Much of the buzz leading up to this year's SXSW Interactive Keynote revolved not around Mark Zuckerberg, this year's guest and founder of Facebook, but around his tendency to give awkward and empty interviews. ...

Eugene Mirman is much funnier than you. A mainstay of New York's alternative comedy scene, Mirman's profile has been even higher of late. In February, his Comedy Central Presents special debuted, and earlier this year, he was asked to cover the New Hampshire primaries for 236.com. He can also be seen as Jemaine and Bret's strange landlord in HBO's Flight Of The Conchords. A multi-year veteran of SXSW, Mirman is hosting this year's Web Awards at SXSW Interactive and is also performing at multiple SX venues during the music festival. ...

Austin is about to incur a hefty carbon footprint as SXSW kicks off, but thanks to the folks at MakeMeSustainable (MMS), people have an opportunity to walk the sustainability talk. The 'Interactive Carbon Tree' was designed specifically for SXSW in an effort to mobilize attendees at the conference to reduce their collective carbon impact. Check it out here: http://makemesustainable.com/sxsw...

You know how Texas has those new Film Incentives dollars to throw around now? Well, they're not limited to movies and Friday Night Lights only. The gaming industry gets a piece of that, too. And since there are over 50 gaming studios already in Austin (not to mention the availability of increasingly slick development/programming courses) it's a given that gaming will continue to blow up here in the Capitol City. But all that's a major......

Browse and contribute to the 2008 SXSW Interactive Panel Picker. Lifehacker: Mozilla preps Firefox Campus Edition, which is pre-bundled with student-centric extensions like Zotero, FoxyTunes and StumbleUpon. What extensions would you give to our young academics? The Department of Justice wants to come up with an official list of every porn star in America - and slap stiff penalties on producers who don't cooperate. What has better sound: vinyl, or a CD? Any record......

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......

Believe it or not, there's still a bunch of activities going on around town this week other than SXSW. This week's IST List won't include our usual bevy of music and film events; for those, we recommend that you check out our Interactive Guide to SXSW Parties and the Other Side Guide, respectively. Meanwhile, if you'd like to share your SXSW photos with the Austinist community, simply tag 'em "sxswaustinist" -- we'll be featuring......

The 10th annual SXSW Interactive Web Awards were handed out last night at the Austin Hilton's Grand Ballroom, honoring 18 of the internet's top developers, designers, and websites. Comedian and video blogging phenom Ze Frank emceed the ceremony. "It's amazing how this event has grown in the seven years I've worked with the Interactive Festival," said Shawn O'Keefe, SXSW Web Awards Coordinator. "This year is our biggest year ever in terms of attendance and entries,......

Believe it or not, there's a bunch of activities going on around town this week other than SXSW. This week's IST List won't include our usual bevy of music and film events; for those, we recommend that you check out our Interactive Guide to SXSW Parties and the Other Side Guide, respectively. We'd also like to welcome LAist editor Tony Pierce and Gothamist arts editor Jen Carlson, both of whom will be joining us......

In what might be the best example of both SXSW Interactive & Film comes "The Weathered Underground", a film that allows you to choose the direction that the main character, Eric (played by Michael Ciriaco), gets to experience. Wanna see Eric trip out on mushrooms? Wanna see him go to a club instead of working? Or would you rather see him work instead of drinking? The control is literally in your hands in this......

GOOD Magazine ("media for people who give a damn") and new kid on the scene MOLI will be sponsoring a bash during SxSW Interactive to raise money for blogger/flickr-user favorite Creative Commons. They have managed to recruit New York DJ trio The MisShapes and LA's Filip Turbotito to handle the tunes, with VJ Phi Phenomenon providing an audio-visual experience. Joi Ito, chairman of Creative Commons, will be there as well. We read that Six......

FRIDAY [9] art • Grand Opening Party for DRAW, 150 artists strong at Gallery Lombardi (7pm - 10pm) comedy • Todd Barry, Matt Bearden at Emo's Lounge music • Deerhoof, Macromantics, Experimental Dental School at Emo's music • Primordial Undermind at End of an Ear (6pm, Free) music • The Everyday People CD Release Show with The Hero Factor, Live Oak Decline at The Parish Room music • Lucinda Williams, Heartless Bastards at Stubb's......

In his latest release, Alternadad, Neal Pollack chronicles his experiences as a father and family-man in the early 21st-century. Pollack proves in his fourth bound collection of pages that it is indeed an exciting time to be alive and parenting. Please be sure to read Austinist's exquisite review of Alternadad, an instant American classic. Having said that, we think it's important to let you know that Neal Pollack is coming to Austin. We won't tell......

One of the more intriguing panels during SXSW Interactive isn't even part of the official conference: 20x2 assembles twenty interesting individuals from the creative industry -- "writers, musicians, filmmakers, web geeks and other bon vivants" -- and poses a broad, abstract question that each must answer in two minutes. Having been around since 2001, questions presented at 20x2s past have included "Who Are You?", "What's the Word?", and "What's the Big Idea?". Abstract, indeed. This......

WEDNESDAY [7] music • Hotel, Hotel, Haunting Oboe Music at Beerland music • The Matches, I Am Ghost, Escape the Fate, The Higher at Emo's music • Lotus, The Frequency at Stubb's music • David Garza at Continental Club (Midnight, $7) music • Todd Snider at Cactus Café music • Tiny Fox, The Offisaurs, Aspen Murder at Trophy's music • Pezz Perez, The Seas at The Chain Drive (10pm) film • A Portrait of......

