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

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

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

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.

Turns out it’s an iPhone on steroids that Apple plans to release a couple of months after the iPhone.  Turns out it’s a book reader and an Google rss feed reader / browser all rolled in to one.

Because of some new screen technology, it’s readable in *direct sunlight* – which I can’t do very well on my Sprint phone. It never needs to be turned off.

The Apple exec grabbed it back from Scoble when he stumbled across “Steve Jobs blog”.

Anyway the Scoble blog entry is here.  Leave it to Scoble to stumble on to the summer’s biggest scoop while hanging out at a shoreline seafood restaurant.

On Monday, Scoble will be on CNN with Kathy Sierra and Chris Locke talking about the week’s dismal events in the threats to bloggers saga.

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

“

“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.

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.

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. 

My idea for the movie biz challenge.

Take the best of the Alamo Draft House concept of having food and drink served on counters at your seat and merge it with a low key touchscreen at each seat for ordering food and products, and roll in a perpetual “film festival” ambience and theme.

I can elaborate on all these in detail if you’re interested.

I have a friend in Austin who owns the old Aquarius movie theater in South Austin and he’s looking for a revival of it.  This would be an ideal test bed.

You’ve covered the kids and rowdy cell phone users.  This would be for the rest of us.  The SXSWers, the boomers, the quiet crowd.

I think I’ve got your answer.

Ok, blog reader if you’re scratching your head I need to fill you in on a little background.  Over the last few days, Mark Cuban has issued a “movie business challenge”.  It’s … well, here it is:

This is an open challenge. You come up with a solution, you get a job. Seriously.

This is the problem that consumes me more than what Free Agent we are going to sign. How to get the NBA to get their act together. Which 7-11 Im going to run by to get a sandwich. Its that important.

Only HDNet takes more time out my day than trying to solve this problem. Its the holy grail of the movie business. How do you get people out of the house to see your movie without spending a fortune. How can you convince 5 million people to give up their weekend and go to a theater to see a specific movie without spending 60mm dollars.

For those of you doing the math. You are right. Its not unusual to spend 8, 10 , 12 dollars PER PERSON that goes to a movie in the opening weekend. Shoot, its not unusual for studios to spend that much per person to get people to go to the theater through a movies entire run !

How crazy is it to spend more on marketing than the revenue recieved when they go to the movie ? Its double crazy because that revenue is split with the theater. So if a studio spends 12 bucks to get someone to go to the theater, they might only be getting 4 dollars back in return.

You would think that there has to be a better way than spending 1x, 2x, 3x or more times the initial revenue received opening weekend or week  ? Right ?

For all of you thinking that there are other downstream revenues such as PPV, DVD, TV, whatever….no shit. Yes, those revenue streams will benefit from the initial spend, but they dont make the economics of getting people into theaters any less frightening.

We are looking at affiliate programs. So people with lots of myspace or other social network friends  could get a buck or 2 or 3 if someone goes from their myspace page directly to fandago, moviefone, movietickets.com etc and buys a ticket to a film of ours prior to its release. Get 100 friends to buy tickets to a movie, get a 100 bucks from us.

We are looking at other similar ideas.

We already do movie marketing 101. We do buzz marketing. We put up videos all over the net. We set up websites, myspace accounts for the movies and its characters, we work with movie forums, we buy ads, etc, etc, etc. If its been done before, we are doing it.

So if you want a job, and have a great idea on how to market movies in a completely different way. If your idea works for any and all kinds of movies. If it changes the dynamics and the economics of promoting movies, email it or post it. If its new and unique, i want to hear about it. If its a different way of doing the same thing you have seen before, it probably wont get you a job, but feel free to try.

So go for it. Come up with a great idea that i want to use and I will come up with a job for you to make that idea happen.

for real.

source http://www.blogmaverick.com/

Alp d’Huez – the first major climbs of the Tour de France

So today is Alp D’Huez and I’m watching on OLN.  This is Floyd Landis chance to put his stamp on the Tour de France.  But there are many challengers.  Usually, the Tour the winner of today’s stage goes on to win the Tour de France.

Yesterday the flying Australian Robbie Mcewen won the sprint and Thor Hushovd got “relegated” to 148th place, I guess for pushing the guy next to him near the finish. Pooh!

