The "Coding for pleasure" panel's synopsis, "Every startup origin story is about a couple of developers who abscond to a garage and end up building the Next Big Thing. But money and fame don't need to be your end goal. You can significantly improve your life -- and impact others' lives--by coding for pleasure in your spare time," was rather more ( Read more... )

Among notable speakers on internet culture at SXSW, Clay Shirky gave a talk "Monkeys with Internet Access: Sharing, Human Nature, and Digital Data ( Read more... )

Alcatel-Lucent Eleven API lounge at SXSW was a fabulous place to hang out when I didn't have another place to be. Dimly lit, with sleek white couches arranged in a circle resembling a vaguely familiar corporate logo (but not the Alcatel-Lucent logo, so perhaps the similarity was incidental) it had plenty of power outlets to charge laptops and ( Read more... )

In the "Seven Years in Online Dating" panel ("Since 2003, online dating has evolved in how web sites, profiles and photos are constructed to attract potential mates. Expectations and resultant relationships have changed as well. In this talk we illustrate how web site design and user savvy have created an alternate universe of intimate social ( Read more... )