Marshall Escamilla and Emily Summerfield are the dynamic duo behind Stem and Leaf Records, Austin's latest indie record label that launched during SXSW Interactive earlier this year. This weekend, they're throwing a CD release show for The Interest Kills at the historic Victory Grill, with Happy Families, The Total Foxes, and Red Leaves ... and a spelling bee! We had a chat with Emily and Marshall this week, in advance of the show. Read......

[Austinist is thrilled to present you with the first installment in our new, ongoing podcast series, Audio Austinist. For this inaugural edition, podcast editor Kristina Barnett focuses on the 2006 SXSW Interactive Festival, during which she interviewed two of America's most prominent political bloggers, Jerome Armstrong (MyDD) and Markos Moulitsas (DailyKos). Check it out below, and send us your feedback! In the coming months, we'll be covering a host of issues pertaining to Austinites --......

The highlight of SXSW Interactive Day Two, apart from a confounding mock cosplay battle outside the front entrance to the Convention Center (promotion for a documentary screening at SXSW Film), was the morning's Tagging 2.0 discussion. With all this buzz surrounding the so-called Web 2.0 -- which, we're loath to admit, we still don't actually understand -- moderator Don Turnbull thought it prudent to use a similar catch-phrase, as both emerging technologies (or concepts)......

We showed up late to the panels, after driving up to North Austin to procure a few dozen cases of alcohol -- to no avail, it turned out, as they'd somehow run out of a certain energized malt liquor entirely. How does a distribution center capable of stocking enough boxes of beer to replenish the Salton Sea run completely dry? Such is the ridiculous majesty of SXSW Interactive. After waiting in two or three......

It is times like these we are proud to be an Ist. The 2006 Bloggie finalists have been announced, and Torontoist (Best Canadian Weblog), Londonist (Best British or Irish Weblog), and Gothamist (Best Topical and Best Group Weblog) have all made the cut. The winners will be announced at our very own SXSW Interactive Festival. So check out the other nominees and cast your votes for our dear sister sites. We are hoping that......

In conjunction with the Interative portion of SXSW this year, the festival coordinators will also be debuting the "ScreenBurn Beta Festival," billed as "the place to get your hands on upcoming video game releases, hear from industry insiders and indie developers on the edge, and see the future of game development firsthand." The combination trade show and expo will be held at the Austin Convention Center on Saturday, March 11th, and will feature E3-like......

The sixth annual Weblog Awards, more affectionately referred to as the "Bloggies™," are now accepting nominations for your favorite blogs. From now through Tuesday, January 10, 2005, anyone with a unique email address can submit their recommendations for such esteemed categories as "Best Craft Weblog," "Best Latin American Weblog" and "Best Teen Blog." Several rounds of voting later, the winners will be announced at this year's SXSW Interactive on Monday, March 13th. Past blogebrities......

M O N D A Y [ 1 4 ] music · Dios (Malos), Pilotdrift and Steeltrain at Stubb's music · The Lemurs and Tarantula A.D. at the Parish Room film · Spiderhouse Cafe screens "Walmart: The High Cost of Low Price" (RSVP, Free, 10pm) (Thanks, Kate!) shopping · Austin Museum of Art's Tax-Free Day music · Piebald, Hot Rod Circuit, Hit the Light and Valient Thorr at Emo's music · Nic Armstrong and the......

M O N D AY [ 31 ] music/party · The White Ghost Shivers' Halloween Ball at American Legion Hall! Burlesque, Independence Brew, apple bobbing with the TX Roller Girls, Tarot card readings, a kissing booth and more. The White Ghost Shivers will also be performing a live soundtrack to accompany Buster Keaton's "Cops." ($25, 9pm) music · Galactic, Mofro and New Monsoon at Stubb's music · Halloween Show at Emo's with Flametrick Subs, Satans......

There are so many panels at SXSW Interactive, we hardly know which ones to go to, but we'll do our best in recommending the exciting and/or most relevant ones. 1130: How to Leverage Solipsism - Lead by Peter "I coined the term 'blogger'" Merholz, this will be a panel about tagging and taxonomies -- the stuff that powers Flickr and Delicious. If you're into emerging web tech, which we very sadly are, this is one......

Festivities at last night's SXSWi Unofficial Opener, Break Bread With Brad, got a wee bit out of hand when host Brad Graham tried to strangle SXSW keynote speaker, Jeffrey Zeldman over an argument about web standards. Ooh, that sounded like journalism, eh? But it isn't. Nothing but lies! Austinist was both amazed and wildly pleased that the topics of conversation seemed to stay mostly away from the geekery that is the focus of SXSW Interactive.......

We know that Austin isn't a town that goes bat-shit over celebrities, but it is nice every once in a while to see one of the glamorous, glowing wonderbunnies from heaven wandering our streets, looking for a good place to get BBQ. Yesterday, Austinist bumped into Claire Forlani of the wildly opposite films, "Mallrats" and "Meet Joe Black." Sadly, she did not respond to repeated and desperate screaming of her name, so all we got......

We're hearing rumors that the first party worth paying attention to (besides the VIP-only party tonight at Austinist HQ) for this year's SXSW is the HandShake Happy Hour tomorrow night at Lucky Lounge. 6-8, Milkshake Media and Handwire will be paying for you to get drunk with your friends. Don't forget your Bluetooth-enabled cellphone or PDA so you can beam your contact details and RSS feed to the cutie with the pocket protecter at the......

While we're busy linking the Austin Chronicle, there's an article by Bruce Sterling where he explains why his annual SXSW Interactive closing party is no longer being held at his house, but rather a "secret location." He blames flash mobs and local police, but our blurry memory of being amongst the last to leave last year's party features well stocked liquor cabinets being raided by a drunken novelist, a dotcom CEO taking a 20-year old......