Sherry Lowry invited me to make a video of her “All Content Matters” session at the Tech Ranch. In this you’ll see Jenny L. Magic’s presentation.

How about coming along on a locker room postgame video interview with the Austin Toros, with a few cheerleader interviews with Oscar Davila. The Toros are the NBA Development League team of the San Antonio Spurs and have some great, physical players who we ask about their college backgrounds and current ambitions. This is [...]]]>

How about coming along on a locker room postgame video interview with the Austin Toros, with a few cheerleader interviews with Oscar Davila. The Toros are the NBA Development League team of the San Antonio Spurs and have some great, physical players who we ask about their college backgrounds and current ambitions. This is part 1 of a 10 part video about the Austin Toros. Don’t miss the others by searching for “toros springnet” on Google, iTunes and everywhere you find video on the net.

About a dozen of Austin’s top bloggers, including Elizabeth Quintanilla, Oscar Davila, Greg Ackerman and others tweeted, facebooked and G+ed the Austin Toros basketball home opener win over the Tulsa 66ers. This was a brilliant move by the Toros, to invite Austin’s most popular bloggers and social media mavens to cover every angle of their home opener. They talked to and blogged about cheerleaders, fans, Toros top brass, players, and support people.

According to Michael de Leon of Toros Nation “as if the Austin Toros don’t have enough competition for ticket sales in the form of the University of Texas basketball team, a report from American City Business Journals says Austin could support an NBA team.”

Austin – a metro area with a population of nearly 1.8 million but without any major-league sports franchises – could financially support teams from the NFL, NBA and NHL but might have a hard time supporting a Major League Baseball team, according to a new study.

Says de Leon, “According to the study, Austin has $67 billion in income to support NFL, NBA and NHL teams, but the fact that the city does not have the space to build a new stadium and that Austin would have to compete with the San Antonio Spurs doesn’t give them much of a chance to land a team.”

Too bad the Spurs and NBA is not playing, but you can meet up with me for the Toros season opener and help live blog the event!

The Austin Toros are a NBA Development League minor league basketball team based in Cedar Park, Texas, United States. The team plays home games at Cedar Park Center.

Their logo is the design of a bull and basketball with the state of Texas in the background. After the San Antonio Spurs purchased the franchise, the team colors and logo were changed to reflect the silver and black motif used by the Spurs.

Chris Nixon of Outdoor Kitchen Supply built this amazing bbq and party rig out of a new dumpster and the workmanship on it was off the charts amazing. I spent nearly two hours marvelling at the architechture and construction of it. I also published a photo album on my Facebook page and on Google [...]]]>

Chris Nixon of Outdoor Kitchen Supply built this amazing bbq and party rig out of a new dumpster and the workmanship on it was off the charts amazing. I spent nearly two hours marvelling at the architechture and construction of it. I also published a photo album on my Facebook page and on Google Plus page.
 

This is our first full dress rehearsal for our sxPanel project. We’re doing previews in Google+ hangouts of SXSW panels. The panels come from SXSW’s “PanelPicker” website. There are about 3,000 panel organizers vying for a spot with a panel at SXSW. Only a few will be chosen, but we will be giving [...]]]>

This is our first full dress rehearsal for our sxPanel project. We’re doing previews in Google+ hangouts of SXSW panels. The panels come from SXSW’s “PanelPicker” website. There are about 3,000 panel organizers vying for a spot with a panel at SXSW. Only a few will be chosen, but we will be giving both the winners and losers a chance to webcast their panel proposals to a large audience on youtube, blip.tv, iTunes, Boxee, ustream.tv, justin.tv and more.

