Ducoff

Jon Lebkowsky on “Weblogsky”

Community Matters Blog

Net Impact Austin “Big Ideas”

New Videos from austinblogger

• AustinBlogger.com – Social Media Breakfast -6
• AustinBlogger.com – Social Media Breakfast -5
• AustinBlogger.com – Social Media Breakfast -4
• AustinBlogger.com – Social Media Breakfast -3
• AustinBlogger.com – Social Media Breakfast -2
• AustinBlogger.com – Social Media Breakfast -1

1. Paul Terry Walhus – Devices for Real World Social Networking
2. Henrick Johanssen – B2B Social Commerce Success Stories
3. Alex Jones – Managing Antisocial Behavior in Online Social Communities
4. Matt Chasen – Unsexy and Profitable: Making $$ Without Hype
5. Thom Singer – Networking at a Multi-Day Conference
6. Nik Daftary – Making Dollars and Sense out of the Semantic Web
7. Juan Sequeda – What the Hell is the Semantic Web?
8. Kevin Koym – Growing Your Startup in a “Down” Economy
9. Lani Rosales – Austin as a Technology Center
10. Yvonne Tocquigny – Best Practices for Building a Data Driven Marketing Organization
11. Dusty Reagan – Tips and Tricks for Developing Killer Twitter Apps
12. Troy Lanier – Are Web Video Analytics Critically Dampening Content Length
13. Matt Cohen – Newspapers vs. Content Aggregators – Fight Night!
14. Aruni Gunasagarem – Online/Offline Networking in the Social Media Age
15. Peter Kim – Sponsored Conversations: Good Strategy or Spam?
16. Jeff Beckham – Citizen Journalism: Writing the News with a Million Reporters
17. Jeff Beckham – Freelance Isn’t Free: The Twisted Economics of Writing Today

If I missed you, it wasn’t intentional!  Add your panel in the comments if you’re from Austin, Texas

The UT football team and UT Women’s volleyball team showed up for “fan appreciation day” at the University of Texas Greogory Gym, on Sat, Aug 22, 2009. AustinBlogger Paul Terry Walhus meets up with Mack Brown and talks to some nice fans from Waco while waiting in line with 2,000 plus other fans. Part 5 of a 5 part video.

Paul Terry Walhus meets Mack Brown, UT football coach

Door64 had a party at Austin 360 Condos on Thursday, August 20.  It was packed.  It was a $10 cover and 2 drink tickets in a gorgeous setting on the 9th floor where the pool and observation deck are located.  Since it was a hot, steamy Austin night and there was a “no drinks” sign at the entrance to the pool, most people crowded into the long, narrow inside space where it was cool.  It’s quite the luxury condo, with a mini movie theater at one end of the space and a bar at the other end.  Matt Genovese, how did you swing such a cool venue? By the way, you don’t need pronounce the e at the end of Matt’s last name.

We weren’t able to interview much because of the noise level, so it’s mostly just pictures of people at the event.  Maybe you can spot yourself if you were there. It was a great networking event, I ran in to Heather Havenwood, who did my SXSW interviews, and Meg Strout who was acompanied by a power auto seller Aaron Smith with Motorphilia, and Conversion Scientist Brian Massey to name a few.   I told Meg to check out Aardvark, because she asked me what was hot right now and I just had a foray in to this new “ask your social network” app yesterday. 

You can also see this video on Metacafe, Blip.tv and Veoh and I encourage you to rate it up and review it if you like it.  And if you’re in the video, drop me a note and I’ll include you in the blog post, (note at how many minutes in to the video you appear).

Watch Door64.com – Austin, TX (austinblogger.com video) in News Online | View More Free Videos Online at Veoh.com

You can also see this full video on MySpace, Metacafe, Blip.tv and Veoh

Or you can see shorter episodes at YouTube, Yahoo, MySpace, Metacafe, DailyMotion, Blip.tv and Veoh

via Lyn Bender and Facebook:

an evening of Drinks and Drupal

Host:	GeekAustin
Type:	Party – Night of Mayhem
Network:	Global

Date:	Wednesday, May 20, 2009
Time:	6:30pm – 10:30pm
Location:	Union Park Austin
Street:	612 W Sixth St. Austin, Texas 78701
City/Town:	Austin, TX
	View Map Google MapQuest Microsoft Yahoo

Email:

linearb@gmail.com

Description

Ever since GeekAustin announced the “Introduction to Drupal” workshop, we’ve been getting emails asking: “So what’s the big deal with Drupal?” Sounds like an excuse for a party? Yes!

We’ll have drinks out front and panels in back. We’ll be bringing in local experts to discuss and debate topics such as: “Why should I use Drupal instead of Wordpress?”, “Isn’t theming hard with Drupal?”, and “Why would the city use Plone instead of Drupal?”. Ok, well maybe not the last panel.

This should be fun. Hope you can make it.

-Lynn

The Drupal Texas LinkedIn group:
http://www.linkedin.com/groups?gid=1812268
The Austin Drupal Users facebook group:
http://www.facebook.com/group.php?gid=92094071680

Water Shortage Worldwide – twestival.com and Dr Faye from Paul Walhus on Vimeo.

RSVP to austin@yelp.com.

Features:  pinata, cigar rolling, and salsa lessons.

8-11pm, Friday Jan. 9

Location Austin Uptown Dance

8868 Research Blvd. #706
Austin, TX 78741
(512) 459-5678
(RSVP deadline: January 31, 2009 9:00 AM)

Who’s organizing? Clarke R

From Austin Uptown Dance’s site:

Dance all day, and no pay!

Bring your friends and tell everyone to join us for a Free Day of Dance! 9 hours and 20 classes of dancing from beginner to advanced. Shout it out in the streets!
10:00am Two Step 1, Two Step 2
11:00am Jitterbug Swing 1, Two Step 3
12:00pm Cha Cha 1, Cha Cha 2
1:00pm Jitterbug Swing 2, Salsa 2
2:00pm Salsa 1, Salsa 3
3:00pm West Coast Swing 1, West Coast Swing 3
4:00pm Night Club 1, West Coast Swing 2
5:00pm Tango 1, Tango 2
6:00pm Waltz 1, Quickstep 1

I used their embed badge to create a river of Austin images.  It’s fairly awesome.

