Tag Archives | South by Southwest

The IronGeekiest of Them All

Posted by Harry McCracken on March 16, 2011 at 10:39 pm

One of the last things I did at South by Southwest this week was probably the most fun and definitely the wildest and wackiest: On Tuesday afternoon, I competed against Joshua Baer, Larry Chiang, Amanda Coolong, Lydia Leavitt, and Nan Palmero in a tournament known as Das IronGeek. We raced around the SxSW show floor, competing in a typing test at the Das Keyboard booth, sifting through sand to find phone cases with Seidio, answering trivia questions provided by Triviatise, going head-to-head in air hockey over at MapQuest, and setting up servers for SoftLayer.

In the end, the contest wasn’t that much of a contest: Josh Baer, founder of the neat service OtherInbox, won the overall competition handily and beat me at air hockey like I’ve never been beat before. I went away happy anyway, having tied for second place, won the trivia round, and generally comported myself better than I did at last year’s inaugural IronGeek edition.

After the jump, a few photos I took of my fellow contestants.

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A Sharing Site Called Circles? Hey, It’s Been Done

Posted by Harry McCracken on March 14, 2011 at 6:44 am

One of the biggest stories so far here at the South by Southwest conference in Austin has been Google Circles–a major new social service that, according to ReadWriteWeb, will let users share photos, videos, and updates with their friends, with total control over who sees what. Tech guru Tim O’Reilly, who got a preview, thinks it looks “awesome.”

Except…All Things Digital’s Liz Gannes reports that Google says the whole thing is wrong. It’s not working on Circles and isn’t announcing anything at SxSW. The denial doesn’t quite eliminate all possibility that there’s truth somewhere in RWW’s story–actually, it would be a shocker if Google never introduces anything involving sharing stuff with friends–but it does sound like it’s not unveiling Circles here. Apparently.

But psssst–Circles isn’t a fantasy. In fact, it already launched. More than six years ago. From once-major Google competitor Lycos. Continue Reading →

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Technologizer at SxSW

Posted by Harry McCracken on March 7, 2011 at 12:05 am

I’m getting ready to head for one of my favorite tech conferences, Austin’s South by Southwest Interactive, which starts this Friday and goes well into the next week. I’ll mostly be hanging out, meeting interesting people, and looking for cool companies to write about–but I’ll also be part of two official events at the show.

Official event #1: On Monday, March 14th at 12:3pm in room 12AB in the ScreenBurn section at the Austin Convention Center, I’ll moderate a panel called “Platform Success: Earning Developers’ Trust, Hearts, and Minds.” Panelists include Peter Hoddie of Marvell, Brandon Watson of Microsoft’s Windows Phone 7 team, James Keller of iOS developer Small Society, and Ben Satterfield, the CEO of TestFlight.

Official event #2: On Tuesday, March 15th at 3pm at the SxSW Block Party, I’ll be doing my darndest to fare well in a competition called Das IronGeek, which pits a few folks against each other in a tech tournament including a typing race, a build-your-own server competition, and other challenges, including at least one they haven’t told me about yet. (I competed last year, in the inaugural edition, and didn’t do so well–but this year I’ll prevail. Or at try not to embarrass myself.)

Hope to see some you at one (or both) of these events, or just around town.

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