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SXSW 2013 Recap

By
Andy Yen
– Posted on March 30, 2013Posted in: Features, Movies, Music, Reviews, Show Reports, Technology

sxsw 2013 logo

South By Southwest is by far the most overwhelming festival/conference out there. But it involves everything I love – tech, games, music, and film over the course of nine crazy days in Austin. Since I went for the Platinum Badge this year, I tried to do everything. Literally.

I quickly realized that wasn’t possible, but I sure gave it my darndest. For posterity’s sake, I tried to jot down every film, panel, and music set that I saw (or caught a part of) over the week. Add on all the parties and meet-ups with friends both new and old and it adds up to an exhausting, but amazing week.

A few notable highlights/awards:

Best Movie – Short Term 12

I don’t have the words to describe this incredible, emotional film, but Film Critc Hulk does.

Funniest Movie – Don Jon’s Addiction

Most Thrilling Movie – The East

Best New Song That I Have Been Playing On Repeat Constantly Since SXSW – Bastille – Pompeii

Top Three New Bands – Bastille, The 1975, CHVRCHES

I swear I’m not biased towards UK bands, it just turned out this way.

Most Emotional Song Performance – Stevie Nicks/Dave Grohl – Landslide

I have to admit getting a bit teary-eyed and having chills the entire time. Stevie Nicks has an amazing voice.

Coolest Song Performance – Depeche Mode – Enjoy the Silence

Singing along in unison with a packed crowd to Depeche Mode’s arguably most iconic song in a venue that has less than 900 capacity was pretty damn cool.

Best Panel – Jeffrey Tambor’s Acting Workshop

Despite never acting (or having ambitions to act), I laughed and learned more with Jeffrey Tambor about life and career than anywhere else during the week.

Best Food – Rachael Ray’s Feedback Party @ Stubbs

The menu was not only delicious, it was free!

Here’s the master list of events I participated in:

Movies

  • Much Ado About Nothing
  • Drinking Buddies – Olivia Wilde, Anna Kendrick, Jake Johnson, Joe Swanberg
  • Downloaded – Alex Winter, Shawn Fanning, Sean Parker
  • Short Term 12 – Destin Daniel Cretton, Brie Larson, entire cast
  • Don Jon’s Addiction – Joseph Gordon-Levitt, Brie Larson, Tony Danza
  • euphonia – Danny Madden
  • Some Girl(s)
  • Linsanity – Jeremy Lin’s Agent
  • The East – Ellen Page, Alexander Skarsgard, Brit Marling, Zal Batmanglij

Shows

  • Andrew WK @ Viceland
  • Talib Kweli @ Samsung Galaxy Soundstage
  • Shakey Graves @ The Parish
  • Atlas Genius @ The Main
  • Tegan & Sara @ The Main
  • Lord Huron @ Clive Bar
  • Family of the Year @ ACL Moody Theatre
  • Lord Huron @ ACL Moody Theatre
  • Bastille @ Club de Ville
  • The Chevin @ Buffalo Billiards
  • Ash @ Buffalo Billiards
  • Bastille @ Cedar Street
  • CHVRCHES @ Hype Hotel
  • Pusha T @ MTV Woodies
  • Trinidad James @ MTV Woodies
  • Joey Bada$$ @ MTV Woodies
  • HAIM @ MTV Woodies
  • Meat Puppets @ Stubbs
  • Sound City Players @ Stubbs – Foo Fighters, Stevie Nicks, John Fogerty, Rick Springfield, Brad Wilk (Rage Against The Machine), Krist Novoselic, Chris Goss, Corey Taylor (Slipknot), Alain Johannes (Queens of the Stone Age), Lee Ving (Fear)
  • Local Natives @ Mohawk
  • Divine Fits @ Radio Day Stage Austin Convention Center
  • Alt-J @ Mohawk
  • Feathers @ Brazos Hall
  • The Neighbourhood @ Brazos Hall
  • Depeche Mode @ Brazos Hall
  • Fitz and the Tantrums @ Lustre Perl
  • Frank Turner & The Sleeping Souls @ Blackheart
  • Eagles of Death Metal @ Stubbs
  • The 1975 @ Stubbs
  • Frightened Rabbit @ Stubbs
  • Blue Sky Riders @ Stubbs
  • Kenny Loggins @ Stubbs
  • Talib Kweli @ Lustre Perl
  • Chuck Ragan @ Cedar Street
  • Matt Pryor (Get Up Kids) @ Cedar Street
  • Twin Falls (Chris Carrabba) @ Cedar Street
  • Frank Turner @ Cedar Street