Kimberlie Dykeman interviews Thom Singer at the Austin TechCrunch party, produced by austinlifestyles.com Paul Terry Walhus. Thom has written three books: “Some Assembly Required: How to Make, Grow and Keep Your Business Relationships”, “The ABC’s of Networking”, and “Some Assembly Required: A Networking Guide for Women”… which are available at Amazon.com. The books are full of tips to assist business professionals find unique ways to stand out from their competition and to build a network of contacts that will lead to more business.

Thom did a great rundown of the TechCrunch party on his blog.

Kimberlie Dykeman interviews Mark Spilitro, CEO of iKnowWare.com which helps connect you to your business resources anytime, anywhere. Paul Terry Walhus produced this for AustinLifestyles.com. You can get a secure web based view of your business in your language on your mobile device.

TechCrunch rocked the high style Pangea Lounge in Austin’s trendy 4th Street District on Sept 25, 2008 with a roomful of startups, entrepreneurs and VCs. Kimberlie Dykeman did about 20 interviews, and these are a few of the first to be released. More will be released later.

Interviewees included Troy from PeoplePad.com, Brad from DadLabs.com, Dewey from Mingll.com, Mark Spilotro with iknoware.com, Erick Schonfeld and Heather Harde with TechCrunch.com, Randy Cohen with ticketcity.com, Joshua Baer with otherinbox.com, Jay Hallberg with SpiceWorks.com, Samantha Nebrick with YellowPages.com, Dee Dee Dial with BazaarVoice.com and more.

The video is also appearing at these video sites: MySpace, Metacafe, Blip.tv, Stupid Videos and Sclipo. On itunes, subscribe to austinblogger to get the video on your Apple TV, ipod, or Itunes player.

Here’s the DadLabs video from the TechCrunch party:

And here’s our video which is on austinblogger on itunes:

Click To Play

Austin Time Exchange & github
http://austinblogger.com/blog/ video – Open source currency – Solving social problems with Intentional Economics Tom Brown is a co-worker who has deployed OpenID on multiple high profile nonprofit websites. HeresTomWithTheWeather is contributing Ruby on Rails code to projects hosted on github. Tom is the co-founder of SuperBorrowNet. Rich Vazquez is a board member of the Austin Time Exchange Network, longtime editor of LasCulturas.com and currently works in software security and web programming.

Click To Play

Andrew Donoho, Web Theorist with IBM’s Emerging Internet Technology Team, has a long history working with both web standards and implementations. He was an early participant in crafting XHTML v1.0 and v1.1 and SVG v1.0. He has been creating and pushing implementations of the bi-directional web since 1999 and is extending that idea to building a Co-Web with a scalable UI for the last 18 months. He is trained in experimental physics with a degree from the University of Texas at Austin. He still lives in Austin with his wife.

Bill Leake has been involved in driving provable revenues through internet marketing techniques since the early 1990s when, as part of the management team at Power Computing, he built the first company to sell $1 million of product over the internet. Bill has guided Apogee Search from inception to its current position as the largest search engine marketing firm in the Southwest, and one of the 20 largest in North America.

Bill gave this talk to the OneWebDay crowd at Cafe Caffeine on Monday Sept 22, 2008 and has some interesting asides on the economy and the political scene.

Click To Play

The Internet as key enabling technology for the emergence of the new global sustainability economy

David’s Bio: David Armistead has been involved in business and organization development, strategic planning, and future studies projects since the early 1980s, and has worked directly with major culture leaders, multinational firms and state and federal government, and also high tech manufacturing and small business.

Click To Play

The Web – Returning to Its Roots: It isn’t Just for Marketing Anymore

CJ’s Bio: CJ Romberger founded Wildwood Interactive, a premier web development firm, in 2000. Her experience includes systems analysis, website and database development, computer programming and training, quality assurance, and product and application development. She’s worked at companies like Fisher-Rosemont, BMC Software, and Human Code, and has led development teams for large eCommerce sites like RX.com and Leapfrog.com. CJ graduated with a 4.0 GPA from Texas State University and holds a BBA in Computer Information Systems. She writes a column called “Gadget Girl” for Austin Woman Magazine and in her spare time plays music in her recording studio and plays with new technology.

Video by Paul Terry Walhus of austinblogger.com

Paul Terry Walhus, the AustinBlogger, got 5 seconds of fame on CNN by having his twitter post put up on the CNN big screen. His twitter name is springnet. He asked about the effect of the new economic package on the mortgage holder with a high interest rate. The answer? We’ll get back to you.

And this comes by way of Jon Lebkowsky and Jelly Austin

Celebrate OneWebDay – The Earth Day for the Internet

Activities all day long! Uber-Jelly Jam Barcampian Melange

http://wiki.workatjelly.com/One+Web+Day+Uber+Jelly+at+Cafe+Caffeine+-+Monday,+Sept+22nd

The idea behind OneWebDay is to encourage people to think of themselves as responsible for the internet, and to take good and visible actions on Sept. 22 that (1) celebrate the positive impact of the internet on the world and (2) shed light on the problems of access and information flow.

OneWebDay is a global, decentralized event. We’re encouraging people around the world to meet up on Sept. 22 to talk about the threats to the net and how the web could change lives around the world in the future.

Our Austin event features a day-long extended uber-Jelly, featured speakers and interviews about how the Web has changed lives.  In addition to our speakers (list developing) we’ll be asking attendees:

• how the web has changed your life
• how you’d like the web to change the world in the future
• your favorite online event ever
• something you’ve done online with other people in other countries

and posting our clips on YouTube, Blip.tv and dotSub.com as part of a global video mashup.

Online Videos by Veoh.com

Players are Veronica Belmont of Tekzilla, Bonny Pierzina, Leah Culver of Pownce, and Casey Mckinnon of Galacticast.

Mashable put together a list of Austin’s most important technology blogs and AustinCast.com – sister site of AustinLifestyles.com – wound up on that list in some pretty great company.

Here’s the list with a few excerpts from the blog entry at Mashable:

1. Austin 3.0 – A website designed to give the “younger Austin Geek a place to see what is going on in Austin.”
2. Austin Startup – Austin Startup is simply a news site that chronicles the goings ons and creation of new tech sector business in the Austin area.
3. AustinCast – This site is a frequently updated hub for video and audio interviews of local area movers and shakers in the technology scene. He’s published over 100 video interviews with the likes of Veronica Belmont, Pete Cashmore, Zadi Diaz, Cali Lewis, Lindsay Campbell, and Leah Culver as well as a number of local heroes to the Austin scene.
   