The panel features Elizabeth Quintanilla’s panel proposal called “Marketers can learn from Jimmy Buffet & Lady GaGa”. EQ asks “Have you ever wondered why both Jimmy Buffet is so successful and not a “one hit” wonder? Why are millions of people flocking to be a “little monster” and how can one singer be so wildly successful? Two different niches .. similar lessons to be learned and applied in your marketing or would you prefer to … #fail in your marketing execution.” Elizabeths copanelist is famed Philly social media marketer Seth Goldstein.

http://markmhendrickson.com/share-frequency This was posted on Google+… ]]> Share frequency on social networks

http://markmhendrickson.com/share-frequency

http://bit.ly/bwVYS3 YouTube – Ira Glass on Storytelling, part 3 of 4 Create AccountSign In. Home. BrowseMoviesUpload. Hey there, this is not a commercial interruption. You're using an outdated browser, which YouTube no longer supports. [...]]]> I'm certainly not the first to post this, but if you haven't seen it yet, I'd recommend watching all four parts.

http://bit.ly/bwVYS3

Homesteading on the indie web. — I had the pleasure of attending IndieWebCamp in Portland last month, a BarCamp-style conference where techies get together to brainstorm ideas about how they can help people own and control their online identities.

The so-called indie web movement, a spiritual cousin to the open source [...]]]> [Originally posted at http://markmhendrickson.com/homesteading-on-the-indie-web]

Homesteading on the indie web. — I had the pleasure of attending IndieWebCamp in Portland last month, a BarCamp-style conference where techies get together to brainstorm ideas about how they can help people own and control their online identities.

The so-called indie web movement, a spiritual cousin to the open source and standards movements, is rooted in a desire for digital freedom, primarily from monopolies that threaten to restrict and violate the common Internet user's online existence. It calls for practical means to protect this existence by preventing or disrupting the control that any one company has over a person's online identity, either from a functionality or data point of view.

It's a thought-provoking movement for a number of reasons, not least because it finds itself screaming into the wind, so to speak. Most Internet users, with the proliferation of social networks, increasingly place their digital lives in the hands of proprietary services run by mostly private — and always self-interested — companies. These users don't own the identity and content they publish to these services in a way that insulates them from their vague terms of service and the application thereof. Nor can they continue to enjoy those services (at least in the same manner) if the companies shut them down, redesign them undesirably or fail to improve them. Yet, only a small minority of users actively worry about these problems and usually only once they've been stung by account deactivation, incessant downtime, censorship, privacy leaks, or critical design shortcomings.

There's a moral tone to the indie web movement, not just an insistence that users ought to control their online identities for the practical purpose of avoiding conflicts with their service providers. Proponents argue that the Internet needs to maintain its decentralized nature and resist consolidations of power lest technological progress gets stymied, data gets lost, hoarded or corrupted, and users get disenfranchised en masse. There's a tension here, since private companies that treat their users as virtual sharecroppers are clearly responsible for much of the progress occurring on the web today, and their services are making it dramatically easier for everyone, including the technically illiterate, to participate online.

There were two particular challenges to the indie web movement that struck me while attending the conference. The first had to do with identifying the relevant and recognizable needs of the average Internet user to obtain better control over their online identity. Indie web proponents lodge a disparate number of valid complaints against proprietary services, each with its own merit but none that would be recognized by mainstream audiences as a massive, immediate problem on its own.

Tantek Çelik, the conference's lead organizer and my gracious host, cited the famous downtime of services like Twitter and Tumblr as reason for decentralization, as well as the tendency of acquired services to get shut down. Others cited the desire to more easily export and manage the content they post to services so it can be used on their personal computers and published elsewhere on the web. For others still, it was primarily an issue of personalization and the ability to interact with numerous online services and their respective functionality with more flexibility and fluidity.

All of these are pain points that are best articulated by technologists who take the time to understand them but are surely felt by "normals" as well. They don't, however, seem top of mind enough to compel millions of ordinary Internet users to take concrete steps to address them, at least with today's solutions. Downtime is frustrating but most people learn to work around it; shuttered services disappoint loyal users but most likely faced their demise due to popular disinterest; and most people don't know what else they want out of the services they use, at least substantially enough to seek alternative solutions.

This complacency poses a critical motivational problem for the primary decentralization scenario proposed by those in the indie web movement, wherein users (both early- and late-adopter alike) take the initiative to host their identity and personal content independently of any proprietary service. The idea here is that everyone should register their own second-level domain and put up a personal website of some sort, just as I've registered markmhendrickson.com and centralized my online identity there. This site could be a simple, static presence or advanced enough to exchange information with proprietary services so that interactions can take place with friends or followers. Theoretically, these proprietary services could get cut out entirely over time, and independent personal websites could begin communicating with each other directly, effectively mapping social networking relationships onto the Internet in a distributed, peer-to-peer fashion.

