It’s that time of the year again…time to slide on your cowboy boots (only the most fashion forward ones, of course – we’re talking about Austin here), and perk up your listening ears, because SXSW is here.  We’re so excited to be attending the Interactive Conference in Austin, TX for our first time ever. We’ll be seeing all of the new films, listening to all the live bands, and checking out all the new gadgets and technology available, and of course, reporting back on everything that’s going on to you guys.

Each year South by Southwest (SXSW) conquers the film and music screenings by providing viewers with the most desired gadgets, eclectic music, and exposure of the hottest, up and coming creators. A staggering expectancy of over 12,000 people to attend the festival leads it to be single handedly one of the largest and highest revenue-producing music festivals in the country.  With the availability of listening to new bands, seeing new films, and testing out the newest technology…what’s holding you back from going?

Here are a few of the most talked about and anticipated events of the festival:

The Official SXSW Interactive Kick-Off, Sponsored by Ustream – Limited to the first 500 badge holders; experience the live performance of the Gym Class Heroes, Fall Out Boy’s Pete Wentz, and other special guest appearances.  The atmosphere itself is enough to want to attend…so get there early and see the show!

Mozilla SXSW Happy Hour Party – only available to the first 250 guests – so hurry up and don’t miss it!  Join Mozilla for drinks and appetizers at Cedar House and learn what’s going on in the world of web today.

Diggnation LIVE at The Bigg Digg Shindigg – Digg and Revision3 are performing live and for free at the well-known Stubbs BBQ on Saturday, March 13.  It’s going to be a combo of old school beats with new age rhythm.

All the events are within the same eight days with 1,400 reported artists playing in over 80 venues.  The overall focus of the festival is new directing talent which goes hand and hand with creative technology and innovative ideas.  Having the creative talent meet the potential consumer of film, song, album, video game, or website.  Click here to find out more information about each event; including times, places, and who is involved in each performance. Are you going to SXSW this year?  If so, what are you most excited for?

Technology is booming.

With technology’s growth and advancement increasing at an exponential rate, every month there is a new product to know about and want. This progress is leaving TV’s, desktops, landlines, paper charts, and large incision surgeries obsolete. People want the newest, flashiest, easiest, and fastest toys, creating an environment of survival of the fittest.

Evolution has been occurring over billions of years, creating RNA then DNA, cognition, motor coordination, and consciousness. From there, humans were able to invent the wheel, a written language, and technology. Now, however, our invention of new technological products is changing the traditional natural selection into technological selection. Technology has become so intertwined into our survival, with its ability to screen for diseases and treat people, that the concept of natural selection is no longer natural. A concept called ‘reverse biology’ is allowing technology to help save lives. This is seen by early detection and therefore treatment of diseases due to the ease of genetic sequencing, in vitro fertilization due to precise microscopes and techniques,  and treatment of certain diseases via gene targeting possible due to numerous collaborative advancements made within biotechnology. Now, people who would not have survived, can and people who would not have reproduce, will.

This progress is showing no sign of stopping as technology grows upon itself at an accelerating rate. No longer are the weak filtered out of society, rather it is all about survival of the fittest new technological toy.  These toys, in turn, are changing the course of our own survival.

[via TED]

We’re going casual with this TV on Tuesday, with a brief comedy clip about technology now, and technology in the future. It’s funny, but listen closely – it’s also thought probing (probing – that’s a scary word when thinking of tech of the future). Take a look, laugh, and let us know where you think tech is going. Will you be getting a chip implanted into your head in your lifetime?

Love watching reruns of Sex and the City, Entourage, Big Love, or Weeds–just to name a few? HBO is joining Comcast’s OnDemand Online Trial this summer enabling one to watch the channel’s epic movies and current TV shows online.  Comcast has agreed to take on this new website under its name because they want the company’s high-profile consumers, on the other hand, HBO wants the availability of Comcast’s consumers list to test out their new creation.

750 hours of content will be available provided by both networks, on Comcast.com and Fancast.com.  The website is said to include full-length episodes of current and classic television shows, movies, theatrical movies, and HBO Family programs.  Sounds like a steal? Well, don’t get too ahead of yourself, you have to already be a subscriber of HBO  or Cinemax through Comcast in order to gain access online.  But on the other hand, if you already are a paying customer of either of these three companies, there will be no additional fee for having onilne access. Will you still watch these shows unlimited on your computer when the website is up and running?  Or will you continue to relay on Hulu, Netflix, Youtube, or Epix? Do you think you will subscribe to HBO just for this access, or should it be more available to general public?

With the number of different social media interfaces that keep people connected, it’s not surprising that people are coming together at an increasing rate to work in collaboration. This, however, is a concept that has been in the scientific community since the beginning.  Take genetic engineering, for example.

Genetic engineers are literally just as their name suggests, engineers who work with genes. They are scientists who can essentially create new organisms, using smaller organisms such as yeast or bacteria, by changing the DNA sequence or expression within the creature. This allows them to create synthetic organisms that can do whatever they need, from smelling like bananas to creating electricity from sunlight.