4. Austin360 – This is the official New Media offering from Austin’s reigning Old Media institution, the Austin-American Statesman.
5. GeekAustin – Probably one of Austin’s oldest tech blogs, LinearB’ and Orion have been chronicling the gaming, business and tech communities of Austin since 2000.
6. Michelle’s Blog - . . . she’s a very active leader and figurehead to the new, young Austin Tech community, and has her hands in just about everything.  Her personal blog reflects all the myriad of ventures she’s involved in there.
7. Josh Dilworth – Josh is over at PR group Porter Novelli, based in their Austin office. Amongst all his many work related projects like SXSW, he has quite visible presence amongst those in the online Semantic and AI community as well as an avid participant in a number of widely used social media tools. I was recently a guest on a podcast of his, Falken’s Maze.
8. John Erik Metcalf - John Erik Metcalf is a major figure in the Austin scene as well, as he’s a co-founder in one of the town’s two co-working spaces: Conjunctured
9. Social Media Club Austin – The site describes itself as “part think tank, part curiosity, all new media” and is a repository for all that is going on in the “business networking event” scene for the Austin area.
10. Some Assembly Required – a self-described “business development and networking blog” authored by Thom Singer.
11. The Jeff Beckham Weblog – Jeff is an Austin area blogger who focuses his posts on the evolution of media, specifically in relationship to how the Internet is forcing transformation on not just media industries but “the word itself.”
12. Door64 Blog – The blog for Door64, the forum and community portal for the Austin-area tech community.

If you an Austin area blogger and want to be added to the OPML file email Mark at Mashable to be included in the next version of the list.

Download Now! (OPML) (import this into your favorite feed reader)

 

pingback austincast.com/blog bastropbuilder.com/blog compuslides.com/blog gameslides.com/blog magickpapers.com/blog shopslides.com/blog touroftexas.com/blog spring.net/blog socobuzz.com/blog web2.0slides.com/blog webgirlvillage.com/blog wholetech.com/blog wmeyers.com/blog workontheweb.com/blog

Norman Mailer’s wife speaks at the Texas Book Festival just a few days before his death. His sixth and last wife, married in 1980, was Norris Church (née Barbara Davis), a former model turned writer. They had one son together, John Buffalo Mailer, and Mailer informally adopted Matthew Norris, her son by her first husband, Larry Norris.

Norris Church Mailer is the author of a previous novel, Windchill Summer. She was raised in Arkansas and now lives on Cape Cod. Her husband of thirty-one years, Norman Mailer, died just days after this talk.

Listal is a social networking site where you can find people who share your tastes in movies, books, music or games.  Lists and collections are shared via a simple url like (in my case) http://springnet.listal.com and they give you widgets to plug in to your blog or website.

The site stands out for it’s tight integration of tagging, friends, finding others, forums and messaging.  The “explore” feature is hot, it lets you scan through reviews of movies, tv shows, books, games, dvds, and music. 

Were you at SXSW and want to keep the experience going and stay in touch with others you met there? Here’s how! I put out a tweet to request that anyone in our “network” who has a del.icio.us account and is willing to share their del.icio.us “name,” to please send it my way and I will compile the list. This way, we can add each other to our del.icio.us networks. One of the drawbacks of all these social networking sites, is the separate interfaces, usernames and such. We are all hoping for the ultimate Mashup of social networking one day.

I’m very excited to get this ball rolling and even more excited to explore all the great bookmarks that our friends who are hot on sxsw are sharing. If you would like to be included, just post a comment here with your del.icio.us “name” and I will add you to our network or send a direct message to http://twitter.com/sxswtwit . Then, just follow these easy steps:

1. Go to del.icio.us (sign up for an account if you don’t have one already)
   
2. Click on Your Network (top left)
3. On the right-hand side, in the text box, type in sxswtwit
4. Click ADD
5. Now sxswtwit will appear in your network beneath in blue
6. Click on sxswtwit
7. You are now in sxswtwit’s bookmarks, but there are none… BUT WAIT
8. In the gray box at the top, it reads:
   

   All sxswtwit’s items (0)
   sxswtwit is in your network, view sxswtwit’s network

9. Click on VIEW sxswtwit’s network

That’s where the magic happens. There you see all the bookmarks shared by everyone in the network, which can be a little messy OR you can look over at the right. There you can click on each member’s name and look at his/her individual bookmarks. You can even add each member to your own del.icio.us network. As more members join this sxswtwit del.icio.us network, you’ll see them added.

Right now, the only member is http://del.icio.us/springnet (me) but that will hopefully change soon. Join now!

Great idea you say? Well, all the credit goes to GeekyMomma who thought it up for her edtech network and the above is practically word for word from her blog post.

Add your name to the comments below and you’ll be good to go or just send a direct message to http://twitter.com/sxswtwit

pingbacks austincast.com/blog bastropbuilder.com/blog compuslides.com/blog gameslides.com/blog magickpapers.com/blog shopslides.com/blog touroftexas.com/blog spring.net/blog socobuzz.com/blog web2.0slides.com/blog webgirlvillage.com/blog wholetech.com/blog wmeyers.com/blog

 Door64

It’s up to the second with information on events and stimulating forums.

Some guy named Matt does it.

I’m on it.

We’re live streaming with a show on justin.tv/austintexas now.

We’re working with Redbud Sports in Austin, Texas and the plans are to bring you many athletes and sports events around Austin. Also, you can see our feed at austincast.com

You only have to post to Pownce. If you need a Pownce invite I have a few left. To find your Pownce RSS feed go to the following URL:

http://www.pownce.com/feeds/public/springnet/  

Of course you won’t be springnet but someone else.

Next, register with Twitterfeed. If you don’t have an OpenID you can get one over at MyOpenID – you’re going to need it sooner or later anyway. Create a new feed in Twitterfeed and add the Pownce feed to it; make sure to uncheck the “Include description” checkbox, and set the update interval to 30 minutes.

However, Pownce and Twitter aren’t enough for me; I want to add Tumblr and Jaiku into the mix. The problem with Tumblr is that it won’t recognize the Pownce feed. No worries, though, go to the Twitter feed you’ve forwarded your Pownce feed to, click the RSS icon and add that feed to Tumblr (as text).