In addition to the marketing challenge of compelling individuals to establish these independent sites, there's the technical challenge of bringing this distributed system to life and making it possible for normal people to get involved. The technical challenge can be divided on one side into the infrastructural issues of decentralizing the real-time communications that currently take place within centralized services (such as forging social relationships, posting content to streams, and interacting with that content). On the other side, there are the technical issues of setting each user up within the decentralized system and making sure they have the tools needed to participate without getting tied to any single provider.

Each IndieWebCamp attendee spent the second day of the conference working on a self-chosen project that would aid the movement. I took it upon myself to devise a tool that would perhaps solve the second half of this technical challenge while also communicating to mainstream users why they ought to set up their own domains. My project was primarily user-centric, since it deferred many of decentralization's intricate engineering decisions and instead focused on motivating users to overcome their default complacency and break ground on their own online homestead.

I established several main requirements for this tool:

- It had to simplify for users the process of registering a domain name and a basic web host, both of which had to be treated as commodities and substitutable at any time. While it's not possible or feasible for users to literally own their domain and hosting, the next best thing is to minimize the differentiation power of these services by abstracting them away.

- It had to automate the process of setting up an initial website, or homestead, on the newly registered domain and host, as well as to automate the processes of updating or extending it later on. While the software for the website had to be fully hosted by the user and open-sourced for maximum control, it could be assisted by the tool on an ongoing basis through code and data pushes.

- The user couldn't be expected to use FTP, a command line interface, a file system, or any other technologies beyond the browser because doing so would severely limit its accessibility. User interactions had to be limited to filling out web forms and clicking on things.

- The financial and time burden of using the tool to both set up and maintain a homestead needed to be minimized as much as possible.

- Users couldn't be required to reenter their personal information or manually upload content they've already shared elsewhere.

http://markmhendrickson.com/images/homestead1.png

The tool's initial user experience is outlined by the wireframe above. The marketing appeals directly to a person's need for control, since that's ultimately what users are expected to obtain in a decentralized system, it likely resonates with an underlying fear that their current online identity may be in disarray, and it's a vague enough proposition to allow many solution details.

The page then addresses four of the most identifiable needs under the tent of controlling one's online identity. Obtaining a personal URL allows a user to more easily point people to their information online; ranking well-curated personal information highly on Google allows a user to control what people find out about them when searching their name; listing all of a user's social networking profiles in one place brings order to identity fragmentation; and backing up a user's online content from numerous sources provides peace of mind. The area at the bottom that lists other people's websites is meant to provide social validation for these propositions.

To get started, the user needs to enter just their desired URL, an email address and a password (with the desired URL checked against a domain registrar's API, assuming one exists). Requests for other values, such as the user's name, are omitted since they can be gathered from the user later on. The goal here is to have them engage with the setup process as painlessly as possible.

http://markmhendrickson.com/images/homestead2.png

Upon entering this basic information, the user is prompted to connect their new homestead to any number of their online services. A link to each of these services, once connected, will show up on the user's homestead. Content posted to them can also be pulled, either once or continually, for redisplay or simply backup on the user's homestead, depending on what kind of service it is.

For example, when a user connects their Facebook account, they can choose to have all of their photos and status updates automatically republished to their homestead. Not shown are possible options to simply back up these but not republish them. By connecting with any of these services, the tool can also automatically determine the user's name, portrait and any other details to display on the homestead.

http://markmhendrickson.com/images/homestead3.png

The final setup step consists of actually paying for the desired URL, with the assumption that the tool could arrange for free hosting. This part of the mockup isn't fleshed out much, but basically the page would show the appropriate form once the user has chosen their preferred payment method.

http://markmhendrickson.com/images/homestead4.png

The result is a profile page not terribly unlike those you'd find on most social networking sites but hosted on the user's own domain and consisting of information about and from the user from a variety of sources. Their service profiles show up on the left along with their portrait and bio, and content they've decided to import into their homestead shows up aggregated on the right.

