March 11th, 2011
10:16 PM ET
WordPress's Mullenweg: Blogging is not dead
There's been a lot of talk in the tech press about whether traditional blogging has been eclipsed by newer, more nimble mobile platforms, such as Twitter or Tumblr, which let users post seamlessly on the fly.
So maybe it was no surprise that one of the first questions WordPress founding developer Matt Mullenweg was asked during an onstage interview at SXSWi Friday was, "Is blogging dead?"
Ever the diplomat, Mullenweg ducked the question while praising his rivals.
"I think Tumblr is fantastic," he said, adding that he uses it for sharing photos.
"Twitter inspired us to start taking mobile seriously," he added. "You open it [Twitter's app] at any time and instantly start reading your friends' tweets. If you open our app you get a blank screen."
Mullenweg was startlingly candid about the shortcomings of WordPress's iPhone app, which he described as "not good yet." His engineers are working to improve it, he added.
The 27-year-old Texas native, who first came to SXSW when he was 19, also fielded questions about the DDoS attacks that crippled many WordPress blogs last week. Mullenweg said his team, which deletes as many as 5,000 spam blogs a day from its servers, traced 98 percent of the attacks to China. They did not appear to be politically motivated, he said.
But don't feel too bad for WordPress just yet. Its sites host almost half a billion blogs, and it powers an estimated 12 percent of the Web. A new blog launches on WordPress every two seconds, he said.
"People are now using WordPress for more than just a blog. They're using it to power their entire website," he said. "When it's at its best, it's invisible. It gets out of the way and lets people do their business."
Post by: CNN Tech producer Brandon Griggs
Filed under: Tech
March 11th, 2011
09:38 PM ET
Jake Gyllenhaal: Greetings from sunny Austin
SXSW kicked off on Friday night with Jake Gyllenhaal's new movie, "Source Code" premiering at Austin's Paramount Theatre. He made his way down the red carpet, joined by co-stars Vera Farmiga and Michelle Monaghan, to the delight of many a local teenage girl (and a few 30-something ladies) who were screaming "Jake! Jake!" from along Congress Avenue.
"Source Code's" director Duncan Jones premiered his first feature-length film, "Moon," here at SXSW two years ago. Now he returns to with a big budget and a big-name cast.
In the movie, Gyllenhaal plays solider Colter Stevens, who wakes up to find himself in the middle of a mission attempting to thwart a massive terrorist attack in Chicago. He is sent back in time, for eight-minute increments, to find the bomber and fall in love (enter Monaghan).
The "Source Code" cast members aren't the only A-Listers heading to town this week: Jodie Foster will walk the red carpet on Wednesday night in support of her upcoming film, "The Beaver," starring Mel Gibson, and Conan O'Brien is expected to swing in for the premiere of "Conan O'Brien Can't Stop," the documentary chronicling his between-gigs tour/variety show.
Gyllenhaal tells CNN he's a big fan of Austin and SXSW and hopes to extend his stay for a few days and check out the rest of festival. So who is he listening to lately? The Civil Wars and the new album from Adele. We enjoy your playlist, Jake.
Post by: CNN Entertainment Editor, Katie Caperton
Filed under: Film
March 11th, 2011
09:19 PM ET
Spotted at SXSW: Man in need of an iPad (2?)
The scene just outside SXSW is almost as interesting - if not more so - than what's going on inside the Austin Convention Center. Take this guy, Aaron Heideman, for instance. On the day Apple released the iPad 2, he was standing on the sidewalk in Austin, wearing a kilt and asking people for money.
Not money for food or drugs or, you know, housing. Money to buy an iPad.
Heideman, whose business card - yes, business card! - describes him as a "blogger, hitchhiker," told me his is on a cross-country tour, visiting every state in the U.S. and talking to people for a book he's writing about the American dream.
That's all nice and whatever, but writing said book on a clunky old laptop is just such a bummer, he said.
Hence the sign: "Saving up for iPad." And the hat, set out on the street for donations.
Heideman didn't specify whether he was gunning for the original iPad or the just-released-Friday iPad 2.
Either way, he said he'd already raised about $100.
Post by: John D. Sutter CNN Tech writer
Filed under: Scene • Tech
March 11th, 2011
09:10 PM ET
The Big Idea: Google leaves nothing left to discover
One of the hot buzzwords in technology lately is “serendipity” – which app developers use to mean the process of discovering things around you by using smartphones that run equations and pull recommendations to tell you what you should be doing.
It’s not exactly serendipitous, in the literal sense of the word.
The most popular example of this phenomenon is the “check in.” Say you’re at a coffee shop and you’re bored. You could check in to tell friends where you are – and then they could “serendipitously" "discover” where you are and come hang out, too.
The same goes for recommendations. Lots of sites – from Yelp to Google – offer up tips and ratings about restaurants, parks – whatever. The point is, technology helps you find things you might really like – and you’ll know that before you waste your time in going.
But is there a dark side to all of this over-planned spontaneity?
At a Google panel discussion here at South by Southwest Interactive, a member of the audience raised this point to Google’s Marissa Mayer:
“What happens to us if we lose this ability to discover - and need to discover?”
He referred to the phenomenon as “manufactured spontaneity,” and wondered aloud whether we have too much digital information – so that we don’t actually stumble upon anything in a legitimately unexpected way these days.
Mayer, Google’s vice-president of consumer products, disagreed:
“I think humans are just curious and it doesn’t seem like with Google and other places that information causes us to be less curious,” she said in a packed conference room in Austin, Texas. “If anything the access to more information causes us to be more curious.”
