sxsw Archive

Ribbit was acquired by BT last summer. In this SXSW interview, Jolie O’Dell chats with Raymond Lee of Ribbit and the two discuss the shrinking divide between computers and mobile devices, the need to bring telephony to interactivity online, and the future of brain chips.

Jolie O’Dell met with the HostMySite team at SXSW. HostMySite created the "fastest server in the world’. No, it’s not a triple quad core processor with 185 gig ram and a 50,000 TB hard drive. It’s a motorcycle that has a server inside. I guess it makes it easy to get service- they can just drive the server to the help desk.

What would have really made the promo pop was to hire a famous motorcycle driver and get a strip of the street blocked off for a few races back-and-forth.

Check out Jolie’s video below to see what the motorcycle server is all about:

Blurb is a tool that helps you create your own printed books. It reminds me a bit of NY-based SharedBook. Blurb helps you create books in a variety of sizes and styles including softcover and hardcover. They say the books are bookstore-quality in quality and flexibility. Book pricing starts at $4.95 and go up to $54.95. 

Jolie O’Dell sits down with Mike from Blurb to learn more about how Blurb works:

TechSet has held a few parties at SXSW and was one of the sponsors of the blogger lounge. Jolie O’Dell caught up with one of the TechSet founders, Brian Solis, to discuss what TechSet is, how it works and the cities that TechSet has visited. They also discuss the convergence of online and offline relationships.

In the SXSW 2009 session “How to Protect Your Brand Without Being a Jerk,” panelists cautioned brands to police trademark violation while still protecting PR by practicing flexibility and communication when it comes to new media law.

In the age of user-generated content, sharing, remixing, mashing-up, and even simply referring to copyrighted content has landed both brands and users in a world of hurt.

What panelists called a “folk understanding” of the Digital Millenium Copyright Act and traditional media law have given rise to large-corporate paranoia in the gray areas of new media content publication. Misunderstandings of Internet culture as well as trademark infringement have lead to heavy-handed policing of content and trademark use, often leading to online PR debacles.

“You become known as the brand that sues,” said panelist Oren Bitan of HIQI Media.

Read more at Adrants.

Welp, my third SXSW has come and gone and each year the days fly by. They say that if time moves fast you are having a good time. And a good time I had. The interactive festival did seem more subdued than previous years. As in years past, the best part was meeting CN readers and making new contacts. Nearly every conversation I participated in was intelligent and I’ve learned a lot from the overall festival. I can’t speak to the party scene as I didn’t hit many of them. I handed out hundreds of CN stickers!

I was asked by a reporter if there was a breakout product or service this year and my answer was no. I also think Twitter was quieter this year than previous years. And thats a good thing.

Here’s the CN coverage from SXSW 2009:

• SXSW 2009 Schwag Bag Video
• SXSW: The Bats and the Birds
• SXSW Live Blogging: Facebook Connect Launched for iPhone
• Exclusive: Video With Loic LeMeur on Seesmic Facebook Client
• SXSW: Nutshell Mail Demo
• SXSW Photos
• Entrecard Launches Ad Network and Credit Buy Back Program
• SXSW - Cannybill Web Invoicing and Billing Service
• SXSW Demo Video - Pixton Comic Creation Tool
• SXSW Demo Video - Tatango Group SMS
• SXSW Video - Tactile CRM for Small Businesses
• SXSW Photos - Part II
• SXSW 2009: Mobile Trends Toward Futurism, Commerce, Laziness
• SXSW Video: Regator - Curated Blog Aggregator
• SXSW Video: 99designs - Design Contests
• SXSW Video: Lil’Grams - Twitter-Like Service for New Parents
• DandyID Demo Video - One Stop Data Collection and Data Portability

See you in 2010!

DandyID is a new Rhode Island-based startup that the founders say is, "a one-stop shop for data collection and portability." They provide a suite of tools to manage your online identity. They support over 300 sites and developers can pull data from their service via the API. It’s almost like a social OpenID as you can use your DandyID to register on services that are setup as partners.

The partner sites can also use the DandyID API to find other friends on each network based on their DandyID profile. Certainly sounds more interesting than say the "defaults" on Twitter.

I had a chance to meet with DandyID co-founders Sara Czyzewicz and Arron Kallenberg — check out our video below. They also discuss the API contest where developers can win a bunch of prizes by creating an interesting build on top of DandyID.