This is meant to be just a start. There are a number of ways the design and functionality of a given user's homestead could be advanced. The layout and theme could be customizable. The user could add the ability to post content directly to their homestead and then have it syndicate out to other services. They could even start creating connections with other homesteaders by adding them as friends or the like, all referenced by their own URLs.

Perhaps an open-source ecosystem could even emerge that provided plugins and other modifications to the core software package, eventually enabling social experiences that rival those of proprietary services, with feeds, messages, tags and more. The central accomplishment here would be in enabling large numbers of people to claim independent online presences with the potential to play increasing roles in their online lives. Once enough people have done so, it'll be much easier to weave a indie web between their homesteads and insulate them from the decisions or fate of any particular company.

The first ever live webcast on Google+ happened on Saturday, July 15 starting at 5:15 am and ending at 10:45 am.    Michael Mozart embedded his youtube live show in his Google+ stream and was as excited as a kid at Christmas waking up to a stash of toys under the Christmas tree.  Michael’s [...]]]>  

The first ever live webcast on Google+ happened on Saturday, July 15 starting at 5:15 am and ending at 10:45 am.    Michael Mozart embedded his youtube live show in his Google+ stream and was as excited as a kid at Christmas waking up to a stash of toys under the Christmas tree.  Michael’s a toy geek with a wide following on youtube live.  Mike calls his channel JeepersMedia on YouTube and is best known for his funny Fail Toy Reviews. I found out about this in a hangout on Google+ where you can add me to your circle

Michael is a living energizer bunny and he’ll probably be on live a lot in this format from now on showing his amazing collection of toys. He knows everything about toys and may have one of the world’s largest toy collections of over 400,000 toys in his 6,000 square foot building.  And he doesn’t mind trotting out these toys on his show and sharing every detail about them from his encylopedic mind.

Mark Coddington notes “Among those enamored with it [...]]]> Google+ was obviously this weeks big story, sorry Facebook your skype addon was a side note by comparison. TechCrunch had one of the best explanations of what Google+ is all about, and Wired’s Steven Levy wrote the most complete accounts of the thinking at Google behind Plus

Mark Coddington notes “Among those enamored with it were TechCrunch’s MG Siegler, ReadWriteWeb’s Marshall Kirkpatrick, social media guru Robert Scoble, and the Huffington Post’s Craig Kanalley (though he wondered about Google’s timing). It quickly began sending TechCrunch loads of traffic, and social media marketer Chris Brogan brainstormed 50 ways Google+ could influence the rest of the web.”  Since then Arian Huffington, Ashton Kucher, Newt Gingrich and others have jumped on board.  Surprisingly, the number one user on Google+ (the “Tom” of Google+) is Facebook owner Mark Zuckerberg.

I’ve really enjoyed my first week on Google+ and am finding new and old friends showing up every day.  The invitation process keeps opening and closing unpredictably.  If you need an invite you can email me with your Gmail account and I’ll invite you.  Be sure to have your Google Profile filled out or the invite won’t do you any good.  The most fun I’ve had on Google+ is in the “hangouts” which is a video chat that up to 9 people can take part in, in fact, I did a video podcast about Austin’s Formula One racetrack under construction in a hangout.  Here it is:

EvoTrain partnered with the Texas Entrepreneurs Network to host a competition at the awesome GoodLife Team HQ to find Austin’s Fittest Entrepreneurs. The mission of the competition was to “identify, reward, and [...]]]> Who is Austins fittest entrepreneur? Watch this 4 episode video on itunes, youtube, blip.tv, etc. and please add your comments and ratings!

EvoTrain partnered with the Texas Entrepreneurs Network to host a competition at the awesome GoodLife Team HQ to find Austin’s Fittest Entrepreneurs. The mission of the competition was to “identify, reward, and promote those entrepreneurs that prioritize health and fitness in their lives and at their organizations” and workplaces.

