Category: sxsw

While we can't show you video of the app for iPhone known as Opera Mini, I did get a chance to briefly play around with it. The SXSW trade show floor has terrible WiFi (at times), and as a result, I think the speed might have been affected. That said, in some cases I found the Opera Mini app to be a faster browser than mobile Safari. Truthfully, Opera's 90% compression of content on sites ...

I ran into Guy Kawasaki, Jay Cuthrell and Nicholas Bonsack and asked them about their impressions of SXSW this year. Granted, Guy had just walked in the door... But Jay and Nicholas discuss a few panels they attended. Thanks guys! ...

When TUAW went to Macworld, we had a chance to test Betwext, and I have to say it worked like a charm. Think SMS meets AIM and you get the idea: sign up on Betwext as a group and, when you text one number, it sends a text to a group with your name attached. It's easy and useful in certain cases. Yes, not in all cases, but for things like ad hoc group coordination when nothing but a text message ...

Genius appears to bridge the gap between CRM tools and online marketing efforts. Yes, it automates your push across various social networks and online services (YouTube, Facebook, Twitter, etc.). It also focuses on generating demand and engagement, and tracking your efforts along with lead generation. What it boils down to is tracking conversations on these sites via trackable links. A novel ...

I ran into Cali as she just hit the show floor so the only thing she'd seen that caught her eye was the OWLE bubo (covered here on TUAW). But she was shooting video of the floor as well that I'm sure will wind up on GeekBrief.TV. What's up with everyone showing up late to SXSW? ...

There are plenty of ways to spread your content around on social networks, but the tools are designed for individuals or, at best, can be hacked to work with small business needs. SocialTALK, by Syncapse, is a real business solution for companies needing to manage numerous networks for numerous brands. Instead of having a silo for each individual effort, SocialTALK allows access controls, ...

There are quite a few social media plays at SXSW this year, and the name of the game is analytics. Once you go beyond the hype of social media, marketers who decide to use it for promotion need to know what the return on their investment will be. Social Toaster automates some of the work, and provides analytics to track how many people are actually finding and sharing your stuff online via the ...

Digital graffiti is all over SXSW 2010. This year the SXSW digital graffiti is in full force. Stickybits.com is handing out stickers with barcodes you can affix to any surface with corresponding media of your choosing tied to the barcode. These stickers are everywhere. Over the urinals. On random walls --- no rhyme or reason. The one behind me now has a photo taken from the couch inside the ...

I took a whirlwind tour of the Microsoft booth and essentially got a quick demo of some things we've covered before, including Photosynth and Windows 7. Still, it's always nice to see what features you might have missed or features MS thinks you should really pay attention to. In this case they are very proud of their touch support and data-driven application support. Something like Photosynth ...

The panels have only just begun at SXSW (you can find a list of day one interactive events here), but I took a quick stroll through the Austin Convention Center earlier today and grabbed some pics of how many people are here (spoiler alert: a ton) and some shots of the Seed booth. Again, if you're on the ground in Austin you can write your takeaway from any interactive panel you attend via this ...

The Interactive portion of SXSW is March 12-16, and Download Squad will be covering the event a little differently this year. We'll still have videos from developers, designers and business leaders, but in addition, we'll be harnessing the power of the crowd via Seed to cover the core takeaway from as many panels and conversations as possible. If you're interested in covering SXSW Interactive ...

At SXSWi 2008, Grant and I met Jason Reneau, the founder and CEO of MindBites, a platform and marketplace for video lessons. We were really impressed with the MindBites vision last year. When we met up with them this year, it was awesome to see how far the community, the site and the market for quality video tutorials has come. Today, MindBites is launching the Screencast 4 Cash contest ...

Each year at SXSW, there's that one service that people go mad about. This year, most people seem to be loving foursquare - however one of the neatest services I discovered (perhaps unsurprisingly at one of the many parties) is Contxts. Currently in public 'alpha', the service lets you share contact details using just your mobile phone and an SMS. Once you've registered (for free) on the Contxts ...

At last year's South by Southwest Christina caught up with technology super-hero Guy Kawasaki to talk about his venture Alltop (which we've previously covered here at Download Squad). This year, we were fortunate enough to chat with Guy about the new MyAllTop area that lets you build a custom collection of your favorite feeds that are listed on the AllTop site on your own personalized page. ...

When our own we met up with Darin Fisher of Google's Chrome team, we had exactly one question on our mind, "Where's Chrome for Mac?" Darren shares some answers, encourages you to try out nightly builds, and laments the lack of Chrome for Linux (coming soon-ish.. ) in this short interview. ...