AUSTIN, Texas--I'm in Austin for the South by Southwest Interactive Festival, finally. And I'm exhausted. Last night, some friends convinced me that it would be a good idea to watch the Syracuse-University of Connecticut basketball game on TV until the end, and if you read the sports section this morning, you'll know that it went into six overtimes. I was able to get, oh, three hours of sleep.
Apparently, "nerd bird" is SXSWi slang for an Austin-bound plane coming from a city like New York or San Francisco, where there would be plenty of geeks flocking to the conference. It's totally true.
My early-morning JetBlue flight from New York contained folks from Gawker, Mashable, AllThingsD, and CrunchGear. However, unlike a Thursday flight from San Francisco that happened to host Digg founder Kevin Rose, there was no flight attendant encouraging us all to Twitter upon arrival.
So what's the buzz right now? The weather is unseasonably chilly and rainy. The line to pick up conference badges is screamingly long, and I'm about to go deal with that. Friday has only a limited number of panels and discussions.
Beyond that, everyone seems particularly eager to just have some fun. And some cool SXSWi-centric games are popping up. A few days ago, something called SXSW Bingo started making the rounds. It's a sort of Bingo scavenger hunt for which players are tasked with taking mobile photos of targets that range from Robert Scoble to a Snuggie.
I've also heard that Paparazzi, an iPhone game from Socialbomb that attempts to rank players by fame stemming from how many times they show up in mobile photos, may be another time-waster of choice.
I wonder if wacky games, scavenger hunts, and other outside-the-conference shenanigans will have a bigger presence at SXSWi 2009 than they may have in the past. My reasons for thinking so are twofold.
First, given the economic conditions we're all dealing with, a lot of people in the tech and media industries are looking for something to ease the stress. I think that any out-of-work geek would smile at the fact that blogger Ariel Waldman is sporadically twittering the locations where she is giving away free cupcakes.
Second, SXSWi was big last year, and it's bigger this year. The quirky digerati who have traditionally dominated SXSWi's core may be looking for new ways to hang out, now that the conference has grown increasingly corporate.
My CBS Interactive colleague Andrew Mager is also at the conference, and he is currently playing a Twitter-organized game of "Assassins." I'm not quite sure how it works, but he has reported that he was kidnapped by rival players. Eek!
Well, the Golden Globe nominations are out and everyone's buzzing about how Tom Cruise's fat-suit performance in Tropic Thunder is up against the late Heath Ledger's turn as the Joker in The Dark Knight. (Gee, wonder which one will win.)
But on the Web, there's another set of awards announcements making the rounds. The AOL-owned meme-culture blog Urlesque has announced the winners of its first annual "Urlies." The goofy categories include "Make It Stop" (winner: Rickrolling), "Breakout of the Year" (winner: the "Puppycam" craze), and the "WTF of the Year" (winner: the photo of the "Montauk Monster").
The best part, however, is an Oscars-inspired tribute to the Internet's veritable glut of funny cat videos. Worth a watch, embedded below:
Pop singer Rick Astley had a huge hit with "Never Gonna Give You Up" 20 years ago. Now he's had a second wave of fame--and according to a fan site, it will culminate in a performance at MTV Europe's "EMA" ceremony, which takes place on November 6.
The campy, hip-wiggling video for "Never Gonna Give You Up" enjoyed newfound popularity when it became the center of the "Rickrolling" phenomenon--the sharing of a link that purported to be something else but was actually a link to the Astley video as hosted on YouTube. The craze was declared "totally over" after a surfeit of Rickrolls on April Fool's Day, but it kept going strong--one of the most high-profile gags involving the song was when pranksters flooded an online poll for the New York Mets' eighth-inning sing-along with "Never Gonna Give You Up."
The EMA awards, which are the equivalent of the U.S.'s MTV Video Music Awards, feature a "Best Act Ever" award, chosen by popular vote rather than judges, and it's been well-known for a while that Astley is the front-runner. Rumor has it, per an Astley fan site set up specifically for the "Best Act Ever" campaign, that not only will the British singer accept his award at the EMA event, he'll perform as well.
Astley's official Web site confirmed several weeks ago that he had been invited to appear at the ceremony (but not necessarily perform), and that the singer would give it "serious consideration." If the more recent rumors are any indicator, that "serious consideration" has amounted to a "yes."
A correction was made at 1:47 p.m. PT on Thursday. Astley's official Web site says he was invited to appear at the ceremony, but does not mention actually performing.
(Credit:
Dipity)
Timeline creator Dipity has finally been put to a completely awesome use: a user called "tatercakes" has created a timeline of fads and memes that have surfaced on the Internet since its earliest days. And, as far as I can see, almost nothing has been left out--if you're a Dipity member, you can add to the list.
Among the chronological listings are some memes that pre-date my knowledge of the Internet ("Trojan Room coffee pot"); a few classics like All Your Base, Hampsterdance, and Peanut Butter Jelly Time; and more recent ones like lolcats and Rickrolling. Don't know what those are? Check out the timeline.
There are also a few culturally significant moments that go beyond the Web, like Stephen Colbert's White House Press Correspondents Dinner speech in 2006. The pirated C-SPAN clip of that speech taught the media industry that it's tough to put a lockdown on video that everybody wants to see, taught the White House that you should really be familiar with a comedian's schtick before booking him for a speaking engagement, and taught millions of erstwhile American Luddites about the possibilities of YouTube.
Aside from that, the list does not yet include many of the people who have arguably turned into Internet memes themselves: digitally beloved politicians like Howard Dean in 2004 and Ron Paul earlier this year, a smattering of YouTube stars, and over-the-top bloggers like Perez Hilton.
But Sen. Ted Stevens' parodied, mocked, and dance-remixed "Series of Tubes" speech was the only really glaring omission I saw, aside from a few memes that are entirely too disgusting to mention in a family-friendly context (though be warned, a few gross-outs like "Goatse" are already on the list).
It also fails to mention, at least at this point, the latest Internet meme: the Internet meme timeline.
Urban travel blog Gridskipper has a great new list of geek hotspots in New York City: from bizarre curio shop Evolution, to comic culture megastore Forbidden Planet, to Barcade, which is exactly what you'd think it would be.
The list misses a few, like West Village gaming center Nyclan (coverage here) and the Manhattan outlet of Japan-inspired gallery and retail shop Giant Robot. But overall, this New Yorker thinks it's a decent and diverse selection that clearly indicates there's more for nerds to do around here than go for Water Taxi rides.
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