The finalists included AJ Joe of KPI Analytics, Denver Fredenburg of HyperWear, Robyn Pettinger of BootCamp U, Krisstina Wise of the GoodLife Team, and Alex Charfen of CDPE, the winner.

This is the full video showing the tasty Irony “sports mixer” drink sampling and an interview with Robyn Pettinger of Bootcamp U. or BCU, an interview with Matt Barker of Evotrain, door prize winners, and the announcement of the runner up and winner of the competition and interview with Austins Fittest Entrepreneur.

Links

• http://www.evotrain.com
• http://www.fittestentrepreneurs.org/

The above video shows Kathie Tovo’s early evening talk to the crowd at her election returns party, you can see Brian Rodgers holding a Tovo sign on the stage next to Kathie. Brian worked hard behind the scenes to get Kathie elected and was instrumental in getting the Austin City Council to release their [...]]]>

The above video shows Kathie Tovo’s early evening talk to the crowd at her election returns party, you can see Brian Rodgers holding a Tovo sign on the stage next to Kathie. Brian worked hard behind the scenes to get Kathie elected and was instrumental in getting the Austin City Council to release their email correspondence via the open records act. “It’s nice to be on the winning side for a change”, Brian said, who had previously campaigned for lower property taxes, fewer subsidies to big out of state businesses (like the Domain) and against subsidies from the city to Formula One. Brian still fights relentlessly for the rights of Austinites on ChangeAustin.org. I once teamed up with Brian on the political parody site Bush2004.com (not everyone got the joke). This time around someone else beat us to Perry2012.com which has also turned out to be a joke.

Full Screen High Definition version of the above video here.

Ken Koym received and forwards the following notice reminding you how critical this issue is as $14 million dollars of public taxpayer funds have been pledged to make it possible for Formula One a large international corporation to ride the backs of citizen taxpayers [...]]]>

Full Screen High Definition version of the above video here.

Ken Koym received and forwards the following notice reminding you how critical this issue is as $14 million dollars of public taxpayer funds have been pledged to make it possible for Formula One a large international corporation to ride the backs of citizen taxpayers from Austin. It seems wrong to Ken that taxpayer funds should have been declared for a business lying outside the city limits of Austin or for a large corporation to be given a free ride, particularly one that promotes car racing based on combustible energy a sciene of the past rather than concentrating on advocating methodologies, which will help all generations have better futures.

Help us Pull the Shade, elect Kathie Tovo, and defeat yet another shameful tax dollar giveaway, this time to the billionaires at Formula 1.

There’s a BIG uptick in early voting in this runoff!  It IS a meaningful race with clear differences.  Here’s our take:

We’re getting into the race to Stop F1 Subsidies, Elect Kathie Tovo for Austin City Council & Help Pull the Shade!

ChangeAustin.org proudly endorses Kathie Tovo against current Austin City Council incumbent Randi Shade in the runoff election for City Council, Place 3. Our endorsement is based on Shade’s refusal to oppose a taxpayer subsidy to Formula 1 racing and her opposition to fair geographic representation for Austin voters. Read more here.

Wanna help us pull the Shade, tell F1 to pay its own way and to elect Tovo?

1.  Click here, print out the flier and take it to your neighbors.

2.  We’ve got tons of phone calls you can do from home — call us to help!

(Need to make some extra money — call us!)

3. Early voting locations — pass to all your friends.

Or just forward this message to help rattle the bones of Austin voters who haven’t been voting, who were looking for a reason to!

Strong “buy” recommendations: sarahlane, pelpinatripp, chftwt (Leo Laporte)

A guest post from “pundit”. She writes on politics, policy, current affairs and human interest news from or related to India on her daily blog, http://punditcommentator.blogspot.com. If you want to invest in me, now is the best time because I’m new and [...]]]> What is Empire Avenue?

Strong “buy” recommendations: sarahlane, pelpinatripp, chftwt (Leo Laporte)

A guest post from “pundit”. She writes on politics, policy, current affairs and human interest news from or related to India on her daily blog, http://punditcommentator.blogspot.com. If you want to invest in me, now is the best time because I’m new and I have a lot of value in my youtube SXSW interview videos.