Finally, open up your Jaiku profile, click on Feeds (Edit) and add an RSS feed. You can use the Pownce feed or the Twitter feed – they both work pretty much the same.

That’s it – by posting on Pownce you now automatically update all four services at the same time. Now, if only someone would create a Miranda Pownce plugin…

Btw, my Pownce/Twitter/Jaiku/Tumblr stream is a lightweight combination of some posts from springnet and some of my personal thoughts. If you’d like to follow any of them, here are the links: Pownce, Twitter, Jaiku and Tumblr.

Edwards said, “Here’s an idea. Suppose instead of America spending $500 billion in Iraq, America led an international effort to make primary school education available to 100 million children in the world who have no education whatsoever.” [Applause]

Scholz Garden is a populist playground, a favorite place for liberal politicians like Hightower, like it says in this Austin Chronicle article:

“That’s how Billy Lee Brammer sets the scene in The Gay Place, his true-fiction account of Texas politics and the boozy courtin’ and lawmakin’ that went on under the trees at Scholz Garten (now casually renamed “Garden”) in the Fifties. It was the one place in town where an under-21 Eddie Wilson could score a beer without getting hassled. Scholz was destined for the ever-after indeed. The German-owned gathering place on San Jacinto was the watering hole of choice for every liberal politician, writer, musician, and artist in town.”

I had the chicken fried chicken with a potato double play: German potatoes and fries.  I got close enough to Edwards to get some real good snapshots which you can see here (feel free to reproduce on your blog or website with attribution):

http://austincast.com/album/edwards (click “slide show” to see them all quickly).  While you view them you might want to play the “rough transcription” of the speech done by News 8 Austin.

The Gingerman was the site for the first Austin Wordpress meetup.  About a dozen folks showed up including a local member of the Wordpress team who passed out cool t shirts.

I wasn’t able to stay long so I’m hoping to pick up the details of the last part of the meeting off others blogs.

Lorin Rivers has done a masterful job of stretching wordpress to it’s limit with his current project.  He extended the mysql back end of wordpress to do a much better job at handling large numbers of users, making it more suitable to host a large community.  Keep at it Lorin, you can go places with this if you open source it.

 Andy Skelton, one of the folks at the meetup said on his blog today: “Don’t ask me why I didn’t do it first. Paul Menard is doing a fine job starting an Austin WordPress Meetup. He listed it on Upcoming and Meetup and the crowds are growing.”

 Here are some cell phone pictures I took of the Wordpress meetup at the Gingerman showing the attendees and lots of beer glasses.

One of the best-loved twitterers, Paul Terry Walhus, a gray-haired blogger from Austin, Tex., has 9,177 friends and 1,851 followers, according to the tracking site Twitterholic.  (my name was mispelled in the article)

The article goes on to say:

At least one politician has tuned into the service. John Edwards, who has 2,001 followers and 2,082 friends, recently twittered that his presidential campaign would be “carbon neutral.”

After Robert Scoble, who writes a popular technology blog called Scobleizer and who himself has 2,985 followers and 3,045 friends, challenged this ambitious vow on Twitter, Mr. Edwards twittered back that he would, as president, offset his campaign’s carbon emissions by financing alternative energy research.

And they quote Bruce Sterling’s characteristically biting comment:

Bruce Sterling, the science fiction writer and journalist, who used Twitter at South by Southwest, wrote to me, “Using Twitter for literate communication is about as likely as firing up a CB radio and hearing some guy recite ‘The Iliad.’ ”

The articles author Jason Pontin is the editor in chief and publisher of Technology Review, a magazine and Web site owned by M.I.T. E-mail: pontin@nytimes.com

“According to tracking site Twitterholic, the top 10 twitterers have thousands of people following them—a literal cult of personality. Paul Terry Walhus, a gray-haired Austin coffee-shop blogger who has 8,789 friends and 1,722 followers, is currently the most popular person on the site. His latest tweet: “5:33 am cst L:78704 starting work week … full plate today … toast, mango yogurt and coffee w half and half.”

I’m floored!  Thanks for the shout out Slate!  What can I say?  I guess I’m going to have to dig deep and come up with some incredible blog entries now.

picture above from the Statesman article referenced below.

I’m out.  Of the closet.  OK.  I’m a twitter user.

Omar Gallaga, Statesman blogger/writer and Rodolfo Gonzalez, photographer, caught up with me on South Congress last week and outed me as a twitter user in a story on twitter.  Here I am posing for a picture above at Jo’s Coffee.  He calls me “amiable”.  Nice.  He says my hair is “unruly under the hat”.  I should have pushed harder for that haircut from Dorothy last week, darn.

Gallaga mentions Robert Scoble’s use of twitter at SXSW and it was Scoble on twitter that got me an invite to the Salt Lick for a super barbecue beerfest at SXSW.  It was actually Coté that turned me on to twitter about 2 weeks ago.

Gallaga really hits it on the mark when he talks about how twitter is a “springboard to new creations”.  Today twittervision, which is a mashup of google maps and twitter, introduced “personal twittervision” which lets you post comments while viewing every comment posted on twitter worldwide.

TwitThis is an easy way for people to send Twitter messages about your blog post or website. When visitors to your website click on the TwitThis button or link, it takes the URL of the webpage and creates a shorter URL using TinyURL. Then visitors can send this shortened URL and a description of the web page to all of their friends on Twitter.

So I think I’ll install this on this blog and my other blogs:

austincast.com/blog

spring.net/blog

touroftexas.com/blog

and

searchslides.com/blog

I’ll let you know how hard or easy this was.  I run on Wordpress.

Given the powerful reach of the internet should political campaigns be required to disclose youtube negative ads?  – Pat Buchanon

“let it rest” – Eleanor Clift

“the internet is being transformed into a toilet” – McLaughlin

But twitter itself has exploded like a supernova overnight, going from 600 tracked on twitterholic to 13,000 last night. I’d guess it’s over 15,000 as of this red hot second. I talked with the twitterholic folks and they agreed with me that it’s like dealing with a runaway train. The site itself it under a crushing bandwidth load.

Twitter is great. It’s sms messaging and web messaging all rolled in to one package and it operates like a miniblog. It let’s you know what everyone is doing quickly.

Finally, the promise of real social networking is at hand. The last few days have been changing days in the life of the net.

I’ll have a lot more to say about twitter.

Here’s a blog past from my twitter friend Alex Nesbitt “buena vista” that’s typical of the kind of enthusiam and fervor there is for twitter. Direct quote follows.

