parties

"We're going to be giving away, literally, hundreds of tacos," Josh Williams, founder of mobile networking start-up Gowalla, said to CNET in an interview last week about his company's plans for the annual South by Southwest Interactive Festival (SXSWi), which runs March 12-16 in Austin, Texas.

"We're bringing, like, playground-style balls and chalk," said Dennis Crowley, the co-founder of Gowalla rival Foursquare. "You'll be able to win prizes at ad-hoc foursquare games that you see around the convention center."

Eighteen months ago, neither Gowalla nor Foursquare existed. But their similar &… Read more

Molly, Jason, and I are headed to Austin, Texas, for South by Southwest festival again this year and, of course, we wouldn't miss the chance to have another meetup. This year, the folks at Squarespace were nice enough to offer to set it all up for us.

Meet us at Malverde at 5 p.m. Central Time for drinks, food, pictures, BOL stickers, and more. You can get all the details like directions and things at the official Eventbrite meeting invite.

SAN FRANCISCO--The "gospel according to Goldberg." Turns out it can't be found in a local synagogue, Jewish deli, or Rube Goldberg device, though a couple of us puzzling through treasure hunt clues Saturday night were stubbornly stuck on those ideas.

If you're thinking more along the lines of churches and singing nuns, we want you on our team next year.

The Goldberg gospel was just one hint in the Tech Search Party, a semi-geeky scavenger hunt set in San Francisco's Noe Valley and organized to benefit the neighborhood's Alvarado Elementary School, which needs a technology boost. One-third of the classrooms there don't have working computers; many that do work are held together with duct tape, according to Tim Smith, the event's creator.

About 250 people descended on the normally quiet little Noe with flashlights (or flashlight apps) to solve as many clues as possible in two hours and score prizes like Geeknet gift certificates, Electronic Arts games, a date with Kara Swisher of AllThingsD (PR teams only), and, of course, bragging rights.

Smartphones were essential to the endeavor, as Web searches were needed to decipher clues like "cost $45,499 in year of Beverly Cleary's birth" (answer: the San Francisco Library in Noe, which was built in 1916), or 1:3.226 (answer: the grade of the steepest street in San Francisco: 22nd between Church Street and Vicksburg).

My team, the "Noe-it-Alls" (a runner-up for best team name, I might brag), joined 50 other teams with names like "Several Sassy Sleuths," "Is Our Children Learning?" and "Indominable Immersion Mamas" (Alvarado offers language immersion programs).

On hand were family and friends of Alvarado students; random geeks who learned of the event via Twitter or were recruited from lines for the Google and Apple commuter buses that swing through Noe Valley to take employees to work; candidates for San Francisco supervisor; and even Tyler Hinman, winner of the 2009 American Crossword Puzzle Tournament. The "Scribble Monkeys" team included CNET's Rafe Needleman of Webware fame and former CNET.com Editor in Chief Steve Fox.

My team consisted of Tom and Rayna, parents of Alvarado students and owners of a Palm Treo and Motorola Q, respectively; Jonathan, who brought along his semi-functional Motorola Razr from 1913; and me, with my little ol' Samsung Alias 2. Needless to say, Rayna and Tom did the Web searching. … Read more

It should come as no surprise to Nintendo that third-party developers are beginning to complain about the company's online presence (or lack thereof). In fact, they're calling the company out. In a time when a game's online component is nearly as important as its single-player campaign, the online offering for the Wii is simply not up to par.

From the confusing 16-digit friend codes that must be shared for matchmaking to the lack of localized promotion, Nintendo has not made it clear that the company takes online gaming seriously. Sure, the Virtual Console is solid and there … Read more

You will, no doubt, be plagued this holiday season by real-time conversations from real-time annoyances who claim to be members of your family. You will, therefore, be tempted to indulge in some excessive real-time drinking that might, just might, affect your sense of, well, the real time, the real place, even the real country you are inhabiting.

However, you will, I hope, be delighted that some very enterprising people have considered your plight and decided to offer you the latest hangover cures in real time. All you need to do is to have your smartest phone about your person at … Read more

NEW YORK--What's it like to watch a dot-com mogul spend $1 million? Well, it's sort of nice when it's going to a good cause.

On Monday night, at the annual benefit gala for the nonprofit Charity Water, Bebo founder Michael Birch, one of the event's co-hosts along with the likes of Twitter co-founder Jack Dorsey and entrepreneur Sean Parker, made a surprise announcement. Shortly before the event's live auction to solicit donations for new wells, Birch declared that he would personally match all donations up to $1 million.

Charity Water, a favorite cause of the dot-com set, … Read more

NEW YORK--The line on Wednesday night snaked outside the New York Stock Exchange building as a swarm of marketing, advertising, and other media types waited to get into the party that AOL was throwing on the trading floor to mark its spin-off from Time Warner. Onlookers weren't really sure what the big deal was.

An evening commuter walked past, craning his neck up at the massive AOL-logo banner--yes, the one with the fuzzy blue monster on it--and asking a few of the people in line, "Why's AOL having a party?"

"Spinning off from Time … Read more

The Nintendo Wii might be leading the video game market, but at least one game developer is suspect of its software.

Lightning Fish Games CEO Simon Prytherch sat down with GamesIndustry.biz in a recent interview discussing his company and the state of the gaming industry. Lightning Fish Games develops "family-oriented" games for major consoles.

After discussing what he has learned about the industry, he shared his opinion on the state of the Wii and its market.

"Wii is a very casual, wide market," Prytherch said in the interview. "It's a market that doesn'… Read more

It's not hard to throw together a fondue party. All you need are a few friends, some easy-melting ingredients, and bread, fruit, or something of the like to dip in it. Oh, there's one more thing that would make the evening go down as easy as a vat of melted cheese or chocolate: the fondue pot. Even if you have such a device, creating the velvety centerpiece would probably require the use of a saucepan on the stovetop. That is, unless you have a fondue pot that does double duty.

The All-Clad Fondue Pot with Cast Aluminum Insert … Read more