This review also appeared on Wise Marketing.

Watch out Facebook.  Empire Avenue is the latest hottest highly addictive social networking site.

While Empire Avenue capitalizes on the very same human personality trait of narcissism, it takes the idea to its logical conclusion. Instead of declaring a “liking” (of dubious veracity) for other people, Empire Avenue insists you put your money where your mouse is.

On Empire Avenue, you and I are more than just people. We are in fact, people-stocks. Strangers around the world trade shares in us on a virtual stock exchange for virtual profit.

Why should I join Empire Avenue?

People sign up to find out the market worth of their personal brand and social network. You can list yourself on a public stock index closest to your chief interest for example, news and media or sports or weapons.  People build portfolios buying people-stocks based on market valuation of social media activity, common interests or personal connections.

How do I earn money and build my net worth on Empire Avenue?

In chronological order, here is a to-do list:

1 – Fill out your profile and upload a portrait photograph

2 – Connect all social media platforms in which you are active – Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn, YouTube, Flickr

3 – If you have one, connect your blog RSS feed to get it peer endorsed

4 – Go about your normal social media activities – tweet, “like”/comment, connect, upload videos and photos, post on your blog

5 – Join city, interest/brand and personal communities

6 – Find people via the Search Function or the Twitter Index and buy people-stock

7 – Market yourself to potential buyers

8 – Reciprocate share purchases as much as you can within your budget

9 – Chat with people as much as possible on anything and everything

10 – Participate in Special Achievement parties, such as the Royal Wedding

Empire Avenue considers every single one of these actions and transactions as “achievements” and awards you points, known as the virtual currency Eaves. The more you have, the more you can earn.

This is how I met some truly cool people, learned new vocabulary (all newbies get “scalped”) and raised my share price 120% by the morning of my sixth day at Empire Avenue, despite two days of inactivity. Try it for yourself. It’s fun. But if you are a blogger like me, make sure you read the Terms of Service. You may not want to give Empire Avenue a “non-exclusive, transferable, sub-licence, royalty-free, worldwide license to use any IP content that you post on or in connection with the website”.

pundit then followed up by telling me:

Here’s another Brit social media prof’s blog post on EA through which I first discovered EA:http://jeremywaite.net/2011/04/23/how-much-are-you-really-worth-empire-avenue-think-they-have-the-answer%E2%80%A6/

And here’s the list of additional resources I promised:

http://www.rickliebling.com/2011/04/26/empire-avenue-suggested-reading-before-you-jump-in/comment-page-1/#comment-110176
http://www.facebook.com/pages/Empire-Avenue-Guide/149942318366045
http://planet.empireavenue.com/2011/03/25/getting-started-on-empire-avenue/

You can read about Scoble’s one hour video interview with the founder here.

Just after I went to bed last night my ipad woke me up and started buzzing and lighting up with the news.

Here are images [...]]]> No drone. Burial at sea. Four helicopters to prevent a Blackhawk down scenario.
It was an operation done right. Extraordinary. It’s a stunning, amazing story that’s unfolding before our eyes.

Just after I went to bed last night my ipad woke me up and started buzzing and lighting up with the news.

Here are images from 20 US newspapers today carrying the news of Bin Laden’s death.

Google Map of Bin Laden’s Compound:

View Osama Bin Laden’s Hideout Compound in a larger map

Astrid is from France but she just has the faintest accent. leNewz, developed by Paris-based Triviumsoft, offers a more visual way of browsing news [...]]]> Astrid Guillon, the Lara Logan look alike spokesperson for lenewz, explains how the unique iphone news app works at the SXSW 2011 Trade Show in Austin, TX. Twitter: lenewz Site: http://lenewz.com

Astrid is from France but she just has the faintest accent. leNewz, developed by Paris-based Triviumsoft, offers a more visual way of browsing news on the iPhone. The app is built on Triviumsoft’s Eaagletext mining and mapping technologies to deliver a real time keyword map of the most important topics in each of six news categories: Sports, Economy, Politics, Life, Technology and Celebrities.

Astrid did the executive summary in her native French tongue toward the tail end of the interview.