Floyd Landis is playing it cool riding in the “safety zone” outside of the dense peloton. Phonak is riding out in front most of the time. Today’s stage 5, which covers 225 kilometres or 139.81 miles to the city of Caen in Normandy, presents the 172 riders left in the race with only four modest climbs and is likely therefore to end in another mass sprint to the finish.

1 kilometer = 0.621371192 miles

World road race champion Tom Boonen of Belgium had been expected to rule the stages, but his best showing so far has been a second place on Monday. The 25-year-old sprint specialist for the Quick Step team has been upstaged by last year’s Tour de France sprint champion Robbie McEwen, who won his second stage of this year’s Tour on Wednesday and took over the green jersey of the sprint points leader.

However, when Thursday’s stage got under way, Boonen was still dressed in the Tour de France’s most important color, the yellow jersey signifying the leader in the overall standings. He leads another sprinter, Australian Michael Rogers, by 1 second, with American George Hincapie 5 seconds behind in third place. The standings are not likely to change much until Saturday’s 52- kilometre individual time trial, which may go some way towards revealing the contenders for this year’s Tour de France title.

If at first you don’t succeed, keep on trying. This was the motto of Matthias Kessler who stuck to his guns and won the classic stage from Esch-dur-Alzette in Luxembourg to Valkenberg in Holland.

 The previous day he had been wiped out just 50 years from the line, but not this time. It seems a lot of riders were tired after over 10 hours beneath a very hot sun in the past two days.  But behind the joy of a German winner, the was a lot of sadness as Alejandro Valverde, Fred Rodriguez and Eric Dekker all left the race with broken bones. Fred is the main lead-out man from the US for Aussie Robbie McEwen.   Fast Freddy, as he is known fell badly with Dekker and first reports say that he broke his wrist while Dekker has done the same to some teeth. All three were personalities that the race badly needs, but the loss of Valverde means the loss of a real overall favourite.  This, ironically, will favour the fortunes of American favourites George Hincapie, Floyd Landis and Levi Leipheimer, who today saw a danger man leave the Tour.

end quote

This year’s Tour de France, man.  A lot of broken men, broken bones, doping allegations, Lance sitting at home in Austin.  What’s going on?  I’m watching this year, and pulling for Hincapie, Landis, Leipheimer and the Norwegian Thor Hushov (it’s in my blood).

• Mason Arnold, Austin Organic
• Tom Brown, Stuffopolis
• Neelan Choksi, Solar Metric
• Nickie Freedman, The Legal Lady
• Bijoy Goswami, The Human Fabric
• Joel Greenberg, Friends Talking
• Steve Harper, The Ripple Effect
• Daniel Hedrick, Esoterika
• Scott Ingram, Network in Austin
• Alan Kleymeyer, Kleymeyer
• Jon Lebkowsky, Weblogsky
• Steven List, Looking in Blind Spots
• Brian Massey, Customer Chaos
• Enrique Ortiz, Mobility
• Ryan Pitylak, Bootstrap Student
• Pat Scherer, Tech Marketing
• David Swedlow, Metastorming
• Tee Double, HipHop Bootstrapper

TourWatch 2005, a television viewing party for the Tour de France, will be held in Austin, Texas at Central Market from July 2 though July 24. Central Market is at 4001 N Lamar in Austin, Texas.  The event website is http://touroftexas.com

The Friday June 24 issue of Austin’s major metropolitan newspaper has an article called Central Market to be Lance Central.  The Austin Statesman site is doing a comprehensive Tour coverage section.

The Austin Podcasting Network TourWatch 2005 is being produced by the Tour of Texas  The event sponsored by Grande Communications,  Circuit City, Trek Sports Drink, 24 Hour Lance Armstrong Fitness Center, Central Market, the Spring, and the Tour of Texas (coming in the Fall, a bicycle adventure excursion around Central Texas).   

The TourWatch 2005 will  be showing the Tour de France on two 61″ large screen, high definition televisions compliments of Circuit City. The TourWatch 2005 crew of podcasters, radio announcers and telecasters will bring your their own commentary and spin on the Tour which will be broadcast at the event and podcast over the Internet. 

