Excursions

SAN FRANCISCO--The atmosphere, predictably, was one of sunny world-changing collaboration as Twitter co-founders Biz Stone and Evan Williams took the stage on Wednesday morning for Chirp, the company's first-ever developer conference. The two spoke separately: Stone discussed the company's past, and Williams went into what it's working on to get to the next level.

They had to keep things positive. Much of the audience consisted of developers who aren't really sure what will happen to the flexible communication platform now that Twitter has begun announcing official mobile clients and rolling out an advertising program, dual moves … Read more

AUSTIN, Texas--It turned out to be just a rumor that Spotify CEO Daniel Ek would use his Tuesday keynote at the South by Southwest Interactive Festival (SXSWi) to announce that the streaming music service would be expanding from Europe to the U.S. Ek said onstage that the stars just aren't aligned yet, and that he would rather wait than launch a lackluster Spotify.

"The most important thing for us when it comes to the U.S. launch is the fact that we want to build the best product that we can," Ek said. "Here you … Read more

AUSTIN, Texas--Disco lights. Bubble machines. Big-name DJs. Ashton Kutcher.

Those are just a smattering of the things you would have seen on Monday night in downtown Austin, Texas, where two of the most talked-about parties of the South by Southwest Interactive Festival (SXSWi) were happening simultaneously. These would be, of course, the respective parties thrown by Foursquare and Gowalla, two start-ups offering very similar "geolocation" services. And at SXSWi, where everyone wants to know where everyone else is in instant real-time, this kind of social-networking app is going to be big.

Most people expected that SXSWi would see … Read more

AUSTIN, Texas--Some were wondering if Twitter's big Monday announcement at the South by Southwest Interactive Festival (SXSWi) would be an attempt to one-up Google in search ads. But, no: With its new @Anywhere technology, the company's real target may be Facebook's successful Facebook Connect.

The Twitter announcement was part of a talk by CEO Evan Williams that was, well, a bit vanilla. But people are excited by @Anywhere, which will be debuting soon on third-party partners like The New York Times, eBay, and Amazon. Though a lot of the details aren't yet clear, the basic explanation … Read more

AUSTIN, Texas--Twitter CEO Evan Williams took no time in getting to the juicy part of his keynote address at the South by Southwest Interactive Festival on Monday afternoon. He announced the "@Anywhere" platform, a way to pull Twitter links and data onto partner sites and media outlets.

A brief demo of @Anywhere showed off "hovercards" that bring up Twitter information with a mouse-over, let readers or users connect with their Twitter accounts much like Facebook Connect, or explore more specific possibilities, like instantly following a newspaper columnist's Twitter account by clicking on his or her … Read more

AUSTIN, Texas--It seems a little bit counterintuitive at first that one of the most prominent brands at the South by Southwest Interactive Festival (SXSWi), an annual gathering of all things digital-media, isn't a tech company in the least: it's PepsiCo, a food and beverage conglomerate originally founded in 1898.

The company, a top-tier sponsor of SXSWi, had set up two large-scale booths in the hallways of the Austin Convention Center, a "Podcast Playground" that hosted various events including its "Speakeasy" video blog series, and the "Refresh Cafe," a set of chill-out couches … Read more

AUSTIN, Texas--Music service Mog unveiled its first mobile application in a press conference Monday as part of the South by Southwest Interactive Festival. Called Mog All Access for Mobile, it'll be coming out as a $10/month subscription for the iPhone and Android platforms this spring and will feature access to on-demand streams of 7 million songs, radio stations, and what founder and CEO David Hymon described as "unlimited downloads to the phone, as part of the subscription, in ways that really succeed what others have done."

Downloads through the Mog app are possible even through the … Read more

AUSTIN, Texas--It would be very clear to an uninitiated bystander at the South by Southwest Interactive Festival (SXSWi) this week that the annual nerdstravaganza is full of people talking about a zillion location-based social-networking applications.

There are the various campaigns and tie-ins for rival check-in services Foursquare and Gowalla, the local-deals promo from iPhone app Whrrl, and the litany of "where is everyone?" mash-ups perhaps best personified by Vicarious.ly, an uber-aggregator of Foursquare and Gowalla check-ins from Austin as well as just about every other sort of social-media updates coming out of SXSWi. Developed by SimpleGeo, another … Read more

AUSTIN, Texas--Facebook envisions its technology as a powerful unifying force in the gaming world, games program manager Gareth Davis said to a packed house of eager coders at the social network's "Developer Garage" event on Sunday afternoon here. The get-together was held as part of the South by Southwest Interactive Festival (SXSWi), which drew developers and other tech enthusiasts from all over the world to Austin for the week.

"Facebook is a service that enables developers, like you, to make applications social everywhere, on as many platforms as possible, and we get some very interesting cross-platform … Read more