Panels

  • Machinima & Rooster Teeth Present “Blood, Sweat, and Online Videos: How to Achieve the Digital Dream”
  • Virtual Reality: The Holy Grail of Gaming – Cliff Bleszinski (Gears of War), Paul Bettner (Words With Friends), Chris Roberts (Wing Commander), Nate Mitchell (Oculus Rift), Palmer Luckey (Oculus Rift)
  • A Conversation With Danny Boyle – Danny Boyle, Rick Smith (Underworld)
  • Much Ado About Much Ado – Joss Whedon, Amy Acker, Clark Gregg, Nathan Fillion
  • Innovation & Leadership in the Agile Age – Scott Cook (Intuit)
  • Jeffrey Tambor’s Acting Workshop
  • The Signal & the Noise – Nate Silver
  • The New Serendipity? – Joichi Ito (MIT Media Lab), Kevin Rose (Digg, Google Ventures), John Perry Barlow, Colin Raney (IDEO)
  • The Future of Google Search in a Mobile World – Guy Kawasaki, Amit Singhal
  • A Conversation With Steve Case
  • Matthew Inman (The Oatmeal) Keynote
  • You Are Not A Lottery Ticket – Peter Thiel
  • Deadmau5 & Richie Hawtin – Talk. Techno. Technology
  • The Anatomy of Amanda Fucking Palmer: An Inside Look
  • SXSW Keynote – Dave Grohl
  • Music Curation in 2013 – Ryan Scheiber (Pitchfork), Steve Blatter (Sirius XM)
  • SXSW Interview: Macklemore & Ryan Lewis

9 movies, 17 panels, and 37 shows in 9 days? I think I can do better next year.

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I’m a Social Media Community Manager!

By
Andy Yen
– Posted on February 19, 2013Posted in: Internet Phenomena, Technology

No! Stop! I’m not looking for a higher CTR or increased engagement on your goddamn social networks! I’m not a cog in your sales machine! I’m a real person with real feelings, not a profile picture to analyze for your own amusement. My status updates say, “Check out our newest eBook!” but read between the lines; what I really mean is, “Check out me, please. I need validation!”

What’s happened to me?

McSweeney’s nails it again.

via McSweeney’s Internet Tendency: I’m a Social Media Community Manager!.

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Mailbox For iOS

By
Andy Yen
– Posted on February 19, 2013Posted in: Technology

Anthony Wing Kosner for Forbes:

Email is a constant stream of triggers, and the means to act upon these triggers can be present in the tool through which you receive it. This is why Mailbox’s mobile first approach is so important. Increasingly we get our mail messages on our mobile devices without the time, attention or full-size keyboard to make a complete response. These half-read, half-considered messages become work to take care of later—but that later never comes. By being able to structure your responses even if you don’t have time to make a full response you reduce the residue and mental overhead associated with your inbox. So when you do sit down at your desk or laptop or iPad, your work is cut out for you and ready to engage with the actual content you have to consider.

It took me a week to decide to take the plunge with Mailbox and allow it to archive all of my email on Gmail. All of my mail has been in my inbox basically since I signed up for the service years ago, a situation I imagine most people have been in as well. I can say it’s been a pretty good experience so far, my inbox is pretty clear, but I’m still getting used to the workflow of sorting my mail.

It’s a shame that there’s no Exchange support for the app, because for me, that would be the true test for Mailbox’s workflow – work emails. Nevertheless, I’ve definitely cut down on the bulk email lists I’ve subscribed to on my personal account. When you see the emails streaming in on an empty inbox, it’s pretty easy to see what’s necessary and what isn’t. Having 100,000 emails in the same place over the last 9 years or so just ended up being a big pile of eh.

via Mailbox App Revolutionizes Gmail Productivity, Will Google Or Apple Buy It? – Forbes.

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Google Currents Lets People Easily Create Touchscreen Optimized Content

By
Andy Yen
– Posted on December 9, 2011Posted in: Technology

Google Currents released yesterday. Basically, it’s a Flipboard-style app on your tablet or smartphone that lets you view your subscribed RSS feeds and content from featured publishers in a more visually pleasing “online magazine format.”

What makes it interesting, though, is that Google is also launching a basic content publishing platform for small publishers (like yours truly) to easily create a touch-screen optimized content portal.

Alongside Google Currents, we’re also launching a self-service platform that gives publishers the flexibility to design, brand and customize their web content. For example, if you’re a small regional news outlet, a non-profit organization without access to a mobile development team, or a national TV network with web content, you can effortlessly create hands-on digital publications for Google Currents.

It’s pretty basic, and you’ll still need to tackle the problem of growing your subscriber base, but it’s an interesting angle of attack nonetheless.

via Official Google Mobile Blog.

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Why There Wasn’t LTE In The iPhone 4S

By
Andy Yen
– Posted on December 4, 2011Posted in: Technology

Apple obviously doesn’t use Qualcomm Snapdragon SoCs so enabling LTE on the iPhone isn’t possible using Qualcomm baseband unless you make the phone’s PCB larger (which Apple obviously wasn’t going to do). Note that no one else seems to deliver a single chip LTE + 1x/WCDMA voice solution either, so this isn’t just a Qualcomm limitation.