1. It’s meant I’ve kept in touch a little more with one of my dear friends I was neglecting. In fact I’ve even seen him more partly because we’re both twittering. Here’s a couple of random examples…

“Dana Power, a computer programmer from Raleigh, N.C., says her brother who lives in Texas introduced her to Twitter so they can stay in touch: ‘I hardly ever corresponded with him, but with Twitter, I can see what he is doing at a given point in his life,’ she says. ‘It makes me feel more connected to him somehow.’”

Leisa tells a nice story about Twitter helped her get to SXSW.

2. I’ve loved watching the community create it’s own ‘rules of engagement’ and I’ve been facinated by all the blog posts I’ve read on this phenomenon; Like David Armano’s at Logic + Emotion. There are thousands more…

3. It’s a cross between IM and a mini blog – you can access it from both PC and mobile terminals so it’s easy and accessible.

4. I control it. I can twitter as often as I like. I can choose who sees me and who I see. Ican be public or secret. I’m a Twit!

5. It’s a growing ecology. Expect mash-ups with google earth and flickr soon. There’s already Twitterholic.com – expect ‘Twitterholics-anonymous.com’!

Oh, yeah, I forgot to mention twittervision which is really blowing the lid off everything. It’s television for the twitter age, on a google world map it shows you every tweet from every twitterer in real time. All twits, all the time. Mind boggling, the whole twitter phenomenon.

Yahoo! BarTab: Monday, March 12, 6:30–9:30 pm at Light Bar. The big ‘hoo! and what seems like every little company they ever acquired are throwing a bash at the fresh newish club at Congress and Fourth, featuring an open bar, munchies and music by The Little Ones. “After we reach capacity,” they say, “admittance will be determined by Feats of Strength.” We’re pretty sure that’s the name of Andy Baio’s band. Why you’ll wanna go: Ask anyone who was at last year’s Yahoo! party that busted the seams of Iron Cactus. This’ll be the talk of Tuesday. Also, if you’ve written something that uses tags, you might leave with a check.

from SXSW Baby!.

Do you want the inside track on parties at SXSW.  “Corky” has the scoop in the following link followed by a brief blurb:

Corcoran in Austin 360

“

WED: Day | Night THU: Day | Night FRI: Day | Night SAT: Day | Night

It used to be the mantra of the first morning at South by Southwest: “Where are all the cool parties?” Everybody would hit town knowing of one or two soirees where the free booze flowed and the gratis chow was spread out on tables, but they’d have to ask around to get a more complete picture.

Nowadays, the party scene is revealed more than a month before the first Shiner Bock is cracked — and then overrated — by an out-of-towner. Internet sites such as showlistaustin.com, donewaiting.com and austinist.com collect party info and spread the news, giving readers weeks to get in good with the party hosts, to get that all-important invite.

Here are some of the things we’ve culled from those sites and brooklynvegan.com. Many are free and open to the public:

SXSW day parties.

More SXSW

• 2007 artists
• List of performers
• SXSW Source blog
• Full coverage

“

Twitter, says the official website is a “ Whole World in Your Hands”

What is twitter?

“Twitter is a community of friends and strangers from around the world sending updates about moments in their lives. Friends near or far can use Twitter to remain somewhat close while far away. Curious people can make friends. Bloggers can use it as a mini-blogging tool. Developers can use the API to make Twitter tools of their own.”

Ok… so how does it work?

“You can send updates in three ways: send a text message from your mobile phone, type a message from the Twitter site, or instant message from Jabber or Gmail chat. (support for AIM and other chat services coming soon!) Start by texting the word help to 40404 if you’re in the United States. For international folks, we have different numbers. Write us and we’ll give you yours.”

I heard about twitter from Cote on his drunkandretired podcast.

You can see the twitter plugin on the lower right column of the austincast blog.

Twitter Support.

It’s Friday morning at Jo’s and there are a couple of dozen folks enjoying the chill air.  Tom, with the green bandana, is sweeping up aound the place and extolling the virtues of the new espresso machine, the La Marzocco.  We’ll have the scoop on this in an upcoming blog episode.  It’s a nice view from the Jo’s front deck of Amy’s Ice Cream, Zen restaurant, and the Hotel San Jose.  Tom cranks up the ipod and the music resumes.

We found 63 photos on flickr matching the search phrase Jo’s Coffee.

Jo’s has a MySpace page at myspace.com/joshotcoffee and soon there will be a guide to MySpace on Jo’s blog.  What would you like to see on Jo’s blog, send us an article or post something in our comments. 

Austin American Statesman writer Shermakaye Bass has written up a “day in the life” of Jo’s South called:

People-watching on SoCo

Tues February 13 at 8 pm

Blackwater Gospel

Amy Cook 9 pm

Thurs February 15 at 12:30 pm

Alice Spencer

and her Monkey Butlers

Sun February 18 at 12:30 pm

Andrew Nafziger Trio

Jo’s Downtown

242 W 2nd Street

Austin, Texas

512.469.9003

joscoffee.com  

Mix it up with gaming industry mavens as they share their insights in to how to launch a gaming industry career.

Rodney Gibbs, from Amaze Entertainment, will give a presentation along with other gaming industry wonks.

And you can register to win a free 2007 sxsw interactive pass and attend this major blog/media fest in March.

Downtown Jo’s has a state of the art video projector for events like these and encourages meetups and special interest groups to use their facility.

It would have been the redeeming moment of the night had Gore given the grammy to Neil Young.

Don Henley gave a shout out to the Dixie Chicks.  “nice going!”

Here are some impressions I jotted down on my craplet sitting in the rocking chair.

The Police are back and they belted out Roxanne, then it was mostly downhill except for the Dixie Chicks and the “who died last year segment”.

The once shameful Chicks have gone from being scorned as unpatriot to singing their anti-war song in prime time on the big show.

What’s with Justin Timberlake and the “Blair Witch” camera that he did a youtube video with during his performance of “What Goes Around Comes Around”?  Nice nose.

Dylan edged out Neil Young for best solo performance in the night’s most tragic snub.

Shakira shook those hips.

“Gnarls Barkley” dresses as an airline pilot during his rendition of “Crazy”

Ludacris gives special thanks to Oprah and Bill O’Reilly?