These different attributes can literally be picked out of a database of DNA sequences that encode the desired function called the BioBrick and “snapped” together like Legos to create the desired affect. Literally, the protocol to generate an organism is to choose sequences of DNA, string them together, and insert them into the bacteria or yeast (of course, this is the highly simplified protocol).

Through this database of known sequences, scientists have been having much more successful results with more ease. This is only possible because of the collaboration seen among the scientific community in sharing the information they have learned in hopes of leading to a larger finding. Scientists take part in this endless progress, because it can lead to anything: from safe, clean batteries to banana smelling LCD screens.

The functionality is priceless, yet could be one day as easy as playing with Legos.

[via NYT]

In today’s especially humorous installment of TV on Tuesday, blogger and entrepreneur Seth Godin talks about the tribes we are involved in with in our daily lives.  He describes the changes that we experience every day in our social lives we experience.  The idea of tribes is a discussion about leading and connecting people with ideas.  Whether it be a spiritual or religious idea or a work/family ethics, they are ideas that bring social norms to our lives. This is a long one, but it’s worth it!  What tribes are you following and how are they affecting your life?

The new website Bundle allows you to see, in friendly, colored-bubble format, how people in your region are spending money on things like shopping, travel and leisure, house and home, health and family, and transportation. We put in our local area and found out that people are spending $649 (per month) on food and drink.  After this, you can click “go deeper,” at which point Bundle breaks it down further – people are spending $298 on dining out, and $351 on groceries.  Click “get stats” and it will tell you exactly where people are spending those $298: in our area, at Starbucks, Chili’s, Round Table and Peet’s, among others.  And while this is definitely interesting for our notoriously voyeuristic society (reality TV, anyone?) and perhaps even useful (you can use others’ spending in your area to more accurately access yours in comparison), is it also too much?  Bundle uses Citi credit card data in addition to third party information to be privy to what most people would consider to be very private information.  It’s just one example in a long list of uses for the internet that straddle the line between interesting and invasive:  GoogleMaps is useful to find where you’re going and check it out on Street View beforehand, but many have protested that Street View is an infringement of their privacy, and perhaps even a threat to their safety.  While Bundle isn’t threatening – no one can see where you’re specifically spending your money – is it heading in that direction?  Do you think the internet is leading to an utter loss of privacy?  What point do you think pushes the boundaries too far?

The media landscape has changed over time from the printing press to the telephone to radio waves that allowed TV and radio.  However, the internet is the first source of media that gives us the man-to-many conversation pattern, rather than the one-to-one pattern of the phone, or the one-to-many pattern of radio and television.  Everyone is a listener, everyone is a producer – it’s like having a phone that could turn into a radio if you pushed the right buttons.  Listen to Clay Shirky as he addresses how this powerful paradigm shift has affected how we receive news – from all around rather than the top down – and how that affects the workings of the world and the politics within it.  This is an amazing talk about the power of social media, and the power that social media endows people with.

Just how many of us have a Facebook account in the world? To even think about it you know the number is going to be astronomical; the question is “who doesn’t have a Facebook account?”  By December 2009, Facebook single handedly attracted 469 million visitors, putting them at the No.4 most viewed website in the world.  Sound like just a number to you?  More than 31 million people signed onto Facebook in December 2009 then in November – Yahoo had 31 million viewers in the entire year of 2009.  That’s right, Facebook had that many hits in just thirty-one days.  The social networking site is quickly climbing the ladder to becoming the third largest Web property in the world (booting out Yahoo as number three, and closely behind Google (No.1) and Microsoft (No. 2)).

All in all, Facebook has grown by almost 250 million viewers in 2009.  If Facebook continues to attract this number of people, it will surely pass Yahoo as the third most viewed website in the world by the end of 2010.  But how many viewers does it need to take on the No.2 and No.1 websites? To pass Microsoft, Facebook would need well over 727 million hits worldwide, and Google of 899 million viewers, which may take more time then the 11 months left to 2010.

On the other hand, Facebook surpasses both Yahoo and Microsoft in many other aspects.  For example, Facebook’s page views grew an estimated 141% last year to 193 billion in December, Yahoo only received 100 billion while Microsoft pulled in 109 billion.  Although Facebook passed these two head honchos, Google still holds the top spot for 274 billion a month. When all’s said and done, Facebook is making exceptional growth in today’s market of most viewed websites. So keep checking out your friends, updating your status and pictures, and let’s move Facebook to the number three spot!

People have been concerned since the initial creation of social media that it will disconnect us – that the digital world will replace the “real” world and as such, relationships will suffer.  Here, Stefana Broadbent argues the opposite.  She’s an ethnographer who studies human interaction, and her research shows how communication tecnology is capable of cultivating deeper relationships, bringing love across barriers like distance and workplace rules.  What do you think – do you think the internet enables or prevents intimacy?  How has it affected the relationships in your life?