sxsw

For all the hype that Highlight received during SXSW Interactive, the app pretty much went silent when it came to the music part of the conference. Awareness of Highlight among techies was high, but it just never made it to the outside world. I'd like to say that this is surprising, but really, it's not.

Buzz apps seldom achieve osmosis between the tech world and the real world. Those that do sometimes find fame and fortune, but the majority just swirl around the industry vacuum before pivoting into oblivion. It's a problem.

One of the most basic … Read more

AUSTIN, Texas--Despite the success of Spotify and its competitors, music sharing still hasn't caught up to what Napster offered before being neutered by the courts, that service's founders, Sean Parker and Shawn Fanning, said today.

During a on-stage discussion at South by Southwest here, Parker and Fanning argued that though new technologies and licensing models finally allow music lovers to legally access and discover vast collections of songs online, even the best new services are still philosophically behind what Napster originally offered its users.

Parker, who appeared earlier this week alongside former U.S. vice president Al Gore … Read more

The guys at Chaotic Moon are on a roll. Literally.

First, they wowed CES with their Board of Awesomeness, a Microsoft Kinect-powered skateboard that the rider controls with various gestures. They parlayed that into a shopping cart that can follow you around a grocery store, scan your groceries, and possibly even check you out automatically. But all that was just January's work.

These days, the Austin-based Chaotic Moon Lab--the R&D arm of the larger studio--has taken the same skateboard I rode in Las Vegas in January and made a few X-Men-style modifications. Now it's powered by your mind.

The obviously named Board of Imagination integrates a neuroheadset from a company called Emotiv, with a Samsung tablet running Windows 8, which is in turn connected to the skateboard's motor. The headset translates thought into electrical circuitry that's routed through the tablet, into the motor, and powers the board. Simply put, you think--it goes. … Read more

A nexus tablet, Instagram is here, but not really and google fails to entertain, all that and more on this week's episode of Android Atlas Weekly for March 14th, 2012.

NEWS:

Jessica Dolcourt with the Samsung Galaxy S II on US Cellular -Samsung Galazy S II

-Google Pin Frenzy

-Google’s entertainment strategy is in disarray

-Android Tablets Will Overtake iPad by 2015, IDC Says… Read more

AUSTIN, Texas--Looking out the window of my hotel this afternoon, just across from the convention center here where thousands of South by Southwest attendees have been swarming like ants for days, I saw something altogether new.

Very thin people in with long hair and tight black pants carrying musical instruments were, if not everywhere, then all over the place.

Welcome to the annual population changeover as SXSW Interactive ends and SXSW Music begins.

Technically, those two sides of the festival (there's also SXSW Film, which lasts for ten full days) don't overlap, as Interactive ends today and Music … Read more

PayPal introduced a redesigned digital wallet at SXSW 2012 in Austin on Tuesday, which is promised to launch this spring.

Some of PayPal's new digital wallet amenities go beyond just payments, but rather reinforce the platform as a one-stop shop for mobile commerce in general.

For example, users will be able to create personal lists for different shopping situations as well as create budgets by purchase amounts and other metrics.

Then there are a lot of other features that carry over from PayPal's browser platform such as being able to switch from one funding source stored in your … Read more

Every startup CEO, founder, or co-founder hopes that this year, South by Southwest will be the event that turns them into the next Twitter, Foursquare, or Beluga. They come to Austin, Texas, in search of exposure, new friends, more money, and parties (of course). This year, CNET's Brian Tong and I sat down to talk to a few of the companies we thought were interesting--out of the many, many, many others that are also interesting, don't get us wrong.

From our interview home at the Thirsty Nickel, we spoke with Dave Morin, the CEO of Path, who assured … Read more

commentary AUSTIN, Texas--If you've been reading South by Southwest-centered blogs over the last 24 hours, you've probably gotten a sense of the outrage over what's being called the "homeless hot spots" program.

If you don't know what that's about, let me catch you up. A marketing agency sent some Austin homeless folks out on the streets, wireless hot spots in tote, with the idea that SXSW attendees in desperate search of Wi-Fi would pay a few bucks for the connectivity and for the chance to help out someone in need.

Some of the … Read more

AUSTIN, Texas--Former U.S. vice president Al Gore and Facebook's founding president Sean Parker argued passionately today that online communities must use the powerful tools at their disposal to save American democracy.

At South by Southwest (SXSW) here, Gore and Parker took the stage to tell an adoring crowd of several thousand that though they should be proud of the mass Internet activism that derailed the Stop Online Piracy Act (SOPA), there is still a huge amount of work to be done if Americans want to keep special interests from perpetually forcing their agendas down society's throat.

Fortunately, … Read more