Techarati

SXSW tickets via cellphone SMS

South By Southwest (SXSW) Austin, Tx., one of the largest film festivals in the U.S., with over 1331 bands playing live across seven days at 58 venues, offered wrist bands early to a lucky few who signed up via cell phone SMS message this evening (Wednesday Night, Febraury 22nd). 

The messages directed the interested to tickets being sold at Waterloo records in downtown Austin.

According to the SXSW official site:

If you are a SXSW Registrant, sign up and receive special notices through the Online Registrant's Directory. SXSW will send you alerts and updates specific to your badge type from last minute schedule changes, special events, breaking news and more. Get the latest lowdown and don't miss a thing!

In addition to an early notice of ticket sales, SXSW SMS, will also will notify you of band schedules, as well as allow you to vote in the Film Festival Audience Award, or vote for your SXSW favorite film.

"To sign up for general updates and alerts about SXSW 2006 just send the text message 'sx add' to '56658' from your mobile phone!"

Click here for more SXSW SMS info! or here for the latest SXSW info!

----
Update: According to those who have recieved the text messages, there will be more wristbands on sale to the public Thursday, February 23rd, at Waterloo Records in Austin, Tx.

MacWorld, my absence!

This is the first time in years that I am not at MacWorld, this sucks!  I'm betting on a complete line of Intels PowerBooks (a Micro would be great), and 34", 42", and 50" plasma's from Apple with built in Mac Mini's,  AirPort, HDMI, etc.

Watching mobile TV beats out reading the newspaper!

A new Korean study shows that people will spend more time watching Mobile TV (DMB) then they spend reading the newspaper according to the Korean Broadcasting Advertising Company.

The study's results, titled "Consumer Behavior 2005", are inline with the world wide trend of the last decade witnessing consumers migrating away from paper based products, and towards electronic versions of the same products (i.e.: email vs. postal mail).

A synapses of the results show that the average Korean consumer spends 82 minutes watching TV, spends 61 minutes watching mobile TV (DMB), and only 42 minutes reading the newspaper each day. The most popular content on mobile TV is News - 19.2%, movies - 14.5%, and music - 14.4%, with 45% of mobile TV (dmb) users being in their 20's. Though most of these figures line up squarely with most first world nations, the most surprising figure was that DMB consumers are more willing to endure advertising versus other media (DMB 77.7%, Regular TV 74.2%, and Radio 68.8%).

Via: MobileMag.Com

One Cable to Rule Them All.

One connection for all device mania has hit, and it's about damned time!

Today's breaking news is that a beavy of computer industry heavyweights want to create a new device connection between your monitor and computer called the unified display interface or UDI, by Q1 2006. This interface will not only be used for computers but also for consumer entertainment electronics unifying the two, seperated at birth, industries. UDI will be backwards compatible with DVI, and looking forward, will be compatable with HDMI (High-Definition Multimedia Interface), the standard digital interface for High Definition TVs (HDTVs). Sadly, UDI will also use High-bandwidth Digital Content Protection (HDCP), a technology used today in HDMI-compatible products to prevent copying media to other devices.

Industry heavyweights involved in the movement to create this new interface (folks, it's just a new fangled cable) include: Apple, Intel Corp., LG Electronics, National Semiconductor Corp., Samsung Electronics and Silicon Image Inc., NVIDIA Corp., THine Electronics Inc., FCI, Foxconn Electronics Inc. and JAE Electronics Inc.. You can read the entire press release at eHome Upgrade.

Although this sounds to be an improvements, we already have a tangle of cords hidden behind our desks to deal with today. Lets take a look at a short and incomplete list, video (DVI/VGA), sound, three variations of USB, two variations of FireWire, our ancient standard power cord, ethernet, and now the Computer/Entertainment industry wishes to add another cable... whew, it almost makes a tech geek like me want to run and hide. I hope that this new cable standard will carry sound, USB and FireWire to the monitor, so that the snarl of cords really does get tempered.

This news follows closely on the heals of South Korean cell phone manufacturer's initiative aimed at creating one cable for all cell phones, making it easier for consumers to utilize their devices, and increasing the sales of cell phone accessories. You can read more about this development at engadget.com.

One Cable to Rule Them All.
One Cable to Find Them,
One Cable to Bring Them All
And in the Darkness Bind Them!

Hurricane Katrina

I wish to extend our deepest sympathies and prayers to those who have lost everything in the wake of Hurricane Katrina, and the subsequent levy failures in New Orleans. For those of us not in the destruction zone, it is tough to comprehend the scale and scope of this tragedy.

For those looking for loved ones the following links may be helpful:

Craigs List New Orleans - People Lost and Found
hurricanekatrinasurvivors.com
The Sun Herald's "I'm OK Line"
Now Publics Missing Persons

Katrina Blogs:

Metroblogging - New Orleans
Katrina Refugee
Slidell Hurricane Damage Blog
Kaye's Hurricane Katrina Blog
John's Online Journal

And lastly, a great local resource for all the above:
nola.com

B. Drew Moynihan
Publisher / Technologist
BAM 2 Media

Hurricane Katrina - Help!

The victims of Hurricane Katrina need your help today! BAM 2 Media supports the Red Cross with direct links in this post. If you prefer another organization, please donate to them today, so that assistance can get to those who need it quckly.