As Austin Metblogs posted on Friday, Google recently expanded their nifty Street View application to include Austin. The feature, part of Google Maps, allows you to 'virtually' drive through the city. Most of the hundreds of photographs that make up Austin's Street View look to have been taken sometime last October though December, as Halloween and Christmas decorations can be seen. Waterloo Park was evidently shot during early November's Fun Fun Fun Fest --......

Green Drinks gets computer savvy this month with a focus on greening computer usage and IT. Rebecca Thorburn, a member of the Climate Savers Computing Initiative, will be on hand to discuss the non-profit organization's dedication to promoting climate conservation through the widespread deployment of energy efficient hardware and power management software. ...

The Daily Texan has announced its list of endorsed candidates, with one glaring omission. ...

Bust out your day planner, or your spreadsheet, or your Google Calendar, or whatever the hell you use to organize your life--the full schedule for the SXSW Film Festival has been released, including all features, docs, shorts and panels....

When I graduated from college, there's weren't a lot of gay characters in movies and TV. This was the mid-90's so when there was a gay character, he was usually dying of AIDS. I saw every one of these movies, but I was desperate to see characters more like myself....

This might not technically be theatre, but it made for some great comedy. On Saturday's show [listen], the Car Talk guys repeated the name of Austinite and Puzzler-winner Quentin Fennessy eight times in a row.......

Presidential Primaries: Hillary and Mitt Romney take Nevada, McCain takes South Carolina....

Are you familiar with micro-blogging? We weren't, until we took the time to Google "Twitter," the word that seems to be on everyone's busy lips. Twitter is a social networking site that enables users to quickly (and briefly) update their blog and subscribers via SMS, IM or third party application. Updates are 140 characters or less, and while many Twitterers utilize the service for relaying meaningless information regarding their day to day life, a few of them have found that passing along information in the form of short link-based posts, event notifications or emergency situation news items. The Los Angeles Fire Dept. uses Twitter as a means of communication - a lesson they learned after the 2007 wildfires. Democratic presidential candidates John Edwards and Barack Obama both use Twitter, too. ...

Google MapsGeorgetown Village, a new master planned community 35 miles north of downtown Austin, is hoping to become the first green subdivision in Georgetown. According to the Statesman: Green Builders Inc. is creating an 800-acre master-planned community with 2,000 houses that will be environmentally friendly and feature rain harvesting and energy-saving heating and cooling systems. Georgetown Village will offer 15 floor plans, from 1,800 square feet to 2,400 square feet. Several models are near completion.......

Photo by Will Pate on flickrInteractive + ScreenBurn The preliminary list of Interactive panels has been released, and includes topics like "The Great Debate: Is Web 2.0 Bulls#!t?", "The Porn Police: Know the Rules," and "The Suxorz: The Worst Ten Social Media Ad Campaigns of 2007." [Preliminary List] Additional, several panels for the gaming-centric ScreenBurn fest have been revealed. These include "The Future Virtual World Game Development: Rise of the Indies," "You Are Here: Gaming......

Louisiana elects the first Indian-American to ever serve as governor of a U.S. state. Is nuclear power (excuse us, we meant "nuke-ular") in the cards for America's post-petroleum energy future? Greenpeace takes issue with the environmental friendliness of the iPhone. Bill that seeks to increase court control over government surveillance passes through the U.S. Senate Intelligence Committee. The ISP war against file sharers intensifies; BitTorrent comes under heavy fire. Prediction: Apple + Google =......

According to Bizjournals, Google is expected to close on a lease at the Scarbrough Building on Sixth and Congress Ave. They'll be taking over the entire second floor of the Chicago-style building, which has the distinction of being Austin's first steel and concrete structure (built just shy of a century ago) and, more interestingly, housing the first dry goods store that tacked on price tags to its wares—before that, stores in Austin worked largely on......

...each East Austin Gentrifist is, in his or her own way, a kind of Columbus: Making assumptions passed on projections of the real estate market, alternately worshiping or shaking their fist at the spate of new condominiums, depending on their particular deities—‘discovering’ new parks and stores, trying to understand the strange speech and habits of the natives, semi-aware that their very presence contains a pathogen of tax hikes that threaten to exterminate the indigenous population....

The Worst Years of Your Life Edited by Mark Jude Poirier [Google Book Search Link] Ah, the short story. The short-pants-wearing, pencil-case-carrying, crack-voiced little brother of the novel. It’s about time short stories got some love, no? Simon and Schuster has just released a new anthology of lit-fiction short stories about early adolescence. Established names like George Saunders, John Barth, and A. M. Holmes are sprinkled in alongside younger writers. The editor, Mark Jude Poirier,......

Badass: Your private jet holds 180 passengers. Google.com: NASA geeks think it is so cool, they're going to let you park it on their runway. Lame: Being seen in one of those electric cars they sell by 6th and Lamar. More lame than that? Being seen in one of these things. (We're kidding, folks, seriously.) Remember when we told you about that OU guy that tore that UT guy's balls? Yeah, he's going to......

ACL Previews Interview: Ghostland Observatory Previews: The Broken West, Big Sam’s Funky Nation & Rose Hill Drive Previews: Billy Joe Shaver and Fionn Regan Previews: Brandon Rhyder and Ocote Soul Sounds Interview: The Broken West Previews: Sylvia St. James, Jeffrey Steele, and Amy Cook Interview: Bloc Party ACL Fest Updates: Google Mashup, Contests, Eco-Chic Previews: Augustana, Amos Lee Interview: Peter, Bjorn, and John ACL Band Clash, Round 3: Wilco Vs My Morning Jacket Travis......