Basically because as magical as Apple makes engineering seem, it just wasn’t physically possible and won’t be until at least 2012 sometime. And even then, will LTE even be rolled out in enough markets?

via AnandTech – Why No LTE iPhone 5 in 2011? Blame 28nm Maturity, Check Back In Q2/Q3 2012.

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Deadmau5 Lights Up London Skyscraper For Nokia

By
Andy Yen
– Posted on December 1, 2011Posted in: Music, Technology

Deadmau5’s got some of the best light show/visuals in the business with his “normal” set equipment. But projecting those visuals onto a London skyscraper? Hot damn.

The stunt was ostensibly for the release of Nokia’s new Lumia 800 phone, though calling it “4D” is a bit hokey. What, did that light travel across time? Nevertheless, that Lumia is still a mighty sexy phone and associating it with pretty colors and a popular DJ can’t do it any harm.

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3.5 Inch Phone Screens

By
Andy Yen
– Posted on November 25, 2011Posted in: Technology

We may or may not ever hear Apple confirm this, but you can bet your festively plump heiney that one of the reasons the 3.5 inch screen of the iPhone was decided upon was the ease of which you could use it with one hand. Turns out that it’s a lot more difficult to do that on a 4.3 inch Android device.

Maybe bigger isn’t always better.

via 3.5 Inches – Dustin Curtis.

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The Verge’s Kindle Fire Review

By
Andy Yen
– Posted on November 14, 2011Posted in: Books, Technology

Joshua Topolsky:

For an OS that’s still playing catch up to iOS, and one which is plagued by fragmentation in its main, fully supported app store, the introduction of a completely separate store on a completely separate product which developers now have to to consider seems relatively awful to me. Sure, there are some great titles available to Fire owners — but what’s the long term plan? If the Fire doesn’t reach parity with Honeycomb or Ice Cream Sandwich, all of the new “tablet” Android apps will be unavailable for this platform or require a second build which developers will have to maintain, and that seems untenable.

Disappointing if you’re looking for the Kindle Fire to be an all-purpose tablet device. That doesn’t mean that it’s completely useless as a full featured tablet, but I wouldn’t hold out hope for long-term developer support on yet another fragment of the Android ecosystem.

Kindle Fire review | The Verge

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The Hidden Cost Of Owning An Android

By
Andy Yen
– Posted on November 13, 2011Posted in: Technology

Michael Degusta made an interesting chart detailing Android OS software upgrade support for 18 popular devices released over the past couple of years.

The results are disturbing if you expected a pattern of support:

  • 7 of the 18 Android phones never ran a current version of the OS.
  • 12 of 18 only ran a current version of the OS for a matter of weeks or less.
  • 10 of 18 were at least two major versions behind well within their two year contract period.
  • 11 of 18 stopped getting any support updates less than a year after release.
  • 13 of 18 stopped getting any support updates before they even stopped selling the device or very shortly thereafter.
  • 15 of 18 don’t run Gingerbread, which shipped in December 2010.

In a few weeks, when Ice Cream Sandwich comes out, every device on here will be another major version behind.
At least 16 of 18 will almost certainly never get Ice Cream Sandwich.

Could you imagine if Apple forced you to buy a new phone every time they updated iOS? People would riot. The only Android phone i would even consider buying is whatever Google has anointed it’s “official” Nexus device. At least then you’ll get the theoretical “maximum” amount of software updates.

Future OS upgrades are something people rarely think about when shopping for a new phone, but it’s a very real problem with Android. Of course, if you don’t care about getting new features or security updates on your $200 on contract device, then feel free to keep ignoring the issue.

Nevermind that it  would make you the technological equivalent of people who don’t like more cash.

via the understatement: Android Orphans: Visualizing a Sad History of Support.

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Ashton Kutcher to Take a Break from Twitter

By
Andy Yen
– Posted on November 10, 2011Posted in: Technology

The impetus for Kutcher’s sudden hiatus was an earlier tweet that defended Penn State coach Joe Paterno, who was fired Wednesday after being implicated in a scandal related to assistant coach Jerry Sandusky’s alleged history of sexually molesting children. “How do you fire Jo Pa? #insult #noclass as a hawkeye fan I find it in poor taste,” the tweet said. Later on, Kutcher tweeted, “Heard Joe was fired, fully recant previous tweet!” and “Didn’t have full story. #admitwhenYoumakemistakes.”

So he made a mistake. He admitted it, apologized, and recanted. Shit happens.

One of the appeals of Twitter is that it gives the public a window into the mind of a celebrity. Sometimes that mind says stupid things, but at the end of the day everyone’s human. I don’t see why something like this should drive him away from the platform. Sure, it’s embarrassing, but quitting Twitter because of this seems a bit over-reactionary. Give the guy a break, it’s not like he followed it up with pics of Pedobear and exclamations of “SUCK IT, KIDS!”

via Mashable.

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