“I think that ultimately gives us a lot more time for us to do things we are interested in,” she added, noting that Google searches and traffic maps cut down on wasted energy.
Mayer’s answer seemed to win over her questioner:
“I’m a big fan,” he said.
What do you think? I’d never considered info overload in this way before.
Post by: John D. Sutter CNN Tech writer
Filed under: Tech
March 11th, 2011
08:50 PM ET
Google: The future is all around you
"How many people already today have used maps on your phone?" Google's Marissa Mayer asked a tech-addicted audience in a conference room at SXSWi here in Austin, Texas.
Pretty much everyone raised their hands.
No surprise there, Mayer said, since phones are becoming the main way people interact with maps and other location-based information. About 40% of all Google Maps searches come from mobile phones, Mayer said, and on two occasions - Christmas and New Year's Eve last year - the majority of maps searches were from phones.
Google Mobile Maps - "or GMM" - now has 150 million users, she said.
"You have a device that can say, 'I am here, tell me about here, tell me about something interesting or useful near here.'" That makes phones much more useful for location-based searching than desktops, she said.
Mayer spoke about Google's wanderings into location-aware technologies, many of which wowed or surprised this already tech-savvy crowd. Here are a few of the highlights:
Google Hotpot: In November, Google "quietly launched" a product called Hotpot, which lets users get recommendations on restaurants and stores near them, based on what their friends have recommended and rated, and based on what other Hotpot users who are similar to you have liked. If you search for a BBQ restaurant, for example, the first results might be the joints that are closest to you and that have been reviewed favorably by people who Google knows are your friends.
"Contextual discovery": Information about a person - where they are, who they're friends with, what time of the year it is, etc. - can be used to make search more powerful in the future, Mayer said. She put a picture of a grayish bird on a giant presentation screen to illustrate this point. It would be difficult to use Google to find out what kind of bird that is because you would have to describe it in text and then search through a bunch of images.
Better would be to use Google Goggles photo recognition technology to get a sense of the bird's shape and pair that with the location - Austin, Texas - and the time of year - March. Then Google could reasonably figure out that the bird you're looking at is actually a mockingbird, the state bird of Texas.
"This is really about the power of here - what it means to have that device that says, 'This is where I am, please get me some information from the digital world so I can use it in the physical world,'" she said.
3-D maps that render instantly: Google's latest Maps app, which is only available on Android devices, uses new technology to render map images instantly, smoothly and with impressive-looking 3-D buildings. Older mapping tech used "tiles" to draw a map. Google now uses vector technology, which has a much finer resolution and updates faster. A Google employee got audible "wows" from the audience when he showed a demo of a 3-D map of Manhattan, New York.
"If I do a double pinch here – (cue the "wows" and nerd-murmurs) – I can basically view all around Manhattan," the demo guy said.
Route choices in driving directions: The latest version of Maps gives users driving directions choices based on traffic patterns. Google's driving direction technology has become wildly popular, Mayer said, and the fact that users can see and avoid traffic jams means they save a collective two years of time and $250,000 in fuel each day, she said.
Combined, drivers use Google to navigate 35 million miles every day, she said.
Post by: John D. Sutter CNN Tech writer
Filed under: Tech
An Apple employee handed out water to people waiting in line to buy the new iPad 2.
March 11th, 2011
08:09 PM ET
They came all the way to Austin ... for an iPad
Lines and technology? Why, yes, that IS why techies descended on Austin, Texas today.
But this is certainly the longest line we've seen yet - even longer than the one to pick up SXSW badges.
Leave it to Apple, which has no official presence at SXSW, to trump the Interactive portion of the conference by setting up shop to hawk its spanking new iPad 2. The tablet device went on sale Friday.
An Apple pop-up store selling only the new gadget and its accessories opened at 5 p.m. today at 6th Street and Congress Avenue in Austin, a few blocks from the heart of the conference. By 5:20 p.m., the line wrapped around the block.
Apple employees handed out water to the waiting hopefuls, although the friendly Texas climate means it's no big deal to hang out in the breezy evening air. There were barricades, and a cop keeping watch, but shoppers were in pretty good spirits. With each new fan(atic) that emerged from the store, there was another camera - this time, in tablet form! - to take pictures of the gigantic line.
Want one for yourself? The new thinner, faster iPad has the same price structure as the previous one, ranging from $499 to $829.
Officially, the downtown Austin store was staying open Friday til 10 p.m. No promises on how long supplies last.
Post by: CNN.com producer, Jamie Gumbrecht
Filed under: Scene • Tech
Photo by Phil Dhingra
March 11th, 2011
12:04 PM ET
3-D images in a 2-D world
Will this be the year of 3D cameras? Austin-based developer Phil Dhingra thinks so.
With the release of the Nintendo 3DS at the end of the month and the recent announcement of the world's first 3-D smartphone, Dhingra decided to take advantage of the budding market by creating 3dporch.com.
"By the end of the year there will be 10 million of those sold in the U.S. That means there will be about 10 million kids walking around with 3-D cameras, and they are going to need a place to share photos," he said.
With this new audience in mind, 3dporch.com reproduces 3-D images for a 2-D world.
Once a 3-D photo is uploaded, the site produces an anaglyph image, which can be viewed through those old-school red and cyan glasses. You can also make the picture "wiggle" between the two photos produced by a 3-D camera, download the original .mpo format and see the individual images.
Dhingra will be taking photos at events around South By Southwest. Click here to check out his latest photos.
Post by: Anna Gonzalez
Filed under: Tech
Credit: CNN (www.cnn.com)
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