Eight cool and three lame things I discovered at SXSW ‘07

SXSW Interactive is a great place to discover interesting new stuff. This year was no exception. It’s also a good place to discover stuff you’d rather never see again.

Eight cool things (in no particular order)

1. Cupcakes Take the Cake. I wound up sitting next to the blogger behind this on my flight out of Austin. An impressive dedication to the art of the cupcake…
2. Jamglue.com. Online, web-based mash-up, remixing software. Flippin’ sweet.
3. Doris Haddock. Not sure how I didn’t already know about her, but Doris “Granny D.” Haddock, subject of the new documentary, Run Granny Run, is an amazing woman. A lifelong activist, she walked across America at the age of 88 to raise support for campaign finance reform. At 94, she ran for Senate in New Hampshire against incumbent Republican Judd Gregg, debated him on live TV, and without any television advertising or support from the Democratic Party, managed to get nearly 40% of the vote.
4. Designing for Vertical Rhythm. There’s a lot I don’t know about web typography, but I’m learning…. Very, very geeky stuff, but fantastic!
5. babble.com. From the people who brought you nerve.com, a “magazine and community for the new urban parent.” Well designed, funky, and interesting. I’m not “a new urban parent” yet, but when I am, I can see myself getting into this site.
6. Getting Things Done. I’m pretty sure that at most of the design sessions I was at over the weekend, a) I was the only one without a Mac notebook, and b) I was the only one who hadn’t read or even heard of this book. It seems odd to me that all these rocks stars of the web design community are keen to get time management tips from a guy in a suit and tie, but whatever… I’ll give it a read.
7. Beatport.com. Kinda like iTunes, but for DJ-types and wanna-be mash-up artists, and all the tracks you download are unprotected .mp3s or .wavs.
8. Whataburger. Not as good as In-n-Out or Carl’s Jr. or Fatburger, but better than most places on the East Coast…

… and three lame things

1. Twitter. People at SXSW were into this like crack-covered cheese-fries. I tried it for four days and got strangely addicted to receiving moronic text messages on my cell phone from strangers. It was like the worst, most vapid blog posts in the universe, beamed directly to my phone every 20 or 30 min. If I was a sixteen year old girl, I might think this was a cool idea, but I’m a grumpy old man. No thanks.
2. ChaCha.com. Here’s how it works: I ask a question, hit search, and then the search goes to some other live person, at another computer, who then uses Google or some other search tool to try and give me an answer. What a dumb idea. My brother and I tried it, though, because some PR person was pimping it at a bar and had a scantily-dressed hottie with him, handing out buttons. I stumped ChaCha by asking “how do you play pocket tens out of position in no-limit holdem?” ChaCha’s search assistant took about ten minutes, made idle conversation, and finally said he had no answer. Meanwhile, I found this answer in about five seconds via Google….
3. Austin Pizza. Imagine the worst pizza you’ve ever had, then imagine it soggier, with stranger-tasting sauce and more rubbery cheese. It was like that, only a little worse.