Austinite Bill Kilday has put together a pretty nifty ACL page that shows you which artists are playing on each stage throughout the weekend. What's more, he's conveniently provided YouTube clips and music videos for most of the artists. "Bill's Map" is a mashup of Google Maps, YouTube, and the Official ACL schedule. It's worth a look around, especially if you're curious about some of the lesser known acts playing the festival. In an......

Having nearly completed world domination, Google turns eyes to the heavens. Gross: Think about your parents having sex. Grosser: Think about your grandparents having sex. Grossest: Think about your grandpa having sex on his 85th birthday. Move over Travolta, Cate Blanchett dons Ray Bans, leather jacket to look like Dylan in upcoming film. Proof that those bug-eyed glasses sorority chicks wear are totally deceiving: The "Barbie Bandits" admit to bank robberies. "Dude, but I......

Big surprise: Obama doesn't care much for "Obama Girl". Hurricane Dean was a category 5 when it hit Mexico, but settled down to a category 3. The "Daily Show" tries to recapture its cultural relevance by really and truly sending a correspondent to Iraq. Gaddafi's son wants a free media (among other reforms) in Libya. The gal who works on your nails definitely deserves a bigger tip. Rumor is Google is investing in Chinese......

ACL Previews Austinist Launches Dedicated ACL Page! Preview: Manchester Orchestra and Patterson Hood Preview: Ian Ball and the Little Ones Interview: Paolo Nutini ACL Band Clash, Round 2: The Killers Vs. Björk Weekly Features Tales Of Mere Existence Hots On #9: Sound Off New Release Tuesday: Frisell's Floratone The Argyle Academy New Movie Releases: The Invasion, Superbad, Death at a Funeral, and More Truesday: Friesday The Laurie Show News, Features, and More Travis County......

As part of their ongoing investigations in the death of UT fraternity pledge Tyler Cross, who died last November after falling from a fifth story balcony at the University Towers, authorities are ">taking their search to the internets. The Travis County District Attorney's office recently filed a search warrant demanding access to the Google Group archives of the Sigma Alpha Epsilon Fall 2006 pledge class. In the affidavit, as described by KVUE News, investigators interrogated......

Londonist are starting to think their city is getting just a little bit too expensive, when even Christian Slater can't afford to go out there. And there's no escaping, as local singer Lily Allen discovered when she was barred entry to the US. The British mapping agency caused further bad karma, by blocking a 3-D representation of London in Google Earth. But the smiles returned to Londonist's faces as they interviewed Baroness von Reichardt,......

Remember how Beyonce fell on her ass at a concert and said she didn't want anyone posting videos of it? The folks at Shout Mouth have compiled their Top Ten Most Embarrassing Stage Falls (with video accompaniment, of course). Do you remember the last State of the Union when Bush honored Julie Aigner-Clark, founder of Baby Einstein (a series of infant educational programs)? Yeah...those programs don't actually work. Scary: Shitload of Germans pile on......

In our ongoing efforts to make it as easy and intuitive for you folks to see just what's going on around town, today we're pleased to launch the newest version of our Weekly IST List. Instead of appearing on the front page with the rest of our daily articles, the Weekly IST List now has its own dedicated place on the site: you can access it through the navigation menu at the top, or......

Josh over at random graphs has an interesting scoop indicating that internet behemoth Google might be opening up an office in Austin. An "Engineering Director" position was recently posted to the Google Jobs site. The req states that the opening is "available in Austin, Texas" and, more interestingly, calls for the chosen candidate to lead a "group of 100+ engineers" and deal with "an informal startup environment." The posting doesn't elaborate on whether said "projects"......

Tonight, Alamo Music Mondays presents the US Premiere of We Were Never Here, a film about the German avant-rock band Mutter. Though the band has been around since the 80s, we have to admit that we don't know much about them—and though the Google-translated version of their Wikipedia page is hilarious, it isn't entirely informative. (Representative sentence: "Then with in the same year the published album main thing music disappointed the most incalculable all Diskurspop......

There's so much going on across the Ist-a-Verse that it's almost impossible to keep track these days. Fortunately, we do it so you don't have to! Londonist took a walk through Oliver Twist's London, thanks to a gorgeous map layer for Google Earth. They also caught up with modern-day fictional London, with the Fantastic Four and 28 Weeks Later. It was a week of insanity over at DCist. They started the week off with......

A prominent official at the Austin Museum of Art (AMOA) and his wife were arrested this weekend, after the two were caught trying to make off with paintings from the Fine Arts Festival. Austin Police Commander Michael Jung was on patrol near Republic Square Park early Sunday morning when he found a suspicious-looking Alexandra Sheppard, wife of former AMOA finance and operations director Nathan Sheppard, wandering around the Fine Arts Festival tents. In the process......

What happens when you throw music, dance, poetry, photography, visual art, theatre, film, and -- why not? -- opera into a great big blue box and shake? You get an explosion of proportions that only the creative geniuses at Refraction Arts can contain. This year's Fuse Box Festival, featuring artists from Brooklyn to Portland and places in between, showcases works you've never seen before and aren't likely to see hence. Things start gearing up this......