Natalie Maines quotes the Simpsons bully upon winning best country album “ha ha!”  Maines, “a lot of people just turned their tvs off right now.  Continuing in the tradition of blurting out whatever’s on her mind, good for her!  Good for Austin!

I didn’t like seeing Ray Benson take a back seat to Carrie Underwood in the Bob Wills.  One blogger said she should get the award for “pretend artist doing something classic to try and prove you’re legit . . . this would be a great time for Jesus to take the wheel and steer her out of here.”

Ornette Coleman is still living.

And finally there was James Brown dancing in the folks who died last year montage. 

PRESS RELEASE — For two decades, the SXSW music
festival in Austin, Texas has been the industry’s best kept secret for
breaking new acts such as Franz Ferdinand, Kaiser Chiefs and James Blunt.
That’s all about to change as DIRECTV, the nation’s leading satellite
television service provider, teams up with music/entertainment guru Blaze
TV to bring the nation’s biggest music showcase to national television for
the first time in DIRECTV Presents SXSW Live. Exclusively on DIRECTV’s
Channel 101 (The 101), the special will be broadcast live March 15-17 and
feature unprecedented access with upfront performances and
behind-the-scenes footage from the three day musical extravaganza.

Date and Time: Wednesday February 21 – 7PM

Location: 800 Guadalupe – Austin Public Library- Austin History Center

Information: Seating is limited so please call 974-7400

For more information on our project please see www.birthofcoffee.com

Thanks

Daniel Lorenzetti & Linda Rice Lorenzetti

The Birth Of Coffee Project

www.birthofcoffee.com

lorenzetti@birthofcoffee.com

512 585-0011

Jo’s Coffee Video Podcast Windows Media Version – download now

Jo’s Coffee Video Podcast Mac Quicktime Version – download now (ipod ready)

Tom, Jo’s Assistant Manager and fixit guy, shows us the equipment and processes that keep Jo’s running. He talks about the history of the place and gives us a tour around the outside.

Lisa demos one of her favorite drinks. We also encounter Fritz, the Motorblade poster guy and one of the regulars who talks about the NASA astronaut space love triangle. It’s a fascinating look at the inner workings of South Congress epicenter of activity.

Makin’ Mocha – the Ipod Version

Makin’ Mocha with Rose – for Windows Media player

A Café Mocha is a variant of a cafe latte. Like a latte it is typically one third espresso and two thirds steamed milk, but a shot of chocolate is added. Typically the chocolate is in the form of an Italian syrup, although less sophisticated vending systems use instant chocolate powder. Whipped cream, dustings of cocoa and marshmallows may also be added on top for flavour and decoration.

This being an American invention, it is mostly unknown in Italy and other continental European countries. Mocha was originally a particular variety of coffee from Mocha, Yemen, made without cocoa, but which tasted as if it had cocoa in it, and modern usage usually refers to an imitation of it using other coffee varieties and cocoa.

A variant is white café mocha, instead made with a shot of white chocolate.

A term moccaccino is used in some regions of Europe and the Middle East to describe Café Latte with cocoa or chocolate.

OK. It’s here.  This year’s two hour Carnaval video.  Be the first to see it before it shows up on google video or youtube. 

Yeah baby, take me there! 
The Carnival 2007 Video!

The following is an excerpt from what has to be the best Carnaval “fan site” we have seen, produced with much love by Dana…lots of great photos and personal stories…to see the whole thing, click here. But this sums up what this thing is all about. We couldn’t have said it better.

“I heard a lot of stuff from folks this year about Carnaval and their reasons for not going, and it seemed to have a common theme of “fear of debauchery” or like this was some sort of giant ORGY or something where everyone is doing body shots and rolling about on the floor in a drunken or drug-filled haze. NOTHING COULD BE FURTHER FROM THE TRUTH…I want to go on record saying that Carnaval is

1. some of the safest, best fun I have all year
2. one of the HEALTHIEST things I do for myself all year
3. an opportunity to dance and laugh with some of the nicest total strangers I could ever hope to meet
4. one of the biggest creative outlets I have on ALL KINDS of levels.

So, basically, if you’re not going to Carnaval, I sure don’t know why. If you’re afraid to go alone, find a friend to go with. Heck, Mac showed up as a surprise totally by himself. Sondra, Lane and I gave him some beads and later he was spotted in a conga line, having a great time. You don’t need a costume, you don’t need to drink, you only need to come with an open mind and happy feet and a willingness to let your spirit soar for a few hours. You only have from 9pm until 2am, when they turn the lights on, so it’s this brief trip into another world. I guarantee you’ll leave there with a happy heart and enough stored up mojo to get you through another month or so of winter – maybe until the bluebonnets perk up. Personally, Carnaval juice carries me through all kinds of rough times all year long. I think I speak for my “posse” when I say they feel the same way.” This comes from Dana’s website linked above.

Carnaval Brasileiro 2007.

In Loving Memory of Molly Ivins, 1944-2007

Syndicated political columnist Molly Ivins died of breast cancer Wednesday evening at her home in Austin. She was 62 years old, and had much, much more to give this world.

She remained cheerful despite Texas politics. She emphasized the more hilarious aspects of both state and national government, and consequently never had to write fiction. She said, “Good thing we’ve still got politics—finest form of free entertainment ever invented.”

from the Texas Observer obituary

Video by Paul Walhus

 Lance does a question and answer session with Austin Texas fans before heading off to the final bike race of his career, a bid to win his 7th Tour de France in a row. The setting was Lance’s new health club.

“After 26 years, you know the drill,” says the Chronicle. “This is your chance to duct-tape the critics’ mouths shut and speak up about Austin music. Not sure who to vote for? Turn on the radio, drop into the local record store, or head to the clubs tonight. Your favorite band is probably playing.”  And give some consideration to our Austin favorite singer/songwriter Amy Cook. 

Vote Here!   Entries must be received by Wednesday, January 31, 2007.

View the Contest Stage for the Artist, Amy Cook, on FameCast.com:
famecast.com/contest/stage50.php?stage_id=1&artist_id=1159 

 Before you vote, you’ll need to register as a “Famecast Fanatic”

http://famecast.com/registerfan.php

When you register there’s an option to “invite your friends”.

Jo’s Coffee has a new blog (4 days old) and they’re getting ready to host a series of great films, geek user group meetings, music events and other smokin’ events. They’ve equipped their coffeehouse with a high definition video / svga projector and surround sound system.

Jo’s Downtown will be rolling out it’s first film event Monday night, January 8th. Jo’s Downtown is located at 242 West Second Street, within a stone’s throw of the new rusty City Hall. Parking is free and plentiful in the City Hall garage. This the Future Film Forum Film Cluster’s first showing at Jo’s Coffee on the new high definition video system. The Future Forum Film Cluster meets the first Monday of the month to watch and discuss a film. Films they have watched and discussed in the past include: Last Days of the San Jose, Born Into Brothels, Crash, Jarhead, Goodnight and Goodluck, and others. For more information, to suggest a film, or to be added to the Film Cluster list, please email Taline at Taline@austin.rr.com Shown in picture below:

Here’s a snippet from the Austin Chronicle on the film that will be shown. You can get the rest of the review at Austin Chronicle Screens.

If all you want is spin, you can get it six ways from Sunday on any subject, any day of the week. Op-ed columnists, administration apologists, bloggers, PR flacks, chat-show talking heads – they’re part of the army of agenda-pushers out there generating more spin than a platoon of whirling dervishes. But where can you go to hear straight talk on the state of the world today and, perhaps more significantly, the world our children will inherit?

As Austin writer/actor/filmmaker Turk Pipkin was pondering that question a few years back, he happened upon his then-preteen daughter Katie having a conversation with Steven Weinberg, the Nobel Prize-winning theoretical physicist. “She was probably about 10 years old at the time,” he recalls. “They met at a party and started talking about Texas fossils, and Katie was able to date these fossils, and they started talking about geology.”

From that discussion came the spark for Nobelity (www.nobelitythemovie.com, www.nobelity.org), Pipkin’s documentary featuring conversations with nine Nobel laureates about what’s in store for our planet over the next 50 years. The title, he says, springs from the idea that “they’re like our intellectual nobility.”

If you’d like to learn more about The Nobelity Project and its educational web-site, or would like to support The Nobelity Project’s non-profit work to bring clean drinking water to the children of St. Joseph’s Mahiga Primary School in Kenya, visit Turk Pipkin’s www.nobelity.org It didn’t hit my top ten list for last year solely because it was a work in progress and Turk had more work to do upon it, but it was slight. The fact is – it is absolutely brilliant. Listening to these minds share their insight upon the problems facing everyone upon every bit of this planet and how to solve them is essentially just stunning. This is one of the absolute most important films of this year or any year. – Harry Knowles, AintItCool.com “This film could have a huge impact on the world.” – Ann Richards Technorati Profile

Team Hotel San Jose is a new kind of racing team and sports club, led by athletes who are dedicated to serving the community by working with disadvantaged and at-risk youth, developing the skills of beginning and intermediate cyclists, and cultivating the most incredible regional racing team you’ve ever seen. The core team members are a motivated group of professional and ex-professional cyclists, cycling enthusiasts, and triathletes, who ride with respect for all, regardless of experience. We welcome road cyclists and mountain bikers, runners and multi-sport athletes, men and women, and girls and boys.

The Alamo Draft House is a movie theater that has food. I recenlty posted on Mark Cuban’s blog about how they “get it.”  Read what “clever monkey” says about how the Alamo “gets it”.  because he says it better than I did on my Cuban post.  By the way, I didn’t win his suggestion contest and how he could attract more customers to his digital movie chain.  

Perhaps some of the coffee houses around town will start showing movies, documentaries and net flicks (youtube?) and turn in to mini Alamos?   That would be fair play, for the foodies to start attracting some of the movie crowd and filling up their slow times with more customers. The first coffee house in town to start showing videos, movies, docs, etc. will attract a whole new following.

And there’s more to what the Alamo does, quoting from clever monkey: “The venue often offers more than just a movie for your admission price; when we went to see The Hustler the evening’s program included a 20-minute book reading from a local author who’d written a book on pool halls and 1960’s bachelor culture. We hadn’t really been expecting this facet to the event, but there were other patrons who’d clearly known that this was part of the whole deal and had bought a signed copy of the book before being seated.”

Where will the first “net nightclub” appear in Austin.  It’s happening in the Bay area.  So we’re on “net nightclub watch” to see where it will pop up first.   The following is excerpted from the ValleyWag blog. and it’s about how the dot com bazillionaires are pumping up the “net nightclub” scene. 

Jonathan Abrams, founder of Slide, is far from the only web entrepreneur to dabble in nightlife. One cynical take: They’re just trying to buy glamourous lives; too bad their clubs are in the SF area. But we’re inclined to be more generous. As sidelines go, a nightclub investment is at least less pretentious than developing a taste for fine wine. The roster of Silicon Valley nightlife investors, with the customer ratings for their venues, after the jump.

Jamie Zawinski, a programmer who worked on early versions of Netscape’s Navigator browser, owns DNA Lounge.  The DNA Lounge webcasts shows and events live from their venue in San Francisco, CA.
http://www.dnalounge.com/.  They webcast everything: you can listen to the last two weeks of their shows in their webcast archive. 

Jonathan Abrams, as one was reminded in his recent television appearance, is behind Slide Lounge, the downtown club, about as fabulous a venue as San Francisco is capable of supporting. Friendster founder Abrams, who famously turned down an offer from Google, is also an investor in Mamacita. http://slidesf.com is their site (Flash alert); see if you can get past their splash screen (I couldn’t)

Trevor Traina, socialite son of the Napa winery owner, co-founded Compare.net, an early comparison shopping site. He’s now more often in the society than the business pages. With Gavin Newsom, he’s an investor in Matrix. In the nightlife business, he’s overshadowed by his brother, Todd, who is a partner of Ashton Kutcher and Wilmer Valderrama in various L.A. restaurants.

Peter Thiel, co-founder of PayPal, the online payment service, and an investor in other ventures such as Facebook, is one of the backers of Frisson — an upscale restaurant-bar with a co-ed bathroom.

Ken Howery and Luke Nosek, two partners of Thiel in the former PayPal founder’s venture capital fund, are said to be investing in a Manhattan nightclub.

Doug Dalton, one of the founders of BranchIt Corporation, is behind Anu and Swig.