Cali Lewis of GeekBeat.tv and Pelpina Tripp of WebBeat.tv met up with Paul Terry Walhus of Spring.net in the Press room at SXSW 2011 on Saturday, March 12, 2011.

Cali, along with this reporter, is a winner of the “Order of the Plastic Star” or Statesman Social Media award. Pelpina recently joined forces with [...]]]>

Cali Lewis of GeekBeat.tv and Pelpina Tripp of WebBeat.tv met up with Paul Terry Walhus of Spring.net in the Press room at SXSW 2011 on Saturday, March 12, 2011.

Cali, along with this reporter, is a winner of the “Order of the Plastic Star” or Statesman Social Media award. Pelpina recently joined forces with Cali coming from Dallas mainstream network tv and, along with a new videographer/editor Dave Curlee, roamed SXSW 2011 for interviews.

Netherlander Pelpina Trip is producer and host of WebBeat.TV, a show about the latest net trends, web memes, hot sites, startups, and social media news.

GeekBeat.TV is a short video show, hosted by Cali Lewis, about technology news, current gadgets, and amazing research projects that will affect your future. Cali has a passion for technology, and she works hard to find the most interesting, most compelling, most exciting stories out there, and tells about them in a quick five minutes. Cali is a “speed talker” one of the fastest speakers on the planet.

“Whrrl — is a location-based, social application for the iPhone, Android and Blackberry designed to help people [...]]]> The two whrrl ghrrls were really working the line at the improvised Apple store at SXSW 2011 giving away keychains that had lottery numbers to win a car. @whurley first turned me on to whrrl. From whrrl’s website

“Whrrl — is a location-based, social application for the iPhone, Android and Blackberry designed to help people discover highly relevant new experiences in the real world.”

“Whrrlers join Societies, groups of like-minded people with the same real-world interests, passions and brand affinities to exchange recommendations (new places to go and things to do) and experiences (via photos and notes).”

Whrrl’s Society Rewards program enables businesses to participate in the discovery experience by offering prizes at places that Whrrlers win by checking in.”

AOL’s About.me had a remarkable photo crew taking profile pictures at SXSW 2011 for any one who dropped in to their booth at the Convention Center in Austin.

A lot of us have multiple online profiles scattered across various services, including Facebook, LinkedIn, Flickr, and Twitter. And one problem we face [...]]]>

AOL’s About.me had a remarkable photo crew taking profile pictures at SXSW 2011 for any one who dropped in to their booth at the Convention Center in Austin.

A lot of us have multiple online profiles scattered across various services, including Facebook, LinkedIn, Flickr, and Twitter. And one problem we face is pulling all of this information together to build a single on-line identity — be it for personal use, or to create a professional on-line profile. About.me is focused on enabling you to create your personal splash page and to quickly build a personal and dynamic splash page that points visitors to your content from around the web. And there’s more. About.me understands how many people see your profile, where they’re coming from, and what they do on your page.

AUSTIN – Springnet — Demonstrators in Austin, Texas showed their support for the protests in Wisconsin by holding an energetic rally at the state Capitol. Several hundred protesters attended the event in Austin Saturday, Feb 26, 2011.

The pro-union crowd sang folk songs and carried placards criticizing budget cuts in Texas and blasting Wisconsin [...]]]>

AUSTIN – Springnet — Demonstrators in Austin, Texas showed their support for the protests in Wisconsin by holding an energetic rally at the state Capitol. Several hundred protesters attended the event in Austin Saturday, Feb 26, 2011.

The pro-union crowd sang folk songs and carried placards criticizing budget cuts in Texas and blasting Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker’s proposal to eliminate collective bargaining rights for state employees.

Liberal commentator and onetime Texas Agriculture Commissioner Jim Hightower, wearing a trademark white cowboy hat, said he was happier than “a flea at a dog show” after seeing the hundreds gathered outside the Capitol. He said progressive voters had become too complacent.

For more videos like this follow “springnet” on itunes, youtube, blip.tv, viddler, vimeo and other popular video sites around the web. http://spring.net has the full list.