nightlife

Last month, digital jukebox purveyor TouchTunes announced a new Web-based service that lets users create playlists at home and then access them later at nearly any location with one of the company's jukeboxes. The service is called MyTouchTunes and it aims to provide a fun, social way to interact with music for a night out on the town. (Of course, you'll have to find a place where it works first.)

Now, the company has launched MyTouchTunes Mobile, an iPhone app that lets you access all the features of the service from the palm of your hand. The app … Read more

Jukeboxes have populated local watering holes for decades, providing countless hours of entertainment for patrons. Now that nearly every place has a network connection--and just about any song you'd ever want to hear is available online--the digital jukebox is slowly replacing the traditional vinyl-spinning models (for better or worse).

One of the largest providers for pay-to-play music via digital jukeboxes is TouchTunes, which offers both the hardware and the music to go with it. Now, the company is expanding its purview to include a Web-based service called MyTouchTunes, which lets users create playlists at home and then access them later at nearly any location with a TouchTunes jukebox.

The service is straightforward enough in concept if not quite in site design. The interface isn't terrible, but it could use a little tweaking. For example, you have to search for music to add to a playlist--not the worst, but it would be nice to be able to click an add button from the playlist itself, and then be presented with a search option on just that page. Navigating is easy enough, with the myMusic button in the left nav and the location search in the right column being the most immediately useful options. There's also a Create a Playlist box on the right shoulder, and this could stand to be more prominent (I'd also like to see it integrated directly into the myMusic space).… Read more

NEW YORK--Tuesday evening was the first night on the job for at least one of the waitresses at the brand-new Standard Hotel, a Los Angeles import straddling the about-to-open High Line elevated park in Manhattan's downtown Meatpacking District. And it must have been quite the trial by fire when several dozen unexpected patrons showed up for an impromptu Internet Week New York gathering.

That's the thing about Internet Week. It has no centralized location, and events can vary wildly by geography. (It seems like half the panels and conferences are in midtown hotels and the other half are … Read more

I ended up spending the Memorial Day holiday weekend in Las Vegas, a city in which I do not set foot particularly often. When I wasn't partaking in my preferred activity of lounging by the hotel pool with a good book and a pina colada (yes, that's right, I don't gamble), I decided to test-drive a new iPhone app. Namely, it's the free app from lifestyle e-newsletter UrbanDaddy, which hit the iTunes App Store earlier this week.

UrbanDaddy--which operates city-specific newsletters for New York, Chicago, San Francisco, Las Vegas, Miami, and Los Angeles, as well as … Read more

AUSTIN, Texas--Over a lunch of fajitas at the Iron Cactus restaurant Sunday, one of my friends here at the South by Southwest Interactive Festival shrugged and said, "I'm just not into the party scene this year. It's all a little weird."

I had to concur. SXSWi, after all, is known for its wild parties. But two nights in, I've clocked in a total of 20 minutes at them before opting to hang out elsewhere, and I'm not the only one.

There are obviously a ton of people going to this year's bashes--the line … Read more

This is part three of a four-part series. Here are part one and part two.

Surprise: Despite budget cuts and a general malaise about making a big, bubbly scene when loads of people in the tech industry are out of work or in danger of losing their jobs, there are still a ton of parties at the South by Southwest Interactive Festival, which starts Friday in Austin, Texas. There will be fewer open bars for sure; nevertheless, rest assured that you'll still be able to find far more nightlife options than you could possibly want. They do refer to … Read more

Trendy men's newsletter Thrillist has already shown its penchant for giving the middle finger to all things recession-related, whether it be chartering party planes or throwing '90s-dot-com bubble-theme parties (granted, both of those stunts preceded the Wall Street meltdown by a few months). But the New York-based start-up may be savvier than its big-pimpin' image would have you think.

The latest move from the company is a monthly compendium called Thrillist Invites, which is a listing of stuff you can do for free, if you sign up and RSVP. The first Thrillist Invites list will be for its New … Read more

Buzzd, a mobile service focused on "real-time" reviews of bars and restaurants, says it's making some inroads in the tough, crowded location-based networking market.

The New York-based start-up is set to release numbers on Thursday announcing that 1.2 million venues are now listed in its directory, 10 percent of which were added by users. As for demographics, about 80 percent of Buzzd's users (it doesn't provide specifics on active users) are in the U.S., concentrated around cities like New York and Los Angeles, with another 10 percent in Europe and 10 percent in … Read more

Youth-oriented mobile carrier Helio announced Wednesday that it has launched a bar and restaurant search site through a partnership with Buzzd, which also powers the mobile sites for local events and entertainment services like TimeOut New York, and Flavorpill.

Helio's new service, which is ad-supported, lets people in major U.S. cities search on the mobile Web site--linked from the home page of the carrier's browser--for bars, clubs, and restaurants. Most of the data will be pulled from Buzzd partners like Flavorpill, TimeOut, and the IAC-owned Citysearch. Added on, however, will be "event feeds" with specific … Read more