The Longhorns lost their second game in a row this weekend to the Aggies, so their potential national title has crumbled in to an invite to one of the lesser bowls, maybe they’ll play Arkansas.

podcasts:
Barak Obama podcast 4,629,699 Senator Obama discusses his book The Audacity of Hope Oct 28, 2006 10 – 11:30 am
Chinese economy podcast 742,784 In China’s Shadow: The Crisis of American Entrepreneurship with Reed Hundt Oct 28, 2006 11 – 11:45 am
Evan Smith award podcast 3,092,257 Bookend Award Ceremony honoring Louis Sachar & Texas Monthly Magazine  Oct 28, 2006 10 – 11:30 am
John Burnett NPR podcast 2,551,240 Uncivilized Beasts & Shameless Hellions: Travels with an NPR Correspondent Oct 29, 2006 3 – 4 pm
Matthew Dowd – the lesser known Architect podcast 7,473,022 Raging Moderates: Political Complexity in America with Rod Dreher, Matthew J. Dowd, and Ronald B. Rapoport Oct 29, 2006
Maureen Dowd podcast 9,067,400 State of the Union: Politics in America Matthew J. Dowd, Maureen Dowd, Nicholas Lemann, Victor Navansky Oct 28, 2006 3:30 – 4:30 pm
Maureen Dowd and Gore Vidal podcast 1,643,213 Gore Vidal in Conversation with Maureen Dowd, Moderator: Evan Smith of the Texas Monthly. Oct 29 2 – 3 pm at the Paramount Theater on Congress Ave in Austin, TX
Texas Beat generation podcast 1,894,607 The Ransom Center & TBF present: The Beats. Rob Johnson, Bill Morgan.  Moderator: Lee Moore
Texas Book Fair podcast 2,029,474
Texas Monthly 1 podcast 10,772,897
Texas Monthly 2 podcast 10,763,075
Texas Monthly 4 podcast 2,036,137
The Architect Karl Rove podcast 5,686,857 Advice and Consent: Presidential Advisors Sidney Blumenthal, Clark Kent Ervin, Bill Minutaglio, James Moore, Wayne Slater (Bush’s Brain) Moderator: Paul Stekler.  Oct 28, 2006 3:30 – 4 pm
waiting in line for Barak tickets podcast 8,259,485

video podcasts:
Barak crowd 1 video 209,698,816
Barak crowd 2 video 111,747,072
Barak crowd 3 video 8,026,112
Barak crowd 4 video 25,217,024
Barak crowd 5 video 9,746,432
Barak crowd 6 video 80,220,160
Barak crowd 7 video 27,512,832
Barak crowd 8 video 26,361,856
Barak crowd 9 video 12,605,440
Barak Obama intro video 245,194,752
Barak Obama speaks video 12,611,584
CSPAN video 64,761,856 – Paul Terry Walhus gets interviewed by CSPANN. 
Matthew Dowd video 94,126,080
Texas Book Awards video 50,999,296
Texas Book Awards crowd video 10,323,968
Texas Book Awards crowd video 19,486,720
Texas Book Awards crowd video 25,800,704
Texas Book Awards crowd video 5,736,448
Texas Book Awards crowd video 29,224,960
Texas Monthly Awards video 144,375,808

Rob Johnson, author of The Lost Years of William S. Burroughs: Beats in South Texas and Bill Morgan, author of I Celebrate Myself: The Somewhat Private Life of Allen Ginsberg discuss beat identity and explore new facets to these authors’ lives that they’ve uncovered during their research.

This 15 minute podcast excerpt covers the most interesting parts of the panel.  The Texas Book Festival is a great event that is held every September in Austin, Texas.

Jim Ellinger podcast from Amman, Jordan AMARC conference

Here’s from the KLRU site cited above.

If LizLambert’s snappy hotel do-over and its resulting documentary film confirms that not all of old Austin should be considered sacred ground, then Nancy Higgins’ elegiac, heartfelt Viva Les Amis is the flipside of that particularly well-thumbed coinage.

Using footage filmed at and interviews with former employees, regulars, and assorted hangers-on of the late, lamented Les Amis Cafe (now, cruel irony, a Starbucks), Higgins’ film both mourns the passing of the UT area’s artistic and intellectual (and drunken) nexus and celebrates the plainly odd notion that a Parisian-style sidewalk cafe-cum-lifestyle could blossom so deep in the heart of Texas in the first place.

As for this third season of SXSW Presents, festival producer Matt Dentler notes, “The big difference is that we are expanding the episodes to include not just the films themselves but related conversations and panels with the filmakers and figures in the local film and arts community who will be hanging out, talking, and just kind of sharing their thoughts on the films.
The idea of this whole show in the first place was to try and bottle what an experience at a film festival – particularly South by Southwest – would be like. But on your television.”

The Last Days of the San Jose

Dir: Liz Lambert

October 10, 2006 · 9:00pm – 10:30pm

A loving portrait of the residents in an Austin motel, as it undergoes changes reflecting an American trend.

See the next project of the San Jose Hotel

“Some of you who are new to Austin may not know of SoCo’s previous life as a drug and crime infested sector of the city. The Last Days of the San Jose chronicles the transformation of the little motel from prostitute and junkie hangout to chic and trendy boutique hotel. The renovation of the San Jose helped spark the revival of South Congress into the fashionable neighborhood it has become today.

The movie will be showing tonight at the Alamo downtown. Afterwards we recommend heading over to the San Jose and having some drinks in their enjoyable outdoor patio.”

From the Original Alamo website:

LAST DAYS OF THE SAN JOSE
Theater: Alamo Downtown

Read the full Celluloid Eyes review here.

Start your tivos . . .

SXSW Presents

‘Last Days of the San José’

KLRU, The Austin Chronicle, and South by Southwest have teamed up for SXSW Presents, an independent film series airing Tuesdays at 9pm on Channel 18 (Time Warner Cable Channel 9). Hosted and co-produced by SXSW Film Producer Matt Dentler, the third season of the series runs through January. This week’s installment is Liz Lambert’s Last Days of the San José. For more information, see the Austin Chronicle Screens, and www.klru.org or www.sxsw.com.

The Austin City Limits Festival had near perfect weather for the 3 days of concerts by over 150 bands in Zilker Park.  Watch my pictures and even some mini-movies of Tom Petty’s closing act on day 3. I think you’ll enjoy these slide shows of the event.

ACL Festival photo album 9/15/2006
ACL Festival day 2 – 9/16 – coming
ACL Festival day 3 9/17/2006

The “Flaming Lips” were pretty outrageous and rolled a band member out to the audience in a giant balloon.