The Discovery Channel is sending a 3 person crew to produce a documentary on the TourWatch 2005 Event and on Austin’s support of Lance in the Tour.  Austin’s KEYE TV 42 will be doing a special newscast to be called “Austin Prepares for the Tour” on June 23. Newsweek will be featuring a piece on Austin’s TourWatch 2005 in the June 26 issue.

TourWatch 2005 will feature a daily podcast and radio and tv show spots with many local celebrities from the sports, fitness, radio, tv, blogging, podcasting and entertainment communities. 

Representatives of the local bicycling, swimming, running, triathlon and fitness communities are going to have tables at the event where they will give out information on upcoming events (eg. marathons, bike races, etc).

The podcasters will be interviewing local Austinites who are following the race and will be doing interviews with Tour enthusiasts around the world via phone and skype.  The interviews will be carried over the PA System at the event and syndicated over the Internet in the form of podcasts which Tour followers will be able to subscribe to.

If you want to be a podcast star, come by our podcast table at the event, and we’ll set you up behind a microphone and help you create your own podcast.  Or we’ll interview you if you are a Lance fan or Tour de France enthusiast. We’ll be doing video interviews for television and video podcasts in high definition tv.  So if you want to be a tv star, come by our booth and record an interview or do your own little show. Sponsorships are available for this event, call 512-699-4000 for details. 

Contact: Paul Terry Walhus 512.699.4000 or Stephen Dulaney 512.785.4701
email: touroftexas@touroftexas.com website http://touroftexas.com      

About 3–4 weeks ago we launched a site call http://web2.0slides.com and it got a surprising instant response.  It’s a slide show of 1,400 of the top new web 2.0 web sites.  Within two days of in house launch, we started getting blogged, listed, rated, linked to and buzzed about and we couldn’t figure out why.  Then we realized it was because we were getting noticed in referral logs by the web masters whose sites we were showcasing in our slideshow.

We’re planning several major releases of http://web2.0slides.com , http://tagslides.com and http://sportslides.com which will expand the idea of web2.0slides into all other major topics and categories that we can develop.

If you’re skilled in php, mysql, javascript, iframes, flash and have an understanding of new web 2.0 technologies, social networking, social bookmarking (a la http://stumbleupon.com , http://del.icio.us http://technorati.com and are knowledgeable about the blogosphere contact us!

Take a look at who is linking to us!

About 3–4 weeks ago we launched a site call http://web2.0slides.com and it got a surprising instant response.  It’s a slide show of 1,400 of the top new web 2.0 websites.  Within two days of in house launch, we started getting blogged, listed, rated, linked to and buzzed about and we couldn’t figure out why.  Then we realized it was because we were getting noticed in referral logs by the webmasters whose sites we were showcasing in our slideshow.

We’re planning several major releases of http://web2.0slides.com , http://tagslides.com and http://sportslides.com which will expand the idea of web2.0slides into all other major topics and categories that we can develop.

If you’re skilled in php, mysql, javascript, iframes, flash and have an understanding of new web 2.0 technologies, social networking, social bookmarking (a la http://stumbleupon.com , http://del.icio.us http://technorati.com and are knowledgeable about the blogosphere contact us!

Take a look at who is linking to us!

Lance Amstrong News on our Blog – The “docureality” show produced by the Discovery Networks Travel Channel will air on Thursday night, Dec 22 on channel 58 (Grande Communications) and channel 33 (Time Warner).

Many local Austin media outlets carried coverage of this event. On the last day of the Tour de France several thousand people showed up to cheer Lance on and sign several giant yellow cards that the Outdoor Life Network brought to the event.

Here’s the email from producer Bill Delano about the event

Hey Ya´ll~ Tune in tomorrow night for my first film, “Chasing Lance: a Fans Story”!!! Its a great show, was a thrilling adventure and will forever stand as testament to what two friends can do with a camcorder, computer, and a dream.

Here’s the TV Guide sum up: Join five Americans on an emotion packed thrill ride as they chase the Tour all around France supporting their hero in his seventh and final ride. These are true fanatics who do far more than vacation, they redefine what it means to be a true Fan.

Let everyone know and check it out on the Travel Channel on Thursday, December 22 at 8 and 11pm EST (7